In Another Place (SuperWhoLock Big Bang) Part 4
Fic Masterpost
Part 3
As soon as Dean pushed through the doors to the warehouse, everything that might or might not have been happening outside was forgotten. He followed Sherlock's directions, sprinting through the store. When he saw the trapdoor, he stopped so suddenly that even his heavy boots slid a little on the tile floor.
Just before Dean moved to throw the trapdoor open, it occurred to him that he hadn't bothered to ask either Moriarty or Sherlock whether or not Cas was even still alive. After all, why was he still in the cellar when Sherlock had easily walked out?
The air went out of Dean's lungs. The trapdoor weighed heavy on his arms, and he almost dropped it.
But then Sam was beside him, lifting in unison. A glance and a nod from Sam, and Dean's strength returned to him. Together, they lifted the door open.
A short staircase led down into the dark. And at the bottom lay a huddled figure in a trench coat.
"Cas!" Dean called out as he half-ran-half-leaped down the stairs. "Cas!"
And then, to Dean's infinite and overwhelming relief, the form in the trench coat stirred, looked up at him, squinted, and said, "Dean?"
Dean dropped to his knees. He tried to pull Cas into an embrace, but Cas warded him off with one hand and a fearful cringe. "No!" he gasped. "My arm…"
Sam's voice echoed a little as he called from up above. "Hurry up, Dean. I think something's happening out there."
"Lemme take a look," said Dean. He waited for Cas to nod before pulling out his knife. He slit the sleeve of Cas's coat from wrist to shoulder, and it fell open to reveal a sight that made Dean look away with a soft groan. The arm was mottled red and black, and so swollen that Dean wasn't sure how it had even fit in that coat sleeve. A long splinter of bone protruded from the skin where an elbow should have been.
This wasn't the kind of broken arm that got better with a few weeks in a cast. This wasn't the kind of broken arm that got better, period.
Cas looked down at his own arm, but he didn't start to look scared until he saw Dean's stricken face.
"You're gonna be okay," said Dean automatically. "Come on."
"Careful..." Cas protested as Dean hooked one arm under Cas's legs and another behind his back. He whimpered a little as Dean lifted him, shifting his arm slightly, but then he managed to relax.
Dean carried Cas up into the light, where Sam was standing by the exterior door and peeking out.
"We gotta get out of here," Dean said. "Are we still pinned down by that sniper?"
Sam turned, his face drawn tight. "I think we've got some other problems right now, Dean."
"What…" Dean started to ask, but then he took a look outside and sized up the situation. He quickly pivoted back behind the door and out of sight. "Fuck. Meg?"
"Looks like," said Sam.
"Let me see," said Cas. Dean rotated awkwardly so that Cas could see out of the gap in the door. Even with all the adrenaline of the day, Cas was heavier than Dean had bargained for. So when Cas suddenly said, "Put me down," Dean thought Cas had read his mind.
"It's okay, Cas, I've got you," Dean said.
"Dean," said Cas, looking into Dean's eyes with an intensity that reminded Dean of when Cas had been an angel, "Put me down."
-----
It had once been such a simple thing for Castiel to push aside the pain of physical injuries and fight even when he was broken and bleeding. Back then, after all, he had just been wearing a vessel. Something to be used up, put back together, and ultimately cast aside.
But now he was more or less human. He lived in his body. It dictated what he was and was not able to do. And as he had soon learned, being in pain seriously interfered with even the most basic functions. Like standing.
So Castiel was very glad when Dean put him down on his feet, and he managed to stay on them.
"What's the plan?" said Sam, eyeing him uncertainly. Both Sam and Dean had their hands out, ready to catch Castiel if he were to fall. Castiel wondered how bad he looked, that they were so worried.
"Whatever happens," Castiel said, "I need you both to stay here, out of sight."
"Like hell that's gonna happen," Dean scoffed. "We can help. We've got salt rounds, and there's gotta be some iron around here…"
But Sam pointed out, "We can't risk killing anybody. Besides, if we run out of here shooting, the sniper will take us out."
"I can handle this by myself," Castiel insisted.
Dean's face reddened in anger, but his eyes were wide with fear. "You can't even walk!" he snapped.
To prove him wrong, Castiel took a step and closed the gap between them, looking straight into his eyes. "You're going to have to trust me," he said.
"Cas, wait!" said Dean, but Castiel was already edging out the door and back onto the crowded street, leaving Dean and Sam hidden in the shadows of the warehouse entryway.
Dean had been right. Cas couldn't walk. Every tiny movement of his body seemed to shift the pieces of the bones of his arm against each other, making him want to retch from pain. His head felt heavy, as did his legs, and the ground seemed to tilt under him.
But he had a job to do, so he found a way to shuffle slowly forward, keeping his arm as still as possible by his side. Meg's back was to him, and Castiel could tell that she was speaking though her voice sounded very far away.
What did not sound far away was the gunshot. It happened too quickly for Castiel to hope to have stopped it, and suddenly Sherlock was on the ground.
No, not Sherlock. The other one, John, with Sherlock kneeling beside him. Castiel's vision was closing in around him as he slid his feet, following Meg as she approached the fallen pair. She pointed her gun. And though Castiel was closing the distance as fast as he could, he could tell that he would not reach her in time.
To his right, there was a blur of color and motion. Rose launched herself toward Meg, a ribbon of blood flowing from her temple. She threw herself on Meg's gun-arm. She managed to wrench it up into the air just as the shot was fired. The bullet went spinning away harmlessly. Meg almost seemed amused by the useless display of bravery as Rose hooked her arms under the Doctor's skinny shoulders and held on with all her might.
Rose looked at Castiel as she held Meg pinned. And with just a glance, Castiel understood that Rose was not throwing herself into danger pointlessly. Though she could not possibly know what Castiel had planned or whether it had a prayer of working, she trusted him enough to try and buy him some time.
"Hurry!" Rose shouted as Meg finally realized that Castiel was sneaking up behind her.
Castiel closed the last several feet at a sprint. Meg was livid, and he knew that they had less than a second before she broke free of Rose's grip and killed them all. He reached out with his only working arm and pressed his hand to Meg's forehead.
Castiel was, for all intents and purposes, human. He had been so for over a year. He lived as a human, fought as a human, got sick and healed and loved and did laundry as a human. But every once in a while he managed to draw on the last of his grace and call up a minor miracle. So far he had only managed it a handful of times. It had been difficult, but when it came down to life or death he always came through.
Of course, he had never managed anything as taxing as smiting a demon. And he had never tried it while he was in such bad shape that he could barely stand. But that couldn't really be helped.
He reached deep within himself, drawing on all the reserves he had left, and poured them out into his arm, his hand, into the Doctor's body, trying to burn Meg out. The effort of it made his head swim. His vision blurred. But it was working. Light stabbed its way out of Meg's eyes and mouth as her vessel was flooded with angelic power, paralyzing her. But Castiel could feel the reservoir of his grace dwindling. It would not be enough. Not enough to kill her.
So he changed his tactic, even as his knees buckled underneath him and his vision narrowed down to a pinpoint. Instead of killing her or sending her back to Hell, he cast her out.
The Doctor's mouth snapped open, and Meg gushed out of his mouth and up into the sky. The black wisp mingled with the low clouds. She was gone in seconds. She would find a new vessel sooner or later, but for the moment she was banished.
Castiel did not see Meg's escape. His hand was already falling to his side, his eyes already closing. He was senseless before he even hit the ground.
-----
Sherlock noticed the fact that Castiel was using some sort of supernatural means to force the demon from the Doctor's body. He noticed the Doctor slumping into Rose's arms, and Rose quickly turning her armlock into a warm embrace. He noticed Castiel hitting the dirt, and Dean and Sam racing from their hiding place to his side. But all of that information simply filed itself in his brain under, "I am no longer about to be shot in the face," because it was very difficult to muster up real concern for anything besides the fact that John's blood was still pulsing out from under his hands at an alarming rate.
"John," he said, his voice surprisingly calm. For once, he could not seem to put two thoughts together into a coherent conclusion. The cogs of his mind spun uselessly, their teeth never meshing, but at least it didn't show in his voice. "Don't move. We have to try to minimize the blood loss until we can get help…"
John placed his hands over Sherlock's, but his grip was weak and his skin was pale. "Sherlock," was all he said, but the gentleness and regret in his voice was enough. There was no minimizing the arterial hemorrhage that was clearly underway. And there was no help to be had.
Sherlock looked up. There was a dazed quality to his vision, as if he had just taken a good hit upside the head. Rose and Jack were keeping the Doctor on his feet, and Dean and Sam were propping Castiel up as he came to. They looked on in horror as the red pool around Sherlock's knees continued to grow.
"Do something," Sherlock ordered, his voice still unsettlingly calm. Then, when no one answered him, all the calm left him at once. His face grew hot and he bellowed, "Do something! Any of you! What good are your powers and your magic and your technology if you can't save him?"
The Winchesters looked on with something like pity. They'd dealt with enough gunshot wounds to know which ones you don't get up from. The Doctor kept shaking his head, tears pooling in his eyes as he said over and over, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"With the vortex manipulator, I could get him to a hospital," Jack offered, but even the suggestion sounded futile. A wound like this would have been fatal even if it had occurred in an actual emergency room. Here, now, it was already too late.
When Sherlock looked down again he found John's head fallen back, his eyes closed, his face ashen. Sherlock moved one hand, dripping with blood, to John's throat, and though there was a pulse there it was thready and weak. To his horror, Sherlock understood that the only option left open to him was to kneel here in the dust, his fingers pressed to John's neck, waiting for that pulse to slow and finally stop.
But then a voice spoke, shrill with panic and emotion and the thrill of sudden realization, "NANOGENES!" All eyes went to its source: Rose, who was standing with her arms spread and her eyes wide, waiting for someone to acknowledge her idea. Everyone stared blankly.
Except for the Doctor, who regained some of the brightness in his eyes as he realized. "Jack's ship!" he said. "It's the same one he had when we met him in 1941!"
"Nanogenes and all!" Rose finished the thought for him. She turned to Jack for confirmation.
"It'd work," said Jack, nodding. "But my ship is back where I crashed it, two states away."
Then, all at once, Jack, Rose, and the Doctor turned around to look at Moriarty where he stood, still grinning as he watched the drama unfold, still quietly holding the vortex manipulator, still confidently protected by his hidden sniper.
