Author's Note: Sorry about the delay! My kid sister moved away for college this weekend, so there were Very Big Feelings and not a lot of time for writing. I am also a little meh about this chapter so please give me honest feedback; if it doesn't make sense or seems out of character for anybody, I'll revise it.

Martha did not cry when she saw Bobby Singer's house in front of her, big and warm and so much like home. She made damn sure of that.

She didn't cry when the door opened and Bobby stood there, demanding to know what was going on and who she was.

She didn't cry when she saw Castiel standing behind Bobby, looking a little embarrassed and more than a little suspicious.

She focused instead on the relief in her ankle as Bobby slung her arm around his shoulders and took her weight onto him. She focused on the cool air in the house as he guided her gently inside, solicitous and concerned and so much gentler than she knew was typical for him.

She knew that it was only delirious relief that was causing him to react so well to her: relief that Dean hadn't gotten himself killed, relief that Dean wasn't even hurt, relief that the only thing he'd brought back with him was an unarmed young woman, and reluctant, tentative hope at the idea that she was actually who she said she was.

They stepped through the door together, and she didn't get caught by the Devil's Trap that she knew for a fact was under the rug in front of the door. She'd helped re-paint it one weekend after bringing the boys back from the Andromeda galaxy. Test one.

She saw as Bobby surreptitiously dipped his fingers into a holy water font on the wall, then brushed her bare neck with them. That font had been the Doctor's idea—easier than having to open a flask every time they suspected someone of being other than human, he'd said. Bobby had installed it the next day. She didn't even shiver at the cold touch of the liquid. Test two.

Bobby laid her gently on the couch, and she smiled gratefully up at him. He looked a bit uncomfortable and started to say something, but she interrupted him. "You can go ahead and get the silver knife. It's all right."

He stared at her, taken aback, as Dean and Castiel entered the room, talking quietly. Well, Castiel was talking quietly. Dean was attempting to, but he never did seem to realize how far his voice carried.

"You said you weren't gonna tell him," he said accusingly.

Castiel looked less than amused, but responded too softly for Martha to hear. Dean made a face, but didn't give a retort back. Instead he nodded, casting his eyes down.

That was odd.

Martha was in the process of leaning forward to finally get a look at her ankle when she saw that Castiel's attention was suddenly and fully on her. She stopped, meeting his eyes, not looking away as he approached her.

She'd never been scared of Castiel, not really. She knew what he was, of course, knew what he was capable of. But Martha Jones was the Doctor's Companion. She'd seen much more terrible things in the universe than Castiel, and anyway, he was on her side. He was the Winchesters' protector, their guardian, and the Doctor's friend. Her friend, too. Her awkward, strange friend, who made even the Doctor look totally normal and human, but her friend.

But now he was looking at her like a curiosity to be understood at best, and at worst, a threat to be eradicated, and she felt a thrill of fear begin at the base of her spine.

"What are you?" Castiel asked, standing by the sofa, looking down at her. She'd seen that look before, when he regarded some monster they'd come across, some alien he hadn't known of previously. She never thought that it would be turned on her. "You are saturated with artron energy. This is your correct time, but you have centuries worth of the energy collected on you." His eyes darkened, and his hand raised, and Martha couldn't take her eyes off of it. "Just like the creatures outside."

Martha braced herself, but Bobby threw himself between them. "Don't you hurt her!" he shouted, and Martha gasped in a breath she barely realized she'd forgotten to take. "What she is is our only hope to stop Saxon. If she's who she says she is, she's our only shot."

"You don't know for sure if she's the right girl?" Dean asked, and Martha sat up. He turned to her, and the cautious suspicion in his eyes was like a knife to her gut. But she didn't react.

Instead, as Bobby said, "Well, it ain't like Martha Jones is likely to let Saxon's goons take a picture of her for wanted posters," she turned to Castiel. The angel still looked like he'd prefer to smite her clear off this plane of existence rather than risk it, but she swallowed her fear and met his gaze firmly. He looked a bit surprised, and Martha took that opportunity.

"You can tell," she said, and he narrowed his eyes while Bobby and Dean turned to watch them. "You can read my mind. You'll know I'm telling the truth. Please. I need you to trust me. I need your help, and I need you to trust me."

She carefully moved her legs from the sofa onto the floor, sitting up and looking at Castiel expectantly. Still frowning, he sat down next to her—the movement looked awkward and ungainly on him, and she realized that this was a good bit earlier than she'd been before. September, 2008. She thought for a moment, trying to form a timeline in her mind of her previous visits.

September, 2008.

She gasped and looked past Castiel to Dean, who watched her warily.

He'd just come back.

