Dean had almost caught up with the Doctor when he crashed into a pillar, before throwing his hand out to the hunter, who skidded to a halt.
"Stay back!" the Doctor shouted, before speaking aloud to himself. "Whatever made you good, Canton, has clearly been destroyed by what made you Crowley."
His face changed, Dean quickly working out that the Doctor was currently in the midst of a mind-fight with the King of Hell.
"Oh, please," was the reply, clearly Crowley, "Canton is nothing compared to me. Canton was a five-minute phase. I am forever. And if you think that I'm going to be reprimanded by a mere child-"
The Doctor slapped himself on the cheek, and clearly the Time Lord won the round.
"You have no idea who you're dealing with, Crowley!" he said, before doubling over as his body was wracked with pain; the demon inside him attempting to regain his hold. "I'm not a regular human whose brain you can turn into play-dough."
"Yes, I quite clearly got that when I found that you'd locked out your brain," Crowley answered, straightening up. "Although, not all of it – who's Clara? You've clearly moved on from Ms Pond and co-"
Slap. Dean stood watching in slight amazement - his curiosity had won over his desire to stab Crowley in the face no matter what meatsuit he was wearing; he wanted to see if the Doctor could win.
"She is under my protection. As for my friends, you do not get to talk about them. You lost the right to talk about them as soon as you became this-"
"-this what? You can't call me anything worse than what you are, Doctor."
The Doctor was silent for a few seconds, before he looked at Dean.
"Well, that shut him up, didn't it?" Crowley said to Dean. The latter immediately started moving again, pinning the Doctor's body to the pillar, knife to his throat.
In the next second, he changed again – Dean saw it deep within the Doctor's eyes, and he smiled at the man. "Thanks," he said. "He nearly won there. Made me emotional. Made me angry. If there's one thing that's bad it's an angry Time Lord."
He took stock of the situation in front of him: Dean, holding the knife to his throat, unsure whether he should go for the kill-shot or let the Doctor have his way; Sam and the Trans entering the room, Linda Tran holding on to a bloody shoulder; and the demon currently worming its way through his brain, slowly gaining ground over his mind again.
"Don't suppose you have any walnuts to hand, do you?" he asked Dean, his fingers flexing around Dean's wrist, preventing the hunter from slicing open his carotid. At Dean's surprise and then faint shake of the head, he nodded. "Thought not. Crowley?" he spoke loudly, addressing the demon that was currently poking into his frontal lobe, "This is your last warning. You leave now or I make you."
"Oh yeah?" was the sneered answer as Crowley gained his foothold again, although Dean wondered whether the Doctor had let him gain control, just to reason with him, to let him speak. "What're you gonna do, yell at me some more? Because I own this body now. You can't even force me out by throwing up."
Dean suddenly became aware that the Doctor's hand – the one that held the demon-killing knife away from his throat – had started to glow. The same glow that had appeared when he'd healed Sam's scar.
"I'm a Time Lord, Crowley," the Doctor side spat. "I can force you out by other means."
"Bollocks," the Crowley side managed, as the glow became more and more apparent. "You're bluffing."
"Am I?" the Doctor asked, before he lashed out with a strength that belied his wiry frame, pushing Dean backwards, into his brother.
What happened next was a combination of awe-inspiring and insane.
Regeneration. Not only that; regeneration with a ruby-red smoke being forced out of the Doctor's mouth. A golden light streamed from his hands and head, completely engulfing the Doctor's figure. The Winchesters and the Trans could do nothing but stare at the spectacle, the red and gold intertwining as the gold pushed away the red.
Then, as the last of the smoke left, the gold stopped abruptly. It was almost too abrupt, the Doctor crashing to the floor, unmoving, eyes closed.
The humans in the room gaped at the Doctor's prone body, before their attention was drawn to the door at the back of the room opening.
Of course it was Crowley, brushing off the coat on his regular meatsuit. He took advantage of the Winchesters' amazement at the Time Lord, and picked up the tablet that had been resting near the door since the Doctor had forced Crowley out.