"What are all of you even talking about?" Sam demanded.
But Sherlock had no need to ask for explanations. Even if he had no way of knowing what nanogenes were, his companions seemed confident that they could save John. And that was enough. Any ray of hope, no matter how incomprehensible or remote, was better than sitting here and waiting for the end. And if they needed the vortex manipulator to make this plan work, then Sherlock would get it for them.
John's handgun lay on the street where he'd dropped it, just outside the spreading puddle of blood. Sherlock snatched it up and snapped the safety off.
Moriarty spoke for the first time since before Meg had fired her gun. "Really?" he said, sounding torn. "I'd rather not have my man shoot you, but if you start threatening me then I won't have a choice."
"I'm not threatening you," said Sherlock as he tilted the gun upright and placed the barrel beneath his own chin, "And I don't think you'd have me shot. Not for any reason. In fact, I think you'll do whatever it takes to keep me alive."
Moriarty rolled his eyes, but Sherlock could detect a hint of real fear in his expression. "Don't you think that's a little melodramatic?" he said.
"Not if it works," Sherlock snapped. "Now, give us the vortex manipulator, and I'll let myself live."
"You think you can hold yourself hostage?" chuckled Moriarty, panic creeping into his laugh. "Do it! Pull the trigger! It'll save me the trouble of killing you later on!"
Sherlock moved his pointer finger, letting it rest lightly on the trigger. The twitch of Moriarty's eye was enough to tell him that he had already won. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I think Meg had it right. Whatever you're planning to do with that device, you want me around to appreciate it. Enough so that, if I weren't around, there would be no point. To any of it."
"You're bluffing," said Moriarty.
John's heartbeat was slowing. He was running out of time. Perhaps he already had. That blind desperation was evident in Sherlock's voice as he rasped, "You know I'm not."
And perhaps it was trite and overdramatic - suicide in the face of bereavement was more characteristic of the heroine of a romance novel than of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, self-proclaimed sociopath (even though anyone with a passing knowledge of sociopathy knew that it was a lie.) But in that moment, with John's heart stuttering out its last beats, all Sherlock could think about was how very much his life had changed since John had come into it. How very lonely he had been before, without even realizing it. And how unbearable it would be to return to London alone and live in his flat alone and eat meals alone and solve crimes alone and go to sleep alone and wake up alone while John's blood fertilized the weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk at this abandoned corner of the United States.
In that one desperate, frantic moment, if John could not be saved, then pulling the trigger did seem like the simpler and less-painful of Sherlock's options.
And later, much later, when asked, Sherlock would insist that it had all been a bluff. But Moriarty must have seen that spark of truth in Sherlock's face as he said the words. He must have sensed that then, at that one moment in time, Sherlock Holmes would have thrown aside all logic and detachment to die beside his companion. He must have, because with a distasteful grimace and a deep, disappointed sigh, he pulled the vortex manipulator out of his pocket and lobbed it to Jack.
"If you get it to work," Moriarty called to Sherlock, "And you don't try to use it against me, I'll be very disappointed." With that, he finally turned and walked toward his car.
For the barest fraction of a second, Sherlock wondered how many people he was condemning to death by allowing Moriarty to escape. How many schemes did Moriarty still have up his sleeve? How much trouble would he make for Sherlock in the future? But there was nothing to be done as long as the sniper was still in place, and besides, none of it meant anything if John didn't survive.
Sherlock removed the gun from its location under his chin and barked at Jack, "Back to the ship. Now!"
-----
The Doctor was dubious about the vortex manipulator's ability to transport eight people at once, even over a distance as relatively short as the thousand-or-so miles between the abandoned store and the field where Jack's ship still lay in its crater. But they made it. Castiel was semi-conscious, on his feet only with the help of Dean and Sam. Jack was already diving into the wreckage of his ship, trying to activate the nanogenes. Sherlock didn't appear to have moved from where he knelt on the ground, still clutching tightly at John as though he could hold him on this side of death with nothing more than the strength of his hands.
John. The Doctor had been watching when it happened. He had felt his finger squeeze the trigger, even as he resisted with all his might. He had seen what was about to happen - that John would throw himself in the path of the bullet - before Sherlock or even Meg had noticed the determination on John's face. Perhaps the Doctor was simply over-familiar with the look of someone who is about to sacrifice their life for someone they love. After all, he had seen it so many times on so many faces. He'd worn it a few times himself.
The Doctor felt pressure on his hand and looked down to find Rose holding it. Blood streaked her face and dripped off her chin onto her shirt. He had been watching for that, too, and his stomach did a fresh twist of remorse at the memory of the shock that had run up his arm as the butt of the gun had hit her face. "Doctor," Rose said, squeezing his hand again. "It wasn't you. It wasn't your fault."
He cast his eyes down, unable to look at her. Rose had grown. She had grown from a shop girl into the savior of humankind twice over. And meanwhile, the Doctor had only gone backwards from the kindness and contentment he had once enjoyed back to the pride and ruthlessness he had learned in wartime. He had diminished, in Rose's eyes and in his own. Where once he had been a protector of humans, now he needed protection, and people needed protection from him.
Rose was right. None of this was the Doctor's fault, because there was no Doctor in this world. Only a cheap copy that could not hope to live up to the original.
"People?" said Jack, poking his head out of the ship. "We have a problem."
All traces of Sherlock's former poise and detachment were gone as he shouted in reply, "Fix it!"
"Hey, I'm a rogue Time Agent, not a mechanic!" Jack said helplessly. "The nanogenes aren't deploying. They must have been damaged in the crash!"
Jack looked at the Doctor. Then, one by one, so did everyone else.
The Doctor let go of Rose's hand and took two halting steps backward.
"Come on, Doc," said Dean. "You fixed the vortex motivator in about two seconds. This should be a snap."
The Doctor took another step backwards, retreating from the eyes boring holes in him with their expectation. "I can't," he whispered, softly enough that he didn't think anyone would hear.
But Rose heard, or she guessed what he had said, because she matched him step for step and caught him by the collar of his jacket. "You can," she insisted. "You're the only one who can."
The Doctor was finding it very difficult to breathe. He said, "If the nanogenes were destroyed, then there's nothing I can do. They all expect something of me, and I'll just let them down."
"You've never let me down," said Rose without hesitation. "So many times it's all come down to you and, if there was ever a way to win, you found it. You always did."
"He did," he corrected. "The Doctor. The proper Doctor. But I'm not him. I'm just something that was accidentally left over, and I can't. I can't do what he did. I'm not the Doctor."
In the silence that followed, Sherlock's voice spoke very quietly and evenly. Even the anger had gone out of it now, leaving nothing but emptiness. "His heart has stopped," he said.
Before the Doctor could react, Rose put her hands on either side of his head and kissed him. It was the sort of kiss that obliterated everything, the sort that flipped the reset switch in his head. The sort she hadn't given him since that day at Bad Wolf Bay.
"You're my Doctor," she said, and though her voice shook from the tears that were threatening to spill out of her eyes, it rang with truth. "I wouldn't have any Doctor but you. And if you can't give me one more day where everybody lives, then please, please at least try!"
And then the Doctor felt something spark within him. Because even knowing the odds, even knowing all of the Doctor's weaknesses, Rose still had faith in him.
He was not the Doctor. But for Rose, he would try to be.
He fairly dove into the ship beside Jack. "Show me," he demanded.
Jack pointed at the opening that should have been releasing the nanogenes by now. "They come out of there," he said, "But it's not working."
The Doctor sprang onto the mechanism, peering and poking at it like a monkey. "If only I had my sonic screwdriver!" he lamented. "Oh, never mind. This piece here is supposed to be over here… and this piece is completely broken… and something is missing from here…"
"So it's shot all to hell?" Jack tried to interpret.
"HAHA!" the Doctor suddenly shouted, "No, it's only the delivery mechanism that's broken. The reservoir with the nanogenes in it is quite safe behind the bulkhead!"
Rose hovered just outside the ship. "Can you get to them without your sonic screwdriver?" she asked anxiously.
But the Doctor was already reaching for Jack's belt. "While a sonic screwdriver is superior in every way," he said, "Sometimes the situation calls for something a little more… blast-y." With that, he pointed the sonic blaster that he had stolen from Jack's holster at the broken and blocked portal, and fired.
Sparks and bits of metal rained down on Jack and the Doctor. A moment later, a flood of golden points of light cascaded out of the hole the Doctor had opened in the ship's interior wall. Out they flowed, more and more of them, the entire ship's supply escaping all at once. And in the midst of them was the Doctor, running along their stream. He whooped and shouted in triumph as he chased them out of the confines of the ship and toward the people that needed them.
First they found Rose, who was nearest. They buzzed around her head like a halo, and the oozing gash at her temple closed and disappeared.
A larger portion flowed out to where Sam was helping Dean to hold up Castiel. When Dean saw the cloud of nanogenes approaching him, he started to flinch out of their path, but with one look at Cas he changed his mind and stood fast. The nanogenes concentrated themselves around Castiel's arm. In seconds, the horrific swelling deflated until the arm was its normal size. The bruising faded. When Castiel's elbow twisted its way back into its normal position, the protruding splinter of bone sliding back beneath the skin with a wet sucking sound, Dean looked like he was going to be sick.
But Castiel's face showed nothing but relief as he blinked his way back to full consciousness. "It's okay, Dean," he said as soon as he noticed Dean's uncomfortable expression. "It doesn't hurt."
"Good," Dean answered, his grimace fading into a smile as Castiel's shattered arm realigned itself and became whole again. "Good. Can you stand on your own?"
Castiel nodded and took a step, unsupported.
As soon as Dean was sure that Castiel was steady on his feet, he began swatting at his own shoulder, chasing the congregating nanogenes away from the handprint-shaped scar there. "Get out, you little bastards!" he muttered. "I don't need you to heal that!"
Meanwhile, the largest portion of the nanogenes were swirling around John's lifeless form. They circled around him like a vortex, working furiously against the pull of death. There was movement beneath the bloodstain on John's shirt and, slowly, the bullet nosed its way through the wound and fell into the dirt. In its wake, the flesh knit together and the hole closed. But John did not move, and the color did not return to his face.
Sherlock stared into that pale, motionless face, heedless of the fact that he was kneeling in the eye of a hurricane of nanogenes. He watched with a patient sort of intensity. But John's eyes did not open.
