So I recently changed the sidebar gifs on my personal tumblr and kind of accidentally started shipping Oswin and Ianpala... then I had to fic it. And, you know, it was really just supposed to be light and fluffy and short, but somehow it just... took a turn that ended up a lot longer than expected. And kind of veered away from Owsin/Ianpala, but maybe I'll continue it?
The Man Who Was
Dean Winchester loved his baby. Loved her. He had grown up with her, raised Sammy with her, rebuilt her from nothing, took care of her like she was something precious. Because she was something precious, to him anyway. He'd saved the world in this car more times than he cared to count. He loved this car.
What he did not love, was when she ceased to function without cause.
"Do you think maybe it's possible that it's just… old?" Sam asked as he rooted through the glove box for a flashlight. Dean had the hood propped up, and his face up close to the inner workings of the beautiful machine, grumbling as he failed to see what was wrong. The light from the moon wasn't much to work off of, but he'd just given her a tune up a week before, nothing had seemed out of place.
"Don't you talk about my baby like that," he said. "She's classy."
"My point still stands. She's nearly fifty. Cars aren't made to last that long."
"Sammy, you shut your pie hole, or you'll be-"
"Or I'll be what, Dean? Dean?"
"Shh."
Sam quickly, with all the grace of a camel on roller skates, slid out of the car, shotgun in hand, just in time to see Dean turn his gun on a familiar figure half inside a blue box.
"Point that somewhere else," the Doctor said, pushing the gun away and hopping out of the TARDIS.
Dean immediately lowered it and sigh. "Hello, Doctor."
"Dean," the Doctor said with a wide grin. "Sam. How wonderful to see you both."
Before Sam and Dean could reply, the door to the TARDIS opened again and a girl stepped out.
"Who's the broad?" Dean asked.
"Oswin Oswald," she said happily. "And who are these brilliant specimens?"
"Sam and Dean Winchester," the Doctor introduced.
"Does it bother you, Doctor," Oswin said, examining Dean's features so closely that he felt rather uncomfortable. "That all of your friends are prettier than you?"
The Doctor seemed to have thought that question was going very different places, and was rather disappointed by the turn it took. He pouted slightly, and turned to inspect the broke down car.
"You touch my baby, and I will shoot you," Dean said, raising the gun again. The Doctor held his hands up in surrender.
"Dean," Sam warned.
"Last time he touched her, she didn't run for a week!" The Doctor was clearly rather insulted, but tried to hide it by wandering about, inspecting the burnt out lights that lined the highway.
"May I?" Oswin asked, taking a step closer to the vehicle. "I'm rather good with cars."
Dean narrowed his eyes, but eventually nodded. Oswin grinned and stuck her head under the hood.
"Keep an eye on her," Dean instructed Sam. He jogged to catch up with the Doctor, who was now three streetlamps away. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"What, I can't stop by to check up on a couple old friends? Isn't that what people do?"
"Yeah, people. Not you. Not like this. What are you doing here?" He studied the Doctor for a moment. "You have no idea, do you?"
"Alright, you caught me," the Doctor said. "Oswin and I were on our way to visit the Summer Falls when the TARDIS brought us here instead. Anything strange going on lately?"
"We'll, my car is acting up, and now you're here."
"Oi! Muscles!" Oswin called to Sam, who was leaning against the car, not paying an ounce of attention to what she was doing. "Pass me the light."
Dean looked back and forth between Oswin, who was hopefully not breaking his car further, and the Doctor, who was watching her with a strange, all too familiar look in his eyes. Dean frowned.
"How does she die?"
"What?" the Doctor asked, breaking himself out of his thought.
"Oswin. Don't play dumb, I know that look. How does she die?"
The Doctor sighed. "It doesn't matter. In the end, they all die. I can't stop it, can't change it. All I can do is make sure she lives until then. Why are all the lamps out?"
"I don't… what?"
"The lamps, the lamps! Why are they out?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Alright, Moose," Oswin said. "Start him up." Sam climbed in behind the wheel and turned the key. She started right up.
"What did you do?" Dean asked, walking back towards the car. "How did you do that?"
Oswin shrugged. "I told you, I'm good with cars. Just got to know how to talk to him. By the sound of things, you've taken quite good care of him over the years, but lately you've been slacking a bit. He's not to pleased with you for that."
"She," Dean corrected. "The car is a she."
Oswin huffed. "Well that's part of your problem right there. You're not listening proper. Handsome man you've got, and here you are trying to tell everyone he's a girl. How would you feel?" She ran her hand fondly along the side of the car.
Dean blanched while Sam snorted in the background.
"Where's Castiel?" the Doctor asked, looking to the sky. "Last I saw you, you had an Angel. Where's he gone off to?"
