Wherever it was that Dean and Castiel had crashed, it was very dark and very cold. Dean shivered as he felt a chill fog creeping around his ankles. He peered around the darkness.

"So… how do you think Gabriel and Balthazar…"

"Dean." Castiel sighed, levelling him with a tired stare. "You have to learn, there is a system of etiquette when travelling through space. It says that, if you lose your companions to almost certain death, you don't talk about it."

"Oh." Dean almost awkwardly rested a hand on Castiel's shoulder, but he backed off at the last moment. "Really?"

"Yes, and we get blind drunk about it at our earliest convenience. First, we have to figure out where we are… Do you have a lighter?"

"Oh sure." Dean reached into his pocket and produced the cigarette lighter Balthazar had given him in the hold of the rhaptoor ship all those hours ago. "Wait, you're not making another bong, are you?"

"No, I need some light. I want to see where we are." Castiel flicked the lighter on and gazed around in the small circle of light. He kind of wished he hadn't.

"Wow…"

(-*-)

The Bloody Invaluable Book has this to say on the subject of lighters: There is nothing, it says, so fundamentally useful as the common portable lighter. Not only because it can help you start fires to warm yourselves on the arctic desert planets of Betelgeuse nine, or because you can use it to signal to other nearby travellers, melt and fuse wires, give yourself light to see by, heat to eat by, cauterise wounds, and light cigarettes, but also because any non-hitchhiking person will, when asking for a light to do one or more of the above, become so awed by the fact that you have one that they will instantly assume that you also have any number of domestic items from a pocket knife to small change to a travel-sized wash kit. The effect of this assumption means that they will of course lend you anything you ask for, as you give the air of someone who knows exactly where all of their possessions are and what became of them, thus making you a reliable individual.

There is some discrepancy between those who follow the word of the Bloody Invaluable Book and those who follow another, older guide as to whether the cigarette lighter or the towel is more useful to have in your pack if you intend to hitchhike across the universe. Most hitchhikers pack both, just to be on the safe side, but die-hard followers of the old guide claim they need only their towels. Die-hard followers of the Bloody Invaluable Book, however, wait until the guide followers are waving their towels around in pride before using their fundamentally useful portable lighters to set fire to them. This proves nothing, but it has given rise to a new faction of people who argue that the most useful item a hitchhiker can have is a first aid kit.

(-*-)

Castiel rooted around in the escape capsule's wiring panel, under the light that Dean held for him.

"Well that explains it…"

"Explains what?"

"Our capsule caught the end of the Leap of Faith drive, and we blinked through time as well as space. It explains how we got inside what seems to be another ship."

"How far back?" Dean looked around the shadowy cavern they seemed to be in, his eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light. They seemed to be inside some sort of ossuary; rows and towers of what looked like coffins lined the walls around them. His breath fogged in front of his face, and he focused on that. If this was another space ship, it was a cold and creepy one.

"About two hundred million years, give or take the odd twenty-four hours."

"Great." Dean growled, getting the sinking feeling that it might still be Thursday after all. "So do you know where we are?"

Castiel paused for a moment, disentangling himself from the escape pod's wiring.

"Inside another ship."

"Helpful."

"That's the most accurate I can be." Castiel smiled his slightly unhinged smile at Dean. "So… you see all the frozen coffins too, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good." He flashed Dean another, slightly more worried smile, before cuffing him on his shoulder. "Let's go look around."

Dean nodded, and followed into a corridor that seemed to be made of white plastic and metal sheeting, but that was thankfully warmer and not covered in coffins. They picked a direction, and began to wander.

"So, what do we do now?" Dean smiled awkwardly. "I mean, it's not like I have a home or a life or… or anything more than what I've got on me right now."

"And you're dealing with that surprisingly well, given that you're a human. But… I don't know." Castiel shrugged, his hands in his pockets. "What were you doing before?"

"Following Balthazar."

"Ah…" Castiel sighed, letting his smile drop only for a moment. "Well, I suppose you can follow me for now. But I should warn you; half the time I have no clue where I'm going."

As if to punctuate his point, Castiel rounded a corner and walked straight into a rather large, uniformed man with a rather large, nasty looking gun. Castiel smiled. The uniformed man did not.

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the ship, a young woman sat at the central console, typing furiously at the keys. A meek, uniformed man approached her, his boots clicking together as he did.

"Um… Captain?"

The woman yelped and hastily exited whatever it was she had been typing, blushing as she spotted her second in command.

"Yes, Number One?"

"Number Two has another one of those report thingies he's so intent on. Says he's caught some prisoners."

"Oh." The captain thought for a moment. "Good. Maybe that'll keep his quiet for a bit."

"He says he wants to interrogate them."

"Oh… do I have to be there for that?"

"Probably. Maybe. I don't know."

"Ugh." The captain sighed, her blonde ponytail bobbing happily as she shook her head. "Fine. Tell him to bring them here, I suppose."

"Yes ma'am."

