A/N: Thanks for the reviews, they are much appreciated. :D
The day starts with a slam and a lot of things happening loudly very fast.
"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," says Dean, and the first thing Sam processes is something being thrown at his face.
There's a truck revving up outside and some people shouting in the street and white light pouring through and illuminating dust molecules floating in the air.
"I – what-" He fumbles and struggles to get up, grappling with the material covering half his head. It's a dark shirt, though not one he recognises. "What time is it?"
"Time to rise and shine!" Dean moves towards the kitchen. "John said we could use the toaster but I don't like my food coming from the same box as someone's toe, so cereal alright for you?"
Sam stands and stretches. There are discarded books, newspapers, pages of lists and names everywhere. It looks like a bombsite. His first morning in Great Britain, and guess what, he spends it feeling achey from the cramped sleeping position and in the same clothes he was wearing last night like a hundred other mornings.
"John said we could borrow shirts, but his wouldn't fit your gargantuan self so that's one of Sherlock's."
Sam follows his voice to the kitchen. There's a counter strewn with what looks like a forgotten science experiment, with some questionable-looking liquids in some glass beakers near the edge of the table. "So it's 'John' now?"
"Yeah," Dean pauses in pouring out some kind of muesli into a bowl to look at Sam. "Turns out he's not a complete douchebag."
Was he ever? Sam shakes his head disbelievingly. "So where is everyone?"
"Cas is still cloud-hopping somewhere." The fridge opens and a fresh carton of milk is produced. "John went to bed. And nobody knows where the hell Sherlock is, but I hear that's pretty normal."
Sam observes his brother trying (and failing) to find the spoons. There's light greyish pouches under his eyes and he yawns several times. "Did you sleep at all?"
"What are you, my mother?" Not looking at him, Dean unscrews the milk lid and starts pouring. "I slept."
Which means, of course, that he dozed off for about half an hour at some point. Does Dean really think he can fob Sam off with that, or is he really just that stubborn? Sam muses. Yep, pretty sure he's just stubborn. And obnoxious.
"Here." A bowl (with a fork rather than a spoon) is shoved across the counter towards Sam with too much force and the milk leaps in the bowl, nearly splattering him.
"Do you think they'll let me use their shower?" he says.
Dean shrugs. "I don't know, I already did."
Of course. "So I guess you haven't found anything. Like, a person who caused this whole universe mutation." Sam stares into his bowl thoughtfully. "I still don't get that. I'm thinking of going to the library."
Dean puts his bowl down with vigour. Sam almost jumps. "You can't find the answers to everything in a book, Sam!"
This isn't anger, not really, just the culmunation of a night of failure and sleep deprivation and worry and the beginnings of repressed fear.
When Sam doesn't reply, Dean picks up the bowl again and resumes eating like nothing has happened. There's a familiar pang in Sam's stomach, an anxiety when he looks at his brother that sometimes seems to recede into nothingness but not really, it's always there in the background, too constant to be paid attention to and too relentless to be ignored.
He fiddles with his fork and watches the bits of muesli get soaked in the milk, turning to mush and smaller bits drifting around and sinking.
"I think I'll have a shower now." Sam drops the fork with a clatter. He starts to head to the bathroom but then he stops and turns. "Dean?"
"What?"
"What did you say to… John? In that room yesterday? Does he know, like know about us? And Castiel?"
Dean stirs the cereal with the fork. "I told him… enough."
"You want to expand on that?"
"Would you-" The other hunter snorts. "Would you just go and take your shower already?"
"Dean, I need to know what you said."
"Wow, relax Samantha. He knows that we're not mechanics, but I didn't exactly give him my entire lifestory either. Let's just say… nothing you say will freak him out."
He doesn't realise he's tense until he feels his shoulders loosen. "Okay."
When Sam emerges from the bathroom twenty minutes later, hair dripping and his left wrist throbbing from an incident with the shower dial, there's three times as many people bustling around and mud and paper all over the floor and strewn across the carpet.
"What's going on?" he says as he enters the sitting-room.
Sherlock's pacing around the room at a frantic pace, still in the suit he went out in last night, but his dark curls are sticking up in strange directions and he has a wild look in his eyes.
John's standing close by somewhat uncertainly, saying "Sherlock. Sherlock, just stop a minute. What's going on?" while Dean tries to salvage the pieces of paper before they get trampled on. This paper too, is covered in names.
