SPN Fanfic: Between a Quantum Rock and a Hard Place - PART 3/?
Title: Between a Quantum Rock and a Hard Place 3/?
Characters: Dean, Sam, The Doctor, Martha, OCs
Rating: GEN, PG13
Word Count: 3100 words
Disclaimer: None of this is mine! None of it! It all belongs to a bunch of other people!
Warnings: Crack. Crossover. Spoilers for: Season 2 Supernatural, Season 3 (TenDoc) Doctor Who. And in this part, the Back to the Future movies. *facepalm* Dubious assertions about the very early days of radio broadcasting. Other than that, nothing content-wise that couldn't have been aired in either originating country...
Summary: Two worlds are colliding and the future of both universes depends on the Winchester boys, stranded in a time not their own, and a strange little man and his relatively normal friend in a strange little blue box.
A/N: Remember how I said setting even a vague deadline was 'waving a flag under the nose of fate'? Well, crap, dudes! Yes, this is horribly late. Yes, I totally suck. This has been the section from hell to write, and it's now stretched into parts 4, 5, 6, part of 8 and some sections up around 12 and 16, since part 3 is not a TARDIS of infinite capacity. Anyway. Here's part 3, such as it is. The rest will come when it comes. But it is coming. Have no fear.
Part 1
Part 2
Story to date: Sam and Dean are stuck in the Old West and about to meet someone else in their situation, maybe. The Doctor and Martha and the TARDIS are being pulled into Sam and Dean's universe too soon, and that's a Very Bad Thing.
-
Between a Quantum Rock and a Hard Place
Part 3
by CaffieneKitty
-
The TARDIS shook and spun, the floor rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. The Doctor had one foot braced against a support beam, an elbow hooked around a railing and was slapping at buttons on the console. Martha, still trying to keep her feet under her, stumbled against the console opposite the Doctor and clung onto the edge, avoiding touching any controls that might possibly make things worse.
"Martha!" The Doctor called over the console. "That thing on your side that's flashing!"
"This?" said Martha, grabbing a lever with a flashing green bit at the end.
"No! No, the other one!"
Martha scanned the hundreds of controls on her section of the console. "This red button here?"
"Yes! When I say 'now', hit it hard!"
"Right!"
The Doctor muttered, punched something into a keypad, twisted a knob and shouted, "Now!"
Martha hit the flashing button. The time rotor juddered and hovered in mid-rise, vibrating with a quiet hum.
"Ha! Right!" said the Doctor, bouncing to his feet. "We have to land, find the book and get back in before the other universe overpowers the anchor."
"Which book? What anchor?"
The Doctor pushed a bank of switches, then frowned up at the ceiling for a second before looking concernedly across the console at Martha. "Ooo. Did you leave anything you were particularly attached to near the pool?"
"What? No, just that horrid polka-dot dress, why?"
"Good then. It's been jettisoned."
"The dress?" asked Martha with a slight air of glee.
"The pool."
"What?"
"Sorry, necessary sometimes, she can re-grow another pool," the Doctor patted the console, "...eventually. Right now it's more use to us as an anchor. It won't last long though so we'd better do this quickly."
"Do what quickly?"
"We need to make one stop in our universe first. Ideally two, but I think one jump will be all we can manage and this is the one that's most important. We need to get John Smith's journal."
"The 'Impossible Things' thing you wrote when you were human at that school in 1913? Farringham?" Martha frowned quizzically. "But why?"
"Because it's in the other universe as well, and unless we take it there, there is no way it can be there. So we need to go get it so it can already be there."
"That's a paradox," Martha stated.
"Yeah, sort of, but that's the least of our worries." The Doctor turned a knob on the console. "One landing is all we're going to get before the anchor gives way. So, John Smith's teacher's flat at Farringham, three o'clock in the afternoon on Monday the tenth of Nove-"
"Are you joking?"
"What?" The Doctor glanced up at Martha's interruption.
"You can't land on Monday at three, you'll be there!"
"I will?"
"Yes, and Nurse Redfern! She'll be patching your head after that fall down the stairs. I might be there too for that matter. You want," Martha thought for a moment, "...about four and a half hours earlier."
"Alright," he bent to adjust the console, but looked back up immediately. "Hang on, why?"
"Because I remember John Smith's schedule. He'll be in a class from nine to eleven, and Jenny will have already done the linens by ten."
"I was John Smith, Martha," the Doctor said in an affronted tone. "Do you think I don't remember my own class schedule?"
"Right then," Martha said, crossing her arms. "What class did you teach every Monday right before lunch?"
