Author's Note: Okay guys so this is like practically unedited, so if it's terrible please let me know. I wanted to get something up tonight but like I said, Martha and Dean are just giving me fits.
I feel like this story is lacking something altogether, and I'm not sure what, so at this juncture any and all feedback is especially appreciated. What's working, what's not working, what you'd like to see more of...there are gaps in my planning right now so if you have a suggestion, it might find its way into the narrative!
In the meantime, thanks for all your feedback so far, and enjoy.
Martha didn't hear Castiel come in, but she supposed she never did.
She had been sitting in the library, checking her vortex manipulator. She was carefully stripping it down and examining it, making sure there wasn't any damage—anything that she could see, at least. She didn't really understand the technology, but she was starting to know what it looked like when it was likely to make her sick when she jumped. And she knew enough about this kind of tech, from the Doctor, to know what water damage looked like, a couple of things to do to fix that or physical damage. She didn't have spare parts for it, but she could engineer something similar enough. She'd had to already, once or twice.
And this time, if she had to jump, she might have to do it with company, and she wanted to make sure that the vortex manipulator was in as good shape as possible, just in case.
She'd already strapped her boots on, pulled her hair back tight like she kept it when she was on the move, and checked the rest of her meagre gear. There wasn't much to do, in preparation. Dean was taking a while, but he had a right to. He was heading out for the first time, and he had a very difficult good-bye to say, and she understood why he was putting it off. She didn't begrudge him a few hours.
They didn't have a lot of hours left, but she could spare a couple.
So she was sitting cross-legged on the ground, stripping and re-assembling the vortex manipulator for no real reason anymore, just spinning the piece of tech in her hands, touching it with gentle fingers because it was the only thing she had of Jack or the Doctor to hold on to, and she really shouldn't think like that, because she was going to get all maudlin and Martha Jones, savior of the Earth, storyteller for the Doctor, she didn't cry.
She used to cry. She used to cry pretty easily. She remembered lots of tears, when she'd started traveling with the Doctor. But lately, there just wasn't anything left. She'd run out of tears. She'd cried them all already. Or at least, she thought she had, until she sat with Dean Winchester in the guest bedroom and listened to him break in front of her.
She hadn't actually shed a tear. She wasn't sure she was capable, anymore. But she'd come far, far closer than she had in a long time.
"Martha."
She didn't jump, but her heart rate did pick up a bit at his voice.
"Hey, Cas," she murmured, and then quickly added, "-tiel. Hey, ah, Castiel."
He didn't say anything, so she turned around and looked at him. He had an odd look on his face, a little bit surprised and a little bit pensive, like he'd just found a piece to a puzzle he'd been trying to solve. "Dean also refers to me in that way," he said slowly.
Martha felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. She didn't think that the angel could get less savvy than when she'd known him, but evidently the brothers had worked on him for a while before she met him. She had to look down to hide her smile as he said, "Is this a human custom? To shorten names? I am not sure Dean's can be shortened further while remaining a meaningful sound."
"It's a nickname," she explained, and Castiel tilted his head. "Cas. It's Dean's nickname for you. Sort of, a way to express affection. Like, it's something you call someone when you're comfortable with them. To show you're friends, I suppose."
The tilt intensified, went forward a little bit, as Castiel asked, "Dean...is communicating that he considers me a friend, when he calls me that?"
Martha blinked up at him, the weight of what she'd just said and when it was that she'd said it hitting her suddenly. "Oh," she said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say, and she had vanishingly little interest in getting involved in the tangled web of a complicated relationship that Dean and Castiel had, at least when they'd known her. She shifted around so that she was facing Castiel fully, although she stayed on the ground, cupping the vortex manipulator in her hands. "Um, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?" she asked, and she knew that things must be awkward if she wanted to get to the point of whatever it was the angel had mystically appeared in the room to tell her.
Castiel seemed to consider sitting for a moment, and shifted his trench coat as though to do so, but reconsidered and simply stood by the wall, almost but not quite leaning against it. It was so uncomfortable that Martha almost giggled to relieve the tension.
Giggling was another thing Martha Jones had not done in a very long time.
"You have requested Dean's assistance in proselytizing faith in the Doctor," Castiel stated, and Martha straightened anxiously.
"Not like, in a blasphemous way or anything," she said quickly. "Not like that kind of faith, just the belief that he has a plan, that he can stop the Master—"
She was babbling, and Castiel was holding a hand out in patient interruption, so she shut up. "That is not my point," the angel said, and Martha settled back into a more comfortable posture. "My point is, I cannot imagine that your venture is one that is safe. You have done this thing at great risk to yourself, have you not?"
