Author's Note: Okay, so this chapter is a little short and not Sam, but I needed a little more time to fully figure out what's happening with Sam, the Master, and the Doctor. I think I've got it sorted out now, but in the meantime, I thought we might take a look at some of our secondary characters! The segments are in the POVs of the characters listed in the chapter title, in that order.

Thanks for all the lovely reviews, guys; I'm really enjoying hearing your thoughts.

The aching was inescapable.

Nine hundred years of time and space and the Doctor had always outrun it, had always stayed a step ahead of it. But the Master had taken that away from him; had slowed him down enough for the age and weariness to catch up with him. And the Doctor sat in his wheelchair and ached.

He ached and he planned, because the Doctor was never not planning. He ached and he planned and he reached out with the gossamer tendrils of power that he still had access to, reached out into the Archangel Network, reached out and could feel the echoes of all the psychic power of all the people he'd fought so hard to protect for so many years. So many more years than he'd been alive, really.

What the Master had created, for all of the horror it was capable of, was beautiful, in its way. The Doctor wasn't strong enough to access it fully. Not yet. But he could touch it, like touching a single thread in a spider's web, and he could feel the Earth and her people, feel their thoughts and their emotions and their beautiful humanity echoing on the strands for just a moment.

He'd been trying, since he'd begun to build this connection, to find Martha. But she wasn't on the Network, of course. She was far too clever for that, his Martha.

So he tried to find Samuel. No luck there, either. The Doctor held out hope that the young Hunter had figured out that something was wrong with the cellular network, had destroyed his phone. Maybe found a resistance group to join with. Him and Bobby both.

Dean, the Doctor wasn't worried about. Well. For a given value of worried. There wasn't the awful, breathless panic that he felt when he thought about Martha or Samuel or Bobby. There was nothing he could do for Dean; but Castiel would take care of him, when they returned. Which should be any day now, if the Doctor was keeping track of time accurately.

He did feel a pang when he thought of what it would do to Dean, to return to the world like this. He'd died and condemned himself to Hell to save his brother from suffering; and now, there was no doubt that Samuel was suffering. He wished, more than anything, that he could be there to guide both of them. But that was not in the cards, as it were.

It was during one of his meditations, as he was reaching out to the Archangel Network, that he heard him.

In, two, three four. Out, two, three, four.

There was an undercurrent like the progression of the tide, a gentle rushing, waving sound, that the Doctor recognized as pain. Physical pain. It was Samuel, in pain, meditating to keep himself from being pulled under, but the pain was fading as he breathed in and out.

Something else was happening as he breathed in and out, too. It was like his mind, the psychic port that existed there, that all sentient beings had but that was made so much stronger that horrible night in 1983...it was expanding, contracting a bit, expanding more. Opening, flowering.

And suddenly the drawing of his blood made a terrible sense.

(The Doctor ignored the pain.)

The Doctor used the connection to talk to him, to try to get through to him, but Samuel couldn't believe that it was anything but a hallucination. At first, at least. And small wonder—months without a word, terrible, wrenching months, and suddenly the Doctor's back in touch? But he hoped, and he wanted it to be the Doctor, and that was enough.

The Doctor hoped it was enough for Samuel, too.

Samuel couldn't focus on the Doctor's voice in his head when there was anything else going on, and the Doctor didn't know if the Master suspected something was happening, but of course he walked in just as the Doctor was going to reveal that Dean's resurrection was not the Master's doing. But Samuel's mind was so open, so terribly raw and open, that the Doctor could stay with him as he walked with the Master, as the Master tempted and wheedled and offered Samuel everything he ever wanted.

And the Doctor could explore his mind, gingerly, gently, not wanting to cause him any further pain. But Samuel was so distracted by the mantra that ran relentlessly through his head

(the Doctor was unsurprised that it was just a string of his brother's name, over and over)

that he probably didn't even notice. So the Doctor carded carefully through the connections Samuel's mind was making, through what it had been through—not his memories; the Doctor would never do that without permission, even if it was to help Samuel. But his mind had been through something, something traumatic, something repeated.