The Doctor squinched his face up. "Erm... Transcendental Astrophysics?"
Martha smirked. "Right, so I'll pick the landing point then, since I remember your schedule, my schedule and the schedule of the housekeeping staff?"
"I haven't forgotten, you know." The Doctor muttered, twisting a dial slightly.
"I know."
"Just other things on my mind. Saving the universe and things."
"Of course. Ten-thirty in the morning, Monday."
"Gently now," said the Doctor, easing a lever into place. The Time Rotor began to slide up and down its column, whining in protest.
-
Sam tucked the "Journal of Impossible Things" into an inside pocket of his jacket before he and Dean got to the entrance of the forge. The clangs and bangs of active blacksmithery emanated from the three-walled shed under the anachronistic "smithy@angel_gulch.us" sign.
The forge was dark after the bright sunlight of the street and Dean and Sam paused in the open entry way to let their eyes adjust. The shed smelled of charcoal smoke and hot metal; sawdust covered the dirt floor. In the red forge-fire-lit recesses of the building, a broad shadowy figure beat a glowing chunk of metal on an anvil.
"Hello?" called Sam, glancing at Dean.
The smith half-glanced over his shoulder and shouted, "Can I help you fellers?" before taking another few hits on the anvil.
"You're Smithy, right?" yelled Sam over the din. "The guy at the bar said to come here, and from the looks of your sign, I think he sent us to the right place."
The smith did a double-take, dropped his hammer, tossed the iron he was working on back into the forge fire, and charged towards Sam and Dean. Both Winchesters dropped back a step and Dean reached for his gun. The smith stopped short, hands up and palms out.
"Sorry, sorry, it's just... Please. You have to tell me, by all you hold holy..." The grizzled, greying smith looked intently back and forth between Sam and Dean. "...Who won the 2002 World Series?"
"Uh..." Sam glanced sideways at Dean, who shrugged. "Sorry, we don't really follow sports that much."
The smith deflated. "Dammit!"
"Sorry man," added Dean warily, hand still within easy reach of his automatic.
"I keep hoping someone that comes back will know." The man babbled. "The seventh game of the series was going to be the day after I-"
"-Uh, not to interrupt or anything," Sam interrupted, "but-"
"Right, right. Sorry. It's an obsession." The smith frowned. "So, welcome to the old west. You seem to be coping with it damn well so far."
"We're not about to go nuts, if that's what you mean," said Dean, dropping his hand from the automatic in his jacket.
A chorus of giggles and shushing sounded from not far outside the forge doorway. All three men in the forge shed turned and watched as a couple small faces peered around the doorway.
"Yours?" Sam asked, as Dean smirked at the kids.
"Just the one. Go on, giddoutta here! Scoot!" yelled Smithy, and the children scattered. The tallest of the bunch lingered sheepishly. "You know better, Lee. Stop egging them on."
"Yessir," the gangly blond boy grinned, glancing at the Winchesters with bright eyes.
"Now go fetch some water for these gentlemen. They walked in from the flats, by the look of them."
The boy scurried off without another word.
"You've been here since 2002?" asked Sam. "I, uh, mean that's when you were taken?"
"Yep. October twenty-seventh, 2002. Nearly four and a half years ago." He shrugged. "It's not that bad, once you find your feet."
"And Lee?" Dean asked, nodding towards the doorway. "I'm guessing he's not a local either? He come through with you?"
"Lee's been here three years. He's twelve now. I sort of adopted him." Smithy's face soured. "He went into the old plantation on a dare. It's a blessing in disguise, the place being so out of the way."
"Otherwise it'd be attracting a lot more kids," Dean added.
"Yeah."
"How'd he make it here across the mudflats?" asked Dean. "That's a hell of a hike for a kid alone."
"Wagon gave him a lift."
"Hunh. We got shot at," Sam muttered.
Smithy raised his eyebrows. "Well, you aren't nine years old and crying your eyes out scared, now are you?"
Dean smirked. "So, you get a lot of time travelers?" he stated bluntly.
Smithy looked between the two Winchesters. "You know, the few people that haven't gone plumb loco from not being able to understand what's happened to 'em, the first thing they ask is how they got here... but you fellers already know, don't you? About the angel?"
"The angel that sends you back through time if you aren't looking at it? Oh yeah." Dean folded his arms and scowled. "We know."
"Crazy, ain't it." The smith laughed and went to damp the forge fire. "I mean, who the hell even thinks of a statue moving on its own, right?"
"Right," said Sam, glancing at Dean.
"Absolutely," said Dean, nodding sincerely and glancing back at Sam.
