Author's Note: Somebody needs to give Dean-in-my-head grammar lessons, because seriously, so many dangling participles. I tried to fix them but it didn't sound authentic without them.

So after all that emoting, they're finally doing something! Still emoting, but also doing things, which I think is good. Reviews grease the creative wheels, ladies and gents!

So evidently, that feeling, that the angel is taking you somewhere through somewhere that might not be anywhere feeling, wasn't going to get a lot more pleasant for Dean.

Martha handled it with an annoying equanimity, landing steady on her feet when Castiel brought them back to reality or this dimension or whatever it was that was happening, while Dean staggered a bit until he felt Castiel's hand on his arm, strong and supporting. He righted himself, flashing a grateful almost-smile at the angel, who took his hand away without a change in his expression.

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but Martha held up a hand with the air of somebody used to being in charge, and Dean shut it. Not without annoyance, but he shut it, and walked over to her so that she could let him know what was going on. Castiel likewise closed in on them, keeping watchful eyes on the dingy compound ahead of them.

"I'm here a few hours early," Martha said, her voice low and soft. "They won't be expecting me, so we might not get a totally warm welcome. Just stick with me, and let me do the talking, all right?"

"By not totally warm welcome, do you mean weapons in our faces?" Dean asked.

"Probably," Martha replied, not missing a beat. "But that shouldn't be such a shock to your system, hm?" She threw him a grin and walked off towards the compound, leaving Castiel waiting for a signal from Dean.

"Oh, now we got jokes," Dean muttered, shoving his pack onto his shoulder and stalking after her, followed by Castiel.

"There is something amiss here," Castiel murmured, and Dean looked over at him, his brows drawing together. The angel's expression was cautious, closed; his eyes were narrowed, his lips pressed together. And he'd stepped ahead of Dean.

Like, as if to put himself in danger first. To protect Dean.

(God, send a guy to Hell for four decades and he comes back a walking, talking chick-flick. Get it together, Winchester.)

"Something amiss, like what?" Dean asked carefully.

"I am not sure," Castiel replied. "There is a...residue, here. The afterimage of some form of energy. I cannot tell what, yet. But be cautious, Dean. Martha."

Martha stopped at her name, turning around. "What kind of energy?" she asked. "Is it the Toclaphane, do you think?"

Castiel considered the question for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Not artron energy, or at least not in the quantities that the Toclaphane leave behind. Something else. It's too faint for me to determine now."

Before Dean could say anything snarky (which he'd have to admit, if forced, was not the farthest thing from his mind) Martha said, "Okay. We'll be careful. Everybody just keep an eye out, okay? But try not to look too edgy because the people we're meeting are going to be edgy, too, and also armed, probably heavily, and we don't want to start a row."

Dean's hand flicked towards the pistol tucked in the waistband of his jeans, a barely conscious movement born of years of habit. He hardly noticed he'd done it, but Martha grabbed his wrist in a move that was way faster than he'd expected her to be capable of, and her grip was much tighter than he would have thought. He didn't pull away, although he could have, but glared at her. "The hell?"

"You pull out that gun and they'll open fire, no questions asked," Martha hissed. "I don't think you understand the severity of this situation, Dean. These people have spent the past four months hunted, a death warrant hanging over their heads. They're hiding from an enemy who is everywhere and could be anyone. There's no telling who's on Saxon's side, and there's no telling whose husband or wife or child has been taken and is an informant to keep them safe. So you bring a weapon where they can see it, and they're not gonna take any chances. Understand?"

Dean didn't say anything for a long moment, struggling with his innate instinct to argue, to get the last word, but Martha's eyes were wide and scared and desperate, and hell, she hadn't steered him wrong yet. Besides, anything went bad, they did have the best damn cavalry he could hope for—and Cas had proven that he wasn't willing to let Dean be hurt.

"Okay," Dean said. "I get it. No going in guns blazing. I'll let you take the lead."

Martha hung on to his wrist, looking surprised. "Really?" she said.

"Really what?" Dean asked.

"Just...that easy?" Martha pressed. "No argument? Just, gonna let me take the lead?"

Dean frowned. "I mean, it seems like the obvious thing to do. You're the one who knows what the hell is going on. Problem with it?"

Martha shook her head, and her fingers relaxed and fell away from Dean's wrist. "No," she said. "Just...doesn't seem like you. Not when you knew me. Not—never mind." She took a deep breath, and Dean knew the sound that a person's breath made when they were keeping back emotion, and Martha's was making it. "Let's get this over with, yeah?"

