Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The night was calm with the sounds of crickets chirping in the warm June air as a warm breeze ruffled the grass they lay in, but the man in the black coat did not care about any of it. He moved silently out of habit, not for fear of disturbing his fellow creatures of the night. No, this was a man who knew the value of always having all of the elements on his side, including the first and most important of all: surprise. Always stay one step ahead. Always plan for every possibility. And never tell anyone everything.

That was how a spider maintained the center of his web.

He strode up to the door of an old dirty motel on the side of the road and gave it a knock, taking a deep breath and beginning to let himself sink into character. It was never hard, and no one ever noticed. Well, most people never noticed, anyway; the ordinary ones never noticed. Those silly ordinary people. The useless and weak. By the time the man heard footsteps from within the room beyond, scrambling to see who it was and pausing when they realized they did not recognize his face, the man had temporarily disappeared into the identity he would now be assuming for however long it took to extract the information he needed.

“Please, I need some help? I was told the two of you could help me. You’re the Winchesters, right?”

There was silence inside. Finally, a gruff voice asked, “How did know to come here?”

“An old friend of mine said you could help me if I ever couldn’t get in touch with him. His name is Bobby Singer.”

There was the sound of the door unlatching and slowly it began to creak open. A pair of green eyes lined with dark circles peered out at him suspiciously.

“You knew Bobby?” the Winchester asked, his hard expression unfaltering but a slight dip in his voice giving his true emotions away. Most people might not have noticed this, but the man in the black coat was not most people. And he prided himself on that. He made sure to assume an expression of utmost concern, though he knew exactly what had happened to Bobby Singer.

“What do you mean ‘knew’? Has something happened?”

“Bobby Singer is dead. Has been for months now.”

“Oh no! Well this is awful, I… I don’t know what to say. I’ve been in hiding for a few months, and I’ve been out of touch, I had no idea… I’m so sorry…”
“Hiding from what?” the Winchester seemed tired, but opened the door a bit wider, ready to listen.

“A demon. A powerful one. He’s on my tail. I need you to teach me everything you know about hunting them. How do you trap them? How do you fight them?”

“Look… This sounds like a big job. Why don’t you leave it up to the professionals? Sam and I, we can go in and take this son of a bitch down for you. It’s what we do.”

“Oh really? Well that would be wonderful! Thank you, I really can’t tell you—“

But the man’s words were cut off by a splash of cold water to his face. He blinked for a moment in confusion, fighting down rage that had risen inside him at the indignity. He barely managed to keep it under control. When he opened his eyes, wiping the water away from them, another Winchester was standing behind the first, this one much taller and holding a small flask.

“Sorry, had to check,” he said, sheepishly.

“Lesson number one: holy water,” the brother with the green eyes told him, poorly attempting to conceal a lopsided smirk. “I’m Dean Winchester. This is my brother, Sam. You got a name?”

“Right, sorry. My name is Jim. Jim Moore.”

“Alright. Well, Jim Moore, it looks like we’re in business.”

Chapter Text

“And Voila! I give you…”

The Doctor swung the doors of the TARDIS open dramatically.

“Oh no wait, this isn’t right.”

“I’ll say,” Amy said, stepping out from behind him and gazing at the flat, grassy landscape suspiciously. “How is this ancient Greece during the first Olympic games?”

“It would appear that we are…” the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and took out his sonic screwdriver, a soft breeze blowing up the back of his tweed jacket lightly as he made a twirling motion while holding it in the air and pressing a button to make it buzz. He looked a bit like a drunken ballerina, his lanky legs just barely missing each other as they tangled and untangled themselves again. When he was finished, he brought the screwdriver back down to eye level to examine it.

“Ah yes, it would appear we’re in the American Midwest. Missouri, to be exact. Present day. Well, I say present, I mean your present…”

“Missouri? Isn’t that a state?” Rory asked, the last one to step out of the TARDIS.

“Yes, yes. One of the middle ones,” the Doctor waved his hand impatiently. “But that’s not important, what’s important is… why are we here?”
He knelt to the ground and plucked a stem of grass, examining it as though it held all the answers to the universe in its thin fragile frame. Amy and Rory exchanged a ‘here we go again’ glance, and Rory began to twiddle his thumbs, nervous for the answer to the question he was about to ask. “What do you mean why are we here and not in Ancient Greece? You think there’s a reason?”

“Isn’t there always a reason?”

“Right, well…”

Amy cut in over her husband’s faltering sentence. “Doctor, can’t we ever just go where we intend to? The last time we meant to go on holiday and wound up elsewhere, I got swallowed by a hole in the ground and nearly dissected by green lizard people.”

But the Doctor wasn’t listening. He’d sprung up suddenly from his fixation on the grass and was now gazing intently at the sky. Over the treetops of the distant forests stretching around the empty field the three stood in, a black mass was moving through the sky. As it drew nearer its details became more refined, and it became apparent that the mass was made up of black smoke that seemed to be crackling with energy. It was absolutely massive as well, darkening the entire sky as it passed above them.

“What the hell is that?” Amy asked, having to raise her voice over the electrical noises being emitted from the cloud. Her bright red hair blew back in the gust of wind that accompanied it.

“I’m not sure…”

The Doctor held up his screwdriver to scan the sky again, this time, as the cloud was right overhead. For a few moments the sky was completely black, and then it was passing away from them, continuing off into the distance. The Doctor took his screwdriver down to examine his readings yet again. It was silent as Amy and Rory waited for him to say something, but he remained still.

“Doctor…?” Amy ventured, tentatively. But all at once he was moving again, springing into step and pacing around in front of them.
“Oh this is bad. This is very, very, extremely not good…”

“Alright well can you let us in on what is so not good about it?” Rory asked in frustration. He had grown as fond of their raggedy Doctor as Amy, but sometimes he just wanted straight answers. Of course, the Doctor rarely had them, and this time was no different.

“Come along Ponds! I think we’ve found our reason for being here. Follow that cloud!”

Chapter Text

It was a spacious room. High ceilings for a flat, permitted by the fact that it was on the top floor. A hallway off to the side leading to a bedroom and bathroom, one window in the bedroom. Two windows visible in the living room. None in the kitchen. Only one door, the front one, with no visible signs of forced entry on the locks, of which there were two: a chain and a deadbolt. No signs of a struggle anywhere around the apartment at all, in fact.
And yet, a man was lying dead on the ground.

“What did I tell you? This one’s a head-scratcher,” remarked a silver-haired man as he leaned in the doorway, his eyes on the other two men that had just entered and were standing above the body, pulling on rubber gloves.

“What do you reckon, Sherlock?” the shorter of the two asked, looking up at the other. But Sherlock was silent, his calculating eyes scanning the scene: taking it in.

“And you say the door was locked, Lestrade?”

“Yes.”

“And yet the locks are still perfectly intact. And the windows?”

“All locked as well. No signs of force there either.”

“Did the security cameras around the building catch anything?”

“No, nothing out of the ordinary.

“And the one just out in the hallway?”

“Tampered with. One of the guys in the tech department found a loop in the footage.”

“So that was obviously intentional. And that is the reason you’re inclined to think this was more than just a man dropping dead of his own accord.”

“Exactly.”

Sherlock knelt to the ground next to the body to get a better look. The man lay flat on his back. He was dressed smartly: a costly jacket, shirt, and trousers, but not well kempt. There were faint marks of stains that hadn’t fully come out in previous visits to the dry cleaners. There was mud around the ends of his trousers and on his shoes, but that made sense; it had been raining the night before his body was found. The decay rate of the corpse matched up to that night. However, the streets all around his building and down the street were paved. For him to have that much mud, he must have gone off the paved roads of London at some point that night. That was certainly interesting. A park perhaps? Or had he been even further out of town?

“Was anything found with the body?” Sherlock asked, not taking his eyes from it. “A suitcase or bag of some kind?”

“Only his wallet.”

So it was highly unlikely that he had been out far that night. He would have had provisions. There was also no build up of morning papers or mail outside the flat to suggest to anything regarding an out-of town trip. Sherlock held out his gloved hand. Lestrade gazed at it, momentarily puzzled, until he realized what the detective wanted. He turned and grabbed a plastic bag with the brown leather wallet inside and gave it to Sherlock, who promptly removed and opened it. The ID read Oliver James. Sherlock quickly scanned the contents: no pictures of family, friends, or anyone who might be considered a significant other. No paper money or change, but an unusual amount of credit cards and scratched lottery tickets. Money problems, surely. Money problems that had prevented him from forming or maintaining concrete relationships with anyone else in his life.

“John, medical analysis.”

The shorter man, John, took this as his cue to step forward and take a closer look at the body as well.

“Signs of internal bleeding, from what I can tell. But that’s it. And it’s difficult to tell where the bleeding came from without a full examination. But surely you could tell that, Sherlock?”

Sherlock continued to study the body in silence for a few more minutes. His eyes fluttered across it, then up to the flat around them, then back down to it again. Finally, he spoke.

“He was murdered. Someone was after him the night he was killed. The splash mark patterns up his trousers indicate he was running. Seems like a strange outfit to go out for a nighttime jog in, doesn’t it? He was a nervous personality, brought on by his numerous addictions. He would have been easy to scare, and could have quickly run back home due to paranoia. But in this case, he wasn’t being paranoid. Someone was really after him.”