Martha frowned, turning the manipulator over in her hands. "I guess," she muttered, embarrassed.
"It will, likewise, present a great risk to Dean," Castiel continued, and Martha understood.
"Yes," she said, knowing that honesty was not only the best but the only feasible policy. "There's not really a way around it. The Toclaphane are everywhere, and they're out for anyone who's not where Harold Saxon has put them. I do have this—" she pulled the TARDIS key out from beneath her jacket, and held out it for Castiel; she knew that he'd be able to see the nature of it rather than the physical form, "—and it keeps us from being seen by the Toclaphane. It'll work for both of us; it did when he tried to find Sam."
Castiel stiffened, and Martha felt her cheeks flush. Oh, damn. Dean hadn't told him. Castiel's voice was lower and rougher even than usual as he said, "The Toclaphane discovered you, when you found Dean?"
"No," Martha said. "No, no, not discovered. Just...passed over. The key hid both of us."
"And you were positive that it would?" Castiel demanded, his tone that of a parent attempting to tease the truth out of an unwilling child, but with a chill beneath it that no loving parent's voice would ever hold.
But Martha's Castiel was a friend, or close enough, and without that smite-happy look from earlier on his face, it didn't even occur to her to be frightened of him. So she settled back, crossed her arms, and glared at him. "No," she said, "but I also didn't plan to run into Dean on the way here. Sort of think somebody, or two somebodies, could have kept a better eye on the recently-freed-from-Hell Winchester whose brother was missing."
If that wasn't a tiny hint of shame that crossed Castiel's face, so briefly that it was almost unnoticeable, Martha would eat her vortex manipulator.
Instead she strapped it to her wrist and pulled herself standing, rolling her shoulders back to work out knots. She grabbed her small pack from the ground and slung it over her shoulder. She could still feel Castiel's eyes on her, puzzling her out, trying to make sense of this too-bold, downright disrespectful human woman, wondering if maybe it wasn't just Dean who didn't have a proper sense of propriety when it came to dealing with angels, if maybe it was just a human thing, like nicknames. So when she met his eyes, it was with a little bit (just a little bit) of apology, because from what she knew of Castiel, he must at this point have been almost as confused as Dean. Knowing that, she decided to just answer the question she knew he was trying to ask, instead of letting him struggle to express it.
"I'm gonna do my best to take care of Dean," she said, and Castiel managed to be somehow more still than before, although he'd hardly seemed fidgety. It was a different quality of stillness. "I don't know if you believe me any more than he does, but he's my friend. I care about him, Castiel. And Bobby, and Sam, and you. And trust me, I wouldn't be here, now, if I had a choice. But I knew he came back, now, and I knew that he wouldn't be able to deal with Sam being missing. And I do need his help. The world's gone all to hell—sorry, sorry, bad choice of words," she said quickly, noticing the nearly imperceptible wince that the angel gave at her words, realizing too late that it wasn't just Dean who'd come back from Hell. "The world's...you know. Awful. And I don't have anyone else to ask, Cas, or I would. I'd let him stay here. Even if it meant that we never met, even if I had to sacrifice that, I would. For him. For all of you."
She lowered her eyes, trembling with the truth of what she'd just said. She would have. She didn't know what was going to happen at the end of the year, if she managed to win this thing for the Earth. If the timeline had changed so much that all of her adventures with the boys would just be gone. If she'd remember them, but they wouldn't. But really, honestly, she knew the significance that September of 2008 held for Dean, and if she'd had any other allies, any other options, she would have gone to them instead. She'd have let Dean rest. She'd have let him stay here, safe, as safe and protected as he'd ever be, with Bobby and Castiel watching over him. She'd have let their friendship and all it meant to her disappear into the incomprehensible whorls of Time if it meant that he could have some peace.
"I'm gonna do my best," she added, her words soft but firm. "I'm gonna do everything I can to keep him safe."
"I was..." Martha looked up as Castiel broke off, looking away, looking frustrated and confused. "I was not attempting to elicit a promise from you that you cannot keep, Martha Jones," he said. "Although I appreciate your dedication to the continued safety of my charge, and I know the truth of it. But that was not my intent."
Martha closed her eyes briefly, instead of rolling them, because really, Castiel and the Doctor were just made for each other. Nobody else could say so little with so many words. She'd often wondered, if the two of them were put in a room alone together, if anything of any substance would ever be said. "Then what was your intent, Castiel?" she asked, her voice less sharp than just exhausted.
Castiel blinked at her, and replied, "To accompany you and Dean on your mission." As if it should be obvious.