She looked down at his hands and yes, the fingernails were broken, the first segments of his fingers still bloodied. The creases of his hands were still black with grave dirt, and he kept rolling back his left shoulder—the one with the scar that would be so unfamiliar to him. And more than anything else, his eyes kept flicking back to Castiel, like he couldn't believe that the angel was really there, that he really existed. There was no taking him for granted, not yet. When she'd known them—when she would know them—(Martha silently cursed the difficulty of grammatical tense when talking about time travel)—Castiel was an institution, practically a third brother, expected to be there and treated with no more gentleness than that with which the boys treated each other. But Dean's gaze, when it fell on Castiel, was still filled with wonder. Castiel wasn't his team-mate, yet. He was still his savior.

He'd just come back, and the idea of how much pain he must be in—how fresh the memories of his torture must be, when she'd seen him struggle with them later in his life, when he knew her—made her chest constrict with empathetic grief.

"What?" Dean said, fidgeting a bit under her stare.

She snapped out of it, shaking her head and breaking the eye contact. "Nothing," she said softly. "Sorry, nothing."

Castiel had been sitting there the whole time, growing less and less pleased with Martha's fixation on his charge, and when Martha turned back to him she was met with narrowed eyes and a set jaw. He lifted his hands, and she didn't wince. She just pressed her lips together and nodded.

"It has been...a significant amount of time, since I have made use of this ability while within the confines of a vessel," Castiel said by way of warning, and Martha nodded again. "I cannot promise that it will be comfortable."

"I've walked here from London, via Jakarta, Kiev, and Tokyo," said Martha dryly. "Uncomfortable, I can do."

Castiel regarded her, then said, "Very well." He laid the tips of his fingers against her face, resting lightly on her temples—

(—his fingers were surprisingly soft, he didn't have the callouses he would have later, the thick skin built up from using Jimmy Novak's body in battle, and oh, god, Jimmy, this was all new for Jimmy, she wondered if he was scared or if he was still excited to be serving Heaven—)

—and closed his eyes. She tried to calm her thoughts, to let him just see what he needed to see; that she was Martha Jones, that she was the Doctor's Companion, that she was on their side and against Saxon, that she truly wanted to help them. That she was trustworthy, that she was a friend. She breathed deep, even, and ignored the pain in her ankle.

That last focus became quickly much easier when Castiel's consciousness entered her mind like a flood breaking a dam.

She faintly heard herself gasping, a ragged, painful sound, but she couldn't focus on it or much of anything because this wasn't anything like when the Doctor checked on her mind, this wasn't careful or delicate or courteous, it was all force and clumsy power and single-minded focus and that focus was not her comfort: it was only finding what he needed and making sure that she wasn't there to hurt Dean.

Her mind had been connected to others psychically enough times that she was able to catch some reciprocal thoughts from the angel, and so

just pulled him from the Pit I will not have him in danger again so soon if she is not who she says she is I will

mingled with her own thoughts and faded in and out of the foreground amongst her memories of

Castiel please just talk to the Doctor he'd know best what you're going through I wish I could say something to make it better but I

layered above

I did not tell her my name she is not a prophet yet she has foreknowledge how is

and everything tinged with

oh my god why does this hurt it doesn't hurt when the Doctor this has to be over it has to end when will

And suddenly, his fingers lifted, the pain stopped abruptly, and Martha realized she'd been screaming.

She lifted a shaking hand to her aching, raw throat as Castiel stood, gazing down at her with that expressionless face she'd learned to interpret over the years, and she knew that he was concerned. But he said, "She is who she claims to be. She is Martha Jones, and she escaped from London, and she seeks the downfall of Harold Saxon."

Martha took a breath to thank him, but Castiel continued. "However, I do not fully understand what you are, Martha Jones, or how you know us. How you know my name, my nature, and of Dean's return this morning, among other things."

"What?" Dean asked, startled, turning wide eyes from Castiel to Martha. "My—what? What do you know about me?"

Again Martha tried to answer, and again Castiel cut her off. "She knows of your time in Hell, the deal you made at the crossroads, and of your return and the circumstances surrounding it." The angel turned to Martha, studying her. "She knows, in fact, of events from your time in Hell that I know for a fact you have not spoken of aloud since your return."

"Like w—" Dean began, but stopped when he saw Martha shaking her head. He paled, understanding. "How the hell do you know about that," he growled.

Bobby frowned. "Know about what?" he asked, and Dean shook his head tightly.

"Know about any of it," Dean said. "What the hell are—"

"Like I said before," Martha interrupted, "I'm with the Doctor. Time travel. Right? Our timelines don't always sync up. I've met you before, all of you. Last time I saw you it was years in the future for you." She tried to stand, to convince Dean that she—

But her ankle gave out under her and she fell to the ground.

And when she hit the ground, she realized that she wasn't going to stand up again on her own.

The room spun around her, and it was in a haze that she felt hands on her arms, helping her back onto the couch. "Martha?" Bobby's voice came as though from a distance. "What's wrong with her, Dean?"

