#sonofvabitch

River had never felt so utterly trapped in her life - flying across the universe was her life, and now she was stuck on Earth (granted, it usually wasn’t the worst planet to be on), while the entirety of human civilization had crumbled to pieces in a spectacularly distressful fashion around her.

Manipulator broken - no way to contact the Doctor - and now no electricity, no phones, no steady source of food. River could normally work close to magic when technology was in its prime, but this? This was a nightmare, even compared to the forests of Gamma. 

The worst of all of it were the walkers. Something was spreading through humans faster than STDs, and despite knowing that it probably wouldn’t affect her, the half Time Lady made sure she washed herself and burned as many corpses as she could. 

And corpses there were in excess. This...disease...had made the human race angry, aggressive, and hungry. Hungry for flesh that - the last time River checked - was deemed a sin amongst the human race. Hungry for human flesh. So yes, corpses were in abundance, and it didn’t quite sit well with River that a number of them were at her own hand - but this was survival. Even if it bothered her to cut down these walkers, there was nothing that could be done for them once they had turned. So cut them down she did. 

And though they simply got up after she cut them down, it didn’t take long for River to realized that they only blow that mattered was to the brain. She was a brilliant woman, but he still owed Dean her life. 

Dean had come along one day when she had been overwhelmed - caught in an abandoned drugstore with a weapon and no ammo, a broken vortex manipulator, and three dozen walkers struggling to dig her out of her rabbit hole. 

Glancing over the fire through the darkness, River smiled slightly to herself, watching Dean skin the rabbit he had managed to chase down in the woods - perhaps that was what had brought the metaphor to her mind. It had been a rough week - barely any food to speak of, more walkers than they could possibly count, and too many close calls. If they could only manage to catch their food more often, then they wouldn’t need to venture so close to the towns and risk being heard or seen or smelt by those....creatures.

A sigh escaped the Time Lady’s lips, and her brow furrowed as she shoved the wood about the fire, making sure that everything got enough air to burn properly. Why hadn’t the Doctor mentioned something about this? Did it slip his mind? How could something like this possible slip his mind? 

Come to think of it, it was just like her husband to forget something like this, but without any modern technology, River couldn’t possibly get off this planet unless the Doctor decided to come looking for her. Glancing back up, her gaze caught with Dean’s, who was staring at her now, and she held his gaze, not shying away, even though she stayed silent.

It had been a silent agreement between the two of them that they would try to stick this out together - she didn’t know when or how it had come about, but ever since that day at the drugstore, neither one of them had wanted to stray far from each other. River preferred it this way, if she were to be honest, even if they didn’t always get along - the man was as resourceful as she was brilliant. Often times they worked well in putting their ideas in motion.

“Have you ever eaten rabbit before?” River ventured quietly. There was no point in being louder than necessary - especially when the night was filled with walkers and other wild animals that had a better grasp on this survival thing than most of the human race.

@sonofvabitch 

sonofvabitch

Amelia settled into her place at her computer. She'd taken a day, one day of her own in who knows how long. Torchwood would be fine without her for one day, her father had pushed. When her computer started up, there was an annoying blinking light for a pop-up ready to go. A notification was there, and by the looks of it, it was probably there since she left 2 nights ago.

Amelia groaned and sighed. She clicked on the blinking tab in the corner, she opened the new window to find out what was going on this time.

‘Bunker Opened’. It read. ‘What bunker?’ she thought.

It took some snooping around, and some searching on her dad’s computer up in his office, but Amelia figured out that it was a Man of Letters bunker that had been opened, and for the first time since it apparently ‘closed’. Torchwood’s files were a little scares on that matter, but Amelia did remember her father using the Men’s documents, that he could get his hands on, way back 3 life times ago for her. Hunting was a big part of her life back then, and Torchwood needed more information on the new supernatural creatures they were coming in contact with.

She figured that perhaps the Men of Letters had started up again. Hopefully with a face-to-face, Amelia could scrounge up some more needed information that they weren’t able to get through the bunker’s old, and out dated computers. And so, Amelia bid ado to the team, and asked them to let Jack know where she’d gone off too, once the man came in for the day.

Oh. My. God. Macaroni and cheese. The stuff that is baked and has so much REAL cheese in it that it could very well destroy your arteries in one go. Oh. My. God.