"Come on!" the Doctor groaned quietly from where he watched at the entrance to the ship. Jack stood beside him, and Rose just past them. Dean, Sam, and Castiel had fallen quiet as they turned to see the fate of their group's final casualty.
Every one of them held their breath, and wondered if perhaps they were too late.
Please, God, let me live.
That was the thought that had run through John's head in Afghanistan when he'd felt the bullet slam into his shoulder, sending him reeling into the dust. It was an understandable sentiment. After all, one is allowed to think of one's own wellbeing when one has just been shot.
But this time, when he felt the dull impact in his gut, he found himself thinking, Please, God, let him live, and if I have to die then I suppose I can't ask for a fairer trade.
He'd closed his eyes with finality and a clarity of purpose that he hadn't felt since before he'd gone to war.
So he was somewhat surprised to find himself opening them again.
There was no pain. However, the sensation of his insides knitting themselves back together and his capillaries re-filling with blood all at once was not exactly a pleasant one. The sky above him was too bright - brighter than the one he'd closed his eyes to. It took him a few moments to adjust to the light, but then he recognized the face hovering over him.
It wasn't the first time John had seen Sherlock show concern. It had been a long time since he had stopped thinking of Sherlock as an unfeeling machine, since he had realized just how affected Sherlock could be when John was in danger. But still, John never thought he would see an expression on Sherlock's face like the one he was seeing now.
For just a moment after John opened his eyes, Sherlock looked weak. Not angry, not desperate, and not disappointed - John was used to seeing Sherlock in any one of those moods. But weakness was not something that Sherlock had ever shown lightly, or, indeed, at all. It transformed his entire face, making him look more like a frightened child than the jaded detective that he often tried to portray. He looked like a man who had hit what he thought was rock bottom so many times that he was blindsided when he finally, truly stood to lose everything.
And in the next moment, it was gone, buried beneath Sherlock's usual cool superiority. But John had seen it, and that was enough.
"What happened?" John coughed out, finding his throat dry and his lungs sore.
Sherlock was as matter-of-fact as ever as he replied, "You died."
Only then did John look past Sherlock's face to see the tornado of lights twisting around both their bodies, filling the sky and illuminating everything in gold. As John watched, the vortex slowed and dissolved as the lights rose higher and higher into the air, dispersing into the clouds above. So even though there were more pressing questions he could have asked, John couldn't help but point after them and shout, "What on God's Earth are those?"
In the next moment he was stunned into silence as Sherlock, Sherlock who avoided physical shows of affection as if everyone but him were a leper, pulled John upright and into a bone-crushing embrace. His skinny arms were stronger than they looked, and they didn't loosen their hold until John brought his own arms up to return the gesture.
Sherlock's voice shook slightly with helpless, relieved laughter as he answered, "They're clearly some sort of biologically engineered DNA-specific healing device, John, do try to keep up."
-----
Once everyone had caught their breath, they agreed that they all ought to get moving immediately. Rose and the Doctor had a monster of a report to write up for Torchwood, and John vehemently wanted to go home. Sherlock muttered out his disappointment that he'd let Moriarty escape. Dean and Sam mentioned that they needed to check in with Bobby about the fact that Meg was at large and pissed off. Castiel reminded them that she was also probably wearing a new face by now. Jack explained that, while he would like nothing better than to stick around for an orgy (everyone was invited), now that he had his vortex manipulator back he really needed to get moving on finding a replacement for his crashed ship.
But in the end, they wandered back to the farmhouse across the road instead of dispersing. They were too tired to do more.
"But I can transport us anywhere in the world!" Jack protested, pointing at his now-functional vortex manipulator. "Five-star hotels! Palaces! At the very least I can find us a nicer derelict house to squat in!"
But Dean and Castiel were on their way upstairs in search of a bedroom, John was making himself comfortable on the couch, and Rose was rummaging in the dusty cupboards and closets in search of blankets. No one looked like they were terribly interested in moving.
Sam put his hand on Jack's arm, well above the wriststrap of the vortex manipulator. "Leave 'em be," he suggested.
Jack shrugged and obeyed.
-----
While everyone bustled around him, Sherlock stood against the jamb of the front door of the house, uncharacteristically still. Eventually the room quieted as Rose went into the basement in search of more supplies and Sam led Jack around the corner and into the kitchen. The sound of doors opening and closing came from upstairs, and finally even that noise ceased as Dean and Castiel apparently found a suitable room. The Doctor was nowhere to be found.
Besides Sherlock, the only one left in the main room of the house was John, who had managed to make himself more or less comfortable on the awful, rotting couch and looked like he was about to fall asleep.
And perhaps it was some residual weakness from his earlier scare, or maybe he simply did not wish to see John's eyes close again, even in sleep. Or maybe, for once, Sherlock Holmes actually desired some human contact. In any case, Sherlock found himself crossing the room and worming his way onto the couch.
John lifted his head when he felt hands on his ankles. Sherlock slid onto the end of the couch, draping John’s legs over his lap. John lifted an eyebrow. The couch was too small to be comfortable for two grown men, and it was clearly infested with all manner of creatures that only Sherlock knew the names of. "There are other places to sleep, you know," he said.
"None better than here," Sherlock replied, resting his hands on John's knees.
A slight, befuddled smile, and after a moment it looked like John was beginning to drift off to sleep again. It was only then that Sherlock noticed that John was still wearing his same jumper and coat, each with a bullet hole at the level of his stomach, both soaked to varying degrees with sticky, drying blood. Even knowing that the wound beneath was gone, the sight made Sherlock feel as though his skin were crawling, especially since John's eyes were fluttering closed in an eerie reverse of his earlier revival.
"Take your clothes off," Sherlock blurted out.
John's eyes snapped back open. "Excuse me?" he said weakly.
Sherlock shrugged out of his long, black coat, leaving himself in only the purple collared shirt beneath. He offered his coat to John. "Your clothing will become more uncomfortable as the blood dries," he said. "Wear this instead."
John stared for a few seconds, but then he shifted side to side and seemed to finally notice the unpleasant sensation of his bloody clothes sticking to his skin. He sat up with a grateful nod and took the coat from Sherlock's hand. "Thanks," he said as he stood and began to strip out of his ruined coat.
It wasn't strange that Sherlock watched as John peeled off his wet, stained layers one by one. After all, they shared a flat. It was hardly the first time he had seen John bare-chested. But this time, he found himself unable to stop gauging his own reaction. This time, he was acutely aware of the sudden realization to which he had come while bent over John's dying form, feeling as though he were also dying in his soul. What he felt for John was not friendship, or camaraderie, or even brotherhood as he had tried to convince himself for so long. It was love.
But love as Sherlock understood it was supposed to come hand in hand with certain urges. Like Dean and Castiel as they had raced upstairs, their eyes dilated and their blood racing, shouldn't Sherlock have experienced some uncontrollable physical longing? Even with John mere feet in front of him, using the remains of his jumper to wipe blood off of his flanks, his skin moving beautifully over his musculature, Sherlock felt no desire to reach out and touch. No desire to hold and claim. Only an overwhelming need to keep that body safe and whole, a worthy vessel for the perfect soul within.
John pulled Sherlock's coat on. It was too long on his torso and too tight around his shoulders, but John happily reclined back on his place on the couch, draped his legs back over Sherlock's lap, and wrapped the coat tighter around himself.
Only then did John happen to look up and notice the unusual, vulnerable intensity with which Sherlock was staring at him. "Sherlock?" he said, alarmed.
Sherlock rarely found himself at a loss for words. Usually he was able to formulate entire essays and diatribes of publishable quality in his head, only to smugly discard them without giving them voice, content in his own intellectual superiority and feeling no obligation to let anyone else in on his thought process. So it was somewhat disconcerting to have something in his head that he desperately wanted to explain, but that he could not seem to organize into coherent sentences.
"I'm very glad that you're not dead," he finally said, disappointed at the utter inadequacy of it.
John's look of consternation slowly morphed into a bemused smile. Then, in a way that made Sherlock wonder if perhaps John had understood him perfectly, he reached up and put his hand on the back of Sherlock's neck. He pulled Sherlock down beside him. "Me, too," was all John said.
And there, with his legs dangling uncomfortably over the edge of the dilapidated couch and the reassuring rhythm of John's heart audible beneath his coat, Sherlock was finally able to slow his mind enough to fall asleep.
-----
Dean and Castiel had discovered long ago that sex of the "I-can't-believe-we're-not-dead" variety was the best sex, and they had been taking advantage of it ever since. As soon as they'd found a room containing a bed that looked like it might not collapse under their weight, they tumbled inside without even bothering to close the door properly.
Cas's bloodstained coat fell to the floor. His t-shirt went next, and then Dean's. Their fingers dug into shoulders and backs as they staggered toward the bed locked in an embrace, desperately trying to pull their bodies into one another as if the warmth of skin on skin was the only thing convincing each of them that the other was real.
Their mouths were locked together, but Cas pulled away to latch onto Dean's neck, sucking bruises into his skin. While Dean grabbed at Cas's hair in a silent plea for more, Cas's hands fumbled with the zipper of Dean's pants. He wasn't fast enough, and Dean's hands dropped to cover Cas's, eager to help.
But instead of undoing the button and yanking his zipper down, Dean froze. It took Cas several seconds to realize that Dean's lustful panting had slowed. "What's wrong?" Cas asked, his lips still pressed to Dean's neck.
One by one, Dean's fingers laced themselves onto Cas's. Dean stretched their arms out - his own right and Cas's left - like mirror images. When Cas pulled back, he found Dean staring down at Cas's arm almost as if he were surprised to see it there with its unmarked skin, every bone and muscle and sinew in its place. Dean's fingers tightened as he raised Cas's arm, watching as each joint bent smoothly and effortlessly.
Cas was silent as Dean shifted his grip, turning Cas's hand over to kiss each fingertip in turn. He pressed a kiss to the center of Cas's palm, to his wrist, to the inside of his elbow. He worked his way up to Cas's shoulder, his lips gentle as if he were trying to pull out the pain that was no longer there.
"I'm sorry," Dean whispered, the depth of his self-loathing resonating in his voice.
And, because it wouldn't have done any good to explain that it hadn't been Dean's fault, Cas replied, "I should hope so. You completely ruined my overcoat."
