Author's Note: Sorry for the delay! I had some unexpected weekend guests and wasn't able to write. This chapter is a little longer than normal to make up for it! Here we backtrack a little bit to explain what Dean's doing when Martha finds him. Thanks so much to everybody for the wonderful reviews! I love hearing your thoughts, and I hope everybody continues to enjoy the story!

Dean was beginning to wonder whether or not he was really out of Hell, and that seemed to confuse Castiel.

"I assure you," he said, a slight frown on his face, eyeing Dean's third bottle of beer with a certain amount of distaste, "you are on Earth, Dean. Why do you doubt?"

Dean took a swig of said third beer before replying, and decided that he wasn't going to deal with how Castiel knew he was thinking that. "Because this is too perfectly screwed up to be what I really came back to," he said. "I get back home, my brother's gone missing, there's a damn slave labor camp twenty miles away from Bobby's and England took over the world? In four months?"

Castiel didn't reply, but kept watching him with that same vaguely puzzled cautiousness. He'd remained very quiet through Bobby's explanation of what had happened...of Harold Saxon's sudden and inexorable rise to power, of the assassination of the American president, of the reign of terror of the Spheres, of the rise of the labor camps and the totalitarian crackdown of every country in the world under Saxon's hand. He'd asked for clarification once or twice, but otherwise just sat there, seeming to be trying to piece everything together in his mind. It was only after Bobby was done that Castiel seemed to focus back on Dean, slightly concerned by his muted, aching reaction to the story. Bobby sighed. "Son, you need to calm down."

"Like hell I need to calm down!" Dean shouted, then bit off the rest of whatever he was going to say, suppressing a wince at his choice of words. He passed a hand over his face, then took his beer between both hands, letting the chill of it sink into his skin. "So you don't know for sure if Sammy's in the camp."

"No," Bobby admitted. "It's just where he's likely to be. They've been taking almost all the healthy young people and putting 'em in the labor camps. Nine times outta ten, missing person these days, that's the answer. Labor camp."

Dean lowered the bottle from his lips where he'd raised it and stilled, his eyes not moving from Bobby. He felt his chest constrict with what Sam used to call his spidey-sense when they were kids, that knowledge that something was wrong, that a grown-up was lying to them or comforting them with false reassurances. That feeling he got when his dad said It's nothing, Dean, go to bed. "Nine times outta ten," Dean echoed, and Bobby furrowed his brow. "Huh. What's the one time outta ten, Bobby?"

Bobby took his beer off of the table and took a long pull on it. That was insufficient, and Dean leaned towards him, elbows on the table and just barely reining in his anger. "Dammit, Bobby, what are you not telling me? Where could Sammy be?"

Bobby put the beer down and rested his head in his hands. Dean tried not to panic. "'Bout...three months ago, or so," Bobby said slowly, "Saxon set his Spheres loose. The ones you and Castiel almost ran into outside. There ain't no fighting them, Dean, ain't nothing you can do. He sent 'em down with..." Bobby made a visible effort to compose himself, and he said, a little more quietly, "He sent 'em down with orders to kill a tenth of the population of the Earth. And they did."

Dean couldn't react. It was like his brain had been shut off, like everything in him that was capable of feeling, of thinking, was just simply not responding because it couldn't, because if Sammy was gone then what was there left to feel for?

"Ten percent," he whispered, and Bobby reached out and grabbed his wrist, hard enough to hurt but Dean didn't try to pull away. "A one in ten chance. And you haven't heard from him since then?"

Bobby shook his head. "I'm sorry, son. But it doesn't mean he's gone. If he was in a labor camp he wouldn't be able to get in touch with me either."

Dean felt a sensation in his chest that he was really, really afraid was going to come out as grief any minute now. Sammy couldn't be dead. He didn't know Sammy was dead, not for sure. But if he was...

If he was dead, Dean had just spent forty years in Hell, had suffered all of the torments that Alastair could come up with and he was a creative bastard, had turned into something he hated, all for nothing. If Sammy was dead, it didn't mean anything at all.

"Sam is not dead."

Dean looked up sharply to see Castiel standing placidly behind him, as though his announcement was nothing strange or particularly important. The certainty in his voice was absolute. "How do you know?" Bobby demanded.