Captain Becky Rosen tore her eyes reluctantly away from the computer screen as she watched her Number One march smartly over to the bay doors and summon the head of the guard. Whatever; she could touch type. Struck by inspiration, she started up a new text document and started conjuring the image of Number One, a slight but smart young man, new on the job and nervous, turning to his senior officer Number Two, a jaded, angry professional, for guidance, support and maybe something more.

She really was getting bored, if she was reduced to writing about them.

"Ma'am." Number two saluted smartly, before stepping aside to reveal two men she'd never seen before. Silently, her eyes sparkled as she started up another new text file. Number Two, if he had noticed his Captain's mad writing, ignored her and continued jabbing at the captives with the business end of his gun. Becky bit back a smile as she saw this stuff writing itself.

"I found these 'ere stowaways…"

"We're not stowaways…" The burlier of the two men interjected, stepping slightly between the skinnier man and Number Two's harsh, unyielding glare. Protective, Becky thought, and brave.

"You will speak when spoken to!" Number Two barked, before turning back to his captain. "Shall I rough 'em up a little, ma'am? Interrogate them?"

"For what? What information do you need out of them?"

Number Two blinked, before approaching her warily.

"Well, ma'am… it's just… you see, I've never actually had any prisoners of my own before and, well… I'm not really sure…"

Becky patted his arm, and smiled reassuringly.

"Why don't you ask them if they'd like a drink?"

"Ah." He nodded. "Very good. You! Yes you, twitchy one who looked like he's been dragged through a hedge! Drink?"

"I don't…"

"WOULD YOU LIKE A DRINK, YOU MISERABLE MAGGOT?"

"Yes! Please! Uh… Sir."

"And what about you, city boy, drink?"

"Uh, yes… sir."

"Coffee?"

"What?"

"COFFEE?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, thanks…"

"Sugar?"

"Uh, actually, do you have any low calorie sweetener? It's just…"

"OI! I am asking the questions here, you miserable…"

"Yes." Becky pinched the bridge of her nose, before resuming typing. "Thank you Number Two, that will be all."

"Oh…" The stern, military man nodded, but didn't quite manage to hide his disheartened smile. "Very good, ma'am. I'll just…" He nodded, pointed to the door and stood to attention in front of it. Dean and Castiel watched the strange man for a moment, before looking up at the apologetically smiling Captain.

"He's very good at his job... I think. Would help if I could remember exactly what his job was, but… Well, anyway." She shrugged, before returning her attention to her computer screens. "Make yourselves at home, I guess."

Castiel had woken up on a lot of ships, in a lot of different states of mind, and in differing proximity to the phrase "in flagrante", but normally there was somewhat more competency than this.

"Thank you… captain. Um, By the way, we were curious, why do you have a hold full of frozen coffins?"

"Coffins?" Becky blinked, before laughing. "Oh! No, they're not coffins, they're cryo-chambers. We're part of a fleet. We're relocating our home planet because… Because… oh, don't tell me. There was abig catastrophe that meant it was unliveable… Number one, can you remember what it was?"

"No, ma'am." Number one smiled awkwardly. "It made perfect sense at the time, though."

"Yeah, I remember thinking that." Becky shrugged.

"Really?" Castiel cast a glance over the visi-screens, before exchanging looks with Dean. "There, um… there don't seem to be any other ships nearby."

"No, we went first." Becky sighed, her fingers already back to tapping across the keyboard. "They said they wanted us to go first and make sure everything's ready. We're the start-up crew."

"Right." Castiel was getting a horrible feeling about this, and he was pretty sure it wasn't just the DTs. "And your crew consists of..?"

"Amateur writers. Amateur politicians… all the opinionated people who said we could do better if we were given the chance."

"And very nice of them to give us it." Shouted Number Two, saluting. Dean and Castiel exchanged worried glances.

"So…" Said Dean. "You're the fraction of the population who spend all their time trolling each other on the internet. And your planet said you should go and start things up for them."

"Yes."

"And they sent you first?"

"Yes."

"To avoid a horrible catastrophe?"

"Yes. The planet was… I think it was going to explode or something."

"Ok." Castiel nodded, before putting on his very best terrified smile. "If you could just drop us off at your earliest convenience…"

"Oh! I'd love to, but I'm afraid I can't." Beck was already back to typing at a hundred words a minute. "Our co-ordinates were locked in before we left. We don't stop 'til we get there."

"Oh." Dean was now catching whatever sense of dread Castiel had. "So, when will you be landing?"

"We… don't know. Soon, hopefully."

"Right. Soon… So when you land…"

"Crash."

"Sorry, what?" Dread was fast leading to panic for our two intrepid (if reluctant) heroes.

"Crash. We were actually programmed to… crash… into the planet." Becky blinked, and looked up from her computer screen. "You know, now I say it out loud, it sounds kind of weird, but…"

"There was a very good reason at the time." Number One chipped in.

"Yes, it was a very good reason, I just… I just can't remember…"

"You're all useless and insane?" Dean suggested, earning himself a punch in the arm from Castiel.

"I think…" He muttered, trying to ignore how Becky seemed more interested in them the closer they stood together, "we need to go make our capsule work. Hopefully before the crashing, burning and dying."