The answer was so unexpected that Dean blinked rapidly, his head jerking up. When he saw the glint in Cas's eye, he wondered when the hell Cas had learned how to make a decent joke. Dean laughed as he used his grip on Cas's arm to twirl him once and toss him onto the bed.
As Dean kicked off his pants and crawled on top of Cas, he promised, "I'll get you a new one."
-----
As Sam slumped wearily into one of the rickety chairs in the dusty kitchen, he said, "What a day. I could really use a drink." He glanced at the cupboards around him. They didn't look promising.
"Got you covered," said Jack cheerily, sitting beside Sam and pulling a strange-shaped flask out of the pocket of his coat.
Sam took it gratefully. "You know, you're not so bad." He took a sip, coughed, gave the flask a suspicious glare, and pushed it back across the table toward Jack.
"Admit it. I'm growing on you," said Jack before chugging three large gulps from the flask with a satisfied sigh.
"Like a tumor," Sam agreed.
Jack pushed the flask back toward Sam who, after a moment's hesitation, visibly screwed up his courage and took another drink. "Today wasn't so bad," said Jack.
Sam coughed on his drink again. "We all almost got killed. Multiple times."
"I mean before that," said Jack. "Bouncing around the globe. I know you weren't exactly happy about it, but you handled it a lot better than some people would have. You'd make a good traveling companion."
"I can't tell if you're hitting on me or not," Sam admitted, shoving the flask back away from himself.
"Always, as a rule," said Jack. "But more to the point, I'm inviting you to come with me when I go."
Sam was somewhat taken aback. Then he laughed. "You're joking."
Jack looked offended. "Why would you think that?" he said. "It's lonely out there by myself, and for once I'm not just talking about sex. I could show you the stars." He almost managed to not make it sound cheesy.
So even though Sam was ready to dismiss him out of hand, he hesitated and asked, "What's it like?"
"It's like everything," Jack replied. "Every place; every time. It's anything you want it to be."
Sam thought about it. For about two seconds, he thought about it. "Nah," said Sam. He took another drink from Jack's flask, and this time he kept a straight face. "I've got enough weirdness going on right here. Besides, Dean wouldn't want to leave his car behind."
"Fair enough," said Jack, taking back his flask. "Looks like I'm on my own again, and this time without so much as a ship to my name."
A voice replied from the doorway, making both Sam and Jack jump, "At least you don't have to worry about that." The voice belonged to the Doctor. He was leaning against the doorframe, rubbing his arms to warm himself up.
"Where've you been?" Sam asked.
The Doctor pointed at Jack. "Fixing your ship," he said. "It really didn't take much work. The Chula really knew how to make ships last. Most of the damage was superficial, and there was no outer hull breach. It's not pretty, but it'll still get you from place to place."
Jack immediately jumped up, grabbed the Doctor's head in both his hands, and planted a kiss on his forehead. "Thanks, Doctor! I'll bet you're a handy guy to have around," he said, almost sounding sincere for a moment before he offered the Doctor his flask with a wink. Doctor opened the flask, sniffed it, and quickly closed it again. "I don't suppose you have a clone you could lend me?" Jack added.
The Doctor laughed. "That's a long story. A very long story. The short answer being: wouldn't you prefer the real thing?"
-----
Rose staggered back up the basement steps, carrying an armful of moth-eaten blankets.
The first thing she saw when she reached the top of the stairs was John and Sherlock curled up on the couch together. Both of them were snoring softly.
With a little smile on her face, she gently draped one of the blankets over both of them and tucked it into the couch cushions so it wouldn't fall off.
Next she rolled up some bed sheets and a heavy blanket and brought them upstairs for Dean and Castiel. It was quiet there at the top of the stairs. When she looked down the hallway, every door was closed except for the last one on the right, which was standing open by a couple of inches.
Rose crept up to the door and was about to knock on it when, through the crack, she caught a flash of something in the darkness. An impression of rhythmic movement, of hands twisted into sheets, of lips whispering low and fast against glistening skin.
She left the blankets in a neat pile just outside the door and tiptoed away.
Back downstairs, the only signs of life were coming from the kitchen, where a hushed conversation was punctuated by occasional laughter. Rose went to investigate. At the table sat Sam, Jack, and the Doctor. They were passing around a flask.
"Then it's decided," Jack was saying. His cheeks were pink, and he was swaying slightly.
"Not quite," said the Doctor. "I still have to talk to… Rose!" Mid-sentence, he looked up and noticed Rose in the doorway. His beaming smile was infectious, and Rose felt the corners of her own lips curl upwards involuntarily.
"Am I interrupting something?" she asked.
"Not at all!" said Jack expansively, offering her the flask. "Join us!"
The Doctor quickly jumped up and intercepted Rose before she could take the flask from Jack. "Well, looks like it's time to call it a night! See you boys in the morning! Don't have too much fun without me!"
They left Sam and Jack to their miniature party and found a ground-level bedroom. As soon as they were inside with the door closed tightly behind them, Rose spun the Doctor around and silenced his, "Rose, I need to ask you someth…" with a kiss. He didn't seem to mind the interruption. Her hands ran up his chest and grabbed him by the collar. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. They both lost their balance at the same time, and they stumbled until the backs of the Doctor's legs hit the edge of the bed and they fell onto the mattress in a heap.
Rose propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at the Doctor's face. "Wait," she said. "Me first."
The Doctor nodded, waiting.
But instead of speaking again right away, she stared down at him, contemplating. He stared up, patient. Finally she shifted so that she could brush the back of her fingers along his jaw. "We're not perfect, are we?" she said quietly.
He seemed to sense that she didn't want him to answer, so he stayed quiet.
"It used to be so easy, being with you," Rose went on. "And now it's not. I was confused for a while, because I kept expecting it to go back to the way it was, but it's not supposed to, is it? It's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be work."
Slowly, Rose leaned down until her forehead rested against the Doctor's. "You're worth it," she said resolutely.
"Does that mean you haven't given up on me yet?" said the Doctor softly.
A smile filled her face. "Never."
They stayed like that a moment, still and quiet, until the Doctor stammered, "I'll be better. I mean, I'll try. I'll try and be more like him. The proper Doctor."
"Try and be better," Rose replied. "Always. But you are the proper Doctor, and you don't need to be anyone but yourself."
He kissed her then, pulling her that last few inches down until their lips touched and sealed together, arms weaving around each other, clumsy and desperate. When they finally broke apart the Doctor, caught up in the moment with his hands tangled in Rose's hair, begged once more, "Marry me."
And this time, Rose replied without hesitation, "Yes."
She kind of expected him to pull her down for another kiss, but instead the Doctor looked dazed and gave a little, undignified giggle of delight. And only then did he kiss her. This time he didn't stop until they were both nearly falling off the bed and short several articles of clothing.
Wait, wait!” the Doctor gasped, breaking away to catch his breath. “My turn. I have something to say.”
Rose was more than ready to stop talking and start having make-up sex, but she sat up and nodded. "Go on, then."
With a very cheeky and very familiar smile, the Doctor asked, "How would you like to get married on Barcelona?"
It took Rose a few seconds. On Barcelona. Not in. On.
Then all at once she figured out what the Doctor and Jack had been talking about when she'd walked in. "Barcelona?" she said with a grin to match the Doctor's. "You mean the planet, not the city?"
"That's the one!"
Rose grappled with the strange sensation of a fire igniting deep within her - a familiar burn that she'd thought she would never feel again. "Is there even a Barcelona-the-planet in this universe?" she wondered, her smile broadening until she was sure she must be glowing.
The Doctor spread his arms, his devil-may-care charm banishing any remaining misgivings Rose might have had, and said, "Let's find out!"
This time, when they kissed, neither one interrupted.
-----
John had always been a light sleeper, and even more so after the war. So he was the first to wake in the early morning when the ground started shaking and a high-pitched mechanical whine rose in the air.
"What in the…" he muttered, trying to roll off the couch. He didn't get very far, though, on account of the man lying on top of him and clutching him like a security blanket. "Get up!" said John, wriggling out of Sherlock's grasp. "Something's happening!"
By the time he had gotten himself upright and Sherlock more or less awake, Dean was thundering his way down the stairs. He finished doing up his fly right as he hit the last step. Castiel followed closely behind.
"What the Hell?" Dean demanded of no one in particular.
"I don't know!" John shouted back.
"Perhaps we should investigate outside,” said Castiel and Sherlock at exactly the same time.
They all tumbled out the front door into the cool morning mist just in time to see Jack's ship - looking only somewhat worse for wear after its rough landing - finish wobbling its way into the air. As they watched, the high whine of the engines reached a crescendo and the whole ship blasted up and out of the atmosphere with an ear-shaking boom and a flash of light.
"I guess Jack didn't feel like waiting around to say goodbye," said John with a shrug, feeling proud of how much he was now able to take in stride.
"What's going on?" said Sam as he stumbled, bleary-eyed, out onto the porch with the others.
Dean grinned. "Looking good, Aurora," he told Sam sarcastically.
"Bite me," said Sam.
"How late did Jack keep you up last night?" Dean prodded.
"We had drinks," said Sam in the voice of a man who knows that he has already lost the argument. "That was it."
Dean relented. "Well, he's gone anyway," he said. "That was his ship blasting off."
Castiel peeked behind Sam, back through the doorway. "Where are Rose and The Doctor?" he asked. "They can't have slept through that."
Then Sam smacked his forehead, remembering. "Oh!" he laughed. "They must have gone with Jack! They were talking about it last night. Well, good for them!" He beamed at the hole Jack's ship had left in the cloud cover.
John boggled. "They've gone?" he said, trying to wrap his head around the idea of leaving the planet with no more than a night to think it over.
"Yeah," said Sam. "The Doctor seemed pretty happy about it, honestly. I guess Rose felt the same way."
"Wow," said Dean, wearing the same bemused expression that was on John's face. "Okay. Well, yeah. Good for them."
"Yeah," said John uncertainly, staring up at the sky where the ship had disappeared.
They stood there for a few seconds more before Dean clapped his hands together, dusting them against each other a few times. "That's that, then. I guess the rest of us had better get going."
Sherlock finally spoke up, not bothering to look away from the sky. "How do you propose we do that?" he said.
The rest of them looked to the empty street, and then at each other.
"Dean," said Castiel, leaning in and speaking quietly, "I believe our respective modes of transportation are still two states away."
Dean looked up at the sky once more, squinting against the slowly-rising sun.
