Fandom Doctor Who (2005)/Supernatural (SuperWho)
Character(s)/Pairing(s) Dean, Eleventh Doctor, Nickifer, Sam, Tenth Doctor, mentions of various characters from both programs; no pairings
Genre Alternate Universe/Crossover/Death/Drama/Fantasy/Friendship/Gen/Science Fiction/Supernatural
Rating PG
Word Count 2,496
Disclaimer Doctor Who c. BBC, Supernatural c. CW
Summary A good man needs the Winchesters to go to war. Yet, how can the brothers leave Bobby at death's door?
Warning(s) possible spoilers up through series six episode fourteen ofDoctor Who (2005) and season seven episode seventeen of Supernatural, character death
Notes I've been meaning to write this since season seven episode ten ofSupernatural "Death's Door" and something akin to it since series six episode seven of Doctor Who (2005) "A Good Man Goes to War."

You Know What that Sound Means

It started when the Winchester brothers entered the hospital, though neither realized. The box stood just out of sight down a side hall. Dean and Sam watched as the medical team rushed Bobby into surgery, leaving both to stand outside of the OR. No one seemed to notice the flashing light or hear the cloister bells over the din of hospital noise.

Sam saw the emergency TARDIS first. The brothers sat in the waiting room. Bobby was still in surgery. Dean sat beside Sam with his head back, a Spider-Man comic Dean found in one of the children's waiting rooms laying open on his lap. Sometimes Dean snored. Sam decided not to wake him.

Sam did not register the cloister bells at first, but he could hear them just over the sound of the TV nearby droning on about the local weather and news. He stiffened. His neck hair pricked and his heartbeat sped up. Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw Lucifer sitting across from him.

"You know what it means," Lucifer said. He flipped a page of his Peoplemagazine. He made a show of checking over his shoulder and ogling the emergency TARDIS.

Sam opened his mouth, and then closed it. He began to press into the not quite scabbed over wound in his hand. The harder he pressed, the fuzzier Lucifer became until the apparition disappeared back into the recesses of Sam's psyche.

Sam observed the box and then he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't," Sam said. He was not certain if the emergency TARDIS could hear him at this distance.

"What?" Dean woke and rubbed his face. "Can't what?"

"Uh…" Sam looked at Dean. "Someone was asking if I could watch a bag for them. Sleep okay there, Princess Aurora?"

"Shut up." Dean stood up and dropped the comic book into Sam's lap. "Keep my place. I'm going to check things out. I'll come back with coffee."

After Dean left, Sam looked back at the emergency TARDIS, but it was gone.

One floor above Sam, Dean bought two cups of coffee from a vending machine. He filled his own first and then filled Sam's. Just as the coffee finished dripping into the cup, a jarring noise caused Dean to knock Sam's cup over and spill it down into the machine. He cursed and looked over his shoulder. Dean froze. His eyes widened and his jaw loosened. "N…" his voice trailed. He did not want to say it, but he had to say it. Bobby needed him here. "I can't." He paused when the emergency TARDIS would not leave. "Really." The cloister bells continued to ring. Dean took the only cup of coffee back to Sam. Dean did not need help staying awake now.

The Winchester brothers met the Doctor when they were children. The Doctor was almost as tall as their father was and wore a long brown overcoat. He had an older-looking companion with red hair named Donna, who could be intense at times. At the time, Sam was very sick and the brothers were alone. The Doctor and Donna helped Sam get better and kept Dean from getting into trouble with their father.

A few years later, when Sam ran away from home, the Doctor and Donna appeared again. Dean managed to find Sam while he helped the Doctor take care of some statues that came to life when no one looked at them. Dean shivered involuntarily every time he thought of that week. He still sometimes felt he never repaid the Doctor enough for helping get Sam back. Even if the Doctor and Donna told Dean he was not to blame for Sam running off, Dean could still hear John's voice placing the blame solely on Dean. If Dean had not answered a booty call, that week might not have started so bad.

When the Doctor and Donna left, Sam was unconscious. The next time Sam saw the tall Doctor, he and Dean were both teenagers. Left alone by John again, they were on their way back to their motel room after staying at a local cinema until closing. When they entered the parking lot, the Doctor stood alone in front of the Impala's bumper. He looked pained.