"I would know if Sam were dead," Castiel replied, his voice even, unperturbed by the accusation in Bobby's tone, the don't you give us hope if you're not sure behind his words. "And he is not. Therefore, I would assume that he is in one of the labor camps you spoke of."

Dean marveled as he felt the tightness in his chest loosen, as he felt the pain that had started to constrict his throat leave. He took in a breath that was perhaps more of a gasp than he'd prefer, but it didn't matter, it didn't matter a damn bit because Sam was alive. Castiel promised Sam was alive. And he believed Castiel. "Okay," he breathed, and felt Bobby's and Castiel's eyes on him. "Okay. I can work with that."

A moment passed where Dean could almost feel Bobby and Castiel trying to figure out what he meant by that, and Dean stood, working out the stiffness in his shoulders. He decided to save the others the trouble of their puzzling, and said, "I'm gonna find Sammy."

Bobby bolted up after him, grabbing him by the arm (oh, his left arm, yes there was something on that arm, he'd almost forgotten) and spinning him around. The old man looked furious and terrified with an overlay of that old familiar exasperation that usually accompanied Dean or Sam being called an idjit. "I don't think you quite understand, son," Bobby said, his voice low. "You don't just go find people, not anymore. You think if it was that easy, I wouldn't have done it by now? You think I don't care about Sam? You were dead, Dean. Your brother was all I had left in the world." Bobby scowled, and Dean could see the emotion he was holding back in his eyes. "If I could have, I would've found him."

"I'm not trying to—" Dean began, but Bobby wasn't done.

"Sam's been gone three months," he said. "Your angel pal here says he ain't dead, I believe him. But he hasn't come back. You're here, and I ain't losing you now." He grabbed Dean's face in his free hand, and Dean didn't stop him. Bobby visibly fought against tears as he repeated, "I ain't losing you, too."

Bobby's hands moved to his collar, gripping it, evidently torn between throttling him and pulling him in to embrace him. The battle went on in the older Hunter, and Dean just said, "Okay. Okay, Bobby. I won't do anything stupid."

Bobby laughed, tightening his grip on Dean's collar before releasing it, and him, with a small shove. "I'll believe that when I see it," he retorted, and Dean grinned back.

"Have some faith, man," Dean said. "We've got an angel in the room."

That seemed to snap Bobby out of his emotional state, and he passed a hand over his eyes. "Let's get some food in you," he said, heading back into the kitchen.

Dean waited for a moment, then started to follow him back in when Castiel's quiet voice stopped him. "Bobby...he is your friend."

Dean turned to the angel, who had a contemplative expression on his face, like he was trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Bobby's...he's pretty much my dad. Closest thing I got, anymore."

Castiel's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Then why do you deceive him?" he asked, and Dean froze.

"What—" Dean began.

"You did not say it outright, perhaps, but you implied that you would not seek out your brother," Castiel clarified, ignoring Dean's stammering. "That is a lie. You intend to do precisely that, as soon as you feel that you can without alerting him. As soon as this afternoon, if you are able. That is deceit. This is how you would treat your father?"

Dean tried a few words, but nothing passed his lips. Finally he lowered his head and exhaled slowly, trying to figure out how to explain justifiable falsehoods to an angel of the Lord. "Bobby wouldn't get it," he said, very softly, though he had no doubt that Castiel could hear. He wondered, really, if he even had to say it out loud for Castiel to hear it. "Yeah, maybe he tried everything he could, but Sammy's my brother. It's different. I'll be able to find him, Cas-Castiel, I know I will. If he's there to find, I'll find him."

When he looked up, Castiel was studying him. He felt uncomfortable, vulnerable under the angel's gaze, but couldn't find it in him to move or say anything. Castiel raised him out of the Pit, for God's sake. He could take a look at what he'd brought back if he felt like it. "Your brother is the reason you made your deal," he said slowly. It wasn't really a question, but Dean nodded nonetheless. "There is nothing anyone could say to you to make you reconsider this path."

Dean laughed humorlessly. "I sold my soul for the kid. Nobody could talk me out of that, nobody can talk me out of a hike to find him."