How long had he been aboard the Valiant? How long had the Master had him here, subjecting him to whatever it was that had left his mind so exposed? The Doctor felt his breath catch at the sudden and surprising pain of the thought that the young Hunter had been here for a prolonged period of time, so close, suffering while the Doctor sat and meditated.

The Doctor couldn't do anything to help him, he realized with a pang. He wasn't strong enough to repair any of the damage. And as he rounded a (metaphorical) corner in Samuel's mind, he realized something else, something far, far worse.

He couldn't help Samuel. But more than that, he needed him damaged. And how many times had that happened to Samuel? How many different forces had broken him and left him broken to their purposes? How could he do the same?

Whatever had happened to Samuel left him receptive to interference, but it was also enough for him to communicate with the Doctor without any effort. And that meant that he could interface with the Archangel Network. That, plus his humanity, meant that he could interface with the network in a way that the Doctor couldn't—it was designed for a neurophysiology like Samuel's, after all.

I'm so sorry, the Doctor thought, and felt a slight ping of attention from Samuel, but no response.

He told himself that he could protect everyone this way. He could protect Samuel from the Master's further harm; he could protect Dean from the Master using him as a pawn to get to Samuel (although he didn't doubt that Castiel had that under control). He could take attention off of Martha, because the Master would be preoccupied with Samuel.

But it didn't feel any less like a betrayal; another betrayal, one of such a long list. He wanted Samuel's trust, needed his trust. Needed him to know that the Doctor would never give up on him, never turn his back on him.

He needed him to know that the Doctor would always save Samuel Winchester.

He wondered if, after this was over, Samuel would ever be able to believe that again.

...

Jack and Tish had worked out a pretty useful little system for talking without letting anything slip, and by now, adding words to the vocabulary wasn't hard. Sam became the sign for s in British sign language, which, luckily, they were both very basically familiar with. Jack couldn't do it very well, given that his wrists were chained to the posts and his arms stretched out on either side of him, but when he hooked his right little finger and held his left out, Tish knew what he was talking about.

So she walked in to get him lunch, and he signed Sam?

She placed his plate down, and signed a negative, and then laid three fingers briefly across her palm in an m. Martha. No Martha.

Sam hadn't heard from Martha before he was taken aboard the Valiant.

Is Sam okay?

Yes. Given medicine.

Sick?

Pain.

Jack stopped to eat, but in between bites they were able to squeeze in a little more conversation. The Master had given something to Tish to give to Samuel—something for him to drink. He was in pain before, but was better now. He hadn't seen Martha, but had heard of her. Tish was pretty sure that the Master had gone in to see him after she'd left—he'd gone to Sam or had Sam brought to him each day since Sam had been taken from the engine room.

And the Doctor was still holed away in the control room, and he hadn't had the chance to speak to Tish at all. She'd heard him speak to the Master, but only in murmurs. He was quiet, for the most part, staring out the window as though waiting for something.

Jack didn't believe that the Doctor would let the Master hurt Sam. He truly didn't. The Doctor had risked disrupting their time line as children by sending Jack to interfere with Anna's plans for them, he'd sent himself to Hell for an unthinkably long time to protect them from the demons' machinations, he'd gone back to their time again and again with Rose and with Martha to keep them safe and to give them respite, when he could. God only knew how many more of his friends and allies he'd enlisted to safeguard these two young men, how many people were part of the army keeping Sam and Dean Winchester alive and well throughout their lifetimes.

Jack believed in the Doctor, more than anyone he'd ever known. The Doctor, who could barely stand to be in the same room with him now, now that he was going to live forever thanks to the Doctor's own Companion. But it didn't matter. Jack believed in him.

But what Jack believed in more was the Doctor's commitment to Sam. He'd seen the Doctor attach himself to humans before, but this was different. Sam wasn't his Companion. Sam was something else.

Held within the fragile human being that was Sam Winchester was the return of Gallifrey. And as much as the Doctor wanted to say he was sorry for what had happened to Sam that night in his nursery when he was six months old, as much as the Doctor wanted to mean it, Jack knew him. Jack knew that there was a part of the Doctor that was helplessly glad to have someone else who was like him. And even the Master, who was actually another Time Lord, wasn't going to take that from him.

