Thanks to Kathrin J Pearl, tranland, Tutto-E-Lecito, and mudkipz
Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock/Doctor Who/Supernatural/the Avengers/Jekyll, or any associated characters, events, etc.
CHAPTER IX. Metamorphosis
"Jesus Christ," Dean muttered, sidling up to Cas as soon as he saw him in the hallway. Natasha set herself purposefully to the side, an actual sigh of relief flowing from her lips as the hunter released himself from her company. "That woman, I swear—she may be nice to look at, but an hour alone with her just about makes you want to kill yourself."
The angel made a small, noncommittal noise. "Perhaps it is a trait shared by all of these… superheroes, then."
"Dude, I'm sure Stark was a piece of cake compared to that bitch."
"I disagree." His tone was lower, gruffer than usual—clearly as frustrated with the product of the last few hours as Dean was.
"Where is he, anyways?"
"I…" Castiel glanced over his shoulder, then frowned deeply. "I'm not sure… it would appear that he left on his own time."
Dean snorted, driven to the humor by the pure relief of being with Cas again. Natasha Romanoff was an absolutely exhausting woman, he'd thoroughly decided; she had no room for the partner-building that Fury had indicated their goal to be, instead choosing to act as though her knowledge was constantly superior and anything he had to offer was of little or no importance whatsoever.
The whole few hours had passed like that, really—Natasha being domineering, Dean attempting to offer his own thoughts and never getting farther than the first few words out of his mouth. There had been a brief, relieving pause during which they had a quick lunch delivered to them by a tired-looking agent, and then the uselessness had resumed, continuing up until now—six in the evening, and, according to Fury's loudspeaker announcement, time for them to eat dinner.
"Really, though," Dean went on as they followed Natasha in the direction of the dining area—the layout of their little sector of SHIELD was becoming more familiar, though it was still all too easy to get lost in the shadowed, winding hallways. "You'd think that a guy who's managed to harness control of this entire organization might have a little more sense than to shove strangers together and watch how much they could irritate each other."
"I am sure," Castiel replied evenly, "that Director Fury has a larger plan than any of us can presently imagine. As you said, he does have power over SHIELD, and that sort of control does not come without trial. Fury is smart. He knows what he's doing."
"God, I hope he does," Dean growled. His stomach then decided to join in the noise, the snarl ripping through it more amplified than any of their dry, quick-spoken words—enough so, in fact, that Natasha glanced over her shoulder in a swish of dark red locks, her face torn between humor and irritation.
"I also hope that there's something good to eat," he added as soon as she'd turned back around. "Those sandwich things at lunch were seriously the most disgusting crap I've had in ages."
"That's because they were properly nutritious," Cas murmured, "rather than the oily provisions that you often choose for yourself."
"Remind me again, when did you become a dietician?"
The dining area, which they entered moments later, was shaped much like a school lunchroom, with rows of long, thin tables—only one or two of which was needed to seat all of the Avengers, Dean noted—and a sleek counter decked with food running along one side, behind which was a kitchen.
"He wasn't kidding when he said he thought of us as kindergarteners," Dean breathed, his voice laced with disgust and somewhat ironic glee combined. "Man, I haven't seen anything like this for decades."
The rest of the group, including Tony, were already seated at the first of the long tables, plates and bowls decked with a surprising array of food set in front of them. Fury was nowhere in sight, nor were any sort of serving people. Shrugging, Dean started towards the table on his own, reaching out and hooking a plate around his fingers.
"You just missed him," Rose called up from the table, where she sat with the Doctor on one side and Thor on the other. Dean felt his eyebrows arch at the position of the Asgardian—maybe that pair, at least, had managed to form some sort of friendship in their forced time together. "There's all sorts of food, go ahead and help yourself—he's given us an hour to eat, then he has some sort of meeting planned."
"Feels like summer camp, doesn't it?" Dean teased Cas, tilting open the first of the hot dishes and peering inside. He scowled when greeted by an array of what appeared to be roasted vegetables, dropping the lid as if burned.
"I never attended—" the angel began.
"Dude, I know. I know."
The next couple of dishes also didn't suit his needs, and it wasn't until about a third of the way down the makeshift buffet that he opened one of the dishes and was greeted by the steaming scent of beef. "Oh, yeah, now that's more like it," he chuckled, using the on-hand spatula to flip himself out one of the juicy-looking patties. Snatching a bun from a bag and a bottle of ketchup from the table, he scooped up his plate and headed over to the table, managing to slide into the only open place visible, next to Steve Rogers, whose other side was occupied by John Watson. He scowled slightly—maybe it was in more than one area that the so-called "team-building activities" had had their desired result.
"Think we're the only ones bothered by the kindergarten treatment?" he asked of Cas, who immediately slipped in next to him without picking up anything to eat.