“What do you mean numerous addictions?” Lestrade asked, watching him closely.

“Look at his button holes. They’ve been stretched and widened, though the state of the stitching on the rest of the garment indicates that the clothing can’t be much more than a month old. Whenever he did his buttons, his hand must have shook, characteristic of someone with an addiction.”

“Or just a nervous personality,” John pointed out.

“No, there’s more. There are numerous stains on his clothes as well, as though he was not careful when he was out gambling, drinking, or a combination of the two, and spilled on himself often. Not to mention the used lottery cards in his wallet. And most likely…”

Sherlock strode over to the kitchen and began swiftly rooting through the cabinets, pulling out bottles of wine, beer, and spirits everywhere. When he took the lid off the trashcan, they were all greeted with the sight of empty bottles of alcohol almost filling it to the top.

“Yeah, I’d say that indicates an alcohol problem,” John mused grimly, thinking of his sister.

“So we have someone living an addictive lifestyle with alcohol and gambling, most likely unable to keep a steady job, yet still in need of money to keep up with his cravings. Obviously he turned to the last available option.”

Lestrade gazed at him, wonderingly. “Which is…?”

“Crime. This man was involved in a crime ring. How else would he have been able to buy an expensive suit within the past year, while simultaneously keeping up his lifestyle?”

“Couldn’t he have gotten help from someone? Family or friends? The government?”

“No, government checks wouldn’t be able to buy that suit. And he’s not close enough with any family or friends to ask them for that kind of money: no photos around the house, no photos in his wallet. Not to mention why would someone he was friendly with chase him down and kill him? Obviously the same person who gave him money must have been the one he would have problems with as well. Those agreements never end with positive results. Someone helped him. Gave him money in exchange for his assistance. But he must have gotten cold feet,” Sherlock paused here and swooped quickly back across the room again to point at the dead man’s trousers. “That is why this splash pattern on his trousers indicates he was being chased. This was a hit.”

“Well that’s all fine and well, but we still don’t have any signs of external injury on the body, and no signs of forced entry on the building either. How did they do it, then?”

This answer took much longer to form. Sherlock paced back and forth across the flat with a catlike grace, alternately taking in the corpse and the bottles in the kitchen, and then coming back again. He went back to the door, poking at the locks. He disappeared into the other rooms, and when John leaned over to see what he was doing, he saw him poking at the locks on the windows as well. He returned with a look of greatest puzzlement that was an extremely rare sight indeed on the face of Sherlock Holmes.

There was a little more pacing before he finally conceded, “I need more to go on. Please take the body in for a full post-mortem examination, and let me know what they discover about the exact cause of death.”

Lestrade sputtered and rubbed the back of his neck, confoundedly. “I mean… yes… Of course it’s standard procedure, so you would have—”
“Thank you, Lestrade.”

And with a swish of his long black coat, Sherlock was sweeping back out of the flat and down the hallway. John and Lestrade stood back, staring after him, in a puzzled silence. Finally, John shook himself out of it.

“Right, well… We’ll be in touch, I’m sure.”

As he took off to follow his friend down the hall, he heard Lestrade call after him, “I’m counting on it!”

***

Sherlock had grabbed a taxi and taken it back to 221B Baker Street before John could catch up to him. When John walked in, he was standing at the sitting room window, staring at the street below. John tried to speak to him, but he barely even seemed to realize he was being spoken to.

“We’ll probably hear back from the morgue sometime tomorrow. Molly will call.”

“Mm.”

“Have you… got any ideas yet?”

“A few.”

Silence. John waited, but Sherlock wasn’t elaborating. Finally, John gave up.

“Right, well I’m going to the store. Need anything?”

“Mm.”

“Alright. I’ll just… I’ll be back later then.”

***

When John returned from the store, Sherlock was still standing in the same spot. He appeared not to have moved an inch. He was like a statue, stoic and engrossed in his thoughts. So it was going to be one of those kinds of phases. John was used to it by now. Sherlock would get so excited at the prospect of a brand new case, but sometimes while he was in the midst of one, he required a great deal of quiet time to mull over the facts, and he wouldn’t talk for days on end. Although this time… John thought he must have been imagining it, but this time something seemed a bit off. It was so minute that anyone but a very close friend or family member wouldn’t have noticed it, but, as it happened, John was the only friend Sherlock had ever had, and he could see: it wasn’t just deep thought on Sherlock’s face as he brooded this time. If John wasn’t much mistaken, it seemed this time as though Sherlock was questioning. As though for the first time in his life, as far as John knew, the great Sherlock Holmes might be drawing a blank.
But John could have been wrong about that of course. And most likely, all would become much clearer to everyone once the report came in from the lab. John thought that call couldn’t come soon enough.

Sherlock’s silence lasted all the way until it did. But finally the next day, as John was sitting reading the paper while Sherlock maintained his vigil at the window, his phone rang.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

John watched attentively, but Sherlock wasn’t giving anything away, staring determinedly at the wall and swaying slightly from side to side as he listened to whatever the voice on the other line was saying.

“Yes… Alright…”

But then there was an abrupt change. Sherlock’s voice rose above its monotone from before, and suddenly he looked almost manic. John had only seen him get this way once before just a few months ago, when they had been working a case out in Dartmoor. That time, they had faced a mystery that had tested both of their willingness to believe in the impossible, but Sherlock never truly had believed, John knew. Even in his moments of doubt, all Sherlock had needed was more information to uncover the true goings-on of the situation, and Sherlock had known it. Even though his eyes had been telling him the impossible was real, Sherlock had always known that there was a logical explanation behind it all. Still, he had been shaken up, and it took a lot to do that to the consulting detective. But now it was happening again.

“Are you sure?” the detective half shouted into the phone.

“No, no, there must be something else…”

He was up and pacing. He looked slightly mad.

“No, that’s it, I’m coming over there.”

At this, John perked up.

“What? Sherlock…”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I’m bringing John,” he snapped the phone shut.

“John we’re going to the morgue.”

“Sherlock, what is going on?”

But Sherlock already had his coat and scarf on and the front door was banging shut.

***

“I told you all I can on the phone. It’s severed clean through! Just that one vein. Not another scratch on the body. Never seen anything like it, really… I don’t know how it could be possible! But it’s definitely the cause of death. The vein was severed and he died of internal bleeding. Nasty way to go.”
Molly Hooper, dressed in her white lab coat for work, was saying all of it as she pulled one of the metal drawers in the wall open to reveal the covered body within.

“No, you must have missed something. There must be some kind of mark somewhere…”

“Sherlock… there’s nothing.”

Molly glanced sideways at John as she said this, her voice trailing away slightly. She looked as worried as John felt, but Sherlock wasn’t paying attention to either of them. He had fallen upon the body, uncovering it and examining it as closely as he possibly could around the spot that matched where the severed vein was in the X-Rays. But there was nothing there.

“No, no, no. This can’t be right. This isn’t right. There must be something wrong with the X-Rays.”

Sherlock swept back over to the board where Molly had the X-Rays pinned and plucked it off, staring it down with wild eyes.

“Couldn’t the vein have just ruptured of its own accord? That can happen sometimes.” John was addressing his question to Molly, but it was Sherlock who answered yet again.

“No, John, don’t be stupid. You’re a doctor; you know that these things don’t happen, not like this. A ruptured vein would never look that clean. It’s a surgical cut. So why is there no trace of it… on the skin…”

John and Molly exchanged glances.

“I don’t know Sherlock. But surely there has to be some explanation…”

The detective looked up, his pale turquoise eyes manic now, wide and desperate. His voice remained at its usual deep octaves, but he spoke quickly, breathlessly, urgently.

“Oh surely there must be. But that’s just it, John. There ISN’T.”

Now Sherlock was yelling.

“THERE IS NO EXPLANATION JOHN. I have examined every single scenario, every possible option, and every single one leads to a dead end.”

John stared at Sherlock on disbelief, hardly daring to believe it. He looked over at Molly again, as if for some kind of consolation: some answer. But she simply shook her head and raised her shoulders into a shrug, indicating that she was at just as much of a loss for an explanation as Sherlock was.

“Alright well… what does it matter if you can’t explain how it happened though? You could try to focus on who did it instead. Don’t worry about all of this…”

“Actually, figuring out how the murder was committed is a huge part of most murder investigations, as it can help reveal where and why it happened and therefore who might have committed it…” Molly interjected, but upon the withering look John gave her, changed course quickly. “But I’m sure you have enough to go on without that Sherlock. You always solve them, after all. In the end.”

Sherlock regarded her for a moment stonily. Then turned on his heel and walked straight out of the room, his coat swishing behind him as the door banged shut. John and Molly were left standing alone, staring after him, dumbfounded.

“Right. Well, thanks, Molly. You’ve been a big help.”

Molly continued to stare at the door where the detective had disappeared.

“No I haven’t,” she observed. “But then I’m used to that when it comes to him. Good luck with that one. You’re going to need it.”

“Thanks,” John answered glumly. He walked across the room and had one foot out the door before turning around one more time.

“Molly… are you absolutely sure that the kind of injury is impossible? The one on the body?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never read anything like it. Part of me is expecting some government officials to come knocking down the door to confiscate the evidence of it any second.”