Castiel took another moment with the staring, and Dean was starting to feel pretty weird about it, but then the angel simply nodded and said, "Loyalty to family is commendable. However, your friend knows more about the world as it is now than you do. Perhaps—"

"Perhaps nothing," Dean hissed, stepping closer to Castiel, who watched him impassively. "I'm gonna find my brother, and I'm gonna bring him back here, safe. Because that's what I went to Hell for—my brother, safe. Forty years, man. Forty years. It's not gonna be for nothing. I'm gonna get Sammy back."

Suddenly Dean was fully aware of how close he was to the angel, and he lowered his eyes and stepped back. Castiel didn't seem angry, didn't seem upset or really any emotion at all, but Dean was already starting to realize that determining emotions in the angel was going to take some pretty precise readings of how much and in what way his eyes were narrowed, and that was going to take more than twenty minutes to get the hang of. So he figured backing off was the safer move, for now. It was almost apologetically that he murmured, "I just...I gotta get Sammy back, Cas. Please. Don't stop me."

Again with the nickname, but Castiel didn't react to it. He simply continued to look at Dean as though searching for the answer to some silent question when Bobby called out from the other room, "You think you went to Hell, now you're too good to help in the kitchen? Get in here and chop a vegetable, boy, I'm an old man."

Dean spent the day pretending for Bobby, pretending to be okay, pretending not to be planning, pretending to just be curious about where the labor camp was, not that he was going to go to find Sam or anything, just making conversation. He spent the day hoping Castiel didn't out him, intentionally or through his ignorance of human social behaviors. He ate lunch, went outside to help Bobby tend to his pitiful little vegetable garden ("Desperate times call for desperate measures, son," Bobby had said, and Dean couldn't think of times desperate enough to eat practically nothing but vegetables but evidently he'd learn, according to Bobby), worked on the Impala, and then announced that he needed to take a nap.

Bobby nodded, seeming pleased that at least Dean would be unconscious for a while and he wouldn't have to worry so much about him. "You've had a big day," he said solemnly, and chuckled when Dean pulled a sour face at his condescending tone. "Get some sleep, son. I'll wake you before dinner."

Dean went to the bedroom, closed and locked the door, and promptly walked up to the window and opened it.

A rustling behind him stopped him, and his shoulders slumped. Busted.

He didn't have to turn around to know that Castiel was looking at him with disapproval as he said, "Bobby told you it was too dangerous to set out to find your brother."

"All due respect, Bobby's not Sam's brother," Dean retorted, turning around and oh, sure enough, there was that disapproving look. "I am. And it's my job to protect him."

Well, that must have been especially irritating or confusing or something, because he got a head-tilt along with narrowed eyes, and Castiel said, "This morning you returned from Hell, where you sent yourself to protect your brother."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Not exactly gonna let all that hard work go to waste."

"Do you think you owe your brother more?" Castiel asked, and he sounded genuinely curious, like he was trying to figure out the weights and balances of the debts Dean and Sam owed each other. It blew Dean away.

"No, it's not like that," he said, a little more heatedly than he thought he was going to sound. "I don't owe Sam anything. It's not about owing. It's about..." Dean broke off, unable to articulate it, settling finally on, "It's...he's my brother. I'm responsible for him. I always have been." He met the angel's eyes, and, with as much strength as he could muster, asked, "Are you gonna try to stop me?"

He could have sworn he saw the faintest glint of amusement in the angel's eyes, as Castiel said, "If I were to stop you, it would not be a matter of trying. But I do not feel that I should discourage you from this fraternal devotion. It is encouraged in us; I cannot imagine that my Father would discourage it in you."

Dean tried to process that for a second, his eyes darting behind Castiel in a physical manifestation of his thoughts, before giving up. "Sure," he said, and added, "Thanks, Cas. By the way...don't tell Bobby, okay? He'll just worry."

Castiel didn't look pleased by that, and Dean felt a residual shiver of...not fear, just, maybe, intimidation. He was very still until Castiel said, "If he asks me, I will not lie to him, Dean."

Dean slumped a little. He should have guessed. How stupid was it to ask an angel to lie for you? "Could you just...not be around him, for a little while? Just long enough to give me a head start in case he comes after me."

