Author's Note: I really don't have much to say this time other than thanks for all the feedback! I've really been appreciating it. School's getting pretty nuts lately, so I'm thinking about posting a poll on my profile to see what story I ought to write next, as it might be the last for a little while since I'll be student teaching in the spring. Keep an eye out for that. And in the meantime, allons-y!

Dean was keeping it together pretty well, he thought, all things considered.

At least, he was now that they'd left the room. He could just kick himself for letting himself get out of control, and in front of Martha no less, who even if she swore up and down she was his bestie in the future, he didn't know at all.

He walked downstairs with Martha and Castiel, but once at the landing he touched Castiel's shoulder, nodding down the hall while Martha turned and went into the library, evidently not noticing that her companions were not following her.

Dean led Castiel down by the kitchen, and when he stopped, the angel asked (keeping his voice quiet, which Dean appreciated—and realized was a feat of implicit learning, for Castiel), "What is it, Dean?"

Dean glanced down the hall, running a hand through his hair, and murmured, "You sure that girl's on the up-and-up, Cas? Nothing...like, demonic, or maybe like, I don't know, psychic or something about her? She's really original-recipe human?"

There was no answer for a moment, and when he looked back to Castiel, the angel was regarding him with something that if Dean hadn't known better he would have read as amusement. Very faint amusement. But amusement nevertheless. "This has to do with the emotional state in which I found the two of you," Castiel said, and it wasn't a question.

"No," Dean lied. Castiel's expression didn't change, and Dean caved instantly with an overwhelming sense of shame about it. (He never used to do that. Hell, he'd grown up with Sammy, King of the Puppy Eyes and the Bitch Face, and he didn't cave that fast for him.) "Okay, so maybe. But what else could it be? If she was just human I wouldn't have...gotten all chick-flick like that. She did something to me, didn't she? What did she do to me?"

The impression of amusement only strengthened, although Castiel's face barely moved. He sounded very, almost insultingly patient as he said, "What she did was talk to you, Dean. I don't know why you are getting upset about this. I was under the impression that humans did communicate when under stress."

"Not this human," Dean hissed, jerking his thumb to his chest in emphasis. Castiel watched the gesture with a mild interest. "I don't, Cas, I really don't. It always pissed Sammy off that I didn't do the whole sharing-is-caring thing. So why am I getting all dear diary with this chick I don't even know?"

Castiel spread his hands, shaking his head. "Dean, I don't know. Human social behavior is not my...my specialty, as it were. But perhaps the simplest reason is the right one: perhaps you needed to speak to someone, and Martha was available and willing to listen."

Dean scowled, and was about to answer back when Martha poked her head out of the library, a confused frown on her face. "Are you boys going to stand out there all day, or are we going to talk about the plan?" she asked, and it was only halfway as sarcastic as the words suggested.

But what weirded Dean out the most was that she had referred to him-and more importantly, Castiel—as boys.

So he turned the caustic retort he was about to hit Castiel with to Martha, but was again cut off when Castiel said, "We will be there shortly, Martha."

And for a moment Dean was kind of glad he hadn't had the chance to say something ugly, because while Cas's tone hadn't been anything further along the nice spectrum than civil, it lit something up in Martha's face. She didn't give more than a tweak of her lips, but her eyes softened, and her posture relaxed a little. "Right," she said. "Bobby and I'll be waiting." She ducked back into the library, and Dean could hear Bobby's voice questioning her, but wasn't able to make out his words.

"As to your original question," Castiel said quietly, and Dean turned back to him, "Martha Jones is indeed human. She does have an unusual accumulation of artron energy for a human, but if she is an associate of the Doctor, that is understandable."

Dean startled, staring at Castiel. "Wait, how the hell do you know the Doctor?" he demanded. Then a thought occurred to him, and he narrowed his eyes. "Did you read my mind? Because that is not cool."

Again with the amusement, and Dean was starting to get tired of it, and glowered at Castiel as he replied, "I did not have to read your mind, Dean. There are those, other than you and your brother, who have met the Doctor in the course of his centuries-long existence." A darkness passed over Castiel's expression, so briefly that Dean wasn't sure he had really seen it, and the angel added, "I myself met him over two decades ago, for a very short while. But the Host is aware of the Time War, and the fall of Gallifrey, and the role of the Doctor in those events. We are also aware of his work on Earth."

"Yeah?" Dean challenged. "So it's all kosher with you that some alien is stepping on your collective angelic toes?"

Castiel's eyes grew distant in what Dean was starting to think of as his processing face, like he was trying to translate Dean's always-perplexing words into something that made sense. "Stepping on our—" Castiel began.

