I've been thinking of a lot about fem!John plotbunnies recently (mostly AU's and waterfalls of angst). Genderbend is one of my favourite things, so the SuperWhoLock comic FanWork Friday genderbend prompt was like a godsend.

Unfortunately, I didn't actually start writing this until the day was actually over (literally, it is Sunday for me right now), but that didn't stop me. Basically, it's my favourite section of the comic written out with a fem!john instead (I changed some of the dialogue and actions to suite the different character, but it's more or less what happened in the comic, so credit goes to the amazing artist!).

Before you read this, I would suggest you go read the entire comic (go to the superwholockcomic tumblr). The events in this fic occur in pages 57-61, 67-69 and 76-79 of the comic. Thanks to the artist for inspiring me.

Enjoy!

…

Jean Watson was having a very strange day. Granted, living with the world's only consulting detective usually meant that everyday had some element of strange to it, but today was turning out to be much, much stranger than usual. It certainly wasn't everyday that a bloody Angel showed up on your door asking for help, before whisking you off to New York and back in the space of several seconds. As if the violent face-off between the angel statue and the real one hadn't been enough, she'd also been confronted with the possibility of time travel, although the last couple of hours had been far more familiar to her. Researching to find for two lost brothers, she could do. The rest, well, she was still trying to process.

"What are you waiting for?" Sherlock asked with his usual blunt impatience that filled Jean with a desire to smack him. "You know where they are now, Roswell, 1947, so go after them."

Castiel-the-Angel, still looking rather ragged from passing out earlier, was slumped on the sofa, while she and Sherlock stood on the other side of the coffee table staring down on him.

The Angel gave a deep sigh, shaking his head before bitterly replying with, "I can't." Jean could visually see how exhausted he was, from the contours of his slumped shoulders to the worry lines around his eyes and the tone of defeat in his rusty voice.

"You can't?" Sherlock, ever the master of tact, cried indignantly. "Then why did we just waste the last six hours-"

"What's wrong, Castiel?" Jean quickly cut in, before Sherlock could say something too insulting. She shot him a look, and he quieted, scowling somewhat childishly back at her.

Castiel shook his head again and sighed, his movements heavy, "The Stone Angel, it weakened me. I will not have enough power to follow them for several days, maybe even weeks."

"Oh," Jean frowned, thinking. "Well… isn't there a way that you can recharge quickly? Some kind of, I don't know, Angel power socket you can plug yourself into?"

Castiel glanced up at her, piercing Jean with a curious look she couldn't quite read, as though he was weighing up his options. He opened his mouth, then seemed to reconsider, returning his gaze to the threads in the carpet. "No," he said.

"What? What was that look for?" Jean asked, inquisitively. She glanced over at Sherlock, who was gazing at Castiel with an expression of distrust mingled with a mild fascination.

"It's nothing," Castiel said, avoiding her eye in a way which told her that is was, indeed, something.

"It's not nothing, Castiel, you were going to say something, so say it."

The Angel scanned between the two of them, appraising them intensely with deep blue eyes, before returning his eyes to the carpet. "There is a way. An 'Angel power socket', as you put it. But I don't do that anymore."

"Do what, what's the problem?" Jean asked, confused. Castiel looked her right in the eye, and not for the first time she felt as though the Angel was not so much as gazing at her as through her.

"It's the human soul. It's the most potent source of power in the universe. If I can touch it, I can convert its power into energy." Sorrow seemed to overtake his features. He ran a hand over his face, and his shoulders slumping even further, as though centuries worth of weight had piled itself upon him. "But it's too dangerous, and I'm tired of hurting people," he added sadly.

Jean licked her lips, a feeling of helplessness overwhelming her. Before today, if someone had told her of the existence of angels, she probably wouldn't have believed them. In fact, she was still having a bit of a difficult time believing it, but that didn't stop her from seeing what was right in front of her. Castiel might not have been human, but in that moment he certainly looked it; lost, alone and hurt.