She started walking, and Castiel glanced at Dean, who shrugged and made a sweeping gesture, inviting Castiel to go in front of him. The angel just stared at him, so Dean sighed and followed Martha, hearing the faint rustle of Castiel's coat behind him.

They'd gotten about halfway to the compound when Martha stopped, motioning for Dean and Castiel to do the same. "What's up?" Dean breathed.

"They'll meet us here," she replied, quietly, but not whispering. "I'm sure that their look-outs will have noticed us by now. If not, that's thing number one to talk about once we get inside."

Dean settled into a relaxed stance, folding his arms over his chest, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. Not that he didn't think that Castiel would notice first if something was up, or if something was out there, but it made him feel better—made him feel a little bit more normal, looking out for somebody.

Definitely not normal to feel like he was being looked out for...not in years, maybe not ever, really. He glanced at Castiel out of the corner of his eye, making it seem like just part of his sweep of the perimeter, but he saw the angel staring intently at the compound, waiting for someone (something) to come out of it, wanting to be sure that he saw it coming, whatever it was. Human, demon, Toclaphane, whatever it was, Castiel wanted to be ready for it.

Dean wasn't the type of guy who took a lot of time to catalogue and document and name his emotions. Emotions got in the way of the job, but more than that, most of the emotions he was used to experiencing didn't bear dwelling on. But this was a new one, whatever it was. It felt a little like something was expanding behind his chest, and it made his heart race a little bit, and it felt a little like fear but without the sharpness of fear, without the anger that fear evoked in him.

He wondered if it was what awe felt like. He kind of thought it might be.

His eyes had already moved past Castiel, but when he noticed movement his eyes shot right back to it. Castiel had turned his head and was watching Dean, his brow furrowed a bit as though figuring something else, and oh, shit, Cas could read minds.

Think about something else. Anything else.

Geez, it sure was taking the Rebel Alliance a long time to get the hell out here, huh?

As Dean was trying to think about and look at anything that wasn't Castiel, he turned to Martha, who was giving him a weird look. "You all right?" she asked.

"Why?" Dean snapped, not totally meaning to but it came out like that anyway.

"You look like you're gonna puke," Martha said, her own tone a little sharp and irritated in reply. "Hold it together for a little while longer."

"I'm fine," Dean replied, swallowing hard and crossing his arms tighter across his chest. He set his jaw, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

Luckily, saving Dean any more humiliation, it was then that a figure appeared outside of the compound and started walking up to them. Dean and Martha straightened (Castiel really couldn't stand much straighter than he was) and Martha even dusted off her pants, as if she needed to make a good impression.

And hell, maybe she did. The way Bobby talked about her back at the house, it seemed like everybody had it in their heads that she was the only one who could stop Saxon, and she needed to keep that hope up. Seemed to Dean that a little bit of dirt and grime couldn't hurt the image of the on-foot world traveler searching for a mystical gun that could kill a Time Lord, but he supposed that she wasn't always that person—that she hadn't always had to be—and that old habits died hard. Usually having dust caked all over your clothes wasn't the best way to make a first impression, and Dean figured that at some point, Martha had been something normal.

Not that Dean was jealous.

The figure approached and grew clearer, becoming recognizable as a young man, maybe a couple of years younger than Sammy. Certainly much smaller; he looked taller than Martha, but not by much. He had a gun, and it irked Dean to be forbidden to draw his own. The kid didn't look like he was likely to use it, but the nerves that Dean could see him struggling with didn't make the Hunter happy. An inexperienced shooter plus a gun plus nervousness...it wasn't unlikely for that to end badly.

But Martha seemed to have the situation under control, as she stepped forward with both of her hands in the air, displaying herself as unarmed and harmless. (Dean wasn't so sure about harmless, but unarmed was distressingly accurate.) She only took a couple of steps, but something about the way she did it made it clear that Dean and Castiel weren't to follow her lead. Dean stayed put, so Castiel did, too.

The kid got within earshot, held the gun at what Dean guessed was supposed to be the ready, and said, "What's your name?"

"Martha Jones."

"What are you here for?" the kid called, not putting the gun down.

"To tell you a story."

"What's the password?"

"There is none."

The kid lowered the gun, but not the whole way, as his eyes flicked anxiously to Dean and Castiel. "Who are they?" he asked.

"Friends," Martha replied, her voice soothing. "I promise, they're on our side. I vouch for them. What's your name?"