"Son of a bitch."
Part 3
As soon as Dean pushed through the doors to the warehouse, everything that might or might not have been happening outside was forgotten. He followed Sherlock's directions, sprinting through the store. When he saw the trapdoor, he stopped so suddenly that even his heavy boots slid a little on the tile floor.
Just before Dean moved to throw the trapdoor open, it occurred to him that he hadn't bothered to ask either Moriarty or Sherlock whether or not Cas was even still alive. After all, why was he still in the cellar when Sherlock had easily walked out?
The air went out of Dean's lungs. The trapdoor weighed heavy on his arms, and he almost dropped it.
But then Sam was beside him, lifting in unison. A glance and a nod from Sam, and Dean's strength returned to him. Together, they lifted the door open.
A short staircase led down into the dark. And at the bottom lay a huddled figure in a trench coat.
"Cas!" Dean called out as he half-ran-half-leaped down the stairs. "Cas!"
And then, to Dean's infinite and overwhelming relief, the form in the trench coat stirred, looked up at him, squinted, and said, "Dean?"
Dean dropped to his knees. He tried to pull Cas into an embrace, but Cas warded him off with one hand and a fearful cringe. "No!" he gasped. "My arm…"
Sam's voice echoed a little as he called from up above. "Hurry up, Dean. I think something's happening out there."
"Lemme take a look," said Dean. He waited for Cas to nod before pulling out his knife. He slit the sleeve of Cas's coat from wrist to shoulder, and it fell open to reveal a sight that made Dean look away with a soft groan. The arm was mottled red and black, and so swollen that Dean wasn't sure how it had even fit in that coat sleeve. A long splinter of bone protruded from the skin where an elbow should have been.
This wasn't the kind of broken arm that got better with a few weeks in a cast. This wasn't the kind of broken arm that got better, period.
Cas looked down at his own arm, but he didn't start to look scared until he saw Dean's stricken face.
"You're gonna be okay," said Dean automatically. "Come on."
"Careful..." Cas protested as Dean hooked one arm under Cas's legs and another behind his back. He whimpered a little as Dean lifted him, shifting his arm slightly, but then he managed to relax.
Dean carried Cas up into the light, where Sam was standing by the exterior door and peeking out.
"We gotta get out of here," Dean said. "Are we still pinned down by that sniper?"
Sam turned, his face drawn tight. "I think we've got some other problems right now, Dean."
"What…" Dean started to ask, but then he took a look outside and sized up the situation. He quickly pivoted back behind the door and out of sight. "Fuck. Meg?"
"Looks like," said Sam.
"Let me see," said Cas. Dean rotated awkwardly so that Cas could see out of the gap in the door. Even with all the adrenaline of the day, Cas was heavier than Dean had bargained for. So when Cas suddenly said, "Put me down," Dean thought Cas had read his mind.
"It's okay, Cas, I've got you," Dean said.
"Dean," said Cas, looking into Dean's eyes with an intensity that reminded Dean of when Cas had been an angel, "Put me down."
-----
It had once been such a simple thing for Castiel to push aside the pain of physical injuries and fight even when he was broken and bleeding. Back then, after all, he had just been wearing a vessel. Something to be used up, put back together, and ultimately cast aside.
But now he was more or less human. He lived in his body. It dictated what he was and was not able to do. And as he had soon learned, being in pain seriously interfered with even the most basic functions. Like standing.
So Castiel was very glad when Dean put him down on his feet, and he managed to stay on them.
"What's the plan?" said Sam, eyeing him uncertainly. Both Sam and Dean had their hands out, ready to catch Castiel if he were to fall. Castiel wondered how bad he looked, that they were so worried.
"Whatever happens," Castiel said, "I need you both to stay here, out of sight."
"Like hell that's gonna happen," Dean scoffed. "We can help. We've got salt rounds, and there's gotta be some iron around here…"
But Sam pointed out, "We can't risk killing anybody. Besides, if we run out of here shooting, the sniper will take us out."
"I can handle this by myself," Castiel insisted.
Dean's face reddened in anger, but his eyes were wide with fear. "You can't even walk!" he snapped.
To prove him wrong, Castiel took a step and closed the gap between them, looking straight into his eyes. "You're going to have to trust me," he said.
"Cas, wait!" said Dean, but Castiel was already edging out the door and back onto the crowded street, leaving Dean and Sam hidden in the shadows of the warehouse entryway.
Dean had been right. Cas couldn't walk. Every tiny movement of his body seemed to shift the pieces of the bones of his arm against each other, making him want to retch from pain. His head felt heavy, as did his legs, and the ground seemed to tilt under him.
But he had a job to do, so he found a way to shuffle slowly forward, keeping his arm as still as possible by his side. Meg's back was to him, and Castiel could tell that she was speaking though her voice sounded very far away.
What did not sound far away was the gunshot. It happened too quickly for Castiel to hope to have stopped it, and suddenly Sherlock was on the ground.
No, not Sherlock. The other one, John, with Sherlock kneeling beside him. Castiel's vision was closing in around him as he slid his feet, following Meg as she approached the fallen pair. She pointed her gun. And though Castiel was closing the distance as fast as he could, he could tell that he would not reach her in time.
To his right, there was a blur of color and motion. Rose launched herself toward Meg, a ribbon of blood flowing from her temple. She threw herself on Meg's gun-arm. She managed to wrench it up into the air just as the shot was fired. The bullet went spinning away harmlessly. Meg almost seemed amused by the useless display of bravery as Rose hooked her arms under the Doctor's skinny shoulders and held on with all her might.
Rose looked at Castiel as she held Meg pinned. And with just a glance, Castiel understood that Rose was not throwing herself into danger pointlessly. Though she could not possibly know what Castiel had planned or whether it had a prayer of working, she trusted him enough to try and buy him some time.
"Hurry!" Rose shouted as Meg finally realized that Castiel was sneaking up behind her.
Castiel closed the last several feet at a sprint. Meg was livid, and he knew that they had less than a second before she broke free of Rose's grip and killed them all. He reached out with his only working arm and pressed his hand to Meg's forehead.
Castiel was, for all intents and purposes, human. He had been so for over a year. He lived as a human, fought as a human, got sick and healed and loved and did laundry as a human. But every once in a while he managed to draw on the last of his grace and call up a minor miracle. So far he had only managed it a handful of times. It had been difficult, but when it came down to life or death he always came through.
Of course, he had never managed anything as taxing as smiting a demon. And he had never tried it while he was in such bad shape that he could barely stand. But that couldn't really be helped.
He reached deep within himself, drawing on all the reserves he had left, and poured them out into his arm, his hand, into the Doctor's body, trying to burn Meg out. The effort of it made his head swim. His vision blurred. But it was working. Light stabbed its way out of Meg's eyes and mouth as her vessel was flooded with angelic power, paralyzing her. But Castiel could feel the reservoir of his grace dwindling. It would not be enough. Not enough to kill her.
So he changed his tactic, even as his knees buckled underneath him and his vision narrowed down to a pinpoint. Instead of killing her or sending her back to Hell, he cast her out.
The Doctor's mouth snapped open, and Meg gushed out of his mouth and up into the sky. The black wisp mingled with the low clouds. She was gone in seconds. She would find a new vessel sooner or later, but for the moment she was banished.
Castiel did not see Meg's escape. His hand was already falling to his side, his eyes already closing. He was senseless before he even hit the ground.
-----
Sherlock noticed the fact that Castiel was using some sort of supernatural means to force the demon from the Doctor's body. He noticed the Doctor slumping into Rose's arms, and Rose quickly turning her armlock into a warm embrace. He noticed Castiel hitting the dirt, and Dean and Sam racing from their hiding place to his side. But all of that information simply filed itself in his brain under, "I am no longer about to be shot in the face," because it was very difficult to muster up real concern for anything besides the fact that John's blood was still pulsing out from under his hands at an alarming rate.
"John," he said, his voice surprisingly calm. For once, he could not seem to put two thoughts together into a coherent conclusion. The cogs of his mind spun uselessly, their teeth never meshing, but at least it didn't show in his voice. "Don't move. We have to try to minimize the blood loss until we can get help…"
John placed his hands over Sherlock's, but his grip was weak and his skin was pale. "Sherlock," was all he said, but the gentleness and regret in his voice was enough. There was no minimizing the arterial hemorrhage that was clearly underway. And there was no help to be had.
Sherlock looked up. There was a dazed quality to his vision, as if he had just taken a good hit upside the head. Rose and Jack were keeping the Doctor on his feet, and Dean and Sam were propping Castiel up as he came to. They looked on in horror as the red pool around Sherlock's knees continued to grow.
"Do something," Sherlock ordered, his voice still unsettlingly calm. Then, when no one answered him, all the calm left him at once. His face grew hot and he bellowed, "Do something! Any of you! What good are your powers and your magic and your technology if you can't save him?"
The Winchesters looked on with something like pity. They'd dealt with enough gunshot wounds to know which ones you don't get up from. The Doctor kept shaking his head, tears pooling in his eyes as he said over and over, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"With the vortex manipulator, I could get him to a hospital," Jack offered, but even the suggestion sounded futile. A wound like this would have been fatal even if it had occurred in an actual emergency room. Here, now, it was already too late.
When Sherlock looked down again he found John's head fallen back, his eyes closed, his face ashen. Sherlock moved one hand, dripping with blood, to John's throat, and though there was a pulse there it was thready and weak. To his horror, Sherlock understood that the only option left open to him was to kneel here in the dust, his fingers pressed to John's neck, waiting for that pulse to slow and finally stop.
But then a voice spoke, shrill with panic and emotion and the thrill of sudden realization, "NANOGENES!" All eyes went to its source: Rose, who was standing with her arms spread and her eyes wide, waiting for someone to acknowledge her idea. Everyone stared blankly.
Except for the Doctor, who regained some of the brightness in his eyes as he realized. "Jack's ship!" he said. "It's the same one he had when we met him in 1941!"
"Nanogenes and all!" Rose finished the thought for him. She turned to Jack for confirmation.
"It'd work," said Jack, nodding. "But my ship is back where I crashed it, two states away."
Then, all at once, Jack, Rose, and the Doctor turned around to look at Moriarty where he stood, still grinning as he watched the drama unfold, still quietly holding the vortex manipulator, still confidently protected by his hidden sniper.
"What are all of you even talking about?" Sam demanded.