"I'll do it," she said, after a moment's consideration.

"What?" Sherlock interjected, sounding surprised.

"You can use mine," she told the Angel, stepping forward and crossing her arms resolutely, "My soul. I want to help, it's the least I can do."

"Jean, don't be ridiculous-"

"Have you pulled it off before?" she asked, pointedly keeping her eyes locked onto Castiel's. He frowned at her with his uniqely unreadable expression, contemplating her with his eyes.

"Jean!" Sherlock cried, a firm warning in his voice, but she ignored him.

Castiel had tilted his head solemnly, so he looked almost like a curiously wise puppy. "Yes. But not since I was… no, forget it. It's a bad idea, anyway."

Sherlock took a step towards her, agitation and annoyance clear in his face and body language. "There's really no need for this," he said, levelly. "He'll have enough energy to go to the same point in a week or so. The Winchesters are hardly going anywhere in the meantime."

"He's right, Jean," Castiel added with a small smile. "Thank you for offering, but it's safer to wait."

"Right. The issue's settled, then." Sherlock stated firmly, as though that was the definite end of the entire discussion. He swept away with his usual arrogant air, heading for his desk and sitting himself down in front of his laptop.

Jean scoffed, glaring after him, mentally calling him a dick, before looking back at Castiel. Though he smiled at her, a small, kind tug of the lips, he still looked quite sad. She wondered if he could hear them right then, the Winchesters, and it tugged at her heart.

"You'll still hear them, won't you?" Jean said softly, moving to sit on the end of the coffee table, leaning on her knees and bending her head. "They'll still pray to you every day. They're your friends, and they need your help."

She turned a smile of her own on him, and reached out to take his hand. He let her take it, the unreadable expression back on his face, but now it seemed softer, and much more human. She squeezed his fingers, and he gazed at her in wonder.

"I'm doing it, Sherlock," she said loudly, twisting around in the direction of her flatmate. "Don't try to argue with me, it's my choice," she added crossly, as Sherlock opened his mouth over his laptop. She kept his eye for a few seconds, daring him to contradict, but he seemed to have been shocked speechless, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Alright, Castiel," she smiled brightly with a small exertion of air, turning back. "Let's get you to Roswell."

"No!" Sherlock called loudly, leaping to his feet and striding back over to them, just as Jean shifted over on the coffee table so she was sitting directly in front of the angel. With one last squeeze, she let go of his hand, and sent a frown over her shoulder.

"Are you sure about this?" Castiel asked with concern, shuffling on the sofa and sitting up straighter.

Jean took a deep breath, exhaling audibly. She nodded. "Yes, I'm sure."

"It will be painful for you."

"I can handle pain, Castiel." She said with a small smile. Her mind raced back to Afghanistan, to lying in the sand with a bullet in her shoulder, begging with God or whoever else was listening to please, please, let me live. It couldn't possibly get any worse than that, right?

"Not like this. Angels are very powerful creatures, and an exposed human soul is quite vulnerable. It will feel as though your very essence is burning from the power of my touch." He paused, his eyes sad and old. "You have shown me kindness, Jean Watson. I do not wish to hurt you."

"Then don't!" Sherlock cut in, his voice stretched tight with emotion. He had stationed himself directly behind her, she could feel his presence looming over her back. "Jean, you're being highly irrational-"

"Shut up, Sherlock," she snapped, feeling slightly guilty as she swivelled to see an entirely vulnerable, soul-baring look of devastation upon her friend's face. For several seconds, he looked much too young, an expression she'd only seen on him a few times before; once, when Jim Moriarty had strapped a bomb around her chest and once more when an American agent had pushed a gun against her neck and started counting down. However, she remained resolute, staring him down, until the look was replaced with one of silent anger. "My soul, my decision," she stated determinedly.