"I can't stop," says Sherlock, treading an erratic circle of dirt into the ground. "Don't you understand, John? I can't stop. I can't stop, I have to keep going, I found names, I found lots of names, but none of them make sense, I've been searching all night and it doesn't make sense. Why can't I see the answer? It's right there in front of me, it always is, but I can't stop, I can't stop, don't you understand, John?"
And so his rambling goes on. John sighs and makes a frustrated sound, then decides to stand in Sherlock's path.
"Sherlock, could you just stay still-" He puts an arm out when Sherlock attempts to go around him, so the detective just turns around and makes a smaller circle.
"Why can't he stop?" says Sam.
Dean and John shrug at the same time. "He gets like this sometimes," says John. "Well, not like this exactly."
"I can't stop, I can't stop, if I stop… I can't stop, John, John, John, I can't stop…"
"Maybe he really can't physically stop," says Sam.
Dean looks at him. "What, you think this might be… he might be channeling whatever Cas is doing in Heaven?"
"I kind of hope it's that way round." Sam gets a fleeting mental image of Castiel bombarding from cloud to cloud in a large heavenly circle.
"I don't know," says John. "It might just be Sherlock."
Sherlock stops. Just like that, mid-step. He lowers his foot and stills next to the window, cast in the morning light, and the persistent chatter ceases. Sam can't see his face as he stands there, motionless. It seems almost as if he's drooping.
"Sherlock?"
"John." The British man turns, glancing around at his dirt track and the general chaos. He appears calm, his eyes having lost the alarming glaze. Instead he seems incredibly weary, face pale and head tilted downwards.
"What was all that about?" says John.
Sherlock blinks as if it's taking him a second to work out what John could be referring to. "I've had a very bizarre experience, John."
"Yeah, we figured." Dean brushes some mud off a few sheets of paper and squints at the handwriting a second.
"I went out and I was full of a kind of energy. I couldn't stop moving." He pauses, cuts himself off maybe.
John looks worried. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, yes. It was very useful. I found a lot of names."
Sam wonders what Cas is doing in Heaven, that it would affect Sherlock in this way.
"Maybe you should rest now, Sherlock, if you've been walking around all night," says John.
"I don't need to. Rest will only slow me down-"
The doctor has a long-suffering expression that indicates a long history of these arguments."I wasn't asking. Sit."
Sherlock wavers, and then sways. Everybody flinches, expecting him to fall at any moment. He turns and snatches the wad of greyish paper from Dean's hands, then flops onto the couch. "There's something I'm missing. What am I missing?"
As he starts scanning through the names, holding the sheets up above his head for the light to catch them, Sam shoots John questioning look.
"This is the normal Sherlock," says John. Then, to his housemate: "I'll make a cup of tea."
"Two sugars," says Sherlock, without looking away from the paper. Whenever he holds one sheet to the side to look at the one below it, some specks of dust and dirt cascade downwards onto his once-pristine shirt.
The doctor's voice travels from the kitchen as the kettle starts to rumble. "Anybody else want tea?"
Dean is shaken into action from where he has been standing and gazing vacantly at Sherlock with unseeing eyes. "Yeah, you got any coffee?" He brushes his hands of the mud and disappears into the kitchen.
Sam is left with Sherlock, who takes no notice of him.
"So, uh," says Sam, feeling the need to say something. "You find anything while you were out?"
"Names," says Sherlock. "But none of them mean anything. There should be a link, something obvious, something that connects up."
Out of nowhere he picks one sheet, stares at it for a long instant, and then crumples it up and tosses it behind his head, where it rolls and lies still on the floor.
"Oh." Sam wanders over to the desk where John was sat last night.
There's two notepads, one with Dean's handwriting and one which must be John's, the words small and neat and rounded.
Pauline Simone, shot, aged 46. Usman Khan, suicide, aged 62. Sandy White, car crash, aged 13….
"I thought I might go to the library today," says Sam.
Sherlock manages to exude disdain just through his tone of voice. "Already did that during the night. Nothing useful."
Sam blinks. "Libraries are open at night-time?"
"No."
It seems like that's put an end to the conversation for a while and several more snowballs of paper sail across the room.
"Does your brother have a problem with his shoulder or his arm?"
"What?" Sam looks up, half wondering if he heard that right.
Sherlock drops the papers so they scatter onto his chest in a flamboyant gesture. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling. "Dean Winchester. Did he ever have a past injury, a dislocated shoulder?"