Martha stared at him, her mouth working uselessly for a moment, before saying, "For real?" like a child.
That seemed to not yet be fully within Castiel's understanding of the English language, but the context clues were enough for him to say, "Yes, Martha. For real."
And the sound of him echoing her words like that with that puzzled expression was just enough of home for her to laugh out loud, drop her pack to the ground, and throw her arms around the suddenly very still and very confused angel. It didn't matter that he didn't hug her back. "God, I've missed you," she murmured into his chest.
"I'd prefer you didn't take my Father's name in vain," he corrected mildly, and Martha laughed again.
"Sorry," she said.
A cough from behind them broke the hug, and Martha flushed a little at Dean's raised eyebrow and smirk, then scowled without malice at him. He leaned in the doorway, arms folded. "Am I interrupting a moment?" he asked, and Martha resisted the urge to throw her pack at him.
"Are you done packing?" she asked, ignoring his question, which only made his grin wider. "I'm not carrying your suitcases, princess, so I hope you packed light. We won't be staying at the Marriott."
That wiped the grin right off of Dean's face, and he returned her scowl, but she could tell that there wasn't any heat behind his, either: it was simply that the battle was joined. "I know how to pack," he shot back. "Been Hunting since I was a kid, and if we were such best friends back in the—forward in the—" Dean broke off, frowning. Martha suppressed a laugh. "Man, this is hard to talk about."
"Tell me about it," Martha retorted. "When the Doctor starts getting out of order, timey-wimey becomes the understatement of the year."
Dean's lips trembled as he tried to resist a grin. "Timey...what?" he asked.
"Never mind," Martha said, waving her hands. "It's a very long story. But we were just talking, Dean, Castiel and I, and turns out we're looking at a party of three for this little adventure."
All of the levity fell away from Dean's expression as he turned to Castiel. Martha folded her arms over her chest, as though to protect herself from the disbelieving ache in Dean's voice as he said, "You're coming? Really?"
Castiel's shoulders slumped a little as he said, his voice tinged with something that was almost irritation, "I don't understand why this is difficult to believe. Yes, Dean, yes, Martha, I will join you. I am separated from Heaven and have no other mission on Earth but to protect you, Dean. What else would I be doing?"
"Not complaining," Dean said, putting his hands up defensively, although whether he was defending himself from Castiel's irritation or from something else entirely, it wasn't clear. "Definitely not gonna complain about having angelic backup."
"I would not assume so," Castiel said, studying Dean carefully. Dean seemed to suddenly notice the scrutiny, and looked at Martha, firmly avoiding the angel's gaze. Castiel didn't seem to care and continued to watch Dean.
"So where are we headed?" he asked, a little louder than he'd been speaking before. He grabbed a bag from outside the room, slung it over his shoulder, and walked in.
Martha dug into her own pack and pulled out a tightly-folded map, kneeling down and spreading it out on the floor. This one was of South Dakota; she'd burn it as soon as she left the state. Small circles marked the map in a few places, x's marked other areas, and two locations were boxed off, one in the northeast and one in the midwest of the state. She put her finger several inches to the right of one of the circles. "Here," she said. "There's a small pocket of resistance with its headquarters right here. That's where we'll go first."
Dean crouched down next to her and squinted at the map, then frowned at Martha's finger. "There's nothing marked there," he said.
"Well, no," Martha replied. "If I got caught, I wouldn't want to endanger any of the resistance when they found my map. There's a pretty complicated formula that I use to mark the circles and squares and x's without hitting any of the actual bases, labor camps, or safest jump points, while still letting myself know where everything is."
Castiel joined them, narrowed his eyes for a moment, and pointed to another place on the map. "That is the other base, then," he said, and Martha's face fell. He looked up, puzzled. "The algorithm is fairly clear. Elegant, but clear."
"Well," she sighed, "good thing Saxon doesn't have angels on his team."
"That would be unfortunate," Castiel agreed, and Dean grinned uncharitably at Martha, who shot him back a nasty look.
Martha kept one finger on the base, and put another on the unmarked area that was Singer Salvage. "So I'd estimate that we've got about a twelve-hour walk ahead of us," she said. "The Toclaphane seem to be more active during the day, so we should leave from here within the next couple of hours so most of our travel will be in the dark. Do you have a torch, Dean?"
Dean stared at her like she was suddenly speaking Tibetan.
She sighed. "A flashlight, Dean."
"Oh," Dean said, and dug into his bag, pulling out a heavy-duty flashlight that looked like it could take quite a beating. "Yep."
"Good," she said. "Then we should find Bobby, and see if he can spare any first aid supplies, because I'm running low."
