Notes for Bastlase: First of all *tacklehugglomp* thank you for the very sweet review. I really appreciated that. Secondly, this book starts right at the beginning of Season 4 of Supernatural, like, literally, if you watch the first maybe ten, fifteen minutes of the first episode of that season, that's all you need to know for context to what's up with Dean ;)

When River and Dean arrived at an old bar that was a favorite of River's in the 50th century, at first, River didn't say anything. She knew that Dean had just come back from the dead—she had looked up the exact date so she could be there—and she knew that he was still processing. So instead, she simply let him drink in silence and watched his intake.

New liver, after all.

When she saw him run his finger over his lips, she knew that he was drunk enough that his lips had gone numb, so she figured he was relaxed enough to talk to her now. "What do you remember?" was the first question she asked.

Dean narrowed his eyes and gave her a look that clearly communicated how much he did not want to broach that particular subject. "Enough," he said at last when River simply met that look with one of her own.

She lived in a jail, and she was married to the Doctor. No look Dean could give her could faze her.

Besides, River had come to this day specifically because she knew what it meant to Dean. It was her little way of trying to pay him back, because he was always there when she needed to get away for a while and sink her teeth into a good hunt, something to distract her from life in prison. (Yes, the Doctor came to visit her often, and those dates were a highlight of her life, but a girl had to exist on more than just the occasional date and then a daily grind of prison life. And she was a psychopath.)

And knowing everything that she did, knowing how many times in Dean's future he would let her let the psychopath out alongside him—well, this was really just a way to repay that debt that he didn't even know she felt she owed him yet.

"What do you even care?" Dean asked, his eyes narrowed further until they were almost slits as he turned her way fully.

River let out a patient sigh. "Spoilers."

"That's crap and you know it."

"You're only saying that because you don't like my answer," River said with a quiet smile. "But it's the truth. Those are the rules—no peeking at your own future."

Dean rolled his eyes and then leaned back and threw back a shot. "I've mentioned that I hate having time traveling friends, right?"

"I've heard that song a thousand times," River chuckled.

"Consider this my remix."

River laughed outright at that. "Alright, that's a new one."

"Really? What, do I get less funny with age?" Dean asked.

"Spoilers."

"Alright, that answer gets older every time you use it," Dean grumbled.

River shrugged. "I can't help that."

"I think you can."

"I can't help what you think, either."

Dean grinned crookedly at that. "You know, the mysterious look is kinda sexy on you."

"Oh, you're going to have to do better than kind of sexy if you want to get anywhere with me," River said, though she was leaning toward him with her eyes sparkling with laughter. She really did love to spend time with Dean; they spoke the same language.

Dean leaned forward, matching her body language. "I'm just getting started."

"Clock's ticking," River shot back, biting her lip to keep back her grin, especially when Dean simply responded with a laugh that sounded like he'd forgotten how to do it until that moment.

Yeah, they'd both definitely needed this.

…

Amy was still in awe of traveling with the Doctor. She'd been to space! She'd traveled in space and time—in her nightie!

Yeah, she really needed to find some better clothes to wear if she was going to keep this up. But for the moment, she was having way too much fun to slow down for something as boring as a wardrobe change!

She was grinning as the noise of the TARDIS stopped, and she tossed a laugh over her shoulder toward the Doctor and sashayed over to him. "So," she said, "where did you take me?"

"Let's find out together," the Doctor said, looking just as excited as she felt—which, of course, only had her tickled down to her toes.

After all, there was her Raggedy Man, the one no one had believed her about. Her hero. And he'd promised her adventures like she'd never known before.

She loved this.

She loved the thrill of excitement. She loved the little flip her stomach did every time she went to the TARDIS doors. She loved her Raggedy Man with his floppy hair and his floppier smile. She never wanted to stop.

Still grinning, she threw open the doors—and then raised both eyebrows and spun around to face the Doctor. "You took me to a graveyard."

The Doctor looked surprised to hear it—Amy was starting to suspect that he wasn't as good at traveling in space and time as he'd like her to believe, as if making her wait for most of her life before he came back to see her wasn't bad enough—but he quickly recovered some of his manic excitement as he stepped around her and into the cemetery.

"Why'd you take us here, old girl?" he asked—apparently speaking to the TARDIS, another odd quirk of his that Amy couldn't stop grinning over, since he really was such a strange Raggedy Man—but he didn't have to wait for an answer from his blue box when he saw the rest of the cemetery outside what they'd spotted in the doorway.

Amy's eyebrows were just as high on her forehead as the Doctor's were on his as the two of them took in the scene. All around the area, something had flattened the trees and the earth. It reminded Amy of the pictures she'd seen in school of the aftermath of bombs dropping, and she frowned and turned to the Doctor.

"Did you take me into a warzone in my nightie?" she asked.

"I don't think so," the Doctor said, though that really just confirmed for Amy that he didn't know where they were. Not that she minded traveling by the seat of her pants—it was kind of exciting—but she felt a little vindicated in knowing that the Doctor was, well, raggedy.

"Well, what happened here?" Amy asked. Some of the trees were uprooted, while others looked like they'd simply snapped in half, and others looked like they'd been chopped down. The whole air held a sort of charge, like the feeling of standing in a thunderstorm, and Amy found herself shivering with goosebumps traveling up her arms.

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted, then gave her a crooked smile. "What do you think? Shall we find out together?"

How could Amy resist an invitation like that? She grinned at him and grabbed his arm to thread hers through his, nodding sharply. "Yes. Let's."