Some of that resolution crumbled, however, when she turned back to Castiel, who was folding back the sleeve of his shirt and trench coat to reveal his bare right arm. Fear seemed made her heart jump to her throat, but she wrestled it back down, forcing even breaths. You're a soldier, Jean, get it together.

"Just to be sure, there won't be any long term side effects from this, will there?" she said quickly, successfully keeping the fear out of her voice.

The Angel shook his head gravely. "There shouldn't be any damage, unless I touch your soul for an extended amount of time." He switched his gaze from her to Sherlock, who was gritting his teeth behind her. "Do not worry, I will try to be as brief as I possibly can," he said, in what was probably a reassuring tone, though if anything it only seemed to make Sherlock even more restless. Jean watched her friend shift from one foot to the other, before crossing his arms across his chest as though as though to steel himself.

Jean nodded in understanding, the movement grounding her. She took one last shaky breath, and caught Castiel's eye. "Okay, then. Do it."

"I'm truly sorry," he sighed, and Jean believed him. He leaned forward, extending his bare arm and pressing his hand against her stomach. She clutched at the edge of the coffee table, grasping the wood between her fingers, but nothing could possibly have prepared her for what happened next. Castiel's hand pushed, and Jean watched, horrified, as his hand pressed though her jumper, directly into her stomach. For a split second, her doctor side took over, realising that this was very not good as there were things such as internal organs and blood to consider, but that part of her was soon drowned out.

"Guhkt," she gasped, as the pain collided with her body with what felt like an explosive force. A bright white light seemed to burst out from her, filling her vision until she scrunched her eyes shut, as sharp fiery pain crashed its way through her entire body, no, her entire being. She suddenly understood what Castiel had meant by her very essence being on fire. Every atom blazed, raging out from her centre, from her very soul, until she was screaming and burning. It was so much worse than lying on the burning sand with a bullet in her shoulder. It felt worse than a hundred bullets would, like every cell was alight, her blood boiling. Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks.

After a while (whether it was a few seconds or an hour, she couldn't tell) she shakily managed to open her eyes, and all she saw was him, Castiel, the Angel of God (she definitely believed him now). His eyes were blazing, white light pouring out of them and his face had been sharpened into angels of intense concentration. A wayward thought danced to the forefront of her mind, telling her that he looked so utterly beautiful like that, but also quite terrible.

Through the haze of pain she felt a twitching in her soul that seemed to reverberate in her mind, like something was moving, feeling within her, and she realised that it was him. He was touching her very soul, and whatever he was was burning her from the inside. She had stopped screaming by now, and had instead begun to whimper and moan and shake, digging her fingernails into the wood of the table beneath her. That, along with the arm that was impaled within her stomach, were the only things keeping her upright as the pain rolled on, and on, seemingly with no end, until tendrils of darkness seemed to creep up in the corners of her eyes-

"Stop."

That voice. She knew it, deep and low, it seemed to call out to her like a lighthouse in a storm. It took an effort, but she blinked away the black, managing to turn her head to find the source of the voice. Her eyes fell upon Sherlock Holmes, standing up to his full height in the doorway to the hall, her gun in his hand pointed directly at Castiel. She hadn't even noticed he'd left the room to retrieve it. A dangerously determined expression graced the detective, throwing every sharp line on his face into dark focus, with his eyes narrow and cold and the hand around the gun was completely steady. Had Jean been in the right state of mind, the sight of her flatmate looking so dangerous would probably have terrified her.

"I said," Sherlock snarled, finger tightening on the trigger. "Stop."

"Sherlock, no, don't," Jean whimpered, but it was too late. There was an explosive bang, and she gasped, watching weakly as the bullet buried itself into Castiel's shoulder, right into his heart.

"C-Castiel?" She spluttered out, but the Angel didn't react beyond staring solemnly in Sherlock's direction. The wound didn't bleed, but Jean could see the hole clear as day.