Castiel considered that for a moment before nodding reluctantly. "I can avoid him," he said. Dean flashed an appreciative grin and started out the window, only to be startled by Castiel's hand around his arm. He turned to the angel, wide-eyed. "But I will tell you this, Dean Winchester," Castiel said, and his voice was low. "I did not raise you from Perdition only to have you throw your life away. If you find danger, pray. I will hear. And if you take unnecessary risks, I will know."

There was nothing that could be but a threat, so Dean nodded earnestly. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, sure. No unnecessary risks. Pray if things get hairy. I got it."

Castiel's expression was doubtful, but he released Dean's arm and allowed the Hunter to crawl out the window, watching him as he took off through the salvage yard.

Bobby had said that the labor camp was south, so south is where Dean headed. The land was familiar and comforting, but at the same time, a prickle in his spine told him something was wrong. Something had gone really, really wrong.

Castiel told him that he wasn't in Hell anymore, and he felt like he had to trust the angel with that. Alastair had pulled some pretty devious torments, and he'd been fooled once or twice, but this didn't feel like that. If he was going to torture Dean with the delusion that he was home, why would he do it like this? Why have the whole world go to crap but promise that Sam was alive?

If this were Alastair, he'd know that the world could go to hell for all Dean cared, as long as Sammy was okay. Because after forty years, Alastair knew Dean.

He'd probably gone about five miles when out of the corner of his eye he saw movement.

He pulled his pistol up and cocked it, but couldn't quite get over the surprise of seeing the pretty young woman coming at him before she was on top of him, slamming him against a tree trunk and covering his mouth with her hand before dragging them both to the ground.

"Be quiet," she whispered, her voice panicky. "Be absolutely quiet, and get as far underneath me as you can."

Dean did some quick observations and calculations in his head. She looked to be a few years younger than him; maybe younger than Sam, too. She couldn't weigh much more than a buck fifteen, and she had barely come up to his chin when they were both standing. So he felt pretty safe throwing out a one-liner instead of trying too hard to get up. "Usually you have to take me to dinner, first."

He was pretty sure her lips quirked up, but she ended up scowling at him as she hissed, "If you want to survive, do as I say. Please."

She sounded desperate, and she sounded scared, and he was pretty sure she wasn't armed. And something cold was settling in his stomach, so he figured that this wasn't the time to argue, and he curled up beneath her. She breathed a small sigh of relief and laid over him.

When he heard the buzzing, he knew he'd made the right call.

He didn't know why this girl thought that she could protect him from the Sphere, but she seemed pretty sure of herself, so he went absolutely still and felt her do the same. His racing heart was the most movement he accomplished, and that was only because he was holding his breath rather than breathing evenly to calm himself. He felt her heart racing, too.

The Sphere hovered above them for an agonizing moment, and then, miraculously, went on its way. The girl didn't move for a little while, then rolled off of him onto her hands and knees, panting.

Dean sat up, leaning against the trunk of the tree she'd pushed him against and squinting in the direction the Sphere had gone. Why would it ignore her? If the Spheres were controlled by Saxon, the man who had enslaved Sammy, and the Spheres didn't touch this girl, what did that mean?

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, and she turned to him. There was something inexpressibly sad in her expression, and he really hoped it wasn't guilt.

"I'm Martha Jones. And I'm here to help," she said softly.

"Right," Dean scoffed. "Here to help." He'd heard that line before.

"I'll explain everything," Martha said. "But we need to get somewhere safe. We need to get to Bobby's."

Dean startled, then narrowed his eyes. This day just didn't stop getting weirder. "How do you know about Bobby?"

"It's...complicated," Martha said hesitantly. Dean reached out for his gun and saw her tense, and for just a moment felt a little bit of regret. Maybe she wasn't his enemy, but he couldn't trust that, not yet. "Just listen to me. I'm with the Doctor. All right? I'm the Doctor's Companion."

Dean sat up straighter at that, tucking the gun into his jeans. Where was the Doctor? Whole world goes to hell, Sammy gets kidnapped, and where is that alien son of a bitch? Too busy making useless house calls to damned souls to bother saving his so-called favorite planet? "The Doctor. You're with the Doctor?"