"See," Smithy continued as he stirred the coals, "I saw the differences in the photos in the paper and figured it was hiding a trap door, drugs or guns or something, someone was moving it, offing people that got too close...."
"Yeah, um... not to be rude, but we've got a lot of questions," said Sam.
Dean nodded. "Starting with where the hell are we, what year is it and how do we get back?"
The broad man tensed, looking sidelong at Sam and Dean, then away. He took off his leather apron and laid it on the anvil. "Come on in, we need to talk."
The guy headed off into the house connected to the forge.
Dean snagged Sam's elbow as they trailed behind. "Hey, just 'coz this Smithy guy is from the same time as us doesn't mean we can trust him."
"Well, yeah," Sam said, "but he's a potential source of information. Maybe the only potential source of information."
"All I'm saying is he could be up to something."
"We have to get what we can from him, Dean, he's the closest thing to a local expert on time travel we're going to find right now."
Dean let Sam's arm go. "Dude, you have no idea how many times I've seen the 'Back to the Future' movies. I'm the closest thing to an expert on time travel we got."
Sam shook his head and followed the smith into the house.
-
Steven was lost, again. This school was like a rabbit warren; take the wrong turn or the wrong staircase and who knew where you ended up. Like now. Steven looked up at the names on the doors. He'd get in real trouble if he was found wandering the hallways of the teacher's flats. At least he suspected he would; having only been here for two months, it seemed he got in trouble for almost everything.
As he scurried down the hall, he heard a very odd noise. It sounded, he thought, like an elephant dying. Great wheezing noises, starting quietly and growing louder. He knew the sound of an elephant dying from the six months he'd spent in India with his family when his father'd been posted there by his company. The place was over-ridden with elephants.
Steven followed the sound to the door of one of the teacher's flats. What an elephant was doing dying inside - he read the nameplate - Professor John Smith's flat, Steven couldn't venture a guess. The great gasping, wheezes ended with a decidedly un-elephant-like bonk.
It was probably best, Steven thought as he lurked outside the door, to leave whatever happened inside teacher's flats while they were teaching classes as part of the great unsolvable mysteries of life, like geometry, Latin conjugations and girls. But it was a curious thing, and Steven was a curious boy. He edged closer.
Mr. Smith didn't teach any of Steven's classes, but he'd heard the man was a new, and quite young member of the faculty at Farringham School. Perhaps the teacher had a contraband wireless hidden in his room.
Steven loved the wireless. His father was an absolute wireless lunatic. Anytime there was something being aired, his father would tune in the wireless, regardless of what it was. It drove mother mad, all the fiddly bits that made up a wireless receiver strewn about the house, the aerial spread through her garden, but she did enjoy the music when it was available.
Perhaps this was a play. Sometimes they would air plays from London, although Steven hadn't heard of any plays that had dying elephants in them. Inside the room he heard a door open, quick footsteps and a sound underneath it, a kind of low discordant hum, building, like some part of the receiver was about to blow. A capacitor or some other arcane bit his father would know about. Steven crouched down beside the door to listen.
Rustling papers. "It's not here, Doctor!" A woman's voice called. Quite clearly, Steven marveled. Professor Smith must have built a very good set, aside from the buzz in the background.
"Have you checked?" a man shouted distantly.
"Yes, I've checked! It's not here!" More books and paper-shifting noises. "I would have sworn you picked it up from here later today to give it to Nurse Redfern."
Steven found it odd and amusing that the play, which seemed to have a medical theme, had a Nurse Redfern in it, the same name as the school Matron. He also suspected that the last line the woman had spoken might have given his Professor of English fits about tense agreements.
"I'd come out to look, but it'd bring the Family of Blood down on us sooner in the past."
Steven scratched his head and thought it was just as well his English Professor was a dry old stick and very unlikely to even know what a wireless was.
"Yeah, no," said the woman. "Stay right where you are."
"It's in there somewhere. Keep looking!"
"Did you keep it here in the desk?" Sounds of drawers being opened. "Or did you keep it by the bed? You mentioned writing dreams in it."
"Hurry, Martha! The anchor's not going to hold much longer!"
An anchor? Steven's eyes lit up. A nautical medical play. That would be exciting to see. He imagined they'd have a big steamer ship on the back wall of the stage, like the one he and his family had gone to India on. Or a sailing ship, maybe sailing through a storm to bring help to a colony stricken with a dire illness. He hoped Professor Smith's radio would hold out a good while longer. The buzz was so bad now he thought he could feel it in the boards of the floor. But that was impossible of course.