"Well, that was exciting," he said, before coughing suddenly, expelling an eerily familiar golden light from his mouth. He frowned, wiping his mouth, but coughed again.
"Bastard," he said, glaring at the Doctor. "You'll pay for that."
Then, he was gone, and the tablet too.
"You okay?" Sam asked his brother, who nodded.
"What happened?" Dean asked, nodding to Linda Tran, noting her bloody shoulder.
"Beau pulled a gun, grazed her shoulder. Took him down, though, and that creepy guy too."
Dean nodded as Sam stepped forward and crouched by the Doctor. "What happened here?" he asked, pressing his fingers to the man's neck, checking for a pulse.
"Tell you later; let's get out of here."
"Wow. Guy goes to Purgatory for a year and all hell breaks loose," Dean announced, leaning triumphantly back on his chair. Sam, sitting on the bed of the as-ever dingy motel room they currently inhabited, looked up.
"Check this out," Dean continued. "A jogger in Minneapolis got their heart ripped out."
Sam frowned, crossing the room. "I'm guessing literally?"
"Only way that interests me. And then, there's another article from six months ago. Same thing happens, also in Minneapolis. What does that tell us?"
"Stay out of Minneapolis," Sam answered. "Aren't you forgetting something, though?" he asked.
"What?"
"We've got a comatose guy in our motel room."
Sam indicated the Doctor, lying on one of the beds. He'd not woken up since his act in the warehouse. They hadn't been able to take him to the hospital; a quick check with a stethoscope had told them the Doctor had been telling the truth about his hearts. They couldn't leave him either, they weren't running the risk of losing someone else to Crowley, stranger or no. The Doctor had practically sacrificed himself in order for them to get the tablet, and they'd failed in getting it.
Dean sighed, running a hand through his hair. "So, what, we just sit here and wait for him to wake up? That could take years," he said, somewhat reasonably. "We don't have years."
"I know," Sam agreed, both of them watching the Doctor's chest rise and fall. They didn't know anything about their roommate, aside from his dual-hearts and a lower body temperature – a thermometer had told them his temperature was around 59 Fahrenheit.
Dean had gone through the man's pockets upon their arrival in the motel, revealing a curious assortment of objects: the "sonic screwdriver" (Dean had pressed the button down and somehow blown out the TV, he put it down quickly after), some string, and a black leather wallet. Upon opening the wallet, Dean discovered it contained a blank piece of paper. No identification at all, not that the Winchesters had been expecting him to carry any.
"All right," Sam said eventually. "How about you do some more research about this, and I'll go grab some food. We can decide what to do later."
Dean nodded his assent, tapping a few keys on the laptop.
Later came and went, and no decision was made. In fact, the brothers didn't discuss the Doctor at all, instead they argued. About Dean's past year, about Sam's past year, about their difference in ideals; all in hushed tones, like they were worried their immovable companion would suddenly wake and overhear.
Now, the pair were asleep, Sam on the bed (they'd Rock-Paper-Scissored for it, Sam won again), Dean in the motel armchair. As such, neither of them noticed the Doctor take a long breath, expelling a tendril of golden light from his mouth.
The next morning, Dean awoke to an unfamiliar weight on his body. He frowned groggily, eyes taking in a blanket that had been draped over him. His first thought was maybe that Sam had laid it on him, by way of apology for the night before, but he knew his brother far too well for that. He also spotted his brother still asleep on the bed, tangled up in the sheets. Dean's eyes roved the room, finally finding the break in the symmetry: the Doctor was no longer lying on the other bed.
Another quick search revealed the man: he was stood in the small kitchenette area of the motel room, fiddling with the implements there. Alerted to Dean's movements he turned around, a grin on his face. "You're awake," he said. "Good, I've just made some tea."