But Sherlock had no need to ask for explanations. Even if he had no way of knowing what nanogenes were, his companions seemed confident that they could save John. And that was enough. Any ray of hope, no matter how incomprehensible or remote, was better than sitting here and waiting for the end. And if they needed the vortex manipulator to make this plan work, then Sherlock would get it for them.
John's handgun lay on the street where he'd dropped it, just outside the spreading puddle of blood. Sherlock snatched it up and snapped the safety off.
Moriarty spoke for the first time since before Meg had fired her gun. "Really?" he said, sounding torn. "I'd rather not have my man shoot you, but if you start threatening me then I won't have a choice."
"I'm not threatening you," said Sherlock as he tilted the gun upright and placed the barrel beneath his own chin, "And I don't think you'd have me shot. Not for any reason. In fact, I think you'll do whatever it takes to keep me alive."
Moriarty rolled his eyes, but Sherlock could detect a hint of real fear in his expression. "Don't you think that's a little melodramatic?" he said.
"Not if it works," Sherlock snapped. "Now, give us the vortex manipulator, and I'll let myself live."
"You think you can hold yourself hostage?" chuckled Moriarty, panic creeping into his laugh. "Do it! Pull the trigger! It'll save me the trouble of killing you later on!"
Sherlock moved his pointer finger, letting it rest lightly on the trigger. The twitch of Moriarty's eye was enough to tell him that he had already won. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I think Meg had it right. Whatever you're planning to do with that device, you want me around to appreciate it. Enough so that, if I weren't around, there would be no point. To any of it."
"You're bluffing," said Moriarty.
John's heartbeat was slowing. He was running out of time. Perhaps he already had. That blind desperation was evident in Sherlock's voice as he rasped, "You know I'm not."
And perhaps it was trite and overdramatic - suicide in the face of bereavement was more characteristic of the heroine of a romance novel than of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, self-proclaimed sociopath (even though anyone with a passing knowledge of sociopathy knew that it was a lie.) But in that moment, with John's heart stuttering out its last beats, all Sherlock could think about was how very much his life had changed since John had come into it. How very lonely he had been before, without even realizing it. And how unbearable it would be to return to London alone and live in his flat alone and eat meals alone and solve crimes alone and go to sleep alone and wake up alone while John's blood fertilized the weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk at this abandoned corner of the United States.
In that one desperate, frantic moment, if John could not be saved, then pulling the trigger did seem like the simpler and less-painful of Sherlock's options.
And later, much later, when asked, Sherlock would insist that it had all been a bluff. But Moriarty must have seen that spark of truth in Sherlock's face as he said the words. He must have sensed that then, at that one moment in time, Sherlock Holmes would have thrown aside all logic and detachment to die beside his companion. He must have, because with a distasteful grimace and a deep, disappointed sigh, he pulled the vortex manipulator out of his pocket and lobbed it to Jack.
"If you get it to work," Moriarty called to Sherlock, "And you don't try to use it against me, I'll be very disappointed." With that, he finally turned and walked toward his car.
For the barest fraction of a second, Sherlock wondered how many people he was condemning to death by allowing Moriarty to escape. How many schemes did Moriarty still have up his sleeve? How much trouble would he make for Sherlock in the future? But there was nothing to be done as long as the sniper was still in place, and besides, none of it meant anything if John didn't survive.
Sherlock removed the gun from its location under his chin and barked at Jack, "Back to the ship. Now!"
-----
The Doctor was dubious about the vortex manipulator's ability to transport eight people at once, even over a distance as relatively short as the thousand-or-so miles between the abandoned store and the field where Jack's ship still lay in its crater. But they made it. Castiel was semi-conscious, on his feet only with the help of Dean and Sam. Jack was already diving into the wreckage of his ship, trying to activate the nanogenes. Sherlock didn't appear to have moved from where he knelt on the ground, still clutching tightly at John as though he could hold him on this side of death with nothing more than the strength of his hands.
John. The Doctor had been watching when it happened. He had felt his finger squeeze the trigger, even as he resisted with all his might. He had seen what was about to happen - that John would throw himself in the path of the bullet - before Sherlock or even Meg had noticed the determination on John's face. Perhaps the Doctor was simply over-familiar with the look of someone who is about to sacrifice their life for someone they love. After all, he had seen it so many times on so many faces. He'd worn it a few times himself.
The Doctor felt pressure on his hand and looked down to find Rose holding it. Blood streaked her face and dripped off her chin onto her shirt. He had been watching for that, too, and his stomach did a fresh twist of remorse at the memory of the shock that had run up his arm as the butt of the gun had hit her face. "Doctor," Rose said, squeezing his hand again. "It wasn't you. It wasn't your fault."
He cast his eyes down, unable to look at her. Rose had grown. She had grown from a shop girl into the savior of humankind twice over. And meanwhile, the Doctor had only gone backwards from the kindness and contentment he had once enjoyed back to the pride and ruthlessness he had learned in wartime. He had diminished, in Rose's eyes and in his own. Where once he had been a protector of humans, now he needed protection, and people needed protection from him.
Rose was right. None of this was the Doctor's fault, because there was no Doctor in this world. Only a cheap copy that could not hope to live up to the original.
"People?" said Jack, poking his head out of the ship. "We have a problem."
All traces of Sherlock's former poise and detachment were gone as he shouted in reply, "Fix it!"
"Hey, I'm a rogue Time Agent, not a mechanic!" Jack said helplessly. "The nanogenes aren't deploying. They must have been damaged in the crash!"
Jack looked at the Doctor. Then, one by one, so did everyone else.
The Doctor let go of Rose's hand and took two halting steps backward.
"Come on, Doc," said Dean. "You fixed the vortex motivator in about two seconds. This should be a snap."
The Doctor took another step backwards, retreating from the eyes boring holes in him with their expectation. "I can't," he whispered, softly enough that he didn't think anyone would hear.
But Rose heard, or she guessed what he had said, because she matched him step for step and caught him by the collar of his jacket. "You can," she insisted. "You're the only one who can."
The Doctor was finding it very difficult to breathe. He said, "If the nanogenes were destroyed, then there's nothing I can do. They all expect something of me, and I'll just let them down."
"You've never let me down," said Rose without hesitation. "So many times it's all come down to you and, if there was ever a way to win, you found it. You always did."
"He did," he corrected. "The Doctor. The proper Doctor. But I'm not him. I'm just something that was accidentally left over, and I can't. I can't do what he did. I'm not the Doctor."
In the silence that followed, Sherlock's voice spoke very quietly and evenly. Even the anger had gone out of it now, leaving nothing but emptiness. "His heart has stopped," he said.
Before the Doctor could react, Rose put her hands on either side of his head and kissed him. It was the sort of kiss that obliterated everything, the sort that flipped the reset switch in his head. The sort she hadn't given him since that day at Bad Wolf Bay.
"You're my Doctor," she said, and though her voice shook from the tears that were threatening to spill out of her eyes, it rang with truth. "I wouldn't have any Doctor but you. And if you can't give me one more day where everybody lives, then please, please at least try!"
And then the Doctor felt something spark within him. Because even knowing the odds, even knowing all of the Doctor's weaknesses, Rose still had faith in him.
He was not the Doctor. But for Rose, he would try to be.
He fairly dove into the ship beside Jack. "Show me," he demanded.
Jack pointed at the opening that should have been releasing the nanogenes by now. "They come out of there," he said, "But it's not working."
The Doctor sprang onto the mechanism, peering and poking at it like a monkey. "If only I had my sonic screwdriver!" he lamented. "Oh, never mind. This piece here is supposed to be over here… and this piece is completely broken… and something is missing from here…"
"So it's shot all to hell?" Jack tried to interpret.
"HAHA!" the Doctor suddenly shouted, "No, it's only the delivery mechanism that's broken. The reservoir with the nanogenes in it is quite safe behind the bulkhead!"
Rose hovered just outside the ship. "Can you get to them without your sonic screwdriver?" she asked anxiously.
But the Doctor was already reaching for Jack's belt. "While a sonic screwdriver is superior in every way," he said, "Sometimes the situation calls for something a little more… blast-y." With that, he pointed the sonic blaster that he had stolen from Jack's holster at the broken and blocked portal, and fired.
Sparks and bits of metal rained down on Jack and the Doctor. A moment later, a flood of golden points of light cascaded out of the hole the Doctor had opened in the ship's interior wall. Out they flowed, more and more of them, the entire ship's supply escaping all at once. And in the midst of them was the Doctor, running along their stream. He whooped and shouted in triumph as he chased them out of the confines of the ship and toward the people that needed them.
First they found Rose, who was nearest. They buzzed around her head like a halo, and the oozing gash at her temple closed and disappeared.
A larger portion flowed out to where Sam was helping Dean to hold up Castiel. When Dean saw the cloud of nanogenes approaching him, he started to flinch out of their path, but with one look at Cas he changed his mind and stood fast. The nanogenes concentrated themselves around Castiel's arm. In seconds, the horrific swelling deflated until the arm was its normal size. The bruising faded. When Castiel's elbow twisted its way back into its normal position, the protruding splinter of bone sliding back beneath the skin with a wet sucking sound, Dean looked like he was going to be sick.
But Castiel's face showed nothing but relief as he blinked his way back to full consciousness. "It's okay, Dean," he said as soon as he noticed Dean's uncomfortable expression. "It doesn't hurt."
"Good," Dean answered, his grimace fading into a smile as Castiel's shattered arm realigned itself and became whole again. "Good. Can you stand on your own?"
Castiel nodded and took a step, unsupported.
As soon as Dean was sure that Castiel was steady on his feet, he began swatting at his own shoulder, chasing the congregating nanogenes away from the handprint-shaped scar there. "Get out, you little bastards!" he muttered. "I don't need you to heal that!"
Meanwhile, the largest portion of the nanogenes were swirling around John's lifeless form. They circled around him like a vortex, working furiously against the pull of death. There was movement beneath the bloodstain on John's shirt and, slowly, the bullet nosed its way through the wound and fell into the dirt. In its wake, the flesh knit together and the hole closed. But John did not move, and the color did not return to his face.
Sherlock stared into that pale, motionless face, heedless of the fact that he was kneeling in the eye of a hurricane of nanogenes. He watched with a patient sort of intensity. But John's eyes did not open.