"If there weren't all these papers everywhere- Must you spread a newspaper through the entire room to read it, Doctor?"
"What?" called the distant man.
"Ooo bloody-" Something that sounded like a stack of books sliding to the floor. "There it is!"
"Hurry! It's giving way!" The buzz really was horrible now, kind of thrumming almost.
"But I have to clean up the-"
"Leave it! Run!"
Then another elephant died, the wheezing blending with the buzzing and also with a high wail that built and then trailed away at the end. Steven thought it was far too dramatic for an elephant's death. The teacher's flat beyond the door fell silent.
The capacitor or whatever it was must have blown, Steven thought. Discouraged, he stayed crouching in the hallway trying to figure out how the rest of the play would go, with a ship of Doctors and Nurses sailing through a storm to save a colony from a horrible plague. He wasn't sure how the dying elephants fit in, but supposed it would make sense if he'd heard the rest of the play.
-
The room was plain, undecorated except for some curtains that might have been burlap sacks in a former life. The furniture was rough and inexpertly hand-made, as were the few cupboards. One corner was dominated by a black wood-fired cookstove.
"Pull up a stump," Smithy said, gesturing to a raw-planked table near the stove.
Sam pulled over a chair, but Dean lingered by the burlap-curtained window.
"Nice view," he said, nodding out the side window at a pair of young women who had come from somewhere to lounge around the front of the saloon in the late afternoon sun.
Sam craned his neck to see out the window, then dropped into the chair with a long-suffering huff.
"One thing I get the feeling I should point out to the pair of you," the smith said, looking straight at Dean, who was smiling and waving, "Normally not something that gets brought up right away, but... Uh... as long as you're in the past, no sex."
"What!?" Dean's head whipped around.
Smithy scowled. "Neither of you can risk damaging the future by fathering a child."
Sam nodded. "Actually, Dean... It makes sense."
"What," Dean repeated flatly, swiveling to stare at Sam.
"If you get some girl pregnant before you were born the universe would probably explode."
"Hehe. Well..." Dean leered lasciviously.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean..."
"Okay, okay, fine." Dean frowned. "What about in the last Back to the Future Movie, Doc Brown hooked up with that teacher chick. They had two kids."
"Are we really gonna wager the fate of the universe on your knowledge of pop culture?"
Dean shot Sam a look that eloquently expressed, "This would be different from usual in what way?"
Sam pressed his lips together sourly and raised an eyebrow.
"Besides, like I said," Dean smirked and pointed to himself, "expert."
"I thought about that," said Smithy. "The teacher was supposed to die, so when he saved her and took her out of the time stream, they could-" He waved his hands vaguely. "Procreate without destroying the universe."
"Hey, yeah! Quick, Sam!" Dean said urgently, "Can you think of any hot chicks that bought it in the old west?"
"...Dean..."
"What? Come on!" Dean held his hands out to the sides. "I'm joking!" He lowered his hands and glanced back at the saloon girls before turning his back on the window. "Besides, it's not like we're planning to stick around in the past," said Dean, pulling over one of the other chairs and straddling it.
The blacksmith tensed. "Do you think if-" he began.
The door clattered open and the blond boy, Lee, came in carrying a pail of water and a loaf of bread. He set them beside the cookstove and tucked himself into a corner, grinning at Sam and Dean.
The smith looked from the Winchesters to the boy and back. "Lee..."
"Aw, come on! Can't I stay?" Lee pleaded. "These guys aren't even crazy."
Dean smirked. "There's something we don't often hear," he murmured to Sam.
"No, Lee," the smith said sternly.
"But it's been months since-"
"Maybe later." Smithy's tone was final. "You have chores."
Lee sighed, "Yessir," and dragged himself out of the kitchen.
Smithy watched the boy go, watched the door shut.
"It's alright," Sam said after the door closed. "If he wanted to stay, I mean he's from the twenty-first century too, it's not like-"
"It's not good for him." Smithy said, interrupting Sam. "Reminding him of that. He doesn't need reminded."
Sam and Dean exchanged a look as the smith got tin cups down from a shelf.
"This is kind of new for me." Smithy said, dipping tin cups into the bucket of water and setting them on the table in front of the Winchesters. "I'm used to people that come through being off their nut, so I have a chance to work up to the big question."
"Which would be 'How do we get back?'" said Sam, tone grimly expectant of the answer.
"Yeah. That one," Smithy said, tightly. "There is no going back. No way, no how. You're stuck here, for the rest of your lives."
- - -
(to be continued)
Post A/N: No update schedule. Because fate hates me. But it will definitely be continued.