Dean shook his head. "Like, doing your job. Saving the earth and whatever. It doesn't bother you that the Doc doesn't think you're doing a good enough job, and has to butt in and do it himself? You don't have an issue with that?"

Castiel stilled for a moment, studying Dean with an unreadable expression. It wasn't one of his usual set, and it was unsettling. "You harbor a great deal of anger towards a being who holds you in such high esteem," the angel said after a too-long moment.

Dean grunted something that was supposed to be sarcasm but didn't technically have any words attached to it, and thus fell somewhat short in that regard. "Sometimes high esteem," Dean finally muttered, air-quoting around Castiel's words sarcastically, "isn't enough when you end up screwing everything up anyway."

There was another silence, and Dean looked back up to meet the angel's eyes, which he found boring into him. He opened his mouth to say something, when Castiel said, "I have to confess my confusion. Are you speaking about the Doctor, or yourself?"

It was enough to stun Dean speechless, until shock turned into anger and he managed to mutter, "I don't have to listen to this," and stalked off towards the library.

He almost fell on his ass when Castiel appeared directly in front of him, cutting off his escape route, but he caught himself against the wall and tried to steady his racing heart. "Damn it, Cas!"

"This is not the world I intended to bring you back into," Castiel said, his voice very quiet, very firm, and angrier than Dean would have preferred to hear it, so he listened very closely as the angel continued. "You were saved from Hell for a purpose, Dean, and that purpose cannot be fulfilled with matters as they are, with Earth separated from Heaven and Hell. Therefore, you and I must set things right here, and Martha Jones seems to know how to do that. I will not allow your petty showboating to get in the way of fulfilling your God-given destiny. So if your issues—" and no shit right there the angel mimicked Dean's air quotes with a totally straight face "—with the Doctor are going to become an obstacle to getting this job done, then yes, I will deal with it and yes, you will listen to me."

Dean inhaled unsteadily, and murmured, "You know what happened with him. In. Or, down there."

The anger in Castiel's eyes faded somewhat, and he said, "Yes, Dean. I know."

"I was holding on until then," Dean whispered.

Something flashed across Castiel's face—something that Dean couldn't pin down, since it wasn't confusion, irritation, or anger—but it looked alarmingly like grief. It only clouded his eyes for a moment, and he said, "There is a purpose, Dean, for all that happens. Your friend—for he is your friend, whether you believe it or not—did not intend to cause you suffering. And I know that I have not been in your acquaintance long, but I find it hard to believe that you would allow a viable plan to rescue your brother to come undone due to a grudge against someone else. Am I incorrect?"

Dean shook his head. "No," he admitted. "No. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get Sammy back." His lips twisted into a wry grin as he added, "The Doctor better be damn glad he's on the same ship as Sam."

Castiel said nothing, but took a step towards the library before Dean put a tentative hand on his arm. The angel stopped immediately, glancing at the hand and then at Dean expectantly. "And I'm—I'm sorry," Dean said, grudgingly. Castiel frowned, and Dean clarified: "For blowing up on you earlier."

"Blowing up on—"

"For getting upset," Dean corrected hastily, feeling an almost equal-parts combination of amusement and irritation at the angel's persistent inability to recognize metaphor. Although the look of subdued alarm in Castiel's eyes when he'd said blowing up was kind of funny. "Look, man, I owe you, okay? Weren't for you, I'd still be there. You know."

"I do," Castiel said, and Dean wasn't sure if it was the angel being overly literal again or if he was actually sparing Dean the pain of having to name the place of his imprisonment. Either way, he appreciated it, regardless of motivation.

"So I guess I'm saying I'll try to cool it," he concluded hastily.

Castiel gave him another one of those tilted-head narrowed-eyes glances, and for just a second Dean was ready to clarify the meaning of the idiom cool it, but then the angel said, "Thank you, Dean."

Dean smiled uncomfortably, and Martha leaned out of the library again. "Daylight's wasting," she complained, "and I really can't waste much more of it. I should've been gone hours ago."

Dean wanted to be irritated, and was for a second, but then Martha's words hit him. "Wait, gone?" he said, and walked into the room with her, knowing without hearing that Castiel followed him in.

Martha stepped aside to let the two of them enter, then settled on the sofa with her legs crossed under her. She looked, as usual, way too comfortable for this to be her first time on the couch. "Gone," she agreed, and Bobby gave Dean a sour look that promised interrogation later as the younger Hunter sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Martha. Bobby sat behind his desk, and Castiel stood by the door, observing the three humans with equanimity.