Molly giggled nervously at her own joke, the sound echoing hollowly around the room. She cleared her throat, the smile slipping from her face again.
“Yes. I think it’s impossible.”

“Okay. Well, thanks Molly. Have a good day.”

“You too, John.”

Chapter Text

“Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica, adjuramus te…”

“Nothing like a good ol’ exorcism, eh, Sammy?”

“…cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque æternæ perditionìs venenum propinare…”

“Except the thing is… you’re the third one this week. And we haven’t had that many of you black-eyed bastards to deal with since the apocalypse.”
Dean Winchester was pacing in circles around a man sitting in a chair with his arms tied behind his back, while his brother, Sam, stood off to the side quickly reciting an exorcism from an old brown book. A devil’s trap shone bright red on the ceiling.

“So my question is… What’s going on? Did Crowley open the gates of hell?”

Dean leaned forward, putting his hands on the arm of the chair, rage pulsating through the look he gave their prisoner. The man in the chair gave a snarl and a manic smile, turning his black eyes to face the oldest Winchester. From his other side, Sam increased the intensity with which he was reciting the exorcism.

“…Humiliare sub potenti manu Dei, contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili Nomini…”

The demon winced in pain, black smoke beginning to leak from the corners of his mouth. He roared with rage, turning it into a desperate laugh.
“You idiots, you know Crowley can’t open that gate. Not yet anyway, not without the other half of the tablet…”

“…quem inferi tremunt…”

He choked. More black smoke sprayed out. Dean planted his stance and fixed him with a glare, unmoving as he watched the demon struggle.
“…Ab insidiis diabolic…”

“THERE’S SOMEONE NEW.”

It sounded as though the words had been ripped from the demon’s mouth unwillingly. Sam froze midsentence and Dean’s brow furrowed.
“There is a new leader now. He’s building an army, letting as many of us out of hell as he can, giving us freedom again. We can do what we please as long as we are ready to do his bidding if he calls us. We’ve never had it this good, even under Crowley.”

“A new leader, huh? And can we get a name on this new leader?”

The demon laughed. “If you think I’m going to tell you…”

“Sam, finish it.”

“Libera nos…”

“No,” the possessed man lurched forward, gagging as more black smoke shot out.

“We need a NAME,” Dean snarled.

“MORIARTY.”

Sam stopped again, just before the final word of the exorcism. Dean gave the demon an incredulous look.

“Excuse you?”

“Moriarty. That’s him. I promise.”

“That doesn’t even sound like a real name. Is that a name?”

“That’s him, I swear.”

Dean glanced over at his younger brother, who shot him a look full of knowing and gave him a nod. He nodded back.

“Finish it.”

“Domine.”

The demon’s shriek of rage was cut off as the rest of the black smoke still left in the man went spewing out of him and down through the floorboards, disappearing beneath them. The man, left alone now, gasped and blinked rapidly.

“Wh-where am I? What’s going on?”

“Alright buddy, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”

As Sam bent down to untie the man, memories started to dawn again on the man’s face.

“There… there was this thing inside me for weeks… I couldn’t move my own arms or hands… But it did terrible things…”

“I know. But it’s going to be okay. It’s gone now,” Sam’s voice was calm, collected, and soothing as the last of the ropes finally fell. The man’s breathing became more even and he rubbed his burning wrists. Suddenly, he looked back up.

“It was telling the truth, you know. About that new leader. The name.”

“Moriarty?” Dean walked forward again urgently.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Thanks so much for the info. Come with us, we’re going to get you home.”

As Sam helped the man out of the room, supporting the extra weight with his looming frame, Dean followed slowly, taking one last look back at the chair where the exorcism had just taken place before shutting the door.

***

When the newly-exorcised man had been sent on his way with some extra money and an anti-possession talisman around his neck, the Winchesters were left with silence in the Impala again as they drove for the nearest motel. There wasn’t time to make it back to the storehouse tonight, so they would have to make do the old-fashioned way. Dean didn’t even turn on the radio, letting the hum of the road beneath the Impala be the only background noise as he tried to sort his thoughts. He could tell Sam was thinking too. He didn’t know about his brother, but he wasn’t so fond of the conclusions he was starting to draw.

Finally, Sam spoke.

“Dean… This is bad.”

“I know.”

“No, but really. Have you ever heard of somebody who can hold that much power over that many demons, other than Crowley? Or Lucifer?”

“Yeah, except I have never heard of this guy. Moriarty? You’re Mr. Research, have you ever heard of any demon or creature anywhere with that name?”

“No. Which is weird. You’d think someone with that much power would have shown up by now. Where was he for the apocalypse?”

“You tell me.”

They fell silent again as Dean slowed down and pulled into the parking lot of the motel. When they had paid and dragged their duffle bags inside the dingy room, Sam immediately pulled out his laptop and began typing furiously, while Dean went to splash cold water over his face, still trying to clear his head. It was getting late, and he was starting to get tired. When he walked back out of the bathroom, Sam was still sitting staring at his computer screen intently, brow furrowed.

“Finding anything?”

“Yeah, actually. But it doesn’t really make much sense.”

“Sounds like our M.O, then. Hit me with it.”

“There has been a Moriarty in the news recently, or in the news from England anyway. Jim Moriarty. Arrested a few weeks ago on a ton of murder and theft charges. He broke into the case where the crown jewels are kept in Buckingham Palace, while simultaneously opening a vault at the Bank of England and unlocking all the cells at Pentonville Prison.”

“How did he manage that?”

“The report says he used his cell phone. He must have a pretty big network.”

“But it he’s human?”

“I mean… yeah. There’s nothing here that seems to indicate otherwise. I mean, what he did was crazy hard to do, but not impossible for a normal person with a lot of connections in the crime world…”

“Is there a picture?”

“Yeah. There’s one in the article. They took it in the vault when he broke into where the crown jewels are hold on, let me… oh.”

“Oh what?”

“Just… just look.”

Sam turned around his laptop and Dean leaned forward to get a better look at the picture. There, an unsettling, serene smile on his face as he sat wearing the crown and holding a scepter, was the same man that had come to their door asking for help mere weeks ago.

“Jim. That’s Jim. But we helped him! He said he knew Bobby. He wasn’t even British or whatever… His said his name was Jim Moore, right?”
“Yeah which is only a few syllables away from Jim Moriarty.”

“Okay so we’re dumbasses. But why did he trick us? What did he need us for? All we did was take down a demon for him.”

“I… I don’t know,” Sam shrugged, staring at the picture. Dean looked back at it again, noticing something new.

“Hey, what’s that he wrote on the glass?”

Sam narrowed his eyes.

“I think it says… ‘Get Sherlock’.”

“’Get Sherlock’? What’s Sherlock? Isn’t it like a poison or something?”

Sam turned his laptop back and his eyes started skimming the screen again.

“I think you’re thinking of hemlock. Sherlock is, apparently, a person. It says here that Sherlock Holmes was the name of one of the people who testified against Moriarty in court, but Moriarty got off anyway.”

“So Moriarty might have something against this guy.”

“I guess so.”

“But why would he tell the police to get Sherlock? He was acting like he wanted to be caught…”

“No idea.”

“This trial happened a few weeks ago. That’s not long before he came to see us. So why would somebody who is the head of a crime ring try to steal the crown jewels, get acquitted in court, and then immediately come find us with some phony story about being in trouble so we would kill a demon for him? And now some other demon is telling us that he’s the new big scary demon ruler?”

“And what does Sherlock have to do with any of it?"

Neither brother seemed to be able to come up with an answer to any of their questions. Dean scratched his head in frustration and turned around, beginning to think it might be better to go to bed now and figure out the rest in the morning, but he was stopped short by the silent and abrupt appearance of another man right in front of him. He jumped.

“Dammit Cas!”

The angel blinked at him, but did not apologize. Instead he stepped forward in urgency, worry furrowing his brow.

“Another important artifact has gone missing. Straight from under the noses of the current heavenly order.”

“Cas, if this is another freakin’ tablet…”

“It is not a tablet. Actually, temporarily, the tablets have been put on secondary priority while everyone has been dispatched to look for this instead. It is considered top priority and its disappearance could mean the entire world is in danger.”

“Oh good, because it wouldn’t be a normal day if the entire world wasn’t about to bite it.”

“This is a serious matter, Dean, we don’t have time for your—”

“What exactly is missing, Cas?” Sam cut in.

“The box.”

“What box?”

“The box. The box that unleashed it all.”

The Winchesters stared at him blankly.

“Pandora’s Box.”

Finally, the weight of the situation registered with the brothers. Or at least, it registered with Sam, whose eyes widened.

“Pandora’s Box is real?”

“Well it’s really more of a jar, the box thing was a mix up in translations some thousand years ago…”

“What the hell is Pandora’s Box?” Dean demanded.

“In Greek mythology, the titan god Epimetheus was given the first woman in creation, Pandora, to marry. She sort of came with this box—”
“Jar.”

“-Sorry, Cas- a jar, which contained all the evils and hardships of the world. She was commanded not to open it while her husband was away, but she did so anyway out of curiosity and wound up unleashing all of the terrible things inside the jar upon the world. The only thing still left in the jar by the end was hope.”

Sam finished his story to a look of incredulity from Dean. “Seriously, man, I will never figure out how you remember all this stuff.”