Post-Post A/N 2011: Yes I still intend to continue and finish this!!!! REALLY!
Characters: Dean, Sam, The Doctor, Martha, OCs
Rating: GEN, PG13
Word Count: 3100 words
Disclaimer: None of this is mine! None of it! It all belongs to a bunch of other people!
Warnings: Crack. Crossover. Spoilers for: Season 2 Supernatural, Season 3 (TenDoc) Doctor Who. And in this part, the Back to the Future movies. *facepalm* Dubious assertions about the very early days of radio broadcasting. Other than that, nothing content-wise that couldn't have been aired in either originating country...
Summary: Two worlds are colliding and the future of both universes depends on the Winchester boys, stranded in a time not their own, and a strange little man and his relatively normal friend in a strange little blue box.
A/N: Remember how I said setting even a vague deadline was 'waving a flag under the nose of fate'? Well, crap, dudes! Yes, this is horribly late. Yes, I totally suck. This has been the section from hell to write, and it's now stretched into parts 4, 5, 6, part of 8 and some sections up around 12 and 16, since part 3 is not a TARDIS of infinite capacity. Anyway. Here's part 3, such as it is. The rest will come when it comes. But it is coming. Have no fear.
Part 1
Part 2
Story to date: Sam and Dean are stuck in the Old West and about to meet someone else in their situation, maybe. The Doctor and Martha and the TARDIS are being pulled into Sam and Dean's universe too soon, and that's a Very Bad Thing.
-
Between a Quantum Rock and a Hard Place
Part 3
by CaffieneKitty
-
The TARDIS shook and spun, the floor rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. The Doctor had one foot braced against a support beam, an elbow hooked around a railing and was slapping at buttons on the console. Martha, still trying to keep her feet under her, stumbled against the console opposite the Doctor and clung onto the edge, avoiding touching any controls that might possibly make things worse.
"Martha!" The Doctor called over the console. "That thing on your side that's flashing!"
"This?" said Martha, grabbing a lever with a flashing green bit at the end.
"No! No, the other one!"
Martha scanned the hundreds of controls on her section of the console. "This red button here?"
"Yes! When I say 'now', hit it hard!"
"Right!"
The Doctor muttered, punched something into a keypad, twisted a knob and shouted, "Now!"
Martha hit the flashing button. The time rotor juddered and hovered in mid-rise, vibrating with a quiet hum.
"Ha! Right!" said the Doctor, bouncing to his feet. "We have to land, find the book and get back in before the other universe overpowers the anchor."
"Which book? What anchor?"
The Doctor pushed a bank of switches, then frowned up at the ceiling for a second before looking concernedly across the console at Martha. "Ooo. Did you leave anything you were particularly attached to near the pool?"
"What? No, just that horrid polka-dot dress, why?"
"Good then. It's been jettisoned."
"The dress?" asked Martha with a slight air of glee.
"The pool."
"What?"
"Sorry, necessary sometimes, she can re-grow another pool," the Doctor patted the console, "...eventually. Right now it's more use to us as an anchor. It won't last long though so we'd better do this quickly."
"Do what quickly?"
"We need to make one stop in our universe first. Ideally two, but I think one jump will be all we can manage and this is the one that's most important. We need to get John Smith's journal."
"The 'Impossible Things' thing you wrote when you were human at that school in 1913? Farringham?" Martha frowned quizzically. "But why?"
"Because it's in the other universe as well, and unless we take it there, there is no way it can be there. So we need to go get it so it can already be there."
"That's a paradox," Martha stated.
"Yeah, sort of, but that's the least of our worries." The Doctor turned a knob on the console. "One landing is all we're going to get before the anchor gives way. So, John Smith's teacher's flat at Farringham, three o'clock in the afternoon on Monday the tenth of Nove-"
"Are you joking?"
"What?" The Doctor glanced up at Martha's interruption.
"You can't land on Monday at three, you'll be there!"
"I will?"
"Yes, and Nurse Redfern! She'll be patching your head after that fall down the stairs. I might be there too for that matter. You want," Martha thought for a moment, "...about four and a half hours earlier."
"Alright," he bent to adjust the console, but looked back up immediately. "Hang on, why?"
"Because I remember John Smith's schedule. He'll be in a class from nine to eleven, and Jenny will have already done the linens by ten."
"I was John Smith, Martha," the Doctor said in an affronted tone. "Do you think I don't remember my own class schedule?"
"Right then," Martha said, crossing her arms. "What class did you teach every Monday right before lunch?"
The Doctor squinched his face up. "Erm... Transcendental Astrophysics?"