Several seconds later, Jean felt a force pull within her, and she cried out as the pain seemed to peak, and then, suddenly, it was gone, pulsing away and leaving her with the memory of heat and a feeling of exhaustion that seemed to penetrate her very bones. She wheezed, sucking in air as though she couldn't get enough, and looked down to see Castiel's hand had re-emerged from her stomach. His fingertips ghosted their way over her jumper, before trailing up to cup her cheek and direct her sight to his face. While the pain ebbed away, the white light remained, seeming to emanate from his eyes and body, as he gazed at her in such a tender, graceful way she almost felt unworthy to witness it.

"Thank you, Jean," he said softly, grazing his thumb over her cheekbone gently, an action which left her speechless. The light seemed to pulse and peak, and with wide eyes Jean realised that from either side of Castiel the shadows of massive feathered wings were extending out over the wall. "Goodbye," he whispered, and there was a bright flash of light and what felt seemed to be a crackle on energy pulsate through the air- and then he was gone. The sudden, inexplicable absence left the room entirely too quiet and empty.

Jean slumped on the table, bending and curling her arms around her stomach (which had begun to throb as though someone had kicked it in) and still heaving in air, she grimaced, trying to keep herself together as well as process the last few minutes. A quick glance told her Sherlock was still standing in the doorway, shock and whatever remained of his anger keeping him rooted in place, with the gun still stiffly held in his hand. She sent him an angry look over her shoulder, but it was probably marred with exhaustion and left over pain.

"Sherlock! Jean! What in heaven's name is going on up here?" Mrs Hudson called, and Jean looked around Sherlock to find her standing in the hall. She was actually more surprised the landlady hadn't come earlier.

"We-we're fine, Mrs Hudson," Jean gritted out, and it was at least partly true. While she felt exhausted, like she'd just come off a ridiculously long hospital shift, at least the pain had faded away, and even the deeply bruised in her stomach was just beginning to ease. Mrs Hudson, however, evidently didn't see this.

"Oh my dear! What happened?" she cried, rushing past Sherlock and wrapping a supporting arm around Jean's shoulders. Jean was instantly glad for the contact, leaning into the old lady motherly embrace. "Are you sick? You look absolutely terrible, dear."

"No- it-it's nothing Mrs Hudson, really. I just need to rest, and I'll be fine." Jean said, in what she hoped was a firm and reassuring voice. Evidentially it wasn't, as Mrs Hudson looked entirely unconvinced.

"Are you sure, dear? It looks like you might need a doctor-"

"Mrs Hudson, would you mind going down to your flat and making Jean a cup of tea?" Sherlock interrupted, his voice shaky but firm, and Jean was almost surprised to find that he had taken several steps towards them when she hadn't been looking. Though he still had the gun in his hand, he now looked a great deal more relaxed, though she could still feel the tension radiating from him.

"I could probably just make it in your kitchen, you know dear, it would be quicker and easier to carry, at least," Mrs Hudson stated, but Sherlock was now glowering down at her in a way that wasn't exactly threatening, but still made Mrs Hudson twitch uncomfortably.

The old lady glanced between the two of them, perhaps sensing that she was out of her depth.

"On second thought, my kitchen might be better after all, I do hate finding all of your experiments lying around in yours, Sherlock," she rambled, before giving gave Jean's shoulder a squeeze, and then a light pat. "I'll be back in a minute, love, you rest yourself and don't try to do anything too strenuous." Then she scarpered, dashing down the stairs and leaving Sherlock and Jean alone again.

Jean let a few seconds tick by, gathering whatever strength she had, before pushing herself off the coffee table with a grunt. Getting shakily on her feet for more of a challenge than usual, her arms still wrapped protectively around her stomach and legs spread to improve her balance. She turned to face the consulting detective.

"What the hell was that?" she spat as viscously as she could muster, pinning him down with a sharp look and the resulting wave of angry adrenaline steadied her.