"Yes," Martha said, and she must have misinterpreted his tone because she sounded like she was grasping at a thread of hope. "I'm Martha Jones. Bring me to Bobby's; he'll know about me, I swear. And if he doesn't, you can, I don't know, shoot me or whatever it is you want to do. All right? Can you do that? I'm not armed. I'll go with you."

He eyed her suspiciously, but she seemed genuine. Genuine, and frightened, but not of him. All he felt from her towards him was desperate hope that he'd believe her. Her eyes begged him to believe her, and so he stood, taking her by the elbow and helping her to her feet.

She let out a whimper when she got on her feet, and he saw that she was favoring one of her legs. Sprained ankle, maybe, or a broken toe, and while he was figuring it out, he felt her lean more heavily on him. It was a gesture of trust that he found extremely odd coming from a woman who obviously knew that these times were dangerous ones...very odd to rely on a stranger like that. "You hurt?" he asked.

Martha shook her head at first, and he was about to give her the don't lie to me look he always gave Sammy when he lied about an injury when she changed her mind and nodded. "Just a sprained ankle," she said, standing on her own. "I'll be fine. I can keep up."

"Good," Dean said, "because I'm not waiting around for you." He took off towards Bobby's, plans on getting to the labor camp postponed for now, and he heard her uneven gait behind him as she worked to keep up.

It went against everything in him to head back to Bobby's, but if she was really with the Doctor, she could know something that could help him get Sam back. And if he could get Sam back faster, it was worth a momentary delay.

Of course, the last time Dean had seen the Doctor, he wasn't especially helpful. More along the lines of don't worry, Dean, you'll get out some day and then going off without any advice or warnings or anything but useless, vague hope in his wake. Twenty years after that, he was walking back to Bobby's, but that twenty years...

He wondered if the Doctor knew how much worse it made it. The hope, every day, that he would be released. That somebody (that the Doctor) was going to save him. And as the years started to melt together into an endless song of pain and fear, how that hope drained away, how the Doctor's voice echoed through his head saying time can be re-written, how he eventually gave in because apparently time had been re-written to make it so that no one was coming for him.

He wondered if the Doctor knew that Alastair had found out about what happened during the visit (of course Alastair would find out, how would he not) and had used it against Dean. Coming to him as the Doctor, saying Hullo Dean, didn't I promise you'd see me again before ripping into him, those soulful brown eyes boring into Dean's as he said I killed my whole race, Dean, down to the last child, why would you think I'd treat you any different, why would you think you're special?

An awful part of him hoped that the Doctor did know, and that it ate at him.

He was so filled with these thoughts that in retrospect he was pretty sure Martha had already said it twice before he heard it when she asked, "Were you going to look for Sam?"

Dean whirled around and she stopped short, startled, with a pained expression on her face and a little hop to take her weight off of her injured foot. "What did you say?" he said, his voice low.

Martha looked alarmed as she said, "I asked...if you were looking for Sam."

"How the hell do you know about my brother?" Dean demanded.

Again that hurt look flashed across Martha's face, and she said, "I told you, I'm with the Doctor."

Dean considered grilling her further, but they were almost at Bobby's, and he figured that maybe Castiel could do a better job of it than he could, anyway. So he said nothing else, but grabbed her by the elbow and half-dragged, half-supported her back to the salvage yard. Because as much as he didn't trust her, she was obviously in pain, and she was unarmed. It wasn't like she could hurt him. She accepted the help gratefully, as reluctantly as it was given, and again he was pretty sure that she was leaning into him a little more than strictly necessary to stay above the pain.

He heard her gasp softly as Bobby's house came into view, and when he looked at her, there was a sheen in her eyes. He frowned, but didn't say anything.

They got to the door just in time for Bobby to throw it open, a thunderous look on his face, with Castiel behind him looking very mildly apologetic.

Bobby was about to say something, it was clear, when he saw Martha, and instead demanded, "Who the hell are you?"

"Martha Jones," she replied, her voice a choked whisper. "I'm Martha Jones."

It was when Bobby gaped and ushered her in, throwing her arm around his shoulders and helping her up the stairs like she was visiting royalty, that Dean realized that he had no idea what was going on.