Castiel ignored Dean’s comment, addressing both brothers, “this part has not passed through into modern tellings of the myth but the jar was actually a gift to Pandora from Lucifer. The ancients interpreted the jar as letting out all the evils of the world, but in actuality the jar had the ability to summon and control demons to do the bidding of whoever summoned them.”

“How many demons?” Dean asked.

Cas fixed him with a grave stare. “The possibilities are endless. The person who possesses the jar could raise a whole demon army of their own.”
“Wait…”

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance.

“Cas, we know who took it.”

At that very moment, there was a loud knock on the door.

Chapter Text

Amy and Rory lost track of how long they trailed after the Doctor down a long nearly deserted highway. When they finally walked into a roadside diner miles later, they were both panting, while the Doctor himself looked completely fine.

“Okay,” Amy breathed, glaring at him. “I need food.”

The Doctor did not protest as Amy and Rory sank into seats at one of the old ratty booths and pulled out menus, but rather he wandered off to speak to a table of truck drivers. Neither Amy nor Rory could hear what he was saying, but they watched as the truckers glanced at each other and snickered when he first started speaking. Then all at once, the smiles dropped off their faces to be replaced with grave stares. They started nodding. One said something to the Doctor, whose brow was furrowed in concern. He nodded back at them, taking in what they were saying. Then he thanked them and left, moving onto the next table.

“So do you think we’re going to find out what that cloud was soon?” Rory asked, barely masking the exasperation in his voice.

“I’m hoping that’s what he’s doing. Because if he’s just dragging us around on some wild goose chase I’m heading straight back to that TARDIS and not coming back out until we’ve landed somewhere else.”

A waitress with a kindly wrinkled face and a slight southern drawl to her American accent came by to take Amy and Rory’s orders, and finally the Doctor came back.

“I’ve asked them to turn on the television for us.”

Sure enough, a television hanging from the ceiling above flickered to life, but all it showed was a man dressed in a red and white uniform holding a bat and waiting for another man to throw a ball toward him to hit. It was like everyone at the tables came to life, their faces turning up to the screen. When the man swung the bat and failed to connect it with the ball, everyone groaned.

“Oh no, no, this isn’t right…” the Doctor muttered. He swooped away again, said a few more inaudible words to the waitress, who at first looked resistant but then walked over to change the channel. Everyone groaned.

“Hey turn the game back on!” one of the truckers yelled.

“Sorry, everyone, this will just take a moment! I need to see if…”

But the Doctor’s voice trailed off as a commercial ended and electric guitar action music announced the return of the news. They were just in time. A blonde woman sitting behind the news desk and wearing too much make-up started speaking.

“Multiple sources are reporting sightings of an unusual black cloud traveling quickly in the sky today. Although it has some of the appearances of a storm cloud, its movements do not appear to be of the usual kind. We take you now live to Chip Barney for more on the story.”

The picture switched to a smartly dressed man standing in the middle of a field that could have been anywhere, looking relatively calm.

“Thanks Cindy, I’m here in a field just outside of St. Louis that is expected to be the next location where the cloud might be spotted, according to scientists who are attempting to track the strange phenomenon. One of those scientists is here with me now. Mr. Clark, can you tell us what your research team has discovered so far about the cloud?”

Mr. Clark was a stocky man with a rumpled, stained shirt and thick-rimmed glasses tipping precariously on the edge of his nose.

“Yes Chip. We haven’t been able to gather much on it yet because it’s such a new phenomenon, but part of this has to do with the fact that it truly seems to have popped out of no where! Sightings go back to this morning in Carthage, so that is the assumed epicenter, although this can’t be confirmed for sure, it’s mostly just theorizing. We’re going almost entirely off of sightings at this point, but we think we’re starting to be able to chart its movements. It appears to be heading east.”

Suddenly, Mr. Clark fell silent.

“Do you hear that?” he asked Chip Barney. Chip nodded. But whatever it was they were hearing was lost through the television screen. Amy and Rory exchanged a glance. Then the camera panned up and there it was again: the very same black cloud that had crackled above their own heads not too long before. It had already moved halfway across the state.

“Our instruments are going off the charts!”

The cloud got closer and closer, and the yelling of the reporter and scientists became overtaken by the roaring noise that could finally be heard even through the camera. Then just as the entire scene reached a deafening pitch, the camera feed was cut and with a fizzling noise the screen went to black. They could hear the voice of the first reporter now. “Chip? Chip? We seem to have lost his feed…”

Everyone in the diner was now muttering to each other nervously. The Doctor wrung his hands, pacing back and forth.

“Carthage. Amy, Rory, we need to go to Carthage.”

Just then, their food came. The Doctor looked pained.

“Ohhh can’t you take it to go please?”

“Don’t you have a time machine?”

“We can’t back to the TARDIS just yet, me must go straight to Carthage.”

Amy sighed. “Fine.” With a pointed look at Rory she left money on the table, stood up, and grabbed the cheeseburger off the plate. Rory looked extremely hesitant but finally rolled his eyes and stood up as well, grabbing his food.

“Excellent! Now we just need a ride…”

Before Amy could utter another exasperated word, one of the truck drivers the Doctor had befriended at the other table walked by, overhearing the final sentence.

“Where to?” he asked, walking over to them.

“Carthage.”

“I can take y’all over to Carthage. Does this have to do with that cloud?”

“Yes. Although it’s really best if we don’t go into too much detail on it.”

The man fixed him with a serious look. “’Kay then. Name’s Bob. I’ll get you there in about an hour.”

***

 

The ride to Carthage, Missouri in the back of a flatbed truck was far less than comfortable. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory were forced to take seats amidst piles of boxed dried food goods and hold on the best they could for the occasional bumps in the road that shook the entire vehicle.
“Well?” Amy asked, when they seemed to have finally hit a smooth patch of road.

“Well what?” The Doctor’s eyes were darting around, as though he were afraid to look back at Amy’s or Rory’s.

“Are you going to let us know what we’re chasing finally?”

“We’re chasing the black cloud! I thought that was obvious, Amy.”

“No, Doctor, you know what I mean. What is that cloud?”

The Doctor sighed, and finally met Amy’s eyes with a grave look.

“You’re not going to like it?”

“Well I don’t like a lot of things we wind up dealing with, but it’s still important to know what they are, at least.”

“This time is slightly different.”

“How so?”

The Doctor hesitated for one more second, trying to shield them from the truth for as long as he could. But finally, the moment had come.
“I’ve fought the source of them before. They have been on earth just as long as humans have, if not longer. They don’t really have a name other than the one humans have given them.”

“Which is…?”

“Demons.”

The Doctor paused after this dramatic statement, as though expecting an equally dramatic reaction. Amy blinked.

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s all you have to say? Okay?”

“Vampires in Venice? A siren on a pirate ship? We’re used to it by now, Doctor.”

“Oh… well… very good. I suppose.” He looked disgruntled but pulled himself back together. “At any rate, we need to get to Carthage and look for anything that looks like it might be a clue as to where the source of the activity might be located. If we find the source, we also might figure out how best to go about sending them back to it.”

***

Another hour and a few more painful speed bumps later and the Doctor, Amy, and Rory were all dropped off in Carthage.

“Thank you, Bob! You’re a very kind person!”

“No problem Doc. Give ‘em hell!” Bob called back as he drove away. The Doctor waved.

“What nice sentiments. Lovely person, that Bob”

“Okay Doctor, so what are we looking for?” Rory was already looking around, taking in the town: of which there really wasn’t much. There was a big courthouse rising above every other building, many of which looked more well-worn. Past Main Street, rows of houses could be seen branching off. As far as small Midwestern towns go, it wasn’t anything different.

“We need to keep our eyes out for anything… unusual. Anything… demon-y.”

“Well that’s all nice and specific isn’t it?” Amy rolled her eyes.

“Maybe it would be best to figure out where to start?” Rory suggested.

“Yes, yes, brilliant thinking Rory! Let’s stick around downtown at first. We need to be someplace where people might be talking. I want you both to have your eyes and ears on full blast. Listen for anyone who might be saying anything or doing anything related to this whole business…”

“Like them?”

Amy had noticed that a group of three men walking in the opposite direction in front of them, about to cross their paths. The tall one was handing the man in the middle an odd, pentagram-like pendant on a chain and telling him to put it around his neck.

As the men passed Amy, Rory, and the Doctor without looking up at them, they heard him say, “Wear this. It will protect you from any more demon attacks. Dean and I are going to give you some money too, so you can make it home…”

The trio exchanged shocked glances and, perfectly in sync, turned to keep their eyes on the men as they passed them, walking away. Amy and Rory looked at the Doctor for orders.

“Geronimo,” said the Doctor with a nod, and at once they were off down the street following the men.

***

All went smoothly for a while. Amy, Rory, and the Doctor managed to keep their distance yet keep the men in sight, but once one man had dropped one off at the bus stop, the other two headed straight for an old car: a black Chevy Impala. From the 1960s. After exchanging panicked glances, the Doctor motioned his companions over to a motor scooter someone had left on the side of the road.

“We are not stealing that!” Rory shouted. But Amy was already crawling on behind the Doctor. He clicked the sonic screwdriver and the vehicle buzzed to life.

“Ohhh…. Fine…” Rory groaned, rolled his eyes, and jumped on it behind Amy as well.

“Don’t worry Rory, we have a time machine, remember? We’ll return it!”