Sam did not recognize him, but Dean knew the Doctor instantly. "What do you need?" Dean asked. He was prepared to repay the Doctor despite the alien claiming they were even.

"I don't," the Doctor said. "Well, I suppose I could use a hug. I thought I'd check in on you both."

"Both of us?" Sam watched the Doctor curiously. He instinctively trusted the Doctor despite not having a clear memory of their first meeting.

"Yes." The Doctor smiled. "The last time I saw you, you were unconscious." He put a kind hand on Sam's shoulder briefly. "I'm glad I could see you awake and talking."

Sam stared at the Doctor a moment and looked at Dean. Dean still watched the Doctor, scrutinizing him.

"You're dying," Dean finally managed. "Tell me how to stop it. You helped Sammy –"

"Sam," Sam corrected.

"– let me help you," Dean finished.

The Doctor hugged Dean tight and then he hugged Sam just as tight. He smoothed down Sam's hair and squeezes Dean's shoulder. "Someday I'll come back," he assured. "I won't look like me, but you'll know."

"What?" Dean frowned. He hated cryptic things. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's not really a tell so much as a show," the Doctor answered. He looked them both over and then he let them go. "Goodbye, boys," the Doctor said. He walked away back to the TARDIS. The brothers watched him until the TARDIS disappeared.

Dean shook his head. He could still remember how final everything felt that night years ago. Thinking about it now only brought up emotions he did not know quite how to handle about Bobby. Bobby was more important to Dean than the Doctor was, though the Doctor was an important figure in Dean's life. Even though Dean saw the Doctor only a handful of times, there was something about his presence that made it as if the Doctor was always there somewhere lurking.

Bobby was out of the OR now, but he had yet to wake up. Sam and Dean waited across from Bobby's room and kept watch. They tried not to get in the way of the medical personnel watching over Bobby.

Lucifer casually sat down beside Sam. He began to whistle a tune that sounded familiar but Sam could not quite place it. With an afterthought, Sam pressed down on his wound hard enough he almost did not hear Dean speak. "What?"

"I said, 'What do you think we should do?' I mean I know what we should do, but I mean when Bobby gets better, what should we do?" Dean said.

Sam stopped pressing his wound once Lucifer left. "Uh…well…we could just get in. I mean if Bobby was better, we could get away with time travel. Maybe." Sam frowned. "There are articles that say time travel actually isn't physically possibl –"

"And yet we are being stalked by a screaming blue police box intent on taking us time traveling," Dean interrupted.

Sam sighed. "Maybe we could write a letter and toss it in or something. Get it to come for us on another day?"

"I've seen enough sci-fi to know that will just end up with the box showing up in the wrong place. I don't want to change our past where I end up going on some emergency run with you on the verge of chicken pox." Dean looked around. He could hear the cloister bells, but he could not see the emergency TARDIS.

"Which version of the Doctor do you think it is?" Sam asked. "I'm kind of hoping for the one with the bow tie."

"That's because you know that one," Dean said. "The cool one with the 3-D glasses has things under control."

"And his companion isn't married," Sam commented.

"Hey, hey. If it's an emergency, probably not him anyway," Dean said. "It's probably the one with the bow tie. He seems to be the type that would pull a fire alarm or ten thousand."

Sam leaned back. It was hard. The more Sam watched Bobby in his fragile state, the more Sam knew that he and Dean were making the right choice, but leaving the Doctor in a time of need did not seem right either.

True as the Doctor in the long brown coat stated, he appeared to the brothers in another form years after he said his goodbyes. It was during an investigation into what at first appeared to be a group of Wendigo hunting together. He was now shorter than Dean was and had a quirky grandpa style. His companion again had red hair, but the Doctor was quick to point out to Dean that Amy had a husband, "although she doesn't quite remember." The Wendigo turned out to be aliens.

Neither Dean nor Sam saw the Doctor since that encounter. As they lingered at the hospital, the emergency TARDIS always seemed to be waiting just barely in view. Even when Dean confronted Dick Roman, the TARDIS sat just at the edge of the parking lot. Dean straightened his posture and stared at the box. Then he turned away and went back to the hospital.