"Okay," Dean said, with what he thought was remarkable patience, "you wanna explain what you mean, gone?"

Martha sighed, a long-suffering sound, and bent one leg up to rest her elbow on. "This isn't my last stop," she said, "not by any means. You remember when I got here, I said I came from London via Jakarta, Kiev, and Tokyo."

"Yeah," Dean said.

"Well, I meant it," she replied. "I've been walking all over the Earth, telling my story. Well. His story."

Dean didn't flinch, didn't move, but he saw Castiel's eyes flick over to him, and he met them. Evidently whatever the angel saw in his face was good enough, because Castiel nodded in approval, and Dean wasn't going to talk about the flare of pride that warmed his chest with that nod. Because what did it matter what anybody thought of him? Dean knew who he was.

(There was a not insignificant part of Dean's mind that was laughing at him for thinking that, for thinking that there was any part of Dean's self-esteem that wasn't dictated by other people, and that if he was going to let anybody tell him how to feel about himself, might as well be an angel of the Lord, right?)

"The Master rose to power in May," Martha was saying when Dean shook himself out of his thoughts, and from the kind of odd look on her face he was guessing she noticed the moment he'd just had with Castiel, and he was definitely not going to refer to it as a moment again. "We'd met him, me and the Doctor and Jack, at the end of the universe—it's a really long story, just trust me on that one—and he managed to steal the TARDIS and bring himself back to, I think, 2005. He established himself as a British politician called Harold Saxon and fabricated a whole life story for himself. He even has a wife, Lucy Cole. It eventually led to his getting elected as prime minister, and that was when the Doctor got us back here—just in time to see him elected."

"Perfect timing, as usual," Dean quipped, but he was able to keep most of the heat out of his voice. Martha's wry expression told him he wasn't too vitriolic, and her snort told him she didn't think he was wrong.

"Well, basically, he got elected and killed his cabinet almost immediately. He retreated to the Valiant, killed the American president, took the Doctor and Jack and my family, and things went...shall we say, downhill from there." Martha's voice was crisp and cool, reciting the events from what was doubtless the worst four months of her life as though she was reading a recipe, but Dean saw the way her jaw set, the way her hands clenched into fists. "I managed to escape, using Jack's vortex manipulator. But before I got out, the Doctor explained something to me."

She looked over to Bobby, and said, "Do you have a cell phone, Bobby?"

He frowned, but reached into the pocket of his jacket and fished around, pulling out a blocky phone and showing it to her. She gestured for him to pass it to her, and Bobby handed the phone to Dean, who passed it to Martha. She pressed a button and the screen came on, and she nodded, her mouth in a grim line. "That's what I thought," she said. "Archangel Mobile."

Dean shared a surprised glance with Castiel, whose brow furrowed, but otherwise didn't react. Martha caught the glance and made a choked sound that Dean was pretty sure was an aborted laugh. "Not like that," she said. "It's...a weird coincidence. But every phone on the planet is connected to this network. The Master invented it. And it's not just connecting phones. It's a psychic network, creating a gobal consciousness, letting the Master project a subtle mind control all across the world. It's keeping people scared."

Bobby coughed, and Dean glanced over at him, seeing that the older Hunter's face was pale, his eyes wide. "Um," he said, "just pop the battery out of that for me, Martha. Thanks." Martha grinned, and did so. Noticing Dean's eyes on him, Bobby pulled a tougher face and added, "Rufus or somebody needs me, they can get me on the land line. Any of them."

Dean silently recognized his gratitude that Rufus was still alive, after all this. But really, if he was being honest, it didn't surprise him that of anybody in the world Bobby and Rufus would have managed to make it in a world gone to shit.

Another thought occurred to Dean, though, and it made him straighten off of the couch. "Archangel Network," he said, and Martha nodded, frowning. "When I called Sammy's phone, it said his ARC mobile was disconnected."

"Yeah, Dean," Martha said slowly, as though worried Dean was going to freak out, "I said, everybody was connected to the network. Sam probably didn't get to keep his phone in the labor camp, which is why it was disconnected. It's not like the Master needs help keeping people scared, there."

"Could you—" Dean started, then broke off. Martha fell silent, waiting, and Dean tried again: "Could you not call him that? It's just...it sounds wrong."

"Wh—you want me to call him Saxon?" Martha asked, and Dean nodded, feeling foolish but nonetheless right. Martha shrugged. "Sure. It's not his name, but sure."

"What, his name is Master?" Dean snapped.

"As much as the Doctor's is Doctor," Martha retorted, and they glared at each other for just a moment before Martha recovered. "I'll call him Saxon if it makes you feel better, Dean. I don't mind. It's just...I'm used to saying the Master, because it's how everyone knows him, out there. When I talk to them."