"I, uh…" Sam trails off as Dean and John re-enter the room, John brandishing a cup of steaming tea which he hands to the prone detective.
Sitting up to drink it, Sherlock's gaze appears to be directed inward. He's thinking hard. He takes a deep gulp from the tea (how the hell is that not burning him?) and massages his temples.
Going over to the desk, John starts to rearrange the stacks of paper from last night. There's so much damn paper nobody seems to know what to do with all the names. In fact, nobody seems to know what to do full stop, except for Castiel, of whom there is still no sign.
After five minutes, Sherlock's started slumping against the edge of the couch, eyelids drooping and then flickering up again. "John…"
"Yes, Sherlock?"
There's a thump as Sherlock goes completely limp on his side and his eyes shut. "John, there's a link. There 'as t'be a link…." His words are slurring.
"Yes, you've told us all numerous times."
"'F I could jus' fin'…." His words become increasingly indistinguishable, dropped to a near-silent garble, and when he falls silent and his face relaxes it becomes clear he's fallen asleep.
The corner of John's mouth curls upwards. "I didn't think he'd drink it."
"You drugged him?" says Dean.
"Sleeping pill. Only way he would rest."
Dean snorts and shakes his head, but Sam feels restless, like he ought to be doing something in particular.
"Well," Dean's saying. "I'm gonna hope that the, uh, 'soul connection' doesn't affect me like-"
He is cut off by the sound of a tremendous crash from the kitchen and the sound of plates smashing and silverware tumbling onto the ground.
Dean, John and Sam exchange a look before following the sound as it recedes.
When Sam enters the kitchen, at first all he sees is an explosion of dishware fragments, cutlery and milk from a forgotten bowl of cereal covering the floor. It seems as if everything has been dragged off one of the counters. One of the cupboard doors lies ajar.
It's only when some of the cutlery on the floor starts moving that he steps around the counter and sees a mass of tan trenchcoat. "Cas!"
The angel gives a splutter which isn't quite a groan, and throws out a hand to use the side of the counter for support as he stumbles to his feet. Forks cascade off him and rattle onto the ground.
He brushes away their attempts at help and stands there, swaying slightly and his face ashen.
"Are you alright?"
A pause. "I'm… fine."
Dean sighs. "I'll try again. Are you alright?"
As Cas steps forward, making a fragment of plate crunch under his shoe in a small puddle of milk, Sam can't help but notice that there seems to be something of a theme for unexpected objects covering the floor recently.
"Yes," says Cas. He sounds a bit perplexed, and even irritated. "I was in Heaven… I found a soul-"
"You found the person?" says Sam.
Castiel's face darkens. "I did, but before I could discover… who it was I was… thrown back here."
John's hovering in the doorway. While he's adjusted to Dean and Sam's presence, he doesn't really seem to know what to make of Castiel, as a whole. That's understandable.
When Cas takes another step forward he looks down at the crunch at his feet, and notices all the havoc. "I apologise. My landing was unexpected." And then he wobbles dangerously to one side.
"No offence Cas, but you look like you're about to have another close encounter with the floor," says Dean. "Wanna tell us what that's about?"
Cas stares at him and blinks hard. His speech is laboured. "I don't… know."
"I do," says John from the doorway. He has a strange look on his face, like he can't believe he's contributing to the conversation. "It's because Sherlock's asleep, isn't it?"
"But then shouldn't he be, like, passed out unconscious?" says Sam.
Cas grimaces and tries to shake his head. "The connection is not yet firmly established. It…fluctuates."
He proceeds to nearly impale himself on a sharp edge of a plate shard as he throws at a hand to regain his balance, so Dean suggests they move to the less hazardous sitting-room.
"Cas, sit down," says Dean when Castiel stumbles after them into the room. "You'll do yourself an injury and then we'll have to clear it up."
It's unclear how much of this is getting through to the angel, who seems to have a rather tenuous grasp on consciousness. Sam keeps waiting for the moment when he finally buckles, but it never comes.
John goes and picks up the papers that are scattered over Sherlock and the floor and the couch. "You said you found who it was who died," he says.
Cas gives a small nod. He directs all his words towards his shoes. "It was unusual."
"You sure you don't know who it was?" says Dean. There's a silence before all of Castiel's replies, as if he's mustering up the energy to speak.
"I couldn't get a name. But it was not a normal soul." He pauses. "It was very old."