"Chris," he said, lowering his gun the rest of the way. He fidgeted with the strap around his shoulder. Clearly he wasn't used to wearing it. "I can...they're expecting you. I mean, just you, Miss Jones, but I can take you in. All of you, that is. You might just need to explain, you know. Your friends."

"That's fine, Chris," said Martha, putting her hand on his arm.

Dean froze, and felt Castiel tense next to him—probably because Dean froze, and not due to any understanding of what Martha was doing because social cues, not his long suit. Initiating physical contact with somebody that high-strung and that well-armed was dicey at best, and suicide at worst.

But Chris relaxed, and Dean could swear he leaned into her touch, just a little bit.

Oh, right. Savior of the Earth. He'd forgotten that he was in the company of the twenty-first century Messiah.

The kid gave Martha a watery smile and gestured—with the barrel of his gun, which made Dean wince—towards the compound. "Follow me," he said, and took off walking.

Martha hung behind a bit, evidently for the express purpose of smirking at Dean and saying, quietly but pointedly, "Didn't think I could handle that, did you?"

Dean pulled a face at her, and said, "You did good." He picked up his pace a little, pulling ahead of her.

She kept up though, skipping a few steps, and caught up with him. "You thought I was gonna startle the guy with the gun," she pressed.

"I did," Dean admitted, "and you didn't. Good job on not getting shot."

Martha grinned, and Dean felt his lips twitch up a little to match her, despite the furrowing of his brow that tried to get the rest of his face to frown along with it. He didn't get that grin, what was behind it. He hadn't said anything kinder than grudging, sarcastic affirmation of the fact that she hadn't gotten herself killed, and yet she was smiling at him like he'd paid her the highest compliment she could hope for.

She was certainly a weird kid.

He wondered how he treated her, when he knew her. If this was the way they acted around each other—like Hunting partners. No space for kindness, no room for gentleness, just rough-and-tumble and get everybody out alive, and the scraps of tenderness that either slipped out on accident or that they found precious seconds to spare for would have to be enough to get by on.

The way he treated Sam, most of the time.

When he drew himself back into the present, Martha was leaning around him to meet Castiel's eyes. The angel looked at her without expression. "When we get in there," she said, "I need you to act as human as possible, all right? You saw the way Chris acted. These people are anxious. They know that Saxon's not human, and they know that the Toclaphane aren't human. So...I know you're not gonna want to lie, so just don't mention what you are, all right?"

Castiel tilted his head, which was kind of funny while he was still walking, and said, "I don't understand. I would think, in times of trouble such as these, that humans would take comfort in being among the Host."

Martha glanced at Dean, who was glancing at Martha, and the look that they shared was worth a thousand words, most of them being angels, what are you gonna do.

In that moment, Dean believed that at some point, they would be (or they had been or whatever) friends.

"Just take her word for it, Cas," Dean said, and Martha's glance turned grateful. "Remember how I reacted?"

"You doubted me," Castiel replied, and there was an undertone to his voice that Dean wasn't totally sure wasn't hurt.

He plowed ahead anyway. "Yeah, and I know about demons and monsters and all that," he said. "So imagine how a bunch of civilians would react if you dropped that bombshell on them."

Castiel seemed to contemplate that scenario for a moment, then nodded, although he didn't look totally happy about it. "I will do as you say, Martha," he said. "But I will not lie if pressed for an answer."

"Just don't say a lot," Martha suggested lightly. "That's probably the best way to handle the whole thing."

Castiel looked at her, his blue eyes piercing, but she didn't react to it, and they were getting to the compound anyway so the angel made a visible decision to let it go. Chris rapped on the door in a distinct pattern, and the heavy door that led into the facility slid open.

The scene that was laid out before Dean's eyes was dismal. It looked like the place was an old, Cold War-era fallout shelter, all gray, windowless concrete and steel. Inside were huddled about thirty people, men, women, and children. Everyone looked thin, pale, and ragged. It hadn't been long enough for their clothes to have suffered much wear and tear beyond normal, but the impact of the last few months on their spirits was undeniable. Their eyes were sunken and hollow, more from horror than from hunger; shoulders slumped and eyes averted from even each other. The children, five of them, sat in the corner, eating quietly under the supervision of one of the older women. They looked up with wide-eyed gazes, spoons halfway to their mouths. The younger men and women were being instructed in field-stripping what looked like an AK-47 by another young man in a mechanic's jumpsuit sitting on a table with the parts spread out in front of him, who stopped and looked up when the door opened.

The woman who had opened the door was staring at Martha.

Actually, kind of everybody was staring at Martha.

"Are you..." the woman began, and stopped when Martha smiled at her.