Martha smirked. "Right, so I'll pick the landing point then, since I remember your schedule, my schedule and the schedule of the housekeeping staff?"
"I haven't forgotten, you know." The Doctor muttered, twisting a dial slightly.
"I know."
"Just other things on my mind. Saving the universe and things."
"Of course. Ten-thirty in the morning, Monday."
"Gently now," said the Doctor, easing a lever into place. The Time Rotor began to slide up and down its column, whining in protest.
-
Sam tucked the "Journal of Impossible Things" into an inside pocket of his jacket before he and Dean got to the entrance of the forge. The clangs and bangs of active blacksmithery emanated from the three-walled shed under the anachronistic "smithy@angel_gulch.us" sign.
The forge was dark after the bright sunlight of the street and Dean and Sam paused in the open entry way to let their eyes adjust. The shed smelled of charcoal smoke and hot metal; sawdust covered the dirt floor. In the red forge-fire-lit recesses of the building, a broad shadowy figure beat a glowing chunk of metal on an anvil.
"Hello?" called Sam, glancing at Dean.
The smith half-glanced over his shoulder and shouted, "Can I help you fellers?" before taking another few hits on the anvil.
"You're Smithy, right?" yelled Sam over the din. "The guy at the bar said to come here, and from the looks of your sign, I think he sent us to the right place."
The smith did a double-take, dropped his hammer, tossed the iron he was working on back into the forge fire, and charged towards Sam and Dean. Both Winchesters dropped back a step and Dean reached for his gun. The smith stopped short, hands up and palms out.
"Sorry, sorry, it's just... Please. You have to tell me, by all you hold holy..." The grizzled, greying smith looked intently back and forth between Sam and Dean. "...Who won the 2002 World Series?"
"Uh..." Sam glanced sideways at Dean, who shrugged. "Sorry, we don't really follow sports that much."
The smith deflated. "Dammit!"
"Sorry man," added Dean warily, hand still within easy reach of his automatic.
"I keep hoping someone that comes back will know." The man babbled. "The seventh game of the series was going to be the day after I-"
"-Uh, not to interrupt or anything," Sam interrupted, "but-"
"Right, right. Sorry. It's an obsession." The smith frowned. "So, welcome to the old west. You seem to be coping with it damn well so far."
"We're not about to go nuts, if that's what you mean," said Dean, dropping his hand from the automatic in his jacket.
A chorus of giggles and shushing sounded from not far outside the forge doorway. All three men in the forge shed turned and watched as a couple small faces peered around the doorway.
"Yours?" Sam asked, as Dean smirked at the kids.
"Just the one. Go on, giddoutta here! Scoot!" yelled Smithy, and the children scattered. The tallest of the bunch lingered sheepishly. "You know better, Lee. Stop egging them on."
"Yessir," the gangly blond boy grinned, glancing at the Winchesters with bright eyes.
"Now go fetch some water for these gentlemen. They walked in from the flats, by the look of them."
The boy scurried off without another word.
"You've been here since 2002?" asked Sam. "I, uh, mean that's when you were taken?"
"Yep. October twenty-seventh, 2002. Nearly four and a half years ago." He shrugged. "It's not that bad, once you find your feet."
"And Lee?" Dean asked, nodding towards the doorway. "I'm guessing he's not a local either? He come through with you?"
"Lee's been here three years. He's twelve now. I sort of adopted him." Smithy's face soured. "He went into the old plantation on a dare. It's a blessing in disguise, the place being so out of the way."
"Otherwise it'd be attracting a lot more kids," Dean added.
"Yeah."
"How'd he make it here across the mudflats?" asked Dean. "That's a hell of a hike for a kid alone."
"Wagon gave him a lift."
"Hunh. We got shot at," Sam muttered.
Smithy raised his eyebrows. "Well, you aren't nine years old and crying your eyes out scared, now are you?"
Dean smirked. "So, you get a lot of time travelers?" he stated bluntly.
Smithy looked between the two Winchesters. "You know, the few people that haven't gone plumb loco from not being able to understand what's happened to 'em, the first thing they ask is how they got here... but you fellers already know, don't you? About the angel?"
"The angel that sends you back through time if you aren't looking at it? Oh yeah." Dean folded his arms and scowled. "We know."
"Crazy, ain't it." The smith laughed and went to damp the forge fire. "I mean, who the hell even thinks of a statue moving on its own, right?"
"Right," said Sam, glancing at Dean.
"Absolutely," said Dean, nodding sincerely and glancing back at Sam.