They pulled out onto the road a respectable distance behind the Impala and followed it as it left Carthage and got onto the highway. The occupants of the car didn’t seem to notice the little scooter trailing them despite the fact that the highway was rather on the small side and there weren’t many other vehicles accompanying it with them. The Doctor seemed to be keeping just the right distance between them to avoid suspicion. Finally, after a relatively short time on the highway, the black car pulled off again, into the parking lot of a small roadside motel. By the time the Doctor, Amy, and Rory pulled in, they just saw the door to one of the rooms closing as one of the men disappeared into it.

“They went in that one!” Amy pointed out, not about to let the door slip from her memory. “Let’s go!”

“We can’t just go barging in there, they’ll think we’re mental!”

“Rory has a good point. We need to gather our thoughts out here first. Decide exactly how we want to go about this. So… how do we want to go about this?”

“Well they know about demons, apparently. Seems like we can’t say much more that would shock them,” Rory stated with a shrug.
“True.”

“But do we tell them about you Doctor? Do we mention the whole… you know… alien thing?”

“Well it might be for the best to leave that fact out of it right at the beginning. Although it will probably have to come up at some point. After all, if they know about demons… I’m not sure how much else they know…”

They took awhile longer to prepare themselves. They agreed that it might make the mysterious men less abrasive of them if they’d had a bit to settle in before the time-travelers burst in on them. But finally, the Doctor sprang to his feet from the dirty old bench he’s been sitting on.

“The moment is now! Come along Ponds!”

Together, the three of them approached the dingy door and the Doctor raised a fist to knock sharply.

They waited.

Chapter Text

John Watson was at a loss. Sherlock was quickly spiraling into a state of insanity, sometimes completely catatonic, not seeming to notice the world around him at all, and other times overly energetic and reckless, in a state of manic frenzy as he paced very quickly, rambling to anyone and no one about something he might have missed. Sometimes he even went to the kitchen or to his microscope to perform an experiment, following some sort of new possible lead; but always he fell back into his dead, staring silence again. Over time, the silences began to stretch longer, until finally by day three John didn’t hear or witness a single one of the energetic spurts. It hardly mattered, of course. Sherlock didn’t seem to hear him or see him no matter which state he was in these days. But, though far from a psychologist, John knew that the increasing levels of silence could not be good. And the poor doctor was at a complete and utter loss for what to do about it.

In some ways, he felt a strange obligation to “fill in” for his indisposed friend, or so to speak, however, there was a reason Sherlock was the detective and he was the sidekick. John was very aware of the role he’d taken on in the situation since the day he’d moved in with Sherlock Holmes, and he took pride in it. After all, if there was one thing Sherlock often needed, it was a good sharp kick in the side. However, currently that did not seem to be working, and John was left to ponder the events that had led to Sherlock’s mental decline alone, despite his admitted lack for Sherlock’s special abilities.

How could someone really kill someone else by severing a vein without leaving a scratch on the body? Who could have pulled off such a feat? Why? Well Sherlock seemed to have figured out that part at least. The crime ring seemed like an extremely plausible and likely conclusion.

Of course it is, I thought of it.

John shook his head fiercely. The last thing he needed were the echoes of Sherlock’s voice in his head to remind him just how absent the detective actually was.

But could there be more to the why than simply what Sherlock had deduced so far about it?

Thoughts like these continued to plague John’s mind as he tried to go about normal tasks, going to the store again because he’d forgotten to buy bread, taking the tube back to 221b, saying hello to Mrs. Hudson on the way upstairs, passing Sherlock (who did not acknowledge him) in the front room, putting away some folded laundry…

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…

The random phrase came floating back through his mind as he straightened out a pair of trousers. This time he did not dismiss the detective’s voice so quickly. It was something he’d said a few months ago, when they were on the case in Dartmoor. Whatever remains…

John paused, his brain suddenly whirring with activity. It wasn’t possible. Molly had said so, Sherlock seemed to think so, Lestrade too… so what if it wasn’t possible? What if the answer was something else entirely? Sherlock would never think to entertain such ideas that were too far out of his realm of logical thought, but maybe it was time someone else did. Maybe it was time to start looking into the impossible.

His laptop was still sitting out in the front room, but he took it back into his bedroom just in case. Not that it seemed to matter to Sherlock in his present state, but John still couldn’t shake the thought of what he knew Sherlock’s reaction would be to the research John was about to conduct were he not so… unwell. He made sure the door was shut tight before he began conducting his search.

John’s fingers paused hovering uncertainly above the keys the moment he’d opened his laptop. What did he even begin the search with? Where did one start when looking for the impossible? He finally settled on typing in ‘strange injuries.’ The search engine pulled up quite a few cases of bizarre instances in which fatalities hadn’t been able to be explained satisfactorily. People who’d been brutally hacked to death in completely sealed rooms with the doors still locked. People who’d died of internal bleeding that had been so bad that their eyes had exploded. Many cases where the doctors had been able to fabricate some sort of answer, though John knew they were lying because he was also a doctor. There were entire forums of family members and friends that were still looking for answers, dissatisfied with those that they’d been given.

The doctor said it was a bear attack but I’m not so sure… bears don’t just do that to people for no reason…

I know they said it was a heart attack but I was there. That’s definitely not what it looked like…

I think my brother was killed by a ghost…

John paused after reading that last line, his heart missing a beat. Ghosts. He knew he was looking for the impossible, but… ghosts? Although he sometimes leaned slightly more to the spiritual side of things than his roommate, he still considered himself much too rational of a thinker to fall prey to such outrageous notions. He paused in his search and put his head in his hands, massaging his temples in frustration.

“You know what? Fine. Fine,” he said aloud finally looking back up at the screen in indignant defeat. “Ghosts it is.”

The next thing he typed, feeling absolutely ridiculous as he did so, was ‘ghost attacks,’ and the first website that popped up under this search was a link to a page from a group that claimed to be paranormal investigators from America. The page was titled, ‘How to Survive a Ghost Attack.” John clicked play on the video, and two 30-something men who looked rather silly, in John’s opinion, began to speak.

“Okay so there is no surefire way to survive a ghost attack,” said the one with the beard and glasses. His scrawny friend quickly added, “Sorry if the title of the video was misleading, I told Ed not to name it that but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Shut up Harry. Anyway, it’s hard to survive a ghost attack, but there are a lot of ways to help prevent one. Now, if you’ve seen our other video, ‘How to Survive a Demon Attack,’ you’ll know about salt. Salt is a pure substance, meaning evil spirits can’t pass through it. That rule applies to demons, and it also, most certainly, applies to ghosts.”

Here John paused the video, going to the group’s main page and opting for another video titled ‘Ghosts: the basics.” He noted that the group called themselves the ‘Ghostfacers,’ though he still couldn’t help but doubt their legitimacy. They didn’t seem to be affiliated with any kind of official institution, but John reasoned that if an official institution decided to affiliate itself with the sort of organization that called themselves ‘Ghostfacers’ they would probably face a great deal of flak from outside sources. Anything John looked up was not going to be officially credited, and therefore John knew it was up to him to have to sort through the rubbish.

Nothing the Ghostfacers were saying about ghosts seemed to fit with the case he and Sherlock were trying to solve, so he began to click on some other videos: ‘Werewolves: the Basics,’ “Vampires: the Basics,’ wendigos, daevas, witches… none of it seemed to fit. Finally, he got to the tutorial on demons and paused, listening closely.

“Now Ed and I still don’t know about everything demons can do. They seem to be a sort of anomaly, and we haven’t run into a whole lot of him. Those douchebag Winchesters though seem to have come across them more than we have…”

Here, Ed and Harry exchanged a glance and rolled their eyes at each other. John leaned forward. They’d mentioned these ‘douchebag Winchester brothers’ in a few previous videos but had never elaborated further.

“… and they say they still don’t even have a much better idea about everything they can do. They say they’ve seen demons lift people up without touching them and throw them against walls. They can make things happen through their weirdo invisible powers that come from some most likely hellish source.”

Ed nudged Harry here, whispering something in his ear. Harry rolled his eyes again looking ruffled, but nodded for Ed to speak.
“Since our knowledge on demons is so limited, we think it’s better for you to just call the Winchesters if you have any further questions. The number they take cases on should flash across the bottom of the screen now. So good luck and happy hunting!”

John paused the video and scribbled down the number quickly, then pulled out his phone. Here he stopped staring from the piece of paper to his phone and back again. He didn’t like the feeling that he was now opening a door he might not be able to close again once he dialed the number. But then he thought of the dead man in the morgue and Greg and Molly’s confused faces and Sherlock’s eerie silence… Before he could think twice again, he’d dialed the number and put the phone to his ear.

It rang…

“Hello?” a rough voice on the other side of the line asked.

“Hello,” John said, working hard to keep his voice steady. “Is this one of the Winchesters?”

“The very same. But we’re kind of in the middle of something, is this an emergency?”

“Actually yes. My name is John Watson, and I think someone has been killed by a demon.”

Chapter Text

Dean, Sam, and Castiel stood frozen, staring at the door of the tiny motel room.

“Who is that?” Cas asked.

“Well gee, I dunno Cas! Let me use my magical seeing through doors abilities.”

“I do not appreciate your tone Dean.”

But Dean walked forward to peek carefully through the small eyehole in the door.