"He's helping to rebuild Heaven. Why?"
"No reason."
"Have you figured out why we're here, Doctor?" Oswin asked.
"Nope. Everything looks right and shiny. Nothing more out of the ordinary that usual. Back to the TARDIS, Owsin. You've got my number, boys, call if anything weird happens." He gave them a lazy salute before hopping back into the TARDIS.
"You worried?" Sam asked as they climbed back into the impala.
Dean shrugged. "Good things never really come with the Doctor, but it's not as though our lives are a cake walk when he's not around."
Sam nodded, because he really could argue that.
And sure enough, three hours later, in some old, haunted mansion, they run into the Doctor's brand of trouble.
"Sammy!" Dean shouted, not blinking. "Grab the C4 and call the Doctor!"
"What's goin… oh."
"Sooner rather than later!"
Within moments, he could hear the TARDIS landing. His phone rang and he fumbled to answer it without taking his eyes off the Angels.
"We have a problem," Sam said when he answered.
"No shit, we have a problem, Sam. Have I mentioned how much I hate angels?"
Sam would have no doubt snorted at the irony, given better timing.
"Bigger problems than that. The car is gone."
"What do you mean, the car is gone?" Dean asked, as the Doctor all but tripped out of the TARDIS.
"You boys took your sweet time finding trouble, didn't you? It's been over a week."
"It's been a few hours," Sam said.
"What do you mean, the car is gone?" Dean asked again. "The car can't be gone it was parked right outside."
"Yeah, well, now it's not. And, well, take a look at the situation we've found ourselves in."
"Are you saying that my car, my baby, got sent back in time? Doctor, is that even possible?"
"Highly unlikely, but knowing your track recorded, 100 percent possible."
"Doctor?" Oswin said, poking her head out of the TARDIS.
"Stay in the TARDIS, Oswin."
"Can we do something about the freaking Angels?!" Dean exclaimed. "And find my car?!"
"Right!" the Doctor said, jumping around, waving his sonic screwdriver. "How to deal with the Weeping Angels…"
"Personally, I'm fond of blowing them up," Dean said, his eyes beginning to water from not blinking.
"Yes, well, brute force is not always my first choice, but it has worked rather well in the past. Bring on the explosives!"
"They're. In. My. Car."
"Ohh." The Doctor frowned. "Well, that is slightly more problematic, isn't it? Oswin!" he called, pushing open the TARDIS door. "Do a scan for… Oswin? Oy, Winchester, have you seen my Oswin?"
"I haven't seen anything but these creepy fuckers in well over five minutes!"
"Right. Which means she's gone and wandered off again. Phone."
Dean passed him his phone to the Doctor. A moment later, a ringing came from the other end of the hall. The Doctor turned just as Sam rounded the corner, and picked up the abandoned phone on the ground. "Oh dear," the Doctor said.
"This yours?" Sam asked, holding up the phone.
"Unfortunately. And that is, no doubt, the Angel that sent her back. Alright boys, time for Plan B."
"We had a Plan A?" Dean asked.
The Doctor ignored him. "I'm going to let that Angel get me. Once I'm gone, you two get in the TARDIS. She'll protect you. I'll give you a call as soon as I know when I am, and you can pilot the TARDIS back to pick us up."
"That doesn't sound like a good plan!"
"Too late," Sam said as the Doctor ran up to the Angel. The Doctor closed his eyes, and Sam did as well, for just a moment, and when he opened them again, the Doctor was gone, and the Angel had moved closer to the Winchesters. Sam backed toward the TARDIS, not blinking, and pushed the door open. "Dean. Inside. Now." They ran in and slammed the door, then moved to the console. Sam pulled a knob, which activated the external cameras.
"What was he thinking?!" Dean questioned.
Sam's phone began to ring before he could answer.
"Doctor?"
"Hello, Winchester. February 1st, 1829. You remember how to fly her, don't you?"
"Don't you think that would have been a good thing to be sure of before you went and got yourself zapped to 1829?" Sam asked.
"Is my baby there?" Dean asked, swiping the phone. Sam rolled his eyes and began fiddling with the controls.
"Well..." the Doctor said slowly.
"It's a simple yes, or no!"
"Yes. In a manner of speaking."
"In a manner of... what the hell does that mean?"
"You'll see when you get here," the Doctor concluded, then the line went dead.
"Ahhh," Dean raged, shaking his hands. "I hate that man."
"Mmhmm," Sam mumbled, not really paying him much attention as he activated the TARDIS. Within moments, they landed. He swirled the display around, making sure they'd landed in the right place. They were still in the old mansion, but the old mansion was brand new. The floors were shining, and the stairs weren't in shambles, and there was a banister. There were chandeliers and furnishings. There was also a Doctor, an Oswin, and...