"I don't know," said Dean, sounding flustered. "She...her foot was hurt, but she said she was okay. She walked back with me. She kept up all right."

A cool hand on her foot, icy on the heat she didn't realize was emanating from it. It felt like it ought to be steaming. She gasped and shivered.

"It is broken." Castiel's voice was calm and clinical as he made the diagnosis. "And it is infected. Given my limited understanding of human anatomy I am surprised that she has been able to fight off the fever for as long as she has, but now that she is in a place where she feels safe, her body is succumbing."

"Succumbing?" Dean echoed. "I don't like the way that sounds, Cas."

Cas. Martha's lips quirked up into what she intended as a smile but she was pretty sure just came out as a grimace. Less than twenty four—no, probably less than twelve hours into their acquaintanceship and already Dean had developed the nickname.

Cas. Sammy. Doc. She wondered, if this timeline progressed, whether or not she was able to stop Saxon, if she'd ever hear Dean's nickname for her again.

"When was the last time you allowed your body rest, Martha?" Castiel asked, and his voice was gentler, but in a way that wasn't totally comforting—a bit like a doctor speaks to a terminal patient.

"Really rest?" Martha croaked, as the world started to coalesce into a semblance of order around her. "Probably...three weeks. I just escaped Japan. I...it was hard to catch a break, in Japan."

She closed her eyes, quelling a surge of emotion as the memories of her last moments in Tokyo started to surface. When she opened them, Dean was crouched by her. She supposed that if anyone would recognize the signs of suppressing awful memories, it would be a Winchester. "Japan?" he prompted gently.

She looked up at him, and wondered if she should lie. Just a comforting lie. If anybody deserved a little comfort, wasn't it Dean, and wasn't it now? Yes, Japan, bit of trouble, almost got caught, managed to get out in the nick of time, isn't life funny. He'd have the weight of the world on his shoulders soon enough. He didn't need more bad news.

But she couldn't lie. She never could, not to him or his brother. So she whispered, "The Toclaphane. The...spheres. They killed everyone in Japan. I couldn't stop it. I barely made it out."

Dean's look of horror made her wish she hadn't had to say it, but sadly, it was a familiar expression on his face. And to her, better than the suspicion, the doubt, the distrust. Now, they would be in a battle together. Brothers-in-arms, as they should be.

"Everyone?" Bobby said, and she nodded wearily. "Damn. God dammit."

Castiel shot Bobby a disapproving glance, but made no response to the blasphemy. Instead, he sat on the edge of the sofa by Martha's feet, and put his cold fingers back on her broken ankle.

Broken. And she'd been so irritated at herself for being such a baby about a little sprained ankle. Broken, and infected. She pulled up her pant leg and sucked in a breath through her teeth. There wasn't bone jutting, but she'd managed to cut herself deep on something, and she could see the angry red swelling.

It felt instantly better under the coolness of Castiel's fingers, though.

He studied the wound for a moment, closed his eyes, and Martha gasped as she felt his power surge into her foot, as she felt bone knit and flesh close. She felt her body cool as the fever abated, and she leaned against the pillow on the couch, overwhelmed with relief, from the pain and from the heat of the fever.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Castiel didn't reply to that, but stood. "She will recover," he told Bobby and Dean. "Her body is weary from fighting the illness, and she will need rest. But the infection is gone and her bone is healed."

Dean stared at Castiel for a long moment, then crouched by Martha and hovered hesitant fingers over her ankle. He looked up at her for permission, and she nodded. He pulled up the fabric of her cargo pants and looked at the unmarred skin in disbelief.

"Damn," he said. He looked up at the angel, his eyes full of a thousand questions that Martha knew he'd never voice. She knew he was thinking about all of the scars that he'd once had that were gone (god, did he complain about that when he knew her), about the angel taking the time to knit his body back together from death. And she knew Dean well enough to know that he was thinking, well, of course an angel would heal the woman that Bobby said was their only hope against Harold Saxon. But why would an angel heal him?

She wondered if, in this timeline, things might go differently with Dean and Castiel. If the two of them might be able to avoid the mistakes

(I thought angels were supposed to be guardians...not dicks)

(I dragged you out of Hell, I can throw you back in)

that they'd made in the past. Or the last time this was the present.

Martha was entirely too tired for this.

She put a hand over her eyes, and said, "I'm so sorry, but could I...just rest, for a minute? I promise I'll explain why I'm here when I wake up, but I just...I can't keep my eyes open, I really can't."

"You're just gonna fall asleep in a room full of strangers, in a world like this?" Dean sounded truly incredulous, and it was almost funny. "How the hell are you still alive?"

She smiled blearily down at him, and murmured, "I'm a stranger to you, Dean. You're no strangers to me."

And before Dean could come up with a proper rebuttal, and before Martha could hear Bobby's answer of yeah, of course, she passed out.