“What the-”

“What?”

“Three people. A guy, a girl, and some goofy-looking dude in a bow tie.”

“That doesn’t sound very threatening…” Cas ventured.

“Let them in, Dean.” Sam gave his brother an encouraging nod.

“Okay but we’re testing them. Get the holy water ready.”

Finally, Dean swung the door open. Sam was right behind him, ready with the flask, and a second later all three of the strange people standing at the door were spluttering and blinking blessed water out of their eyes.

“What the hell was that for?” the flaming-haired girl spat angrily.

“Holy water. Had to check,” Dean stated unapologetically.

“Sorry, you can come in now!” Sam motioned for them all to enter, backing up his long lanky form to allow them passage.

“Well thank you! And what a lovely welcome!”

The silly man with the bow tie and the gangling legs stepped through first. He seemed to have recovered quickly from being splashed in the face and was now looking around the dirty motel room as though it were some new and fascinating archaeological find. “I’m the Doctor by the way, and these are Amy and Rory.”

He motioned at the red-haired girl and the stressed-looking fellow who trailed in behind her.

“The Doctor? Doctor who?” Sam asked, confused.

“Just, ‘The Doctor,’” Amy clarified; giving Sam what he felt was an unnecessarily aggressive glare.

“Okay, Doc what do you want?”

Dean was doing his best to match Amy’s aggression with his own defensive stance, making it clear that he did not trust the intruders any more than they trusted him. The Doctor, however, seemed unperturbed, continuing to regard these new acquaintances with bright-eyed joy.

“Now that!” he exclaimed, “Is an interesting question. We believe you might have information regarding the black cloud.”

“What black cloud?” Sam stepped forward, looking concerned, and he and Dean exchanged a meaningful glance. The Doctor’s eyes darted between the brothers.

“What are your names?”

“I’m Sam Winchester. And this is my brother Dean.”

“And I’m Castiel.”

It was the first Cas had spoken since the new arrivals, and the Doctor looked over at him in interest.

“Well now, what have we here?”

He began to circle Cas, looking him up and down with twinkling eyes as Cas shot Sam and Dean a confused glance.

“I am an angel of the lord,” he said finally, his eyes flickering back to the Doctor, watching him pace uneasily.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days? Fascinating!”

“Wait an angel of the lord? What is that supposed to mean?” Rory spoke finally, looking absolutely dumbfounded.

“It means, Rory, that he is one of the oldest beings to ever inhabit the Earth and the alternate dimensions existing around the Earth.”

“It is not an alternate dimension, it is heaven.”

`“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

Everyone in the room seemed to be growing increasingly disgruntled as the Doctor danced around, the only person in the room who was in on his own joke.

Sam looked to Amy for an explanation, but she just shrugged. Dean finally cut the tension with a growl.

“Do you mind explaining to us what the hell you’re talking about? And you never answered me about that cloud. That could be demons, it sounds like-”
“Oh we already know they’re demons. We came here to try and find where they came from.”

“Wait… how do you…”

“Are you a demon hunter, I take it?” The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver with a flourish and scanned Dean with it. Dean looked like he was about to punch the Time Lord in the face. “Yes, scanners indicate that you are, indeed, human…”

“Got that right, or you know, you could have just asked…”

“My most sincere apologies, you must understand this is really just fascinating. I had no idea demons were still even active on earth. I hadn’t heard from their species in years.”

“Well I don’t know what planet you’ve been hanging out on, buddy, but we’ve been dealing with demon crap since we were kids, and we know they’ve been around long before that too. They just tried to cause the apocalypse a few years ago, them and the angels anyway. Where were you for that?”

“Apocalypse? No… I don’t recall… It’s a pity though I really hate to have missed it. It must have been quite a show!”

“A show? A SHOW?? We almost died! Sam got possessed by Lucifer—”

Dean gestured to his little brother at this, to which Sam gave a guilty smile and a sheepish wave.

“—And you think it must have been a good SHOW? What is wrong with you? And who are you really, because I don’t believe for one second that you’re a doctor.”

The childlike grin had finally slipped from The Doctor’s face.

“I didn’t mean to belittle your pain. I apologize.”

“He sometimes just gets overexcited about things, really,” Amy put in imploringly.

“You’re right. I’m not a doctor. I’m The Doctor. I’m a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and I’m over one thousand years old.”

This announcement was met with dead silence. Castiel’s expression remained unchanged, but Sam and Dean eyed each other with wide-eyed shock.
Finally Sam spoke, his gaze flickering between the newcomers with renewed trepidation. “So… you’re an alien?”

“Yes.”

“Just him, though. Amy and I are from London,” Rory clarified. Amy raised her eyebrows. “I’m Scottish actually but yes.”

“He has a time machine, and Amy and I travel with him. We meant to go to Ancient Greece but somehow we wound up in a field not far from here just in time to see a strange black cloud fly overhead, and we’ve been trying to figure out where it came from ever since. He says it was a bunch of demons,” Rory said, relieved to finally give the Winchesters a full explanation. They didn’t have time for The Doctor’s cryptic ways right at the moment. However, sometimes living their lives made it easy to forget how strange the whole thing sounded when recounted to strangers. Rory slightly overestimated how well the others would take the news.

“You have a time machine?” Sam asked, disbelief dripping from every syllable.

“The only things we’ve ever seen with the power to do that are the angels. And one time a Greek god sent me back to the 40s, and it was a bitch getting back. But time machines aren’t actually… real…”

“He’s not an angel,” Castiel confirmed, walking forward and squinting at The Doctor. Now it was his turn to conduct an examination. “I know all of my brothers and sisters. He’s something else. I think he’s what he says, Dean.”

“But a time machine, Cas?” even Sam sounded incredulous. “There’s no precedent.”

“Not for you, maybe,” The Doctor said. His eyes were twinkling again.

“Look we can show you the time machine later, right now we really need to focus!” Amy stepped in, snapping everyone to attention. “Those demons were on the move. We need to figure out where they came from and why. This situation could be very… bad,” she finished the short speech with slightly less vigor than she’d begun with, realizing at the last minute that she still didn’t know the full extent of what demons could do and that she and Rory were still comparatively out of the loop in a lot of ways.

“We think we know who’s doing this, actually,” Sam said. “Castiel here just came by to tell us an important artifact has gone missing from heaven, and it can control demons. And we got word from a demon we just exorcised that the name of the man calling the shots these days is Moriarty. He’s probably trying to raise a demon army of his own. There is an opening to hell not far from here that demons can escape from. I bet that was the black cloud you saw.”

The Doctor beamed at him. “Brilliant deductions! I bet you’re right!”

“You seem awfully happy to hear about some crazy guy raising a demon army,” Dean said with an undeniable note of accusation.

“Oh he’s always like that,” Rory told Dean, just barely managing to keep himself from rolling his eyes. “Complicated situations excite him.”

“So! Moriarty… Moriarty…” The Doctor was off in a frenzy of movement again, pacing the floor. “Does anyone have any idea who Moriarty is?”

“Actually, we met him awhile ago. He came to us in disguise, told us his name was Moore. He wanted us to catch a demon for him. We did.” Dean’s voice was gruff. He was already starting to regret helping a stranger so quickly as they had. He couldn’t believe how stupid it had been of them to not do more of a background check on the guy first. But then again, helping people, no questions asked, whether they wanted it or not, was kind of their M.O. Dean figured it was the least they could do after causing almost as much harm as they’d stopped, half the time.

“We’re still trying to figure out why he needed us to take down that demon for him though,” Sam interrupted Dean’s thoughts, continuing to fill the time travelers in on the situation. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“But it might…” Amy interjected, her face thoughtful. “Rory and I still only know half of what’s going on with these demon things. Most people would probably need a tutorial on how they work before they can just go around controlling a whole army of them. He probably just needed you to show him the basics.”

“Great. Just great,” Dean muttered.

“Well, it’s all in the past now! The least we can all do is try and stop him. We should probably try to figure out where Moriarty is now, though, if we’re going to go about that…” The Doctor said all of this very fast as he kept up his pacing.

“Well he’s from London…” Sam gestured to the article on his laptop he and Dean had been studying earlier.

“But that does not mean he remained there. He could be anywhere in the world, and as long as he has Pandora’s Box, the demons will follow him and do his bidding,” Castiel put in.

“Well thanks, angel boy,” Amy grumbled. “Look there has to be some way to narrow the search down, everybody think!” She felt slightly hypocritical saying this though, considering she was also drawing a blank.

Everyone was silent, even the Doctor.

“We should start looking into news reports for strange phenomena. Things that might seem to be related to demon attacks,” Rory suggested. He wrung his hands habitually but his voice was strong.

“We deal with weird news stories all the time,” Dean stated bleakly. “It might be hard to narrow it down to what’s related and what’s not. But it’s worth giving a shot I guess—”

Right then he was cut off by the gravelly chords of “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple. “Sorry, just a sec.” He picked up his cell phone and answered it. “Hello?”

No one else seemed to know what else to do, so they watched Dean, listening intently to his half of the conversation.