"What, like a pensioner?"
"No." Cas drags his gaze upwards to meet their eyes for an instant. "You don't understand. It was older than a human soul should be. Centuries."
Dean lets out a low whistle. "Centuries? Well, uh, was it a dude? Chick?"
"Souls do not have genders."
"Right. Well, that's real useful. Somebody really old."
John moves a bit closer. "And this soul was the past incarnation of… me? And Dean?"
Castiel seems almost reluctant to answer. "No. It was more similar to Sherlock's soul."
"Okay…" Sam takes a moment to try and wrap everything around his mind. "So let me get this straight. Somebody died before their, uh, their time, and this made two universes come together to finish that person's timeline, making Cas and Sherlock coexist… That doesn't explain Dean and John."
"They could be incidental," says Cas.
"Incidental?" Dean looks almost offended.
"It's possible, but unlikely, that two people needed replacements at once," says Cas. His voice sounds strained, and they all lean in to hear him as it drops in volume and pitch. "More likely is that you coincide with the first soul. Say, the soul needed someone else to help fulfil their role. But when two reincarnations were produced, so the other person was produced twice."
"Alright… well, I understood about forty percent of that," says Dean.
"Anything that would help identify them?" Sam imagines scouring through all the names they've got so far just with the idea of 'old.' "Nationality? When they died?"
The angel says one word, but it's little more than a whisper.
"What?" Sam gets closer.
"Come on, stay with us, Cas," says Dean. "This is important."
Castiel forces his head up and tries again. "The way they died…"
"Yeah?"
"Water." He takes a deep shuddering breath. "They died with water."
It's been two days, and Sam is noticing some things about the other four.
He notices that Dean starts limping when the conversation turns to something that stresses him. At first it was only once or twice, but now it doesn't take much to set it off. Stranger still, Dean rarely realises, but John will generally stop using his cane at around the same moments. It's as if they've swapped.
He notices that sometimes John will rub his left shoulder, and he thinks of what Sherlock asked him.
He notices that the Bible never leaves the sitting-room.
He notices Sherlock saying things that Castiel has said earlier, or Dean echoing John in his words, and Sam struggles to work out if it's just coincidence or the sign of something deeper. He doesn't really like thinking about it. John is not, and will never be, the same as his brother.
He notices that while the universes blending wreaks unpredictable results on his brother, and his friend, and two supposed strangers, it seems to have made no impact on him.
Once or twice Sam wonders why that is.
He knows that Dean's worried. Hell, he would be freaked too if he was in danger of channelling another person at any given moment.
Sam wishes the whole thing could be simple. He wishes he understood how to solve this, what exactly they're fighting, what to expect.
A soft breeze wafts through the opened window, but it's doing nothing for the cloudy heat that pervades that atmosphere. He looks up from the sheet of paper. They've narrowed down the list to water-related deaths that they've found.
Cecilia deMontfort, drowned in lake, 8th Aug.
Peter Temble, sailing accident, 9th Aug.
Laurence Simmons, died in shower, 8th Aug.
Emrys Pendragon, drowned, 10th Aug.
Anita Pritchard, flash flood, 7th Aug.
John's got another sheet where he's trying to note down the ages of all these people when they died. He's sat at his desk while Sam leans over the table from the armchair. Nobody knows where the hell Sherlock is.
The room's full of the atmosphere at a library where everybody does their best to be silent, except with added tension. Outside the sky is cement gray, the light in that middling time between afternoon and evening.
It's driving him mad, just writing out these names and staring at them as if somehow the answer will be there in front of him.
Castiel and Dean are in the kitchen. Sam can hear them talking. His brother's voice echoes off the tiles, whilst Cas is quieter, a low rumble.
"I should go back to Heaven," Cas is saying. "I can try and find the soul again."
Dean sounds doubtful. "Are you sure? Like, how dangerous was it last time?"
There's a crunch as somebody steps on a fragment of plate that was overlooked during the clean-up. "I managed."
"What the hell does that mean? Damn it Cas, there are angels out to kill you."
"I am capable of protecting myself, Dean."
The fridge door opens with a squelch, most likely Dean getting a beer. "What about Sherlock? If you die up there, what happens to him? And what if he falls asleep, or gets knocked out or something, you're just gonna end up back here."
"I shall try and return as soon as possible."
A hiss as the beercan is opened. "Great, so now the poor guy's got to stay awake as long as you're flitting about. You know, he went on some kind of soul-bonding LSD trip while you were gone."