"I-"

"You shot him. You shot a bloody angel, Sherlock, what were you thinking?!"

"He was hurting you," Sherlock hissed, returning her gaze with a fire of his own, his free hand clenched into a fist. "That was torture, and I-I-" He lifted the hand with the gun to his head, running his fingers through the dark curls, as if he wanted to rip them out. Not for the first time, Jean reminded herself to teach him about proper gun safety, and she winced at metal scraped over his scalp. "I didn't know how to react, or what to do, so I did the only thing that I had in my power to do," he added angrily.

Jean recoiled at the sheer amount of emotion playing across Sherlock's face, fear, anger and sorrow being prominent. It was unnerving to say the least, as usually Sherlock had tight control over his emotions, only leasing them out to con a witness or remind Jean of his status as a high functioning drama queen. This wasn't funny at all, though; it was completely and utterly genuine. She'd bared her soul in the literal sense just minutes earlier, but now Sherlock was doing it metaphorically. In that moment, he reminded her of a kicked puppy, a very tall, egotistical puppy in tight clothing and shaggy hair, but a puppy none the less.

"Look, just… don't ever do that again," she sighed, her heart melting at the sight. The fight drained out of her and tiredness crawled into her voice. "Please."

He gave a tight nod, before coldly replying, "I could probably say the same to you."

She held eye contact for a few seconds longer, but the very notion of staying upright was wearing her down. Slowly, her arms still clutched around her dully throbbing chest, her eyes slid to the ground and she bent over double.

"Ahhh," she grunted out, her knees feeling like they were about to buckle beneath her.

Sherlock was on her in a flash, wrapping one arm around her waist and the other under her arms, keeping her upright and steadying her against his firm chest. She gripped his shirt as her legs gave out beneath her, but Sherlock didn't let her fall, holding her to him. She felt the gun press against her back, as she took some deep, consolidating breaths, waiting for the haziness to pass so she could regain her own feet. It wasn't exactly humiliating having to rely on Sherlock so heavily, but she would have rather have at least some control over her body.

"You need to sit down," Sherlock said firmly, shifting his arms into a better position, the muscles of his arm straining a bit against Jean's shoulders.

"I'm fine," she mumbled into his shirt, but the trembling in her shoulders betrayed her. She felt terrible and he knew it, with his bloody all-seeing powers of deduction.

"No you're not. Can you move?"

Jean nodded and, arms still around her waist, he half pulled, half guided her on shaky legs across the room to her armchair. With a gentleness that seemed quite at odds with the anger from a few minutes earlier, Sherlock lowered her down into the chair, and she sunk back into the upholstery, feeling like she'd had run from one side of London the other and then got beaten up by a gang of thugs. Sherlock stayed crouching over her, scanning her face and up and down her body as though looking for physical injuries. He placed his hand over her stomach, much like Castiel had done minutes before, frowning and running his fingers experimentally over the spot, even giving some small experimental pushes. Jean watched him through half closed eyes, trying not to wince.

"I am never doing that again," she muttered, scrubbing a hand over her face and through her hair, which made Sherlock glance up at her.

"We're in agreement, then," he replied coolly, with just the hint of a joke in his blue-green eyes. She gave a wan smile in return, a feeling of warm comfort drifting over her at his close proximity. He moved his larger hand to cover her own as a comforting gesture, and they shared a look. I'm just glad you're ok, his eyes said. She smiled a little wider.

"Woohoo," came a voice from the door, and in unison they looked around to see Mrs Hudson, a tray of tea in her hands and a blanket slung over her shoulder. "Ooh, I hope I'm not interrupting anything too personal, dears," she said, with a barely contained grin.

…

Finite.

…

I may have come out of this slightly shipping Jean/Cas.

This took so long. It probably wouldn't have taken as long if I weren't also half-watching Supernatural at the same time, but whatever. I'm beat.

G out. *flies away*