“The very same. But we’re kind of in the middle of something, is this an emergency? …A demon, huh? What makes you think that? …Yeah you’re right, sounds like that case has demon written over it… No, no one thinks you’re crazy. We deal with this stuff all the time… Okay man, what’s your name? …Watson, okay got it, and where are you located?” his eyes were flickering around the others as he talked. They widened, suddenly. “London? Okay well we’ve got contacts over there, we can send someone to-”

“No!” Cas and Sam shouted at the same time.

“Dean, this could have to do with the Box! We need to go!”

Dean cupped a hand over the phone, trying to muffle their voices for the other end.

“We don’t know that for sure. Besides, how are we supposed to get all the way over to London? Even by plane, which you know I’d rather not do, it would take us forever to get there!”

“I believe I have the solution!” The Doctor stepped triumphantly forward and grabbed the phone straight from Dean’s hand, to Dean’s indignation.
“Yes, hello, Watson, is it? This is The Doctor. We’ll be right over in a jiff, we just need to know exactly where to find you! Mhmmm… got it! Sounds easy enough to remember. Baker, like baking. Yes got it. And you say that’s two 2’s? Okay wonderful! ...Are you all right, Watson? Watson…?”

The Doctor handed the phone back to Dean, looking concerned. “We must get to the TARDIS immediately. It would seem that Watson is in trouble. The line just went dead.”

Chapter Text

7: Road Trip

The Doctor, Amy, Rory, Sam, Dean, and Castiel all decided to pile into the Winchesters’ Impala for the journey back to the TARDIS. Sam and Dean claimed their usual spots up front and Amy, Rory, and the Doctor buckled up in the back. Castiel stood outside the car looking uncomfortable.

“Hop on in, Cas! There’s a spot right here on Rory’s lap!” The Doctor called encouragingly.

“There’s a spot where exactly?” Rory looked at Amy in panic, but Cas was already awkwardly climbing into the car. As it turned out, he didn’t sit directly on Rory’s lap, but wound up somewhat squished between Amy and Rory.

Sam looked concernedly back at their disgruntled passengers and turned back to Dean to mutter, “Just… take it easy on the drive.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Please. Baby always rides smooth, you know that Sammy. He glanced in the rearview mirror and smirked, seemingly amused at the predicament. Amy glared around Cas at Rory, who shrugged at her and leaned back into his seat as though trying to imagine he were anywhere else right then. Castiel caught Dean’s enjoyment in the mirror and sent him a fierce glare. The Doctor, on the other hand, seemed unperturbed as usual.

“Everybody comfortable?” Dean asked with a grin. There was a wave of grumbling from behind him followed by the Doctor’s cheerful, “Right-o!”

“Awesome. Away we go! You point the way, Doc.”

The Doctor rolled down the car window next to him and pointed his sonic screwdriver at the sky, scanning.

“We’re going to want to head northwest.”

“Northwest?”

“Yes, Northwest.”

“Seriously, that’s all you’ve got for me? Any specific highway or location?”

“I’ll point you as you go, don’t worry.”

Dean exchanged a dubious glance with Sam.

“If you say so.”

Dean pulled the Impala out of the motel parking lot and onto the road, doing his best to go northwest, just as the Doctor described. He was trying very hard to fight his annoyance over the strange man’s vague and irritating manner. As the small country road opened up back onto the highway, the car grew quiet. The reality of the situation seemed to be fully settling over everyone, along with the realization of just how little they really knew about each other.

It was Rory who finally broke the silence.

“So… you’re an angel?” he asked, turning his head awkwardly to the side to acknowledge Cas.

“Yes, I am an angel of the Lord,” Cas answered in his typical deadpan fashion. He fixed Rory with an intense stare, as though trying to X-ray his mind, which made Rory look even more uncomfortable. His brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to hold Cas’s gaze, as though he was afraid to break it. Amy looked on with a hint of a smile starting to play around her lips.

“There is definitely something different about you. Both of you.” Cas turned his head to fix Amy with the same intense stare he’d given Rory, and suddenly her smile was gone. “You’re both human, but you have traces of something… more in you. I can sense it, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”

“That would be the long-term exposure to the Time Vortex, I believe,” the Doctor chimed in. Cas nodded thoughtfully, still staring at Amy. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably.

“Could you… I mean… Do you mind stopping that?”

“Stopping what?”

“That staring thing. It’s weird.”

“Don’t worry about it he does that to everyone,” Sam remarked from the front. He and Dean both seemed to be holding back laughter at this point. “But he’s harmless, really.”

“It’s true,” Castiel’s eyes had relaxed from their narrow focus and were now wide in earnest. “I apologize. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s all right,” Amy shrugged.

“It’s just the only angels we’ve never met were a bit more… evil than you,” Rory explained. Cas gazed at him solemnly.

“I see. Have you met Lucifer as well?”

Amy looked alarmed. “What?!”

“Oh no relation, Castiel, no relation at all, I assure you!” The Doctor clarified with a laugh. “Believe you me, none of us have ever met a real angel like you.”

“Oh.” Cas looked confused, but also seemed to decide to drop the subject. Amy took that moment to interject a question towards the Winchesters.
“And you two are demon hunters?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, glancing back at her. “But not just demons. We also hunt ghosts, werewolves, vampires, wendigos, djinn, daevas, gods, witches… basically anything paranormal. We’ve seen some crazy stuff.”

“Oh yeah, well I guess we can relate on that front,” Amy murmured, catching Rory’s eyes sharing a knowing smile with him.

“Honestly before today, I never believed all those paranormal things really exist,” Rory confessed.

“Really Rory, with everything I’ve shown you?” the Doctor asked incredulously. Rory shrugged.

“I guess I just figured aliens yes, magic things no. There goes that theory.”

“There are hunters all over the world to help, maybe the ones in your area are just really good at their jobs. You’re lucky to have never had a close run-in with anything to be honest,” Sam told them.

Dean nodded, his eyes still on the road and his hands tight on the wheel. “Yeah it doesn’t always end so well if we don’t get there in time.”

At this, Sam seemed suddenly eager to change the subject.

“So what about you guys? What do you do, other than time travel all the time?”

Amy and Rory exchanged a glance, temporarily struck dumb.

“Well time traveling is about the extent of it for me,” the Doctor said cheerfully. Amy glanced over at him, sensing a note of sadness beneath the surface that she was sure none of the others could hear. But she didn’t mention it.

“Rory and I mostly travel with the Doctor, too. We haven’t had much time to our own, recently. We just got married about a year ago and since then the adventures just keep coming. But we like it this way!” she added quickly, sending another sidelong look at the Doctor. If he had been upset by her words, he did not let on.

“Well that’s good. So you’re married then?”

“Yes. We are.” Rory reached across Cas to take Amy’s hand, eyeing the back of Sam’s head suspiciously. Had that been disappointment he’d heard in the tall man’s voice?

“Congratulations!” Sam said. Rory relaxed a little. Sam sounded genuine. Rory sighed and chided himself inwardly for being so insecure. Amy had chosen him and he knew he needn’t worry even if other men did have crushes on her.

The car fell into silence again. The Doctor, Amy, Rory, and Castiel all continued to sit awkwardly in the back, adjusting positions every so often to try and get more comfortable only to feel discomfort again minutes later. Outside the windows, miles of farmland stretched around them. The car was jostled by a soft bump in the road.

“Take the exit onto this outer road please, Dean,” the Doctor said, finally. Dean followed his directions. The next road they found led into an even more vacant road than the one they’d been on before. There was no sign of civilization for miles. Amy and Rory hoped the Doctor’s sense of direction was on point.

“So, uh, how long is it going to take to get to this… thing?” Dean asked. “Are we sure we can get to Watson in time?”

“Oh, not to worry!” the Doctor assured him. “I expect we’re already there saving him.”

“Wait, what?”

“Not to worry it’s all very-”

“DON’T say wibbley wobbley,” Amy cut the Doctor off mid-sentence, sensing what was coming. She took over for him. “That’s just the way time travel works. We’re not there yet because we’re here, but once we get back to the TARDIS we can go back in time to the exact moment after Watson called. So it’s sort of like we can be in two places at once.”

It seemed like a perfectly plausible explanation to Amy, but Dean merely chuckled darkly.

“I’ll believe this when I see it.”

“I certainly hope you will,” the Doctor trilled.

Sam gave a sigh, rubbing his temples as though he had a headache.

“You okay Sammy?” Dean asked in concern-filled tones.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just stressed, is all. Headache.”

“It’s not… you know… is it?”

“No Dean,” Sam managed a small smile to reassure his brother.

Amy and Rory exchanged a “what was that all about?” look, but did not push the brothers for answers. They did not seem eager to offer any, either. Even Castiel seemed confused. He glanced between the Winchesters, looking slightly alarmed when Sam held his head, but tried to relax back into his seat once Sam claimed to be okay. His thoughts seemed to turn elsewhere.

“Is it true that you are a being from another planet?” Castiel asked, looking over at the Doctor.

“Yes. I’m what’s called a Time Lord. From the planet Gallifrey.”

“I recall you saying that before. But why aren’t you on Gallifrey now?”

At this, Amy and Rory tensed with nearly identical looks of alarm on their faces as their gazes shot straight to the Doctor. The Doctor seemed suddenly extremely interested in something out the window, turning his face away from Castiel.

“Because there is no Gallifrey anymore.”