Sam raised an eyebrow in curiosity.
"What?"
Sam walked to the door without an answer.
"Oh, good, you do still remember," the Doctor said, grinning.
"Who's that?" Dean asked, noticing the man standing on the stairs.
"Oh, um... yes. About that."
"That, Angel-Face," Oswin said with a mischievous smile. "Is your car."
Dean gaped at Oswin, then at the man standing on the stairs. He was fairly attractive, and wearing a suit that fit the time period, but not so much the man. Clean-shaven, roughly Cas' height, and had big, bright blue eyes, but was most certainly not what Dean would have pictured if someone said his car was a human.
"That's not my car."
"Well, it was your car."
"One, my car is not a dude."
"I told you he didn't like you to think him a woman," Oswin said with a smug smile. "He's younger than I expected though. Prettier, too," she added with a flirtatious smile.
Dean ignored her. "And two, my car would not dress like that."
"I've been stuck here for nearly two months, Dean. I've had to adapt," he all but snarled.
"How are you human?" Dean asked after a moment.
He shrugged. "One minute I was a car in the twenty-first century, the next I'm a man in the nineteenth."
Sam and Dean turned to the Doctor for an explanation.
"Oh," he said after a moment, realizing they expected something from him. "Have you not figured it out yet?"
"Figured what out, exactly?"
"When the Weeping Angels sent him back as a car, he defaulted to human."
Dean stared at him, not understanding how that was even a little bit possible.
"I thought that the Angels could only harness potential energy from humans," Sam said. "Why did they think they could take it from a car?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"If it was obvious," Dean said, growing rather annoyed. "We wouldn't be asking you for answers."
"He wasn't always a car!"
Dean nodded for a moment, but still looked absolutely confused. He turned to his car. "What's he talking about?"
"I was a hunter," he said. "In the sixties." Dean and Sam wore matching expression of shock. "I was tracking a Trickster. I guess he thought a good way to get me off him was to… turn me into a car."
"A Trickster?" Sam repeated.
"Yeah. That Trickster. He thought it was hilarious when he realized I was your car."
"And of course he wouldn't change you back, because he's an asshat. So wait, you're telling me that, all this time, my car has been some poor cursed shmuck?"
"Pretty much."
"So… wait. What about all the stuff that was in… you? The guns and the salt, and, most importantly, the explosives."
He smiled, and led them to the closet under the stairs. Inside was… nothing. Until he pulled away the false wall and revealed the entire Winchester arsenal. Dean grinned and reached for his gun, and passed several bricks of C4 to Sam.
"Let's kill us some Angels."
They gathered the arsenal and moved back into the TARDIS, back to the twenty-first century.
"How many Angels would you say there were?" the Doctor asked as he started up the engines.
"I counted at least seven," Sam said, as Dean gave his former car a strange look.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just… Dude, you look ridiculous."
"Don't listen to him," Oswin said. "I think you look very dapper." Dean snorted.
"We'll deal with the wardrobe issue later, boys," the Doctor said as the TARDIS landed once more. "Scans indicate there aren't any Angels in the immediate area, but they are out there. Be. Careful." He ushered them out the door, each carrying an armful of explosives.
Two hours later, they were sweeping crumbled bits of stone into boxes.
"See, man, that looks so much better," Dean said when his former car returned from the Doctor's wardrobe, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket.
"And what does Oswin think?" he asked, turning to her.
"Rugged. I like it."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Can we stop flirting with my car?"
"I'm not your car anymore, Dean."
Dean contemplated that thought for a moment, then his face fell.
"What?" Sam asked.
"I have to get a new car."
"OR!" the Doctor said, twirling around the room. "You could come with meee. You don't need a car when you've got a TARDIS."
Sam and Dean exchanged a glance.
"Yeah, we already did that once," Sam said. "I don't know if we're really up to do it again."
"What about you?" Oswin asked, nudging the ex-impala.
"Nah," he said, shaking his head. "I'm a hunter, not a traveler. Besides, I've been with these two so long, I think I'll stay with them, if they don't mind."
"Not at all," Dean said. "Unless you turn out to be a piss poor hunter, then we're feeding you to a Leviathan."
"Fair enough," he said with a nod.
"I think we've got all the Angel bits," Oswin said, carrying the last box into the TARDIS
"Righty-ho. You and I will take the boxes and shoot them into a supernova somewhere."
"Bye!" Oswin said.
"Until next time, boys." He closed the door and the TARDIS dematerialized.
"You know," Dean said thoughtfully. "He's a good enough guy. Kind of high strung, a bit of a spaz, and way too smart for his own good. But a good guy. Is it bad that I never want to see him again?"
"So, wait," Sam said, turning to the man who was once an Impala. "What's your name?"
"Ian. Ian Campbell."