"See," Smithy continued as he stirred the coals, "I saw the differences in the photos in the paper and figured it was hiding a trap door, drugs or guns or something, someone was moving it, offing people that got too close...."
"Yeah, um... not to be rude, but we've got a lot of questions," said Sam.
Dean nodded. "Starting with where the hell are we, what year is it and how do we get back?"
The broad man tensed, looking sidelong at Sam and Dean, then away. He took off his leather apron and laid it on the anvil. "Come on in, we need to talk."
The guy headed off into the house connected to the forge.
Dean snagged Sam's elbow as they trailed behind. "Hey, just 'coz this Smithy guy is from the same time as us doesn't mean we can trust him."
"Well, yeah," Sam said, "but he's a potential source of information. Maybe the only potential source of information."
"All I'm saying is he could be up to something."
"We have to get what we can from him, Dean, he's the closest thing to a local expert on time travel we're going to find right now."
Dean let Sam's arm go. "Dude, you have no idea how many times I've seen the 'Back to the Future' movies. I'm the closest thing to an expert on time travel we got."
Sam shook his head and followed the smith into the house.
-
Steven was lost, again. This school was like a rabbit warren; take the wrong turn or the wrong staircase and who knew where you ended up. Like now. Steven looked up at the names on the doors. He'd get in real trouble if he was found wandering the hallways of the teacher's flats. At least he suspected he would; having only been here for two months, it seemed he got in trouble for almost everything.
As he scurried down the hall, he heard a very odd noise. It sounded, he thought, like an elephant dying. Great wheezing noises, starting quietly and growing louder. He knew the sound of an elephant dying from the six months he'd spent in India with his family when his father'd been posted there by his company. The place was over-ridden with elephants.
Steven followed the sound to the door of one of the teacher's flats. What an elephant was doing dying inside - he read the nameplate - Professor John Smith's flat, Steven couldn't venture a guess. The great gasping, wheezes ended with a decidedly un-elephant-like bonk.
It was probably best, Steven thought as he lurked outside the door, to leave whatever happened inside teacher's flats while they were teaching classes as part of the great unsolvable mysteries of life, like geometry, Latin conjugations and girls. But it was a curious thing, and Steven was a curious boy. He edged closer.
Mr. Smith didn't teach any of Steven's classes, but he'd heard the man was a new, and quite young member of the faculty at Farringham School. Perhaps the teacher had a contraband wireless hidden in his room.
Steven loved the wireless. His father was an absolute wireless lunatic. Anytime there was something being aired, his father would tune in the wireless, regardless of what it was. It drove mother mad, all the fiddly bits that made up a wireless receiver strewn about the house, the aerial spread through her garden, but she did enjoy the music when it was available.
Perhaps this was a play. Sometimes they would air plays from London, although Steven hadn't heard of any plays that had dying elephants in them. Inside the room he heard a door open, quick footsteps and a sound underneath it, a kind of low discordant hum, building, like some part of the receiver was about to blow. A capacitor or some other arcane bit his father would know about. Steven crouched down beside the door to listen.
Rustling papers. "It's not here, Doctor!" A woman's voice called. Quite clearly, Steven marveled. Professor Smith must have built a very good set, aside from the buzz in the background.
"Have you checked?" a man shouted distantly.
"Yes, I've checked! It's not here!" More books and paper-shifting noises. "I would have sworn you picked it up from here later today to give it to Nurse Redfern."
Steven found it odd and amusing that the play, which seemed to have a medical theme, had a Nurse Redfern in it, the same name as the school Matron. He also suspected that the last line the woman had spoken might have given his Professor of English fits about tense agreements.
"I'd come out to look, but it'd bring the Family of Blood down on us sooner in the past."
Steven scratched his head and thought it was just as well his English Professor was a dry old stick and very unlikely to even know what a wireless was.
"Yeah, no," said the woman. "Stay right where you are."
"It's in there somewhere. Keep looking!"
"Did you keep it here in the desk?" Sounds of drawers being opened. "Or did you keep it by the bed? You mentioned writing dreams in it."
"Hurry, Martha! The anchor's not going to hold much longer!"
An anchor? Steven's eyes lit up. A nautical medical play. That would be exciting to see. He imagined they'd have a big steamer ship on the back wall of the stage, like the one he and his family had gone to India on. Or a sailing ship, maybe sailing through a storm to bring help to a colony stricken with a dire illness. He hoped Professor Smith's radio would hold out a good while longer. The buzz was so bad now he thought he could feel it in the boards of the floor. But that was impossible of course.
"If there weren't all these papers everywhere- Must you spread a newspaper through the entire room to read it, Doctor?"