The brothers forgot the hovering TARDIS by the time they left the hospital. Sam drove them back to Bobby's in silence. Even Lucifer just sat in the back of the van, whistling to himself quietly. Sam was not certain if it was a gesture of understanding on Lucifer's part, or his mind could not process a more intricate hallucination. They disembarked from the van and stood there. The sun was setting and the junkyard was silent. Dean shut his door and Sam dug his finger into his wound since Dean could not see.

There was a whir nearby, but the sound of the cloister bells did not accompany it. Dean's hands clenched into fists and his knuckles lost their color. Sam turned and looked over his shoulder just in time for the TARDIS to appear properly between them and what remained of Bobby's house. After the dust settled, the Doctor emerged in a new suit jacket and a bow tie just the right shade of red not to clash with the greenish material.

Dean stepped around the van so he could stand between Sam and the Doctor. "What the hell was that?" Dean demanded. "You couldn't give us more than an hour of silence in-between that thing," he gestured to the TARDIS, "showing up as some sort of mirror-verse box."

"I'm so sorry," the Doctor said and it looked genuine. "I had no idea that it would appear to you on this day." When the brothers did not appear, the Doctor examined newspapers dated around the time and place that the emergency TARDIS landed. He saw Bobby's obituary, clearly written up by a local at the hospital who knew Bobby, but did not have to worry about leviathans and hallucinations.

Sam stepped out from behind Dean. He put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder. When Sam left Dean and John to head to university, the Doctor appeared to him in this form. Sam never told Dean about the encounter. Sam and the Doctor ended up taking care of a lone Dalek together near Stanford. "What happened?"

The Doctor's eyes moved from Sam to Dean. He took a few steps towards Dean so he could speak in quiet tones to both men. "I got the better of myself. I called forth everyone's debt, and it wasn't enough." He reached out and put an arm around Dean's shoulders and around Sam's waist. "I had to get Amelia free, but I couldn't anticipate everything."

Dean realized how close the Doctor was and in that moment, the Doctor let both of the brothers go. The Doctor always knew when to let go even when Dean was a child.

"Is she okay?" Sam asked.

"Yes and no, but full of faith," the Doctor said. "What about you?"

"We're just…fantastic," Dean muttered. His eyebrows furrowed and for the briefest moment, he looked as he did back at the hospital as he watched Bobby die in front of his eyes. Dean looked away. "You want a beer? We've got plenty."

"Uh, no," the Doctor put his hands into his pockets. "I have to get to a forest. I can't stay." There was no invitation to join him. There never was. Sam and Dean were too important to space and time.

"Do you need our help?" Sam asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "I've got it under control. You also have some important things to attend to." The Doctor reached out and took Sam's bandaged hand carefully. "Always remember, Sam, this will heal." He did not elaborate on the implications. Sam did not need him to.

Sam hugged the Doctor tight as though it might be his last hug in a long time. The Doctor almost stumbled, but hugged back. "Good luck, Doctor."

"Yes. You too," the Doctor said and moved over to Dean once Sam let him go. He raised his eyes to meet Dean's gaze. "You will get through this," he said in such a way Dean did not know if the Doctor already knew his future or wanted to be reassuring. The Doctor made certain Dean held his gaze before adding, "And, you know I will return someday."

"As another you?" Dean asked. Every time he looked at this version of the Doctor, he remembered the Doctor's previous form. The two incarnations were such similar people, but so different that it was hard for Dean to accept them as the same alien.

"Perhaps," the Doctor answered. He hugged Dean tight and pulled away at the right moment. With a wave, he disappeared back into his TARDIS and vanished into the encroaching night.

Dean took a deep breath. He looked at Sam. "You get the beer. I'll see what I can do about the electricity and shit."

Sam watched Dean retreat into the house and then looked back at where the TARDIS once stood. Sometimes he thought Dean kept his willpower in a reserve meant to keep from begging the Doctor to take them away in the TARDIS on a space adventure worthy of some Star Trek crew. Sam retrieved the beer and checked his pocket. The Hostess pie he got from the vending machine while Dean was busy keeping watch over Bobby was still safely inside and still completely intact. He entered the house and set the pie where Dean liked to sit when Dean worked on his computer. Sam put a beer next to it, took a beer for himself, and placed the rest of the pack in the refrigerator.

The End