"That's not my fault, Dean. I did the best I could."
There's a moment of silence and then the sound of the can being placed on the counter with a bit too much force. "Well, what if it's not good enough?"
There is no reply.
Dean sighs. "Tell me something, Cas. This thing going on at the moment, with the soul connection… is there an answer? Like, finding this person's name, is that gonna help? You gotta be straight with me, man."
"The connection is weak still. We need to find a way to break it."
"But how? As long as we're still all living in the same universe, it's gonna happen, right?" No answer. "Tell me this – what happens if the connection doesn't break?"
There is no reply.
Sam can't quite out the next few words, but he hears Castiel say something and Dean replies "God damn it, Cas, I need to know-" but he doesn't sound angry so much as frustrated, desperate. "And don't give me crap about dying, or say there's no solution, because I'm not dying, you hear me? Nobody's dying. So - would you stop giving me that look like I don't know what I'm talking about, alright?"
"Your determination is admirable, Dean, but it is misplaced."
"Misplaced?" There's such a loud metallic smash that Sam jumps and his handwriting does an unnecessarily extravagant loop, thinking for a second that Cas has passed out again. Even John glances up at the doorway.
Sam relaxes at the subsequent stream of curses from the kitchen, indicating that Dean has spilt the beer. "Aw, hell-"
He is interrupted by Cas saying something.
"No, Cas, you're not just flying off! You want to be helpful? Go and help Sherlock with whatever the hell he's doing. Where is he, anyway?"
"Beside the Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park."
There's such a long stretch where no voices come from the kitchen that Sam thinks Cas has already gone, buts then he hears "Dean."
"What?"
"I shall endeavour to make death a last resort."
"Cas-" But, as ever, it appears the angel has disappeared mid-sentence. "Son of a bitch."
There's some shuffling and movement, and then Dean appears in the doorway and comes into the sitting-room. He's got a damp stain on the lower half of his pantleg.
He looks at Sam and John hunched over the bits of paper. Sam waits for the comment about nerds but it never comes.
"British beer officially sucks." Dean swipes at the dark patch. "Cas has gone to find Sherlock." As if the whole apartment didn't hear the prior conversation.
The doctor ignores him, staring at the screen with abrupt interest, then turning and marking something off on the paper.
"You got something?" says Sam.
"Well…" The doctor taps his pen against the table. "It can't be the French girl, deMontfort. She wasn't even ten. Or Temble, he was twenty-seven. And three months. He has a very detailed Facebook tribute page."
"Okay." Sam takes a moment to cross out the names on his list. "So that leaves Simmons, Pendragon, and Pritchard."
Dean leans over his shoulder and peers at the paper. He's wearing one of John's shirts, a spare, and Sam hates that this fact bothers him. It reminds him of what's already happening.
"Hey," says Dean. "I'm not the reincarnation, or the soul or whatever, of a dude who kicked the bucket in the shower. I mean, come on. That's not a guy who causes universes to blend together."
"Yeah, I mean, it's not like you take showers," says Sam.
"Hey-"
"I mean, let's be realistic here."
Dean gives him a look as he heads over to where John's sitting. "Bitch."
"Jerk." Sam thinks. "Anyway, isn't this Sherlock's soul guy we're looking for?"
An exasperated sigh. "Hell, I don't know. This whole thing's so messed up it's like I'm back in ninth grade Chemistry."
"You're right though." John clicks the mouse a few times and examines the screen. "Says here Simmons was a PE teacher when he died who 'enjoyed a weekly game of tennis or squash.' Hardly likely to be centuries old, is he?"
Sam's pen runs out mid-line but it doesn't matter, there's only two names left. He reads them out and thinks. "Emrys Pendragon, Anita Pritchard. Pendragon, Pritchard."
"Pendragon isn't coming up with any results. There's no records of him. Or of the Pritchard girl. It's a dead end."
"Nothing?" says Dean. "Any social network accounts? Or… whatever old people do on the internet."
Sam muses. "You ever heard of the name Emrys? What is it, Welsh or something?"
John types the name out. "According to…. ' ,' it means…." He taps in a few more words. As he's looking at the screen, his face changes, hand suddenly stilling on the mouse. He sits back in the chair.
"What is it?"
"Immortal." John gives a disbelieving laugh and rubs his face tiredly. "Emrys means immortal."
"Looks like we found our guy," says Dean.