"Most of them knew each other beforehand," the angel replied. "You were in the hospital ward the majority of the last time they were all assembled—there was never an opportunity for bonding on your part."
"Yeah, I suppose not." It was true—they hadn't even wanted him as part of their stupid Avengers originally, in fact. They'd only brought him in because Lucifer, for a blessedly brief period of time, had been holding him hostage for Cas… memories of that dark mansion where he'd been imprisoned, of the Devil's laugh and the feel of too much blood on his skin, flashed suddenly before him, and his fingers tightened their grip on the metal of the plate, jaw muscles tensing up.
Don't be stupid. You're fine.
Lucifer's laughter—Sam's laughter—
"Dean," Castiel murmured, and then Dean felt a hand on his side, and took a deep breath. It was hard, impossible, to always suppress his memories of Sam, to pretend like they didn't hurt. He managed to, though. He managed to, and that was all that mattered.
"Hey—hey, look at this," a soft voice spoke up, cutting through the general bubble of conversation. Heads tilted and necks craned towards Bruce, the one who had spoken, as he held up a sheaf of newspaper which he'd presumably been reading. "There's been another murder—near London, Tom Jackman's been taken in!"
"What?" Sherlock exclaimed, his eyes sharpening. Dean's mouth fell open, astounded, and he leaned in like the rest of them to try and get a better view of the article. Large block letters read across the top CORPSE FOUND SLAUGHTERED EAST OF LONDON—SUSPECT ARRESTED, with a far too familiar face watching in black-in-white ink amidst the words of the twin columns below.
"Damn it," Dean hissed through his teeth, "god damn it."
"So it was Jackman all along?" John questioned. "The police caught him before us?"
Sherlock made a low noise in his throat somewhere between a whine and a growl.
"It doesn't make any sense," Natasha breathed. "If he knew people were on his trail—why would he do something like this immediately after we made it clear that we'd discovered him?"
"His strength should be considered, as well," Thor spoke up. "He escaped Torchwood. He would not allow himself to be arrested by the common law force unless he wanted to be."
"But why would he want to be?" Rose pointed out. "It's making less and less sense…"
Sherlock began speaking, then, his eyes directed towards the paper but blearily unfocused as a series of sharp words tumbled out of his mouth, practically skipping along as they attempted to keep up with his train of thought. "You met Tom Jackman and decided he was innocent. He knew that you suspected him and that you were keeping an eye on him. He then proceeded to commit a murder—which he has never directly done before—and allow himself to be arrested, despite his clear ability to avoid such a fate if he so wished. Attention—it's almost as if he's doing this to get our attention, but that makes no sense, he doesn't have any motivation—he's a mad killer, he has to be, unless he's been set against us from the beginning and there's a reason that he even let himself be captured by Torchwood for the time, to draw us in—has he wanted SHIELD's attention since the beginning? No, no, no, no, no. We're missing something. We're missing something huge." His eyes, suddenly flying into focus again, swept swiftly around everyone else sitting at the table, as if demanding an answer from them. "What are we missing?"
The Doctor, for once, was silent, with his fingers brushing his jaw and his eyes shadowed, clearly in deep thought. Thor looked vaguely confused, John worried, Tony frustrated, and Steve shocked, while Clint and Natasha wore identical expressions of puzzled irritation and Bruce retained the same concerned look as before, still holding up the article.
"None of us know," Dean pointed out baldly, his own anger singeing his stomach with an acid pointedness. So it had been Jackman—of course, it had been Jackman the whole goddamned time, and he had let him go, even though he knew what was going on—he should have insisted on taking him in there and then, disregarding what Fury or the Doctor or any of the rest of them wanted… should have trusted his instincts. But now the creature was still out there—after all, he certainly wasn't going to remain in custody—and everyone was in danger, all because he'd made a single stupid decision.
"Of course you don't," Sherlock spat, "why would you ever stop being idiotic for the petty benefit of being able to save lives?"
The almost familial atmosphere that they'd come near capturing at the beginning of dinner was completely gone by the time they headed towards their dormitories for the night, after an exhaustively long meeting that mainly consisted of Fury demanding to know what they'd learned from each other over the course of the day, as well as a pulsating air of frustration from all of them at their failure with Jackman.
Now, the simmering rage that mainly seemed to have been emanating from Dean and Natasha was finally relieved as they all split up—headed towards two-person suites normally belonging to regular agents, which Fury had assigned to them for the night. There were numerous protests from those who'd enjoyed the hospitality of Stark Tower, but Fury's reply was that he needed to keep them closer together, more willing to act as soon as possible—the Doctor, Dean, Cas, Clint, and Natasha's idea of going after Hyde alone, apparently, was far from an encouragement for him to give them more freedom.
