"Wait a minute."
The Doctor cursed himself for not keeping a closer eye on the woman he had rescued. He'd been preoccupied with Dean's fight, but he had known Dean long enough that he should have known Dean would be able to handle himself. And now, this hurting, desperate woman had a gun.
And there was nothing more dangerous than a hurting, desperate human with a gun.
He moved quickly and got in front of this woman, keeping his hands up in a peaceful gesture. "Now, wait a minute," he said again when he saw that she was already trying to step around him to get a better shot.
"Get out of the way," she said, her voice shaking.
"I can get their ship out of your basement," the Doctor said. "I can send them away to the other side of the galaxy."
"No." Her hands were shaking. "Do you know what he did?"
"Yes." The Doctor held her gaze and took a step toward her. "They won't do it again."
"They sure won't." She took a step back, taking a tighter grip on her gun.
"Look," the Doctor started to say, but before he could get another word in, he heard the click of something metal behind him and knew without turning around what had happened. "Dean," he said quietly, more tired than he meant to sound. He'd meant to find an old friend to travel with him for a while, but he'd nearly forgotten about humans.
Scared humans.
Stupid, scared humans.
"Got an easy solution, Doc," Dean said simply. "Unless you think they're not gonna go and eat someone else wherever you send 'em."
"They ate my husband," the woman said, her pitch rising—and her hands steadying. Her anger was reaching that point, the one he had seen too many times, the one he had seen in himself before.
"You can still take the ship," Dean said reasonably. "Don't have a problem with that part."
"I don't want to hurt you," the woman said. "You got me out of there."
Despite the situation, the Doctor felt an almost hysteria bubbling up at the suggestion that she could hurt him. She couldn't. He knew how he was going to die. He knew who would come knocking, and it wasn't this woman. It wasn't Dean either.
"I don't want to hurt you either," the Doctor said.
Zap.
The Doctor flinched, knowing exactly what had happened before he even turned around.
Zap.
The Doctor spun to see Dean, standing there with a gun still in hand, glaring down at the now-dead bodies of the couple he'd just been fighting.
"What did you do that for?" the Doctor demanded, his full attention now on Dean even as he heard the owner of the house drop her own gun and sink to the ground, crying. Her anger had passed, and she was moving on into loss, but he couldn't focus on her, not when he was too angry.
"This is what I do!" Dean shot back, matching the Doctor's anger with his own. "You've known me my whole life, Doc. You know what my job is."
"You're retired!"
"Doesn't make me any less right," Dean said, gesturing with one hand toward the bodies on the floor. "Tell me the truth: if they'd lived, do you really think they wouldn't have trapped someone else, some other family, and done the exact same thing on whatever planet they went to next?"
"You didn't have to-"
"Yeah, I did," Dean said. "You weren't going to."
"No, I was going to send them out of this galaxy!"
"To eat someone else!" Dean practically shouted back at him. "Doc, you're a good friend, and I'm glad to see you again, but you're something else trying to claim the high road when you're willing to be an accessory to murder like that."
The Doctor glared at Dean and let out a frustrated scoff. "Humans," he spat out. "Every time you get scared-"
"We, what, deal with the problem? Yeah, I don't have a problem with that."
The Doctor held his glare for a moment longer before he did, finally, turn to the woman who had collapsed to the floor. And she, at least, was easier to feel for. He crouched down to be at her level and made a visible effort to calm himself down. "I'm going to get that ship out of your basement," he told her.
"Good," she said simply, around a wracking sob.
"I'm sorry," he told her. "I'm so, so sorry."
She didn't respond to him other than to tuck herself into a tighter ball and cry harder. He didn't blame her for that, though; she'd been through too much and had lost too much. She needed a good cry.
He frowned her way for a moment longer before he turned around to see Dean already crouching by the bodies of the aliens he'd killed, clearly making sure that they stayed down. The Doctor narrowed his eyes at that, but when Dean looked up to meet his gaze, all Dean did was shrug and go back to his work.
"Knew I was a hunter the day you met me, Doc," he said and didn't raise his gaze. "Can't seem to shake the life."
The Doctor watched Dean work, his narrowed eyes shifting into something softer despite his best efforts. "You could if you wanted to."
"Trying," Dean said simply, tightly.
The Doctor stayed there for just a bit longer before, with a sigh, he turned on his heel and went to deal with the spaceship.
He'd hoped that this trip would help him. He'd hoped that the TARDIS had brought him there so he could travel with Dean for a while, even a few adventures, like they'd done when he was a kid.
But now… no, he couldn't ask Dean to come with him. Donna had warned him about what he was like when he was alone. The way Dean was at this moment in his timeline, the way he was raw and hurt and too willing to fall back on old habits in a vain search for something that made sense… no, he couldn't travel with Dean. Not this Dean, anyway.
"Why'd you bring me here?" he muttered under his breath, even though he was nowhere near the TARDIS and didn't expect an answer anyway.
She always had a mind of her own.