"Come on!" the Doctor groaned quietly from where he watched at the entrance to the ship. Jack stood beside him, and Rose just past them. Dean, Sam, and Castiel had fallen quiet as they turned to see the fate of their group's final casualty.
Every one of them held their breath, and wondered if perhaps they were too late.
Please, God, let me live.
That was the thought that had run through John's head in Afghanistan when he'd felt the bullet slam into his shoulder, sending him reeling into the dust. It was an understandable sentiment. After all, one is allowed to think of one's own wellbeing when one has just been shot.
But this time, when he felt the dull impact in his gut, he found himself thinking, Please, God, let him live, and if I have to die then I suppose I can't ask for a fairer trade.
He'd closed his eyes with finality and a clarity of purpose that he hadn't felt since before he'd gone to war.
So he was somewhat surprised to find himself opening them again.
There was no pain. However, the sensation of his insides knitting themselves back together and his capillaries re-filling with blood all at once was not exactly a pleasant one. The sky above him was too bright - brighter than the one he'd closed his eyes to. It took him a few moments to adjust to the light, but then he recognized the face hovering over him.
It wasn't the first time John had seen Sherlock show concern. It had been a long time since he had stopped thinking of Sherlock as an unfeeling machine, since he had realized just how affected Sherlock could be when John was in danger. But still, John never thought he would see an expression on Sherlock's face like the one he was seeing now.
For just a moment after John opened his eyes, Sherlock looked weak. Not angry, not desperate, and not disappointed - John was used to seeing Sherlock in any one of those moods. But weakness was not something that Sherlock had ever shown lightly, or, indeed, at all. It transformed his entire face, making him look more like a frightened child than the jaded detective that he often tried to portray. He looked like a man who had hit what he thought was rock bottom so many times that he was blindsided when he finally, truly stood to lose everything.
And in the next moment, it was gone, buried beneath Sherlock's usual cool superiority. But John had seen it, and that was enough.
"What happened?" John coughed out, finding his throat dry and his lungs sore.
Sherlock was as matter-of-fact as ever as he replied, "You died."
Only then did John look past Sherlock's face to see the tornado of lights twisting around both their bodies, filling the sky and illuminating everything in gold. As John watched, the vortex slowed and dissolved as the lights rose higher and higher into the air, dispersing into the clouds above. So even though there were more pressing questions he could have asked, John couldn't help but point after them and shout, "What on God's Earth are those?"
In the next moment he was stunned into silence as Sherlock, Sherlock who avoided physical shows of affection as if everyone but him were a leper, pulled John upright and into a bone-crushing embrace. His skinny arms were stronger than they looked, and they didn't loosen their hold until John brought his own arms up to return the gesture.
Sherlock's voice shook slightly with helpless, relieved laughter as he answered, "They're clearly some sort of biologically engineered DNA-specific healing device, John, do try to keep up."
-----
Once everyone had caught their breath, they agreed that they all ought to get moving immediately. Rose and the Doctor had a monster of a report to write up for Torchwood, and John vehemently wanted to go home. Sherlock muttered out his disappointment that he'd let Moriarty escape. Dean and Sam mentioned that they needed to check in with Bobby about the fact that Meg was at large and pissed off. Castiel reminded them that she was also probably wearing a new face by now. Jack explained that, while he would like nothing better than to stick around for an orgy (everyone was invited), now that he had his vortex manipulator back he really needed to get moving on finding a replacement for his crashed ship.
But in the end, they wandered back to the farmhouse across the road instead of dispersing. They were too tired to do more.
"But I can transport us anywhere in the world!" Jack protested, pointing at his now-functional vortex manipulator. "Five-star hotels! Palaces! At the very least I can find us a nicer derelict house to squat in!"
But Dean and Castiel were on their way upstairs in search of a bedroom, John was making himself comfortable on the couch, and Rose was rummaging in the dusty cupboards and closets in search of blankets. No one looked like they were terribly interested in moving.
Sam put his hand on Jack's arm, well above the wriststrap of the vortex manipulator. "Leave 'em be," he suggested.
Jack shrugged and obeyed.
-----
While everyone bustled around him, Sherlock stood against the jamb of the front door of the house, uncharacteristically still. Eventually the room quieted as Rose went into the basement in search of more supplies and Sam led Jack around the corner and into the kitchen. The sound of doors opening and closing came from upstairs, and finally even that noise ceased as Dean and Castiel apparently found a suitable room. The Doctor was nowhere to be found.
Besides Sherlock, the only one left in the main room of the house was John, who had managed to make himself more or less comfortable on the awful, rotting couch and looked like he was about to fall asleep.
And perhaps it was some residual weakness from his earlier scare, or maybe he simply did not wish to see John's eyes close again, even in sleep. Or maybe, for once, Sherlock Holmes actually desired some human contact. In any case, Sherlock found himself crossing the room and worming his way onto the couch.
John lifted his head when he felt hands on his ankles. Sherlock slid onto the end of the couch, draping John’s legs over his lap. John lifted an eyebrow. The couch was too small to be comfortable for two grown men, and it was clearly infested with all manner of creatures that only Sherlock knew the names of. "There are other places to sleep, you know," he said.
"None better than here," Sherlock replied, resting his hands on John's knees.
A slight, befuddled smile, and after a moment it looked like John was beginning to drift off to sleep again. It was only then that Sherlock noticed that John was still wearing his same jumper and coat, each with a bullet hole at the level of his stomach, both soaked to varying degrees with sticky, drying blood. Even knowing that the wound beneath was gone, the sight made Sherlock feel as though his skin were crawling, especially since John's eyes were fluttering closed in an eerie reverse of his earlier revival.
"Take your clothes off," Sherlock blurted out.
John's eyes snapped back open. "Excuse me?" he said weakly.
Sherlock shrugged out of his long, black coat, leaving himself in only the purple collared shirt beneath. He offered his coat to John. "Your clothing will become more uncomfortable as the blood dries," he said. "Wear this instead."
John stared for a few seconds, but then he shifted side to side and seemed to finally notice the unpleasant sensation of his bloody clothes sticking to his skin. He sat up with a grateful nod and took the coat from Sherlock's hand. "Thanks," he said as he stood and began to strip out of his ruined coat.
It wasn't strange that Sherlock watched as John peeled off his wet, stained layers one by one. After all, they shared a flat. It was hardly the first time he had seen John bare-chested. But this time, he found himself unable to stop gauging his own reaction. This time, he was acutely aware of the sudden realization to which he had come while bent over John's dying form, feeling as though he were also dying in his soul. What he felt for John was not friendship, or camaraderie, or even brotherhood as he had tried to convince himself for so long. It was love.
But love as Sherlock understood it was supposed to come hand in hand with certain urges. Like Dean and Castiel as they had raced upstairs, their eyes dilated and their blood racing, shouldn't Sherlock have experienced some uncontrollable physical longing? Even with John mere feet in front of him, using the remains of his jumper to wipe blood off of his flanks, his skin moving beautifully over his musculature, Sherlock felt no desire to reach out and touch. No desire to hold and claim. Only an overwhelming need to keep that body safe and whole, a worthy vessel for the perfect soul within.
John pulled Sherlock's coat on. It was too long on his torso and too tight around his shoulders, but John happily reclined back on his place on the couch, draped his legs back over Sherlock's lap, and wrapped the coat tighter around himself.
Only then did John happen to look up and notice the unusual, vulnerable intensity with which Sherlock was staring at him. "Sherlock?" he said, alarmed.
Sherlock rarely found himself at a loss for words. Usually he was able to formulate entire essays and diatribes of publishable quality in his head, only to smugly discard them without giving them voice, content in his own intellectual superiority and feeling no obligation to let anyone else in on his thought process. So it was somewhat disconcerting to have something in his head that he desperately wanted to explain, but that he could not seem to organize into coherent sentences.
"I'm very glad that you're not dead," he finally said, disappointed at the utter inadequacy of it.
John's look of consternation slowly morphed into a bemused smile. Then, in a way that made Sherlock wonder if perhaps John had understood him perfectly, he reached up and put his hand on the back of Sherlock's neck. He pulled Sherlock down beside him. "Me, too," was all John said.
And there, with his legs dangling uncomfortably over the edge of the dilapidated couch and the reassuring rhythm of John's heart audible beneath his coat, Sherlock was finally able to slow his mind enough to fall asleep.
-----
Dean and Castiel had discovered long ago that sex of the "I-can't-believe-we're-not-dead" variety was the best sex, and they had been taking advantage of it ever since. As soon as they'd found a room containing a bed that looked like it might not collapse under their weight, they tumbled inside without even bothering to close the door properly.
Cas's bloodstained coat fell to the floor. His t-shirt went next, and then Dean's. Their fingers dug into shoulders and backs as they staggered toward the bed locked in an embrace, desperately trying to pull their bodies into one another as if the warmth of skin on skin was the only thing convincing each of them that the other was real.
Their mouths were locked together, but Cas pulled away to latch onto Dean's neck, sucking bruises into his skin. While Dean grabbed at Cas's hair in a silent plea for more, Cas's hands fumbled with the zipper of Dean's pants. He wasn't fast enough, and Dean's hands dropped to cover Cas's, eager to help.
But instead of undoing the button and yanking his zipper down, Dean froze. It took Cas several seconds to realize that Dean's lustful panting had slowed. "What's wrong?" Cas asked, his lips still pressed to Dean's neck.
One by one, Dean's fingers laced themselves onto Cas's. Dean stretched their arms out - his own right and Cas's left - like mirror images. When Cas pulled back, he found Dean staring down at Cas's arm almost as if he were surprised to see it there with its unmarked skin, every bone and muscle and sinew in its place. Dean's fingers tightened as he raised Cas's arm, watching as each joint bent smoothly and effortlessly.
Cas was silent as Dean shifted his grip, turning Cas's hand over to kiss each fingertip in turn. He pressed a kiss to the center of Cas's palm, to his wrist, to the inside of his elbow. He worked his way up to Cas's shoulder, his lips gentle as if he were trying to pull out the pain that was no longer there.
"I'm sorry," Dean whispered, the depth of his self-loathing resonating in his voice.
And, because it wouldn't have done any good to explain that it hadn't been Dean's fault, Cas replied, "I should hope so. You completely ruined my overcoat."
