SuperWhoLock: When the Shadows Rage

Episode 4: Wishes in Time part 1

"Dude, get off me." Dean smacked his head. "You're like a giant gorilla sitting on my feet."

"How many gorillas have you had sit on you, precisely?" Amy asked from the TARDIS doorway.

Dean pointed a finger at her. "Don't you start, Red."

Amy laughed.

Sam got up, wincing. He was going to have a bruise the size and shape of Dean's steel-toed boot in his back tomorrow.

"Sam? Dean?" The Doctor poked his head out. "What do your shadows look like?"

"Our what? Oh, by the way, thanks a crapload for your help there, Doc." Dean got up, rubbing his shoulder.

"What was that, anyway? The two shadows thing?" Amy asked.

"You saw that too?" Sam asked.

She nodded.

The Doctor sighed. "It's nothing good. Shadows, please, Winchesters."

Dean held his arms out. "See? One shadow. Happy now?"

The Doctor looked at Sam.

Sam brushed his jacket off and looked down at himself. One shadow stretched away from his boots, long and narrow. "One shadow."

The Doctor flicked the sonic screwdriver up and down, scanning both of them, then looked back at Dean. "Not entirely happy, no, but you can come in now, I suppose."

"Oh gee, thanks, I feel so welcome."

The Doctor scampered to the TARDIS console and squinted at a screen, fiddling with two knobs as the screen flashed through a strange pattern of circles and whorls that Sam didn't recognize.

Dean stomped up the ramp and flung himself down in a chair, legs stretched out in front of him.

"Is the Doctor always this cryptic?" Sam asked Amy. Before he closed the door, he peeked back out into the forest, but the shadows stayed where they belonged, beyond the TARDIS light. He let the door swing shut.

"Sometimes," Amy said. "Usually when it's really bad and he doesn't want to admit it."

"Oi, I've still got ears, does everyone think I've suddenly gone deaf tonight?" The Doctor twisted his head around.

Dean crossed his arms over his chest. "Let's hear it then, Doc."

The Doctor scratched his neck. "All right, all right." He mirrored Dean, leaning against the console railing and crossing his arms over his chest. "Two shadows usually means Vashta Nerada."

"Which are?" Sam asked.

"Tree spores. Nasty tree spores that move around in shadows. If there are enough of them, they can strip the flesh from your bones in less than thirty seconds. Most planets with big forests have small colonies of them, though not normally enough to do any damage..." His voice trailed off, and his eyes deepened. He stared at the ground, lost in thought for a moment. Then he sighed. "The last time I ran into them, I lost a very dear friend of mine. Almost lost another too."

"And that's what killed the Cybermen?" Amy asked.

"Nope!" The Doctor spun around and resumed poking at his view screen.

Sam, Dean, and Amy exchanged disbelieving looks.

"Doctor!" Amy's voice was sharp.

The Doctor sighed. "Whatever we ran into in there, that wasn't Vashta Nerada."

"But the shadows..."

"It looks like Vashta Nerada, but it doesn't act like Vashta Nerada. It had plenty of chances to just take any one of us at any time while we were on that ship, and it didn't. Instead it waited and confronted us. And that's another thing Vashta Nerada don't do, they don't hold conversation." The Doctor picked up his screwdriver and turned it in his hands, muttering under his breath. Sam couldn't quite catch what he said, but it sounded something like, "Who turned out the lights?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Okay, then, creepy alien tree spores. How do you kill it?"

"What?" the Doctor stared at him. "No. No, you don't-you don't kill Vashta Nerada."

"Then what do you do?"

"You run. That's the only thing you can do. Besides, I thought you were done, remember? Cybermen. You said that was your problem, and now the Cybermen are gone." The Doctor sighed heavily. "I suppose I'll drop you off at your car now."

"Uh uh." Dean rose and poked at the Doctor's chest. "In case you hadn't noticed, we're in the middle of a pretty freakin' big pine forest. Creepy tree spores plus forest plus town nearby? I don't think that adds up to anything good. We're not going anywhere."

The Doctor glanced over at Sam. Sam shrugged, and he could have sworn that a tiny little smile tugged at the corner of the Doctor's mouth. But it was a quick expression, gone in an instant, and the Doctor faced Dean again, eyes serious and lips pressed in a tight line.

"You have to understand that this could be very dangerous. I've never seen anything like this. I don't know what it is."

Dean gave a harsh laugh and stepped back from the Doctor. "Welcome to our life."

Amy frowned. "Hang on, we're not thinking about just running off on some big adventure without Rory again, are we?"

The Doctor's eyes widened and his mouth formed a big O. "I forgot about Rory!"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Why does that not surprise me?"

"Who's Rory?" Sam asked.

"My husband," Amy said. She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers so that the wedding band on her ring finger flashed in the light.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "You're married, but you still run around with the Doc in his spaceship? I mean, I know I'm the last to judge, but..."

"TARDIS," the Doctor said. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"And it's not like you think," Amy said. "The Doctor's my son-in-law."

Sam blinked and rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, you said son-in-law?" He glanced back and forth between the Doctor and Amy. They looked close to the same age at first glance, though there was something about the Doctor...

"Ehh, wibbly-wobbly spacey-wacey stuff you're getting into there," the Doctor said, holding up his hand and waggling it back and forth.

"Excuse me?" Dean's eyebrow pulled together in his classic 'what the heck are you talking about' look. He glanced at Sam.

Sam shrugged.

"You're right, though, Amy. Wouldn't do to leave dear old Dad out of this, would it?" The Doctor gestured to the captain's seats. "If you'll please be seated, Winchesters. Five o'clock, London, England, coming right up. It'll take us a few hours to get there, so you'd best get comfortable."

Sam sat down beside Dean, glancing at his watch. "Five o'clock London time? It's already almost five o'clock in the morning here."

The Doctor grinned at him. "You weren't listening earlier, were you? Time and Relative Dimension In Space. We're going back to tomorrow night." He slapped the console. "The old girl's a time machine as well as a space ship."

The two brothers just glanced at each other, mouths gaping, and Sam knew Dean was thinking the exact same thing he was.

Dad.

"Whoa, hang on, Marvin," Dean said. "At least drop us back at our car first, huh? If we're gonna go spinning through some black hole or something-"

"Wormhole," Sam corrected automatically.

"Whatever. I want my stuff first."

The Doctor nodded and reset a dial. "I can understand that. One of my companions once brought basically everything but the kitchen sink. Five suitcases and three hatboxes." He smiled faintly. "Oh, Donna. She was a fighter, she was. She could've talked circles around you, Dean. Redhead."

"Got a thing for redheads?" Dean smirked.

Amy slapped his arm. "Oi!"

The Doctor cleared his throat, looking disconcerted. "Off we go, then!"