"What?" called the distant man.
"Ooo bloody-" Something that sounded like a stack of books sliding to the floor. "There it is!"
"Hurry! It's giving way!" The buzz really was horrible now, kind of thrumming almost.
"But I have to clean up the-"
"Leave it! Run!"
Then another elephant died, the wheezing blending with the buzzing and also with a high wail that built and then trailed away at the end. Steven thought it was far too dramatic for an elephant's death. The teacher's flat beyond the door fell silent.
The capacitor or whatever it was must have blown, Steven thought. Discouraged, he stayed crouching in the hallway trying to figure out how the rest of the play would go, with a ship of Doctors and Nurses sailing through a storm to save a colony from a horrible plague. He wasn't sure how the dying elephants fit in, but supposed it would make sense if he'd heard the rest of the play.
-
The room was plain, undecorated except for some curtains that might have been burlap sacks in a former life. The furniture was rough and inexpertly hand-made, as were the few cupboards. One corner was dominated by a black wood-fired cookstove.
"Pull up a stump," Smithy said, gesturing to a raw-planked table near the stove.
Sam pulled over a chair, but Dean lingered by the burlap-curtained window.
"Nice view," he said, nodding out the side window at a pair of young women who had come from somewhere to lounge around the front of the saloon in the late afternoon sun.
Sam craned his neck to see out the window, then dropped into the chair with a long-suffering huff.
"One thing I get the feeling I should point out to the pair of you," the smith said, looking straight at Dean, who was smiling and waving, "Normally not something that gets brought up right away, but... Uh... as long as you're in the past, no sex."
"What!?" Dean's head whipped around.
Smithy scowled. "Neither of you can risk damaging the future by fathering a child."
Sam nodded. "Actually, Dean... It makes sense."
"What," Dean repeated flatly, swiveling to stare at Sam.
"If you get some girl pregnant before you were born the universe would probably explode."
"Hehe. Well..." Dean leered lasciviously.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean..."
"Okay, okay, fine." Dean frowned. "What about in the last Back to the Future Movie, Doc Brown hooked up with that teacher chick. They had two kids."
"Are we really gonna wager the fate of the universe on your knowledge of pop culture?"
Dean shot Sam a look that eloquently expressed, "This would be different from usual in what way?"
Sam pressed his lips together sourly and raised an eyebrow.
"Besides, like I said," Dean smirked and pointed to himself, "expert."
"I thought about that," said Smithy. "The teacher was supposed to die, so when he saved her and took her out of the time stream, they could-" He waved his hands vaguely. "Procreate without destroying the universe."
"Hey, yeah! Quick, Sam!" Dean said urgently, "Can you think of any hot chicks that bought it in the old west?"
"...Dean..."
"What? Come on!" Dean held his hands out to the sides. "I'm joking!" He lowered his hands and glanced back at the saloon girls before turning his back on the window. "Besides, it's not like we're planning to stick around in the past," said Dean, pulling over one of the other chairs and straddling it.
The blacksmith tensed. "Do you think if-" he began.
The door clattered open and the blond boy, Lee, came in carrying a pail of water and a loaf of bread. He set them beside the cookstove and tucked himself into a corner, grinning at Sam and Dean.
The smith looked from the Winchesters to the boy and back. "Lee..."
"Aw, come on! Can't I stay?" Lee pleaded. "These guys aren't even crazy."
Dean smirked. "There's something we don't often hear," he murmured to Sam.
"No, Lee," the smith said sternly.
"But it's been months since-"
"Maybe later." Smithy's tone was final. "You have chores."
Lee sighed, "Yessir," and dragged himself out of the kitchen.
Smithy watched the boy go, watched the door shut.
"It's alright," Sam said after the door closed. "If he wanted to stay, I mean he's from the twenty-first century too, it's not like-"
"It's not good for him." Smithy said, interrupting Sam. "Reminding him of that. He doesn't need reminded."
Sam and Dean exchanged a look as the smith got tin cups down from a shelf.
"This is kind of new for me." Smithy said, dipping tin cups into the bucket of water and setting them on the table in front of the Winchesters. "I'm used to people that come through being off their nut, so I have a chance to work up to the big question."
"Which would be 'How do we get back?'" said Sam, tone grimly expectant of the answer.
"Yeah. That one," Smithy said, tightly. "There is no going back. No way, no how. You're stuck here, for the rest of your lives."
- - -
(to be continued)
Post A/N: No update schedule. Because fate hates me. But it will definitely be continued.
Post-Post A/N 2011: Yes I still intend to continue and finish this!!!! REALLY!