Thankfully, Fury did allow them to bunk with the person of their choice, resulting in the rather predictable pairings of John and Sherlock, Dean and Cas, Clint and Natasha, Tony and Bruce, Steve and Thor, and the Doctor and Rose. John wasn't particularly looking forward to the time spent with the presently silent and brooding the detective, who he knew was less than likely to sleep when there was a question like this on his mind.
"We're missing something huge," he repeated continuously, and that was the last thing he said before disappearing into the toilet of their room, closing the door loudly behind him. John now sat on the edge of one of the two twin beds, where he'd been for the past twenty minutes, while Sherlock isolated himself in the small space that was apparently more conductive to his raging thoughts.
It wasn't a bad room, as their options went—nothing hugely fancy, either, but perhaps the quality of an average hotel. The two beds weren't overly comfortable-looking, which was reasonable enough, John figured; SHIELD was hardly famous for its luxurious hospitality. Other than them, the room was generally featureless, with a couple of metal chairs shoved against the blank wall opposite them and a narrow door leading to the room in which Sherlock was currently situated.
They'd been led to their luggage beforehand—the couple of suitcases of clothes and such that John had managed to pull together before they left Baker Street, in the few minutes that Natasha had allowed. They sat next to the bed now, and John leaned down with an exhausted sigh, pulling up his own battered brown case and settling it on the stiff mattress of the bed. He could hardly change, of course, until Sherlock was out of the bathroom—which wasn't going to be anytime soon; the digital clock on the shared bedside table read 22:56, a good twenty-five minutes after the detective had first isolated himself—but it would provide some sort of reassurance, surely, to at least be able to see his own possessions again.
The distinct, slightly musty aroma of Baker Street lifted as soon as he unclasped and opened the lid, wreathing him with a tight cloak of homesickness. His clothes looked slightly wrinkled, nothing compared to the small wardrobe that Pepper Potts had assembled for him back at Stark Tower, but it was reassuring to see and touch the familiar patterns and textures of his own shirts and trousers. Perched at the top of the pile was the book he'd brought along on a whim, doubtful as he had been that he'd get any free time—a thin paperback copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It wasn't his normal sort of literature choice, but after Mike Stamford had recently reprimanded him for neglecting the classics, he'd supposed that he'd ought to start somewhere. It was an interesting enough story, though there was a distinctly odd feel about it that never failed to unsettle him. Still, even the eeriness was welcome now, in such a foreign place as SHIELD—undoubtedly, it would serve to remind him of warm evenings in Baker Street, of the home life, spiced up regularly by crime, which he'd come to grow fond of.
Sighing again, he removed the book and then clicked the suitcase shut, replacing it by the bed as he leaned back against the pillows and cracked open the slim, dog-eared volume. His eyes settled onto the words, but he hadn't the time to read more than a sentence and a half before the bang of Sherlock's reemergence thundered through the room.
"I'm missing something!" the detective seethed for what felt like the hundredth time. "I'm missing something huge… what am I missing, John?"
"I wouldn't know," he muttered, still rather exasperated. "Maybe there just isn't enough information—perhaps you ought to give—"
"Do not tell me to give up. No, no, there's enough information, I know there is, of course there is—there's always enough information, don't you see? This is bizarre, all of it, and that irregularity makes it easier, cuts out a cleaner silhouette in the evidence that can only be filled by the solution. It all comes back to Tom Jackman—there's something about him, and of course I have a thousand ways to explain it, but none of them are massive enough, none of them fit perfectly… I need a push, John, a push; it's lingering just outside of my realm of realization, it's taunting me, it's right there, right—"
He stopped speaking so suddenly that John, whose gaze had begun to fall back to the novel in disinterest, looked up in swift concern. "You alright?" he checked, but Sherlock was frozen, his shoulders heaving, his face even paler than usual and his stare seemingly fixated on the book in John's hands.
"Sherlock?" he repeated when there was no reply. "Sherlock!"
"That's it," the detective breathed, and his voice was almost breathy in its amazement, in its victory—not quite relief, but rather the refreshing brightness of a breakthrough, of understanding.
"What's it? Sherlock—"
"Jekyll and Hyde… John, it's Jekyll and Hyde!"
"Yes, of course it's Jekyll and Hyde," he snapped back. "I find it interesting, alright? You should try reading fiction sometime, give your mind something to do other than—"
"No, not the book, you idiot! Tom Jackman—there are two of them! A physical change, yes, yes, yes, it worked with Banner, so why shouldn't it with Jackman? Though it could be different circumstances, of course, probably is, not necessarily a chemical accident—how his shape remains almost uniform, it must be something minor, nothing massive and green… inhumanly strong, though, yes, yes, yes!"
"What the hell are you going on about?" John demanded, shoving the book aside.
"Tom Jackman, John—Tom Jackman and our creature, they're the same person… or at least they have the same body. It's like Dr. Banner and the Hulk—it's like Jekyll and Hyde!"
