Fixed point
2009
Dean and Sam Winchester had seen many strange things in their lives. Things normal people never would dream of, not even in their worst nightmares, but one thing had always been clear to the brothers: aliens don't exist.
At least had been their belief, until they met him.
Sam and Dean, even Castiel who was with them at the time, got surprised when the blue phone box appeared out of nowhere and a man wearing a brown tweed jacket and a bow tie jumped out of it.
He seemed overly happy to see the two hunters and the angel. "Fantastic! Just the people l was looking for." The man said and clapped his hands.
Sam and Dean looked at each other, not sure what to do. This had to be some kind of monster, right? He couldn't be human.
"What are you?" Dean demanded to know.
"I'm the Doctor." He looked from Sam to Dean. "And judging by the high I guess that you must be Sam and you Dean." He said pointing first at Sam and then Dean.
"How do you – "but before Sam could finish the question had the Doctor interrupted him.
"And you must be Castiel!" he said excited and looked at the angel "I've never seen a real angel before." He said studying Castiel.
Castiel frowned but didn't say anything.
"Hey, Doctor Bowtie, how do you know us?" Dean asked.
"He's a Time Lord, an alien, from the planet Gallifrey." Castiel said.
"That's correct." The Doctor said, exited to hear more about how the angel knew him.
Both brothers looked at Castiel. "Do you know this dude, Cas?" Dean asked.
"Yes and no." the angel said "I've never met him in person before, but there have been legends since the beginning of time, about a man and a blue box."
Sam and Dean were stunned for a moment, before Dean got himself back together.
"Really?" he said "Aliens? Do we've to deal with aliens now too? We're not the freaking Men in Black."
"I'm not here to take you out to space." The Doctor said with a big smile.
"Well, why are you here?" Sam asked.
"I found out that there are a group of weeping angels not far from here and thought that the three of you maybe would help me get rid of them." The Doctor said.
"Sure." Dean said, convinced that the Doctor was talking about real angels "Always glad to get rid of those sons of bitches."
Castiel looked at Dean with a mix of annoyance and hurt, but Dean didn't see it. Castiel then turned to look at the Doctor and said: "None of my brothers are near and they're not crying either."
"Don't worry Castiel. This has nothing to do with your brothers." The Doctor said and then he told the Winchesters and Castiel about the weeping angels.
And so it was that Dean, Sam and Castiel helped the Doctor defeating a small group of weeping angels. And after that they once again stood beside the TARDIS.
"So can I tempt with a trip?" the Doctor asked and clapped his beloved TARDIS "Anywhere in time and space you want."
Dean had enough to deal with on Earth and in his own time, he didn't need to find problems anywhere else.
"No thanks Doc, we've our own time machine." Dean said and gave Castiel a pat on the shoulder.
Sam smiled for himself, but Castiel looked just as confused as always when Dean said something that didn't make sense to him.
"I don't see any similarities between me and this machine." Castiel said.
"What?" Dean said. The Doctor had told them a lot about his time machine, mostly because Sam had asked a lot of questions about how it worked. So Dean wanted to use this new information to tease Castiel a little. "You two are almost identical. Appearing out of nowhere, traveling through time, repairing yourself, undercover as something from this planet but actually being a weird thing from above and with that blue color of your eyes. Well, guess we just as well could call you TARDIS from now on."
By the mention of Castiel's eyes, Sam gave Dean an odd look, but didn't comment on it.
"Well, if you're absolutely sure." The Doctor said, before Castiel got a chance to say that he didn't like the new nickname Dean had given him.
"I think we'll pass." Sam said, like his brother he thought that they had enough to deal with, with the Apocalypse and everything.
"Yeah we're pretty sure, also; I've already been send to the future." Dean said. He had no intentions on going back to 2014 if it still looked like what Zachariah had send him to.
The Doctor frowned and suddenly looked worried. "How? Where to? And what did you see?"
Dean was stunned for a moment by the sudden stream of questions. He also did not want to talk about the things he had seen. What he had become and what had happened to Sam and Castiel, and he especially didn't want to talk about it when the two of them were just beside him. So he chose the easy answer.
"An angel called Zachariah zapped me 5 years into the future and showed me a lot of crap. But I'm not gonna let any of it happen." Dean said.