Dean accepted the steaming mug without comment. He wasn't a tea-drinker per se, but it was a hot beverage and it was early in the morning, he'd take whatever he could get. To his surprise, the tea was actually quite good.
"When did you wake up?" he asked, placing the mug on the table as he stood and stretched.
"Oh, a few hours ago," the Doctor said absently. "I think. Enough time for me to get the tea and fix the TV," he indicated a tangled mess of wires and circuitry on the floor. "Well, started to fix the TV. That'll teach you to mess with my things."
Dean said nothing in return, instead preferring to take another mouthful of tea. Fortunately, he was saved by Sam waking up, frowning at the pair of them stood by the table.
"You're awake," he finally said, as the Doctor crossed the room to fetch another mug of tea.
"Well observed Mr Winchester," the Doctor grinned, as Sam levered himself upright and out of bed. He took the offered mug of tea, finding, like his brother, that it actually wasn't that bad.
"Thanks," he said, running a hand through his hair, sweeping it off his face.
"Glad you're finally awake," Dean said. "We were starting to run out of ideas about what to do with you."
"Ah, yes, sorry," the Doctor apologised, "one of the side effects."
He sat down, amidst the mess that was formerly the television, before pulling out his screwdriver and picking up the tangled wires. He set about his work with great concentration, leaving the brothers to frown at him and each other.
"Side effects?" Sam asked. "Wanna elaborate?"
"Oh, right," the Doctor said. "Well, as I'm sure you saw, I forced Crowley out. But, it wasn't the most practical way of doing so. I could have detoxed in another way, but I didn't have the materials to hand-"
"Walnuts?" Dean interrupted, wondering how they fit into such a ritual.
"Right, yes, walnuts," the Doctor said. "Last time I had to clean out cyanide poisoning and I used walnuts and ginger beer. Anyway, I didn't have those, so I used the next best thing: regeneration. Regeneration can be seen as the ultimate cleansing ritual – I once recovered from severe radiation poisoning with it. I mean, it offers complete cell rejuvenation, at the cost of my entire self changing."
"Why didn't you, then?" Sam asked. "Why didn't you change?"
"In short, I used up the main energies to force Crowley out. His... essence couldn't handle the force of it, and so he was expelled. I didn't have enough to change, just enough to recover from his probing."
"That's why he coughed up the gold stuff," Dean realised.
"Did he?" the Doctor asked. "Probably not the best for him, regeneration energy can be quite a problem for those who aren't Time Lord."
He leaned back, before picking up the circuit board he'd been fiddling with, setting it back into the TV. He then rearranged the wires, before replacing the entire set. "Now don't mess with my screwdriver again," he told Dean. "You were two settings away from the Red ones."
"Right," Dean said, shaking his head softly, before finishing his mug of tea. "There any more of this?" he asked. The Doctor indicated the kitchenette, where an entire teapot was waiting.
"What did you use to buy this stuff?" Dean asked, noting the teapot, milk and a large assortment of teabags. It looked as though the Doctor had mixed varieties in order to get the desired flavour he wanted.
"Soniced a cashpoint," the Doctor said absently. "Think I went a bit overboard though, I put the rest of the money up there." He pointed to the mantle. Sam discovered that the Doctor had acquired about three hundred dollars worth of twenties; they were stacked in a neat pile. "Thought you lot might make better use of it than me," he added.
"So, what happens now?" Dean asked, returning with another mug of tea.
"Now we wait for my transport," the Doctor replied, yet another grin lighting his features.
A/N: So, yes, here we are at the end of another chapter. Apologies for the slight delay, the beginning of this chapter gave me issues. I hope the Crowley/Doctor argument doesn't confuse too much, I think I indicated well enough who was speaking when. I'm just picturing it and the complete absurdity of it.
I see one more chapter after this, just to wrap things up.
And yes, the walnuts is a reference to the episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp". I always found the detox ritual hilarious.
Right, I don't think I have anything to add.
Your reviews etc are appreciated greatly, however!