Ties Between Time and Space

✦33✦

Chapter Thirty-Three
Don't Touch My Family

*---*---*---*---*---*---*---*

"Emma?"

"I'm okay," Emma looked behind her at Dean. The Doctor appeared by her side and thoroughly checked just to make sure.

"Look at you, angel," he murmured and brushed his thumb over the blood spread across her chin. The wound from the woman's punch had healed instantly and so had the graze on Emma's arm from the bullet. "Such a mess. In all our adventures, not a scratch. Now on a hunting trip, you're bloody mary. Mind you, except for the time you were on fire inside Platform One."

"Hunting's a messy gig," Emma commented. "Sweetheart, I'm fine," she said and took the Doctor's hand away from her face to hold it instead. "All healed."

Mary went to sit down in the passenger seat of the Impala with the door open. Dean checked his daughter first before going over to his mother. He crouched down in front of her. "Found her cell phone in the car. Last phone call was made from Aldrich, Missouri. We're guessing Sam's probably around there."

"Good. That's great," Mary nodded, but she looked distracted.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

She shook her head but he wasn't surprised. She'd been dead for thirty years now. Before that, she did everything in her power to leave the hunter life only to now be a part of it again.

"No. I'm sorry," Mary apologized. "I just... I spent my life running from this, from hunting. And I got out. I never wanted this for you and Sam."

"Mom," Dean sighed, looking at her. "I-I get it. I do. I never wanted this life for Emma either. It's unavoidable given her nature though. But Sam and me... saving people and hunting things, this is our life. I think we make the world a better place. I know that we do."

Mary merely nodded, what else could she say to that?

*---*---*---*---*---*

"So, this was your childhood bedroom, eh?"

They were back in the bunker now. Dean was running the cell phone number he found to try and find a trace on it while Cas had left to do actual physical fieldwork. Mary, on the other hand, was somewhere slowly taking in the here and now of her current situation. It was unreal to her. Being alive after being dead for so long. She was really trying her best. And Emma and the Doctor were standing in Emma's old bedroom in the bunker.

"Not just childhood," Emma said. "It still is my bedroom. For whenever I come home. Dad promised to keep it exactly how I left it and not to touch a thing."

"Never known you to be possessive over things, Em?" the Doctor remarked.

"I'm not," Emma shrugged. "I'm just nostalgic. I like having things to look back on and remember the memories involving them."

"Mindset like that," the Doctor said. "We better start taking more pictures on our adventures, capture the moment and all for you."

Emma glanced at him and smiled. "I've got enough pictures, trust me," she said and a click sounded before a flash went off. The Doctor looked up stunned as Emma stood there holding a Polaroid camera in her hands. "See?" she grinned and waved the photo dry in between her fingers.

The Doctor chuckled and grinned. "I want a go."

Emma tossed the camera over to him and after a minute of figuring it out, he snapped a picture of her.

"Doctor!"

"Beautiful, Em."

*---*---*---*---*---*