"Sounds good." The Doctor said, looking a bit more relaxed but still a little worried. He opened the door to the TARDIS.
"So, are we gonna see you again, Doctor?" Sam asked.
He gave them a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah, I will be back when the angels are causing problems again."
2013
Dean sat outside the bunker, drinking a beer, looking around. It looked peacefully. The sun was shining and it really looked like something from a movie, the ending of a movie where everything was good. But that was far from the case. Dean was pissed and for days had he been sitting like this, waiting. Every day had he spent two maybe three hours like this. And neither Sam nor Castiel could stop him.
Sam came out of the bunker. "Really, Dean? How long do you plan to keep doing this?" Sam asked as he took a chair and sat down beside his brother.
"To that British son of a bitch shows up." Dean said annoyed. He had sounded like this for days.
"Well, technically you can't say that he's British." Sam corrected him.
"You know what I mean." Dean growled.
Sam sighed. "Dean it have been two weeks. Maybe this was not what the Doctor talked about."
"Of course it was! He knew this would happen."
Since the day they had met the Doctor four years ago had Dean once in a while thought of what the Doctor had said. Most of the time had Dean thought they would find a new bunch of weeping angels, but they had never seen any of them again. Then there was the time where Michael and Lucifer were about to start the Apocalypse with their brother-bitch-fight, but neither had the Time Lord appeared then to help. Actually was Dean just begun to believe that it could take decades before they would see him again. But then this happened; all the angels had fallen. And Dean had no longer felt doubt about what the Doctor had talked about.
"Cas has made lunch if you're hungry. He's getting better at it." Sam said, trying to get Dean with him inside. He was afraid his brother would get sunburned or going crazy from waiting.
Dean smiled slightly. Some of Castiel's attempts of making lunch and dinner had gone terribly wrong. But there were so many things he had to learn now that he wasn't an angel anymore and cooking seemed to be one of his favorite things to do. So Dean had decided that Castiel was in charge of all the cooking, if that could get the newly fallen angel in a better mood was Dean ready to eat burnt food now and then. "Tell him to save some for me."
"What about you told him yourself? Have you guys even talked together the last week?" Sam asked.
Sam felt like ever since he'd gotten better had Dean spent the most of his time outside looking for the Doctor, or being busy with something else, leaving Sam alone with Castiel. And when the two of them finally were in the same room, was it like Castiel tried to avoid Dean.
"Yes of course." Dean said, but it was not quite true. Castiel kept avoiding him and after all he had been through would Dean not press him into talking.
Sam rolled his eyes and stood up. He was not going to argue with Dean right now, so he left his brother and went inside the bunker again. Back to Castiel in the kitchen and it was weird for Sam to spend so much time with Castiel, it was not something he was used to.
Dean kept looking at nothing for another 15 minutes before he heard a sound. It was a sound he only had heard twice, four years ago, but he would never forget the sound that the TARDIS made when it appeared or disappeared.
Dean dumped his beer beside the chair and walked over to where the blue telephone box had appeared. Dean crossed his arms demonstrative and looked at the Time Lord with narrowed eyes.
"I knew you would show up at last." Dean said.
The Doctor looked exactly like he had done the last time the Winchesters had met him, except he wasn't smiling this time. He looked concerned.
"So," Dean said and flung his arms "when do we leave? Go back and stop the angels from falling."
"We're not." The Doctor said. He didn't sound harsh, just sorry.
Dean frowned. "What?" he asked, as if the Doctor was speaking a strange language he couldn't understand.
Even though Dean was starting to get angry, the Doctor kept calm, simply explained Dean the situation. "The angels fall is a fixed point in time which means it can't be changed. Some things in history have so massive influence on the future that no one, not even a Time Lord, is allowed to change it."
Dean couldn't believe it. The Doctor's promise of coming back had been his lifeline in all of this, his hope that they could solve this problem.
"I'm sorry, Dean." The Doctor said.
Even though he looked like a young man, could Dean see it in his face; see all the pain and sadness he had witnessed in his long life. But Dean was still angry and felt betrayed by the false safety he had felt from the Doctor's promise.
"If you can't fix it then why did you come?" Dean demanded to know.