"Perhaps," Castiel interrupted gently, "we should return to Martha's discussion of her plan, and the backstory regarding it, rather than diverging into an argument of semantics."

Dean glared at Castiel, feeling strangely reprimanded by the angel's remarks, but Martha nodded. "So Archangel is a global psychic network that every human on the planet is connected to. Right now the Ma—Saxon is using it against us, but the thing is that what it does is create a network. All the psychic energy on the planet is focused on that network, every single thought that every single human has. The power of it all can be collected by Archangel. Right now, the direction of flow is Saxon to us, right? He's using his connection to the network to project fear and submission. But—"

"The connection goes both ways," Castiel said, and Martha quieted, a smile creeping onto her face that the word savage wasn't altogether inappropriate to describe. "That is...truly brilliant. The Doctor plans to reverse the flow the network to overload Saxon's mind, to destroy him."

Martha held up a finger, and Castiel frowned. "Almost," she said. "But the Doctor doesn't do killing, not when he can help it. And he can help it this time."

"Then what?" Castiel asked, sounded, if Dean wasn't imagining it, a little disappointed that he was incorrect.

Martha lowered her voice to just above a whisper, and said, "The Doctor's tapping into the network, a little every day. He's building up a connection that'll let him link in with all that psychic energy, all that power. All we have to do is give it to him, all at once, when he needs it."

Dean felt a jolt go through him when he heard the plan, and when it resided it coalesced into a little bit of nausea. "So the plan is to juice up the Doctor with the psychic energy of an entire planet and...what? Let him loose on Saxon?"

Martha's face fell, and she looked away, her lips pressed together in frustration. "Dean, come on. Maybe you think you're being sneaky, but I know what this is about. You have to trust him with this. There's no other way; there's not. Saxon's got the TARDIS, he's got the Toclaphane, he's got the Doctor. This is our best shot. It's our only shot. At saving the world and at saving our families, do you understand?"

Dean folded his arms, not giving in, but asked, "So what does he want us to do?"

Martha looked for a minute like she wasn't going to let it go, but sighed and said, "I've been going around the country telling people about the Doctor, about all the times he's saved us, about how he can save us this time. And that when the time comes, everyone needs to think of him. Just think of him, all at once, and know that he's going to fix this."

The incredulous laugh that erupted from Dean wasn't meant to get out, but he couldn't help it. It was too ridiculous. "Seriously?" he cackled, as Martha glared a death-glare at him. "We're gonna, what, clap real hard for Tinkerbell?"

"We're giving the Doctor permission to access our psychic energy, and focusing it in a way that he can use," Martha snapped. "Stop being stupid. This isn't—it's not a joke, Dean! God, can't you be serious for five minutes?"

"You gotta admit, it sounds stupid," Dean said.

Martha sat on the couch for a long moment, everything about her posture extremely tense. Suddenly, like a spring uncoiling, she bolted up from the couch, grabbed her boots and shoved them on. "Fine," she muttered. "Just fine, Dean. If you don't want to help save the world, then by all means just hole up here and try to will your brother back to you. Maybe if you wish hard enough, you'll just wake up one morning, and none of this will have happened! Good luck with that, because it hasn't worked out so bloody well for me."

She stormed across the room, and Dean, beset on both sides by glares from Bobby and Castiel, scrambled off the couch and grabbed her arm. She shook him off, spinning around to scowl at him. "Don't," she snapped.

"Martha, come on," Dean began.

"No, Dean, you come on," she said. "I don't have time for this. If you're not going to help, then I have to make double time for the rest of the year. Because I've only got a year. All this, the labor camps, the rockets, the Toclaphane, all of it, it's a year-long plan. Four months are gone. I have eight months to tell every living soul on the planet the story that's going to save the world, and if you're not gonna back me up, then I have to go."

Dean shut his eyes, bracing himself, and said, "Do you really believe this plan's gonna work, Martha?"

She hesitated, and his heart sank. He opened his eyes, and she'd wrapped her arms around herself, looking over his shoulder. "I have to," she whispered.

It would have to be enough. "Okay," Dean said. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to grab your things, put on your walking boots, and come with me," Martha said. "And whether or not you believe in the Doctor, you better damn well pretend you do, because I need you to help me tell his story. To your whole country."

"You need me to be a door-to-door Doctor missionary," Dean said.

Martha's lips quirked into a smile. "In a manner of speaking," she said. "So grab your bike, mission boy. Because we've got eight months to storytell the world out of oblivion."