She knew it was only a matter of time before the deaths started getting to her, but she thought perhaps it would take longer than this. Losing Mary hadn’t helped. Maybe that was it – before the death of her best friend, River wasn’t too overly affected by the deaths of those that were simply on the sidelines of her adventures with her husband. Not that she didn’t care – oh no she cared quite a bit. The loss of any life in the universe was always something to take very seriously, but she didn’t dwell on such deaths. At least, not then.  It was only after one of the deaths was someone who was incredibly close to her that she really got pulled in a bit closer than she would have liked.

Mary Winchester had been River’s best friend when all River wanted to do was have a normal life – a life filled with children and picking out table clothes and mowing the lawn. A life that River always strove for, always wanted, but knew was just out of her reach. Until Mary and John. Sure, the life wasn’t exactly hers, but living vicariously through her friends was something that River did best – especially when they had something she could never hope to acquire.

Like little Sam and Dean. And John. River wanted a nice, tight-knit family, and the Doctor was the only person in the entirety of the universe she could love to a point where it scared her if she thought about it too deeply. But start a family with Doctor? He was too busy saving the universe, and River loved him even more for this fact. She wasn’t even remotely bitter about it – the Doctor was who he was, and she loved him to very core of her existence, and there was nothing she would change about any of it. But having a family that she ran to when she was having just a little too much of the universe? She cherished the Winchester family just that much more because of their own little world.

Until the fire. River was good at pulling off her ‘archeologist’ excuse as to the reason why she was gone for long periods of time, and Mary and John were none the wiser when she came back and told her stories that were mildly conformed to their own planet’s history. It was sometimes amazing how the same things would happen repeatedly across the universe, just with a different race name on a different planet name.  This particular instance, however, River had come back to a crowd in the street and the acrid smell of charred memories and wood.  Mary dead. John and the boys disappeared. No word of where they had run off to. Most of that night was blurry for River, but she could never quite get the smell out of her memory. Some of the house was still burning when she had showed up.

Ever since then, every time someone died, River smelled burning wood. So now every death weighed on her that much more, because every death was another family run off, or another husband left alone, or another child left motherless.

Tonight though, tonight was just a solid weight on her chest. The rain might have been the reason that the smell had never returned to her, but River was having a hard time either way. She had just helped the Doctor and her parents deal with a fairly stubborn crowd of vampiric aliens on the outskirts of town, and one of the small families that had been involved had been completely devoured by the time they could infiltrate and surround the property properly.

The bell on the door of the bar let out a song ringing as River shook out her umbrella, stepping through the bar into the cloud of cigarette smoke and idle chatter. These roadhouse bars weren’t normally her type of scene – she was normally attracted to the loud music and glitter than came along with some of the more high end places of the universe, but something about this one just seemed like a place where she could sit and not be bothered.  A couple of heads turned her way as she walked in, rain in her hair that was entirely too large due to its ability to frizz at the drop of a hat, but she ignore them all and simply took up the closest empty bar stool, ordering a drink that would make her delightfully fuzzy when she was done with it.

Fuzziness was something she welcomed at this point – River still felt sticky from blood and rain, and not even a shower had gotten rid of the feeling. The attractive bartender set the glass down in front of her with a click, and then raised an eyebrow. “Am I going to have to keep an eye on you?” His eyes were full of concern, but whether he truly cared or it was simply his job was up for question.

Falling into old habits and second nature, River gave him a look that would make most men break into a cold sweat. “What, you mean there is a woman here more attractive than I?” And with a small waggle of her eyebrows, she lifted the glass off of the bar and retreated to find a booth where perhaps he wouldn’t follow her. The bartender was left looking a little uncomfortable but still smirking all the same.

“Really Dean? Werewolves only come out on a full moon, and the full moon was two weeks ago…”

River’s ears perked up, not only at the mention of werewolves, but at the name ‘Dean.’ How common was such a name? I just realized that I didn’t pay attention to what era I am in right now… Idle thoughts of guessing when she was filtered through her brain as she passed by the table where Dean and werewolves were mentioned. An almost impossibly tall young man was sitting there with his laptop in front of him, completely ignoring the burger on the plate next to it, while another young man, verging on male model, sat across from him, shoving a large burger into his own mouth, looking irate at having his meal interrupted by talk of werewolves.

As River plopped down into a booth near them, she felt a shiver go up her spine. There was something familiar about the young man eating the burger. Something….familiar….his eyes. Her own widened when she realized that she was looking at a pair of eyes that reminded her of Mary’s eyes. Dean?