"Martha Jones," she affirmed. The woman put a hand over her mouth.

"Who are they?" field-stripping-instructor-guy asked from across the room, gesturing to Dean and Castiel (thankfully, unlike Chris, not with his gun).

"Friends," Martha said, just as she had before. "They've joined me. I can vouch for them."

"Yeah?" the guy said, sliding off of the table he'd been perched on and striding across the room. Dean bristled, but the guy wasn't threatening Martha; in fact, the way he stood in front of her, his eyes darting between her and Dean and Cas, was almost protective. "And how are we supposed to know they're not coercing you?"

"Oh, coercing," Dean said before he could stop himself, because sarcasm was his first language. "Big word for a grease monkey, Aaron."

Aaron (as his jumpsuit announced to the world) took another step towards Dean, this time definitely threatening, but Martha put one hand on his arm and the other on Dean's chest and gave them both a look that the sternest kindergarten teacher would have been proud of. "Are you serious?" she said, slowly, through gritted teeth, emphasizing each word. "The world is under attack and about to end and the two of you are going to get into some sort of macho pissing contest? Not hardly. Dean, cut it out, you're not a child. Aaron, you're just gonna have to trust me. I'm sorry. But you are."

Aaron was still glaring at Dean, who folded his arms over his chest once Martha had taken her hand away. "You, I trust," he said. "Him, not so much."

"Fine," Martha said tightly. "I don't really care if you like each other. Now I want you to gather everyone together, everyone in the compound, because we don't have long. I need to tell you my story, and there's no time like the present."

Aaron looked back to his class, and two of the young men jumped up and hurried out of the room, presumably to get whatever survivors were elsewhere in the compound. Then he ushered Martha (and, grudgingly, Dean and Castiel) over to a big communal table, where Martha was seated at the head, flanked by Dean and Cas.

"Nice digs," Dean muttered, low enough that only Martha and Cas could hear him. Martha responded by elbowing him in the hip, and he grunted.

"It's nicer than some places," she muttered back. "American Cold War paranoia was good for something after all, evidently."

The two young men came back in, and everyone gathered around the table. Martha closed her eyes for a moment, then rolled back her shoulders, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

And as she did that, Dean watched her transform from Martha Jones, scared, exhausted, sad young woman, into Martha Jones, Companion to the Doctor and Savior of the Earth.

"I've traveled across the world," she began, and Dean could barely hear anybody breathing. The room fell utterly silent, and every gaze was fixed, rapt, on Martha. "And everywhere I went, I saw people just like you, living as slaves. But if Martha Jones became a legend, then that's wrong, because my name isn't important."

Dean listened to her with half an ear, but he knew the story. He didn't have to have heard it before to know it. But the way she told it, the way she spoke about him...he wondered what it was like to have faith so strong it could carry you on weary feet across an entire planet, with nothing but a Tinkerbell fairy tale to put your hope in. To believe in something so much that you could hope, despite all odds and despite everything that reality would say, that it would come through for you. That you could ask others to hope for that. Faith in the Doctor.

Faith wasn't something that Dean had ever had. He'd stopped praying young, once he realized (or thought he'd realized) that there was nothing bigger than humans that didn't want to kill them. Faith wasn't what he'd had in his father; respect, awe, eagerness to prove himself, but not faith. There wasn't a night he'd spent holed up in a filthy motel room with Sammy that he hadn't worried that Dad wasn't coming home. Faith wasn't what he had in Sam; faith was what he'd tried to cultivate in Sam towards him. Dean had never had anybody to count on.

His eyes flicked unwillingly to Castiel, and he pulled his gaze away quickly.

That wasn't fair. Castiel had already done him a huge favor; to ask more was not only unfair but unrealistic. Cas said he'd been brought back for a reason. Something about his God-given destiny. So there was an ulterior motivation; it wasn't just that Dean didn't deserve an eternity in Hell for taking care of his brother. It was, we need you to work some more, Dean, here's a get-out-of-Hell-free card.

Not that he didn't appreciate it.

Just, what more could he possibly ask of the angel? What more could he expect? How greedy was he, to want protection and friendship, when really all the debt between them was stacked firmly on Dean's side of the equation?

"I believe in the Doctor," Martha was saying. "I can't do anything else. He's never asked for thanks before, never called in the debts we owe him. And he isn't now. But I need you to know about him. I need you to think about him. I need you to believe in him."

Dean Winchester wasn't a man of faith.

But damned if he wasn't impressed by Martha's.

Edit: Thanks to Illucida for being my grammar-checker! :)