"To have this talk with you. When you mentioned that you had been to the future, to 2014, I figured that you would have some questions. Because you was send into a false future but let me guess, the angels were still gone, weren't they?"
Dean was not very comfortable talking about the sad remains of a civilization he had seen. "Yeah, no angels."
"See fixed point, even in a future there never happened, had they fallen. What about Castiel, was he there?" The Doctor asked softly.
Dean's eyes flickered over the alien's face. Did he know? Did the Doctor know how Castiel had been in the false reality Dean had seen, a broken shall of himself, addicted to sex and a long list of pills.
Dean swallowed hard. "Cas was human and nothing like himself. The dude was stoned and planned orgies."
"And that's why I'm here." The Doctor said sounding a bit more enthusiastic.
"To talk about Cas on drugs?" Dean narrowed his eyes once more. This was not looking good.
"Not necessarily on drugs. No, I want to tell you about that fantastic opportunity you've here. See, last time I met you guys, I couldn't help but notice that you and Castiel was quite good friends. So I figured that you would have seen him in that false reality too, seen what the worst consequences of the fall could have meant for him. So I'm here to tell you that you don't have to go back in time to fix the future, you can do it right now."
Dean snorted. "And do what? Cas doesn't wanna talk with me these days. He keeps avoiding me."
"Think about what he has been through, it must be hard to talk about. Besides, I think he knows Sam comes first, so I think that you need to come to him." The Doctor said.
Dean wanted to say something. Say that he didn't know how to talk to Castiel about this but before he had put together a proper sentence in his head did he hear a Hey, Doctor from behind. It was Sam.
Dean turned to look at his brother coming from the bunker with a big grin on his face when he had spotted the Doctor. And behind him was Castiel, silently following Sam, without the same enthusiastic expression as Sam had.
"Hey Sam! Castiel!" The Doctor said and lit up at the sight of the two of them.
"So, are we going back in time?" Sam asked.
"No, Sammy, it's a fixed point. It can't be changed." Dean said still battling in his head if he should leave Sam and Castiel to finish his talk with The Doctor.
"What?" Sam asked he didn't even need an explanation of the term; Dean's tone was enough to get the seriousness. Dean could see all the excitement and hope vanished from his brother's face.
Sam turned to Castiel who didn't look surprised by the statement. "I'm sorry, Cas." Sam said.
"It's okay Sam. I did never believe that my mistake could be solved this easily." Castiel said.
By the sight of Castiel's sad eyes, Dean made his decision.
"Well, we don't need his TARDIS anyway," Dean said, walked over to Castiel and lay a hand on his shoulder "We've our own." He said with a smile to Castiel.
Castiel looked at Dean with a deep frown. "Dean, I'm no longer able to travel in time, you should know that."
Dean's smile softened. "Yeah Cas, I get that, but you know what? It doesn't matter, either we find a way to make you fly again, or we find thousands new things you'll be good at."
For the first time in days, Castiel smiled. Sam smiled relieved; finally it looked like things would get better. And the Doctor smiled too; glad that he could help those men. Sure, he hadn't saved a planet or a group of beings. But to save one angel was good enough for him. Besides, he knew this not only would help Castiel.
"So what do you say, Doc." Dean said as he had turned to look at the Doctor again. "Wanna come inside and taste Cas' delicious sandwiches?"
"Oh yes! I would love to." The Doctor said and walked with Sam over to the bunker, Castiel had turned too but Dean stopped him.
"After lunch we two are gonna have a talk, you understand?" Dean said.
Castiel sighed heavily. "Dean I don't –"
"It wasn't a question." Dean said softly and looked him in the eyes.
"Okay." Castiel replied and smiled briefly.
Dean patted him on the shoulder and gave him a big smile before they began to walk toward the bunker.
Not so far into the future…
A strange man walked alone into a diner and sat at disk. He had no intentions about staying too long. Just a brief visit to make sure that everything was alright. He looked to his left. Where three men were sitting at a table, they had just finished their dinner. They were drinking beer and laughed at something one of them had said.
"And what can I get for you?" a waitress asked the man.
He turned his attention toward her and smiled. "Oh nothing, everything seems to be in order."
The Doctor left the diner again before the Winchesters or Castiel got a chance to see him. But that was alright with the Time Lord because everything was just as it should be.