The answer was so unexpected that Dean blinked rapidly, his head jerking up. When he saw the glint in Cas's eye, he wondered when the hell Cas had learned how to make a decent joke. Dean laughed as he used his grip on Cas's arm to twirl him once and toss him onto the bed.
As Dean kicked off his pants and crawled on top of Cas, he promised, "I'll get you a new one."
-----
As Sam slumped wearily into one of the rickety chairs in the dusty kitchen, he said, "What a day. I could really use a drink." He glanced at the cupboards around him. They didn't look promising.
"Got you covered," said Jack cheerily, sitting beside Sam and pulling a strange-shaped flask out of the pocket of his coat.
Sam took it gratefully. "You know, you're not so bad." He took a sip, coughed, gave the flask a suspicious glare, and pushed it back across the table toward Jack.
"Admit it. I'm growing on you," said Jack before chugging three large gulps from the flask with a satisfied sigh.
"Like a tumor," Sam agreed.
Jack pushed the flask back toward Sam who, after a moment's hesitation, visibly screwed up his courage and took another drink. "Today wasn't so bad," said Jack.
Sam coughed on his drink again. "We all almost got killed. Multiple times."
"I mean before that," said Jack. "Bouncing around the globe. I know you weren't exactly happy about it, but you handled it a lot better than some people would have. You'd make a good traveling companion."
"I can't tell if you're hitting on me or not," Sam admitted, shoving the flask back away from himself.
"Always, as a rule," said Jack. "But more to the point, I'm inviting you to come with me when I go."
Sam was somewhat taken aback. Then he laughed. "You're joking."
Jack looked offended. "Why would you think that?" he said. "It's lonely out there by myself, and for once I'm not just talking about sex. I could show you the stars." He almost managed to not make it sound cheesy.
So even though Sam was ready to dismiss him out of hand, he hesitated and asked, "What's it like?"
"It's like everything," Jack replied. "Every place; every time. It's anything you want it to be."
Sam thought about it. For about two seconds, he thought about it. "Nah," said Sam. He took another drink from Jack's flask, and this time he kept a straight face. "I've got enough weirdness going on right here. Besides, Dean wouldn't want to leave his car behind."
"Fair enough," said Jack, taking back his flask. "Looks like I'm on my own again, and this time without so much as a ship to my name."
A voice replied from the doorway, making both Sam and Jack jump, "At least you don't have to worry about that." The voice belonged to the Doctor. He was leaning against the doorframe, rubbing his arms to warm himself up.
"Where've you been?" Sam asked.
The Doctor pointed at Jack. "Fixing your ship," he said. "It really didn't take much work. The Chula really knew how to make ships last. Most of the damage was superficial, and there was no outer hull breach. It's not pretty, but it'll still get you from place to place."
Jack immediately jumped up, grabbed the Doctor's head in both his hands, and planted a kiss on his forehead. "Thanks, Doctor! I'll bet you're a handy guy to have around," he said, almost sounding sincere for a moment before he offered the Doctor his flask with a wink. Doctor opened the flask, sniffed it, and quickly closed it again. "I don't suppose you have a clone you could lend me?" Jack added.
The Doctor laughed. "That's a long story. A very long story. The short answer being: wouldn't you prefer the real thing?"
-----
Rose staggered back up the basement steps, carrying an armful of moth-eaten blankets.
The first thing she saw when she reached the top of the stairs was John and Sherlock curled up on the couch together. Both of them were snoring softly.
With a little smile on her face, she gently draped one of the blankets over both of them and tucked it into the couch cushions so it wouldn't fall off.
Next she rolled up some bed sheets and a heavy blanket and brought them upstairs for Dean and Castiel. It was quiet there at the top of the stairs. When she looked down the hallway, every door was closed except for the last one on the right, which was standing open by a couple of inches.
Rose crept up to the door and was about to knock on it when, through the crack, she caught a flash of something in the darkness. An impression of rhythmic movement, of hands twisted into sheets, of lips whispering low and fast against glistening skin.
She left the blankets in a neat pile just outside the door and tiptoed away.
Back downstairs, the only signs of life were coming from the kitchen, where a hushed conversation was punctuated by occasional laughter. Rose went to investigate. At the table sat Sam, Jack, and the Doctor. They were passing around a flask.
"Then it's decided," Jack was saying. His cheeks were pink, and he was swaying slightly.
"Not quite," said the Doctor. "I still have to talk to… Rose!" Mid-sentence, he looked up and noticed Rose in the doorway. His beaming smile was infectious, and Rose felt the corners of her own lips curl upwards involuntarily.
"Am I interrupting something?" she asked.
"Not at all!" said Jack expansively, offering her the flask. "Join us!"
The Doctor quickly jumped up and intercepted Rose before she could take the flask from Jack. "Well, looks like it's time to call it a night! See you boys in the morning! Don't have too much fun without me!"
They left Sam and Jack to their miniature party and found a ground-level bedroom. As soon as they were inside with the door closed tightly behind them, Rose spun the Doctor around and silenced his, "Rose, I need to ask you someth…" with a kiss. He didn't seem to mind the interruption. Her hands ran up his chest and grabbed him by the collar. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. They both lost their balance at the same time, and they stumbled until the backs of the Doctor's legs hit the edge of the bed and they fell onto the mattress in a heap.
Rose propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at the Doctor's face. "Wait," she said. "Me first."
The Doctor nodded, waiting.
But instead of speaking again right away, she stared down at him, contemplating. He stared up, patient. Finally she shifted so that she could brush the back of her fingers along his jaw. "We're not perfect, are we?" she said quietly.
He seemed to sense that she didn't want him to answer, so he stayed quiet.
"It used to be so easy, being with you," Rose went on. "And now it's not. I was confused for a while, because I kept expecting it to go back to the way it was, but it's not supposed to, is it? It's supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be work."
Slowly, Rose leaned down until her forehead rested against the Doctor's. "You're worth it," she said resolutely.
"Does that mean you haven't given up on me yet?" said the Doctor softly.
A smile filled her face. "Never."
They stayed like that a moment, still and quiet, until the Doctor stammered, "I'll be better. I mean, I'll try. I'll try and be more like him. The proper Doctor."
"Try and be better," Rose replied. "Always. But you are the proper Doctor, and you don't need to be anyone but yourself."
He kissed her then, pulling her that last few inches down until their lips touched and sealed together, arms weaving around each other, clumsy and desperate. When they finally broke apart the Doctor, caught up in the moment with his hands tangled in Rose's hair, begged once more, "Marry me."
And this time, Rose replied without hesitation, "Yes."
She kind of expected him to pull her down for another kiss, but instead the Doctor looked dazed and gave a little, undignified giggle of delight. And only then did he kiss her. This time he didn't stop until they were both nearly falling off the bed and short several articles of clothing.
Wait, wait!” the Doctor gasped, breaking away to catch his breath. “My turn. I have something to say.”
Rose was more than ready to stop talking and start having make-up sex, but she sat up and nodded. "Go on, then."
With a very cheeky and very familiar smile, the Doctor asked, "How would you like to get married on Barcelona?"
It took Rose a few seconds. On Barcelona. Not in. On.
Then all at once she figured out what the Doctor and Jack had been talking about when she'd walked in. "Barcelona?" she said with a grin to match the Doctor's. "You mean the planet, not the city?"
"That's the one!"
Rose grappled with the strange sensation of a fire igniting deep within her - a familiar burn that she'd thought she would never feel again. "Is there even a Barcelona-the-planet in this universe?" she wondered, her smile broadening until she was sure she must be glowing.
The Doctor spread his arms, his devil-may-care charm banishing any remaining misgivings Rose might have had, and said, "Let's find out!"
This time, when they kissed, neither one interrupted.
-----
John had always been a light sleeper, and even more so after the war. So he was the first to wake in the early morning when the ground started shaking and a high-pitched mechanical whine rose in the air.
"What in the…" he muttered, trying to roll off the couch. He didn't get very far, though, on account of the man lying on top of him and clutching him like a security blanket. "Get up!" said John, wriggling out of Sherlock's grasp. "Something's happening!"
By the time he had gotten himself upright and Sherlock more or less awake, Dean was thundering his way down the stairs. He finished doing up his fly right as he hit the last step. Castiel followed closely behind.
"What the Hell?" Dean demanded of no one in particular.
"I don't know!" John shouted back.
"Perhaps we should investigate outside,” said Castiel and Sherlock at exactly the same time.
They all tumbled out the front door into the cool morning mist just in time to see Jack's ship - looking only somewhat worse for wear after its rough landing - finish wobbling its way into the air. As they watched, the high whine of the engines reached a crescendo and the whole ship blasted up and out of the atmosphere with an ear-shaking boom and a flash of light.
"I guess Jack didn't feel like waiting around to say goodbye," said John with a shrug, feeling proud of how much he was now able to take in stride.
"What's going on?" said Sam as he stumbled, bleary-eyed, out onto the porch with the others.
Dean grinned. "Looking good, Aurora," he told Sam sarcastically.
"Bite me," said Sam.
"How late did Jack keep you up last night?" Dean prodded.
"We had drinks," said Sam in the voice of a man who knows that he has already lost the argument. "That was it."
Dean relented. "Well, he's gone anyway," he said. "That was his ship blasting off."
Castiel peeked behind Sam, back through the doorway. "Where are Rose and The Doctor?" he asked. "They can't have slept through that."
Then Sam smacked his forehead, remembering. "Oh!" he laughed. "They must have gone with Jack! They were talking about it last night. Well, good for them!" He beamed at the hole Jack's ship had left in the cloud cover.
John boggled. "They've gone?" he said, trying to wrap his head around the idea of leaving the planet with no more than a night to think it over.
"Yeah," said Sam. "The Doctor seemed pretty happy about it, honestly. I guess Rose felt the same way."
"Wow," said Dean, wearing the same bemused expression that was on John's face. "Okay. Well, yeah. Good for them."
"Yeah," said John uncertainly, staring up at the sky where the ship had disappeared.
They stood there for a few seconds more before Dean clapped his hands together, dusting them against each other a few times. "That's that, then. I guess the rest of us had better get going."
Sherlock finally spoke up, not bothering to look away from the sky. "How do you propose we do that?" he said.
The rest of them looked to the empty street, and then at each other.
"Dean," said Castiel, leaning in and speaking quietly, "I believe our respective modes of transportation are still two states away."
Dean looked up at the sky once more, squinting against the slowly-rising sun.
"Son of a bitch."