"That will be unnecessary," Castiel interjeected, and Martha and Dean both turned to him. "The flashlights and the first aid, both. There will be no need for a twelve-hour walk, Martha. Now that I know where the base is, I can get us there practically instantaneously, as I would assume you know."
Martha sat up straighter, staring at the map, and the twelve-hour walking distance between Sioux Falls and the resistance base suddenly seemed about as large as it looked on the map in front of her. Her heart lifted. "I didn't even think about that," she said, a little stunned. But she snapped out of it and broke into a huge smile as she looked up at Castiel. "My feet have never been happier," she added.
"Your feet are incapable of emotion," Castiel corrected.
"You are absolutely right," Martha said cheerfully. "Well! Then I guess we ought to get going, no time like the present. Let's find Bobby anyway."
As if on cue, a gruff voice said, "You three heading on out?"
They all looked up at Bobby, in the doorway, looking resigned and more than a little unhappy. Dean was the first to his feet, Martha and Castiel straggling a bit behind him. The younger Hunter started to say something, then hesitated, looking back to his companions. "Can you give us a sec?" he requested, his voice a little rough.
Martha nodded, and she and Castiel went outside, letting Dean and the man who was his father in all but blood say good-bye.
Martha settled down onto the steps in front of Bobby's house, breathing in the crisp air and gazing out at the odd, decaying beauty of the rows and rows of junkers lined throughout the yard. She pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned against the beam.
Castiel stood behind her, and when she glanced up at him, he was peering out at the salvage yard, taking in the scenery with equanimity.
"Thank you for coming with us," she said, and Castiel looked down at her, expressionless. "It's...I really appreciate it. I know Dean does, too."
Castiel watched her for a moment, then turned back out to look over the yard. "I am not sure why you and Dean are so surprised that I would join you," he said. "It seems the obvious course of action."
Martha shifted, turning more towards the angel. "It's not that we're surprised, Castiel," she said. "I mean, maybe Dean is. He still doesn't know you, after all. He doesn't know what to expect. But I'm not surprised. Just grateful." She chuckled. "You can be one without the other, you know."
Castiel didn't react to that, but glanced back towards the house. "Will Dean be long?" he asked. "You seem to believe that we should not waste more time than necessary."
Martha followed his gaze, and sighed. "This is necessary," she said. "He'll be out when he can."
She settled again, her back to the door, and was a little surprised when Castiel settled down next to her, adjusting his trench coat uncomfortably like he'd never done it before. "You are an unusual person, Martha Jones,"
Martha thought about it for a moment, and said, "Probably so."
"Dean lacks faith," Castiel continued, and Martha leaned back against the beam while she listened. "He seems unable to believe that good things can happen to him, without a price attached. And yet he has lived his entire life surrounded by proof of the supernatural. But you, Martha, you are full of faith."
Martha stilled, and said, very carefully, "You think so?"
Castiel nodded. "It is a different kind of faith. I know that it is not in my Father, or in the Host. It is in the Doctor. But faith is faith, Martha. I have hope that, perhaps, you can pass some of that faith on to Dean."
Martha didn't say anything. The fact that Castiel had asked that of her was surprising, but she felt a warm sense of both pride and happiness that he trusted her with that, with bringing Dean around to trust and belief in him. Because she knew that that's what Castiel really meant. He wanted Dean to have faith; faith in him.
Martha did, too.
"Hey."
Martha and Castiel turned around, and Dean was standing in the doorway in front of Bobby. "Ready to go?" Dean asked, and Martha nodded and stood, followed by Castiel.
"You three don't do nothin' stupid," Bobby ordered. "And if it gets bad, Castiel, you bring these idjits right back here."
Castiel seemed a bit perplexed by Bobby's commanding tone, but thankfully simply nodded and said, "I will do so."
Martha walked up to him, and said, "I know you don't know me. But...I know you, and I just...I mean, would it be okay..."
Bobby had mercy on her rambling and opened his arms. She ran into them and embraced him desperately, burying her face in his shoulder.
"You take care of my boy," he whispered.
"Above myself," she promised.
"Don't know about all that," he said, sounding startled, as they separated. Martha just smiled and shrugged her pack farther onto her shoulder.
Dean was watching her carefully as she walked back up to them. "I'm ready to go if you are," she said, looking at Dean.
He snapped out of his reverie and said, "I'm ready, too."
Castiel held his fingers out in that benediction pose, and Martha closed her eyes as the world swept away from under her feet.
She wondered if it was weird that this feeling was more familiar than anything she'd encountered in the past third of a year.