The Doctor wouldn't allow the Master to take Sam away. And Jack believed that, believed it with a faith that could move mountains.

So when he signed to Tish before she left, he signed, It's going to be okay.

She left without signing anything back.

...

The bunker was quiet after Martha had finished her story, and Castiel had little to do but continue to ensure Dean's safety.

His charge was sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking quietly to Martha and gesturing on occasion to the young man who had attempted to fight with him on their arrival. Martha's expression indicated amusement, and Castiel supposed that Dean was saying something humorous, although the Hunter's features did not communicate such an intent. In fact, Dean's eyes were narrowed, and as he leaned in to say something to Martha, he put his finger very close to her face, which Castiel had thought was a somewhat aggressive gesture.

Nonetheless, there was a softness about Dean's posture, something in the cant of his shoulders, in the curve of his spine, that told Castiel that his charge was relaxed. He was confident that eventually, he would not have to so thoroughly catalogue the individual aspects of Dean's body language in order to determine his mood. But the human was so contradictory that it was often disadvantageous to assume anything.

Martha was easier to read. She was courteous in that: she laid out her emotions before her for Castiel to see, hiding nothing. She said that she was a Companion of the Doctor, and Castiel had no reason to disbelieve her; it would, therefore, make sense that she was more accustomed to helping a non-human understand her. And while he had not trusted her when he met her, she'd given him no reason since to think that she meant harm to Dean.

(That was his only concern; for all Martha's associations with the Doctor, she was still human, and therefore she could mean harm to Castiel however much she pleased. It would do her no good.)

Castiel had not allowed his connection with Dean to flag since he had pulled the Hunter's soul from Hell; therefore, he knew at every moment where his charge was, if there was danger, and, to some degree, his emotional state. And Martha brought out a lightness in Dean that Castiel had not witnessed before. When reunited with Bobby Singer, Dean had felt relief, gratitude, and love, but also anxiety, guilt, and grief. With Martha, he felt at ease. He felt confusion, and occasionally he would feel the need to test her with his anger and his stubbornness, but she accepted it.

Dean attempted to make her turn away from him, to prove him right in his belief that no one could care about him. She refused.

He watched Martha strike Dean in the shoulder with her fist—the shoulder upon which he had left his mark. Dean winced at the impact, and for a moment Castiel considered intervening, but determined from Dean's expression (which was more exaggeratedly annoyed than pained) that it was unnecessary.

Besides. If he was correct, he should save his strength. There would be greater battles to fight than the childish scrapping of his charge and the Doctor's Companion.

As little as he liked to admit it, or think about it, Castiel could still feel the Hellfire that clung to Dean's soul; an almost physical sensation, almost an odor, as though it gave off an acrid smoke. Despite the brightness of it, the beauty of it beneath the tainted layer, Castiel could not ignore what he felt. He wished to purge it, to scrub it clean, to put out the fires that would flare and diminish as Dean fought what had happened to him and succumbed to wallow in it. But Castiel could not fix this thing. Dean's soul was Castiel's to save, but not to repair.

So because of that, he wondered if what he felt was simply that: the remnants of Hell that Dean carried with him.

He tilted his head, and focused on his charge. Reached out with his Grace and touched the soul that he'd dragged from the Pit, that he had held between his wings and carried to safety. The soul that was now housed within the body that he himself had rebuilt. His charge.

Martha was saying something to him, and Dean's eyes were wide, the edges of his mouth twitching as he attempted not to smile. And as Castiel's Grace touched his soul, the angel felt something in it that he had not felt before.

Peace.

Sadness. An almost-physical pain that came, Castiel knew, from the business of repressing his memories of Hell. Weariness. But peace, too; almost tranquility.

Castiel decided that he liked Martha Jones.

He considered exploring this emotion, what provoked it and what he could do to help Dean maintain it, but the Hunter was beginning to realize that something was happening to him and was growing uneasy. Castiel retreated before that unease could grow into something conscious.

More immediately significant than the realization that Dean was at peace, however, was the realization that if this was the case, then his soul was not what was giving off that impression of Hellfire that had set Castiel's vessel's teeth on edge.

Martha Jones had called this a safe-house.

Castiel thought that perhaps she was wrong.