“Oh… I am… sorry…” Awkwardness hung in the air. No one seemed to know what to say, until finally Cas pressed on, “I know what it feels like to be displaced from home. I’ve been banished from heaven before, my home. And now… with the current state it’s in… It’s almost like it doesn’t exist. The heaven I once knew is gone, anyway. Sometimes I think it might as well not be there.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look up front. They’d never heard Cas speak this way about heaven before. The Doctor finally looked over at Cas to give him a small smile.

“Thank you for the fellowship, Castiel. I’m sorry you’ve had to endure similar hardships, however.”

“It’s okay.”

Before another strained and awkward silence could fall over the Impala, Dean decided to take over the conversation.

“So Doc, how come you’re helping us anyway? What do you time travelers have to do with a bunch of demons? Shouldn’t you be… I don’t know… Making sure World War II never happened or something?”

“It doesn’t quite work like that Dean, there are some fixed points in history that can never be changed- oh take this exit.”

Dean abruptly followed the Doctor’s direction, causing everyone in the car to pitch to the side briefly. Once they’d all been set upright, he pushed on, “Not that we don’t appreciate the help and all, we do, but you’ve got to understand, it’s kinda weird. You claim to be in on all this stuff but Sammy and I have been all over this goddamn country saving the entire world, and we’ve never even so much as heard of you. So why are you helping us? You could be anywhere in time right now. Why here?”

“Well, you see… all the things that you fight, all of these angels and demons and creepy-crawlies in this world, are all remnants of an ancient alien race, placed here during times that precede even human beings. They established the alternate dimensions that you call heaven and hell, and they’ve been living here ever since. They’ve been here so long I doubt they even remember where they first came from anymore. I think they believe themselves just as much a part of this planet as you do now. And why shouldn’t they? They’ve practically shaped the majority of human history after all. Some people have even speculated that they or one of their leaders created the human race. But I know where they’re from. I found their source awhile back and defeated it, but it was too late. It had spread its eggs across the cosmos billions of years before.”

“Okay well I’ve had about enough of this scientology crap. You’re dancing around the question.”

“Well, Dean, I just suppose that I take any matters regarding aliens threatening the people of earth to heart. And since demons are actually aliens, and I failed to stop their spread long ago… I feel an extra obligation to help.”

“That’s all fine and well but this is not the first time demons have been threatening the earth. I ask again, WHERE WERE YOU FOR THE APOCALYPSE?”

Dean’s voice had risen to threatening levels, but the Doctor raised his voice right back, finally showing signs of irritation in return.

“I WAS PROBABLY DEALING WITH A DIFFERENT APOCALYPSE! I’m a busy time lord. What year was this apocalypse happening?”

“2010.”

“Well there you go, in 2010 I got pulled away from Earth twice to deal with things on other planets and the last time I was there I was a little busy saving the entire world from being taken over by a madman and my native race who are supposed to be dead but almost got brought back to wreak havoc on the human race and then oh yes there was the whole matter of DYING AND CHANGING MY ENTIRE BODY.”

Silence.

“Okay… what?” Sam asked finally.

“When he dies, he doesn’t really die. That version of him dies but he retains all his memories as he’s immediately born into a new body. It’s called regenerating,” Amy was hasty to explain.

“You know if we didn’t already deal with weird crap I’d say you three were out of your minds.”

“The bottom line is, Dean, I apologize for not having been around before. But we’re here now. And from now on, I can come help whenever you call. You have my word.”

“Fine.”

The entire car lapsed into silence again, and this time it lasted. It was broken only occasionally by the Doctor giving a direction to Dean, who obeyed wordlessly. They carried on like this for what must have been a good part of an hour. Night had fully settled over the world outside now, but the light of the waning gibbous moon kept some of the scenery in view, though it was mostly still just fields of corn and forests for miles. They were deep in Missouri farm land.

“We’ve got to be getting there soon. Are you sure you’re taking us the right way, Doctor?” Amy asked.

“I certainly hope so,” the Doctor murmured distractedly, staring out the window.

“Well that’s reassuring,” Dean grumbled.

“I’m getting tired of staring at corn in the dark. Don’t you have any other scenery in this country?” Amy shifted in her seat, or shifted the best she could with Castiel sitting on one leg.

“Oh sweetheart, this is the Midwest. You won’t see much else for miles.”

Amy crossed her arms in her seat and glared at Dean.

“Don’t call me sweetheart.”

***

After about another awkward half hour and one failed attempt to start a sing-along, the Doctor finally exclaimed, “Pull over, Dean! This is the field.”
Dean rolled the Impala to a stop and to the great relief of the backseat passengers, they finally got to open the doors and spill out of the car, stretching and groaning.

The Doctor scanned the air yet again with his sonic screwdriver, finally stopping to shout, “This way!”

“But what about Baby?” Dean was hesitant to leave the Impala behind on the side of the road.

“We can come back for it later don’t worry. The Doctor can time it so it will never have been left here at all. Sort of like we still have to do with that motorcycle,” She muttered the last bit as a side note to Rory. Dean still seemed reluctant but nodded slowly, turning to face the field.

The Doctor had already gotten a running head start across the field, so everyone else jogged quickly to catch up with him. Eventually, through the mists of the field at night, TARDIS swam into view. She had turned on the light on top, as though she had anticipated that it might be hard to for them to find it again in the dark. When Amy saw the Police Box label, her heart leapt in relief. The Doctor increased his speed toward it and the others followed suit. Finally, everyone came to a halt before it, panting. Except for the Doctor, of course, who was in fact positively beaming at his old friend in pride.

“This?” Dean growled, still trying to catch his breath. “This is your big time machine? Is this a joke? Cuz let me tell you buddy, I am seriously not in the mood for-”

“No! No! No jokes! Follow me inside, you’ll see.”

The Doctor stepped his fingers to make the doors spring open and walked inside, followed by Amy and Rory. Dean caught a glimpse of a brightly colored interior, but glanced over at his brother before following the time travelers inside, as though searching for confirmation. Sam nodded.
“What have we got to lose?”

Finally, with a deep breath, both of the Winchesters and Castiel stepped into the TARDIS. The Doctor was waiting there, staring at them eagerly, standing in front of some sort of control system in the center of a large room with other hallways that appeared to be branching off to further rooms beyond. Amy and Rory leaned against the railing of a staircase that led to an upper level just above, smirking down at them. Meanwhile both Winchesters, along with Castiel, seemed to have gone temporarily mute.

“Well?” the Doctor called over to them, giving a little spin as he gestured around to the impossible interior of the small blue police box. “Still don’t believe us?”

“How…?” Sam finally got out, turning in a slow circle as he stared around, his mouth hanging open slightly. Dean took a step backwards, sticking his head out the door to stare at the field beyond, then pulling back in to gape at the control room again.

“This is impossible.”

“No, quite possible with alien technology. TARDIS is an acronym, for Time and Relative Dimension In Space. Dimension is relative. You can fit a whole world into a small blue box, you just have to think about it a little differently.”

“Okay, I’m getting a headache,” Sam said, sounding somewhat faint.

“Yeah, which is saying a lot because he’s the smart one,” Dean was trying to regain composure, but not having much luck. Castiel, on the other hand, remained silent this entire time. He was blinking rapidly, apparently trying to process the TARDIS in his own way. Sam wondered if Cas was slightly less impressed by the magic police box because using their abilities, angels could probably produce similar effects if they really wanted to.

“It’s okay boys, everyone usually takes a bit of time to adjust. Although we really should get flying soon. We don’t want to keep Watson waiting for too long!”

“I thought you said Watson wouldn’t be waiting?” Sam suddenly looked deeply concerned.

“Not at all! Just an expression, not to worry…”

“Wait, did you say flying?” Some of the Doctor’s words seemed to have only just registered with Dean, who glanced at his brother in panic.

“Well yes, how else would a time machine travel? We’ve got to get into the time vortex somehow so we’ll be flying but also teleporting, in a way, into the vortex…”

Dean was starting to look green. He sank down to the floor in a sitting position, putting his head between his knees.
“My brother isn’t big on the whole ‘flying’ thing. Usually it’s only planes he has to worry about though. Listen, Doctor, has the TARDIS ever had any problems with… oh, I don’t know… being possessed by demons?”

The Doctor laughed. “Oh most definitely not. Demons are incredibly powerful beings of course, but not powerful enough to overcome the TARDIS. Time Lord technology is too strong for that. There’s a reason they were both admired and feared across the galaxy.”

“It’s true,” Castiel said, speaking finally. “I can sense the heart of this machine. It is much to complex for a demon to be able to overcome.”

“Well at least we don’t have to worry about that this time, right Dean? See it will be fine. The Doctor knows what he’s doing,” Sam tried to sound reassuring to his brother. Dean finally lifted up his head, breathing a little more evenly. He even managed to stand back up, but his fists were still clenched with tension.

“Just make it a quick trip, okay Doc?”

“Right-O!” The Doctor began dancing around the controls, flipping switches and pressing buttons this way and that. There was a grinding, whining sound all around that caused the Winchesters and Castiel to hold their hands over their ears and look around in surprise. None of the time travelers seemed phased however; it was like they were used to it. As it died away, Sam and Cas slowly took their hands from their ears and Dean followed suit, though that may have only been so he could grab onto a rail for support as they felt the TARDIS begin to move.

“Here we go!” the Doctor cried, his eyes alight with the joy of a child on Christmas morning. “To London! Geronimo!”