Dean had needed this.

There was no way he was going to admit to it, obviously. But when the TARDIS landed, when the Doctor said that they were somewhere they'd never been before, when they moved through time and space, he felt lighter, like he could breathe for the first time in a while.

The Doctor was practically bouncing himself as he threw out his arm to gesture for Dean and Sam to go first. And it was hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm, too.

… right up until they walked outside into what looked like a closet.

"Great view, Doc," Dean said dryly, scooting around the TARDIS until he could find the doorknob to open the closet and let them all out into a darkened hallway. It smelled musty, not like disrepair but like a swamp, like there was too much water nearby.

"Where are we?" Sam asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Don't know," the Doctor said brightly. "And isn't that exciting?"

"If you say so," Sam said.

Dean shot the Doctor half a smirk as they headed down the hallway, toward the humidity. He thought he could hear whispered voices and jerked his head in that direction, somehow not surprised to see the words "Pool and Sauna" above the door they found down that way.

That explained how wet everything felt, anyway. Especially if this was an alien sauna; the humidity levels for different species were probably different.

Dean got to the door first and knocked on it. "Hello?"

The second Dean started knocking, he heard someone scream on the other side—not a surprised scream but one Dean had heard a million times as a hunter, one that said the woman on the other side knew what was coming for her and was a step from sobbing.

"We're not here to hurt anybody; we're just lost," the Doctor called through the door. "My name's the Doctor; is everyone alright in there?"

"Doctor?" The sound of furniture scraping on the other side echoed in the damp hall before the door opened, and a woman opened the door, looking stressed, her body language ready for a fight despite the bags under her eyes. She looked like she would normally have it together; her dress was nice and her head scarf sat perfectly on her head even with everything going on. But she kept making a fist and then shaking out her hand, as if she was ready to hit anything that moved and was barely conscious of it.

Dean could see recognition click in the woman's eyes, and he turned to the Doctor. "Doc?" he asked.

Before the Doctor could say anything, the woman all but pulled all three of them into the room, where about a dozen more people had barricaded themselves. All of them looked tired and wary, and several made no secret of the fact that they had weapons ready to draw if the newcomers made a move they didn't like.

The woman who waved them in pointed at the Doctor. "I thought you left."

"I do that sometimes," the Doctor said. Dean watched him narrow his eyes, visibly trying to put together where he had seen this woman before.

And then, to Dean's surprise, the Doctor paled.

"Well, we appreciate you raising the alarm about those things out there, but why you'd stick around after what almost happened to you is a mystery to me," the woman said, shaking her head. "At least we have eyewitness testimony about the kinds of phrases these things like to steal, so if they try to copy you, we'll know it."

"Copy?" Sam repeated, glancing toward Dean. They didn't have to say anything else: they'd shared the same expression on a million hunts before.

They knew exactly how to deal with things that could mimic people. It just sucked that they'd been pulled right into a hunt like this when they were theoretically supposed to be taking a break after the crap that had gone down with Cas.

"What's up, Doc?" Dean asked, and he knew things were serious when the Doctor didn't even give him a dry look for it.

"They don't know?" the woman asked, immediately back to suspicious.

The Doctor held up one hand. "They're friends. I brought them here with me."

"And you didn't tell them about the things out there?"

"This is kind of our job," Sam put in before the Doctor could dig himself any deeper into the verbal hole he looked like he was setting up for himself. "We're hunters."

"I don't think you can hunt these things," the woman said, her lips pursed and her hands on her hips as she considered both of them. Finally, she sighed and shook her head. "But I suppose we'll take whatever help we can get. Those things keep trying to infiltrate our rescue flights. If you have a faster way of sussing them out so we don't accidentally take any out to space with us, I'm all ears."

"When does the next flight come in?" the Doctor asked, frowning.

"We're not sure. Some of them have had to abort any rescue efforts and quarantine after reporting that same banging you heard on your shuttle. The protocol is not to panic and to lock down for a couple days and listen for anyone using the wrong turns of phrase, but it's obviously not a perfect system. We don't know enough about whatever these things are, and frankly, we don't know why they're suddenly taking an interest in us."

"Might be they've had an interest for a while, and that shuttle gave them an opportunity to study us," the Doctor said, though something about the way he said "study" made Dean's hair stand up on his arm.

"Is that your opinion after personal experience?" the woman asked pointedly.

"Well," the Doctor said, all bluster at first, but the word tapered off.

Dean could see the Doctor looked frazzled, so he stepped in with his best, most winning smile. "Dean Winchester, by the way. Why don't you catch me and my brother Sam up to speed?"

The woman gave him as warm a smile as she was probably able to muster. "Joulie Lindon," she said, taking his offered hand. "Welcome to Midnight."