A/N: I think sometimes I'm more proud of this story than my published ones because I feel like I can never give back enough to this fandom and the amazing people in it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or Doctor Who or the card game Phase Ten or any of the related rights.

...

River leaned back in the passenger seat, grinning over at Dean. He wasn't what she'd expected, frankly. Bit younger than she'd thought he would be, a little more unsure of himself when it was just the two of them. More raw and visceral. Easier to get along with.

Nothing like the book version Dean.

Well, sort of like book version Dean, in the sense that he did and said all the things that book version did. But the in-person version was different.

Friendly.

It wasn't even a word she would have associated with him. At least not this early on. And maybe it was just with the two of them. But she liked that she didn't have to try. It was an easy partnership. No questions, no complications, just two people spending time together.

This could be good for her.

"So?" Dean asked as he slid into the front seat. "First hunt? What did you think?"

"I think I'd be a little more satisfied if I could actually salt and burn the body."

"What, and deprive Bobby of the perfect way to scare kid hunters out of starting too young?"

"Did it work on you?"

Dean's grin was answer enough.

River recognized most of the music Dean played from her time spent in Earth's twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She'd grown up to that music. Multiple times, in multiple bodies. She'd been Melody Pond, trained kid assassin, back then, but that didn't mean she was blind (or was it deaf?) to the music around her. (Not to mention her dad's weird long-haired-band-wannabe faze. That was great.)

"Probably better we don't kill anything with the Doctor around, though," Dean pointed out. "Or he'll never let us out on our own again."

"Not like it's any better if we kill something and he is standing there," River muttered.

"Yeah," Dean said, and he suddenly got quieter. "Your Doctor seems to be better about that sort of thing."

"I don't know if that's the right word for it," River said. "Maybe 'tired of trying to act morally superior' is better?" She grinned at him, but he didn't return the grin as broadly as he'd done before.

"So you've met the other one?"

River shook her head. "I've read up on the other ones, though."

Dean laughed. "It's not like actually seeing them in action, I promise you."

"I don't doubt it," River laughed. She had a spotter's guide in her journal, just in case. A basic idea of Doctors she might run into. She wasn't sure how many faces she'd have to go through, how many stories to keep straight. She was still getting used to it.

"Confusing, isn't it?" Dean asked. He was good at that. Reading the thoughts on her face.

She laughed. "Only all the time."

...

It didn't take him long to come back to the TARDIS. He realized pretty quickly that if there were two people who even he couldn't find if they didn't want to be found, it was River and Dean.

It didn't make him feel any better about it.

River was already too much mystery for him to be comfortable with. She knew too much about him, she wasn't telling him anything, and she was definitely helping the Ponds to keep secrets from him. He didn't like secrets. Not unless he was in on them.

And then throw the Winchesters into that? That was just a recipe for disaster. Like their secret-keeping wasn't bad enough.

When he got back to the TARDIS, though, the Ponds and Sam were knee-deep in a game of Phase Ten, so he pulled up a chair and decided to join them.

"Can you deal me in?"

"I'm on the last phase, Doctor," Rory said with a grin. "Just let me win this game, and we'll let you play the next one."

"I'm still on phase seven," Sam said, frowning. "Can't get past those sets of four. I wouldn't mind scrapping the game and starting over."

"That's just because I'm winning," Rory grimaced comically.

The teasing went on like that for the entire hand (which Rory, predictably, won) and into the scoring (with lots of interruptions in which Amy insisted upon different and more unlikely ways that Rory had cheated) before the Doctor was dealt in.

The Doctor frowned at his hand. The first phase was supposed to be two sets of three, and he definitely had a run of eight. "We should go somewhere when your brother gets back," he said. "It's been too long since I've seen the two of you." That wasn't quite true. But he meant he hadn't seen these younger versions. The versions he liked better.

"Last time we went anywhere, you got a teenager kidnapped and nearly got us all killed by giant fish people."

"And you think I'd make the same mistakes twice?" he asked.

"He thinks you'll make all new mistakes," Amy said with the teasing twinkle in her eye that always kept him in check.

Sam laughed.

"The offer still stands," the Doctor said. He drew a twelve. Well, that wasn't helpful at all.

"I was just telling Sam about the time we met the Silurians," Amy said.

Rory nodded. "Didn't I get erased from time or something? It's a bit confusing." He laughed now, but the Doctor remembered that it had been a while before he'd felt up to asking Rory about that time, about being a Roman and never really existing. His impossible Ponds. Always kept him on his toes.

"Yeah, try not to get me or my brother erased like that, if you can," Sam said, also laughing.

"So you're coming?" Amy asked, leaning forward with anticipation gleaming in her expression.

"Caught me there," Sam said, leaning back, almost smiling. He drew the ten that Amy had just discarded. He glanced up at the Doctor with what the Doctor had come to know as the "Sammy eyes," the earnest, searching ones that he didn't seem to realize he was using. "I think it'd be a good idea to get out some. You know. Get away."

"Running away from things. Seems to be a common theme around here," Amy muttered.

Amy and Rory shared a look, and the Doctor knew once again that, yes, there was something going on that he didn't understand going on here. He was going to figure it out, but in the meantime, he covered for his annoyance by skipping Rory, who looked like he was getting ready to phase. He had that smile.

Amy drew and then discarded a twelve. "So what are you trying to get away from?" Amy asked. She glanced up at the Doctor, and her look clearly said:Like we can't guess.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. There's so many options to choose from.

Amy sighed, leaned back, and said, "Sam, your turn."

Sam had been paying more attention to the Doctor and Amy than to the card game (and to something else, that much was clear), and he seemed to blink back into reality. He drew a card, then grinned and laid out three threes and three sixes. "That's phase one done for me," he said, marking off a tally on the scoring sheet (which was little more than a piece of paper with four columns and the numbers one through ten written underneath each person's name).

"Where would you like to go? Past, future, present in another galaxy?" the Doctor asked. He knew he wasn't going to win this round, so now he had set down his hand of cards and was headed for the TARDIS controls to think about some exciting options.

"I think the past is definitely a no-go," Sam said with a frown.

"Someplace spacey?" Amy suggested.

A slow grin started at the corners of Sam's mouth and then spread so that even from the TARDIS console, the Doctor could see it. "Yeah. Something like out of a science fiction book. Think you could pull that for Dean?"

"He's a big scifi geek?" Rory grinned.

"Bet I didn't tell you any of that," Sam said, pointing right at Rory and then Amy.

"Of course not." Amy looked delighted.

"Somewhere spacey and in the future. Got it," the Doctor said. He was thinking maybe they'd go find a space station, something huge and impressive with windows that opened out into an overview of a brand new galaxy. Something far away and dazzling. Something that would get the oohs and ahs he'd been missing since the Ponds started having their little powwows of worrying and secrets.

Rory looked down at his hand, shrugged, and said, "Guess we're not playing anymore."

"You're just saying that because I'm winning," Sam said with a smirk.

"You bet I am."

The Ponds and Sam then launched into a discussion about what game they could play that was short and easily interruptable in case Dean came back any time soon but could still be played for a long time while the Doctor set the TARDIS controls.

It had only been about two minutes before they heard an insistent rapping at the door to the TARDIS.