SuperWhoLock
Chapter 21 - Lending a Hand
A/N: Okay I usually wait until after the chapter to do author notes, but I thought I should first and foremost apologize for utterly failing at my first attempt to do a deadline - to make up I'll try and get the next chapter up relatively quickly (I know I know, EMPTY PROMISES). But secondly I also wanted to warn you, THIS CHAPTER NEEDS A GORE WARNING. THIS IS IT: THIS CHAPTER HAS GORE. YOU ARE WARNED.
"You want to what!?"
Sherlock winced at the incredulity in Dean's voice, uniquely reminiscent of the detective's own nagging common sense in the back of his mind.
"It's nothing more than a procedure the good Doctor here has brought to the table as a viable option to aid our current situation." Sherlock said lightly, massaging his temples. Dealing with the Winchesters was predictably proving to be beyond his capacity for patience. They were unlike any other individuals he had gone head to head with before. Insufferable morons he could deal with; ones that inexplicably insisted upon an obsessive interest in his wellbeing, despite being total strangers… hardly so. They were as impossible to deal with as they were to understand.
"A viable option? He said it could fry your brain!" Sam protested, glancing back at the Doctor, who nodded grimly in confirmation.
"Drastic times call for drastic measures. Both of you have sacrificed more for less of a chance than this, or so I was told…" Sherlock tilted his head, hoping the dig would prove enough of a checkmate to advance the conversation.
"What's the chance of this working, anyway?" Dean turned to the Doctor.
"To my knowledge, it only happened once before… as an accident – but I suppose that would make the success rate 100%," the Time Lord confessed.
"Oh great. An accident," the hunter threw up his arms, dubious.
"Dean, Sherlock has informed us that in order to be an asset to our team, he will be of little use until he acquires a complete compendium of knowledge in order to ply his trade effectively," Castiel interrupted the elder Winchester, "If he is willing to risk his life and sanity for the pursuit of aiding our cause, it is not our place to stop such a worthwhile sacrifice."
"It is when it's a senseless sacrifice that won't amount to anything!" Dean argued with the angel, the two lapsing into one of their glare matches.
"Doctor, how would this procedure work anyway?" Sam inquired of the Time Lord, "It's one thing to have seen something done before… but can we recreate such conditions? We only have man-made technology here…" Sam gestured about Bobby's sadly rather mundane living room.
"Interestingly enough Sam, this procedure seems to work primarily off latent regeneration energy – a sort of beneficial radiation that Time Lords produce naturally when they are dying." The Doctor said with a smile at the younger Winchester's curiosity.
"Dying?! You have to die to do this 'procedure'?!" Dean asked, incredulous, "How in any universe would that be helpful?!"
"As he explained before, Time Lords are very difficult to kill due to their inherent ability to regenerate. Instead of dying, their physical anatomy undergoes a violent release of radiation which changes their DNA into a fresh new form, uninjured and perfectly capable of living where the past one's time was up." Sherlock summarized, looking at the Doctor to make sure he had spoken correctly.
"That's about the size of it." The Doctor confirmed, "Now, Time Lords traditionally have only twelve regenerations – and I've already used all of mine…"
"But Crowley gave you another regeneration in Watson's contract." Sam recalled suddenly and the Doctor nodded.
"That's what you tell me."
"Would that even work? An extension to your life?" Dean asked. Castiel coughed, unimpressed.
"If there's one thing Crowley's good at, it's extending lives through Crossroads deals. He has half the government of this country in contracts on that item alone." Castiel told them.
"Old white men whose retirement is long overdue… makes sense." Dean considered.
"In my tenth regeneration – which was actually my eleventh, but that's a long story – I was mortally wounded. But, taking a new form is well… it's like becoming a new person. And I wasn't quite done being my tenth self. I was quite good looking and as that doesn't happen all that often, it pays to um…"
The Doctor trailed in mid-thought as the rest of the room stared at him.
"Right, hm. A bit vain too, I suppose. At any rate, as the fatality of the wound set in, my body began to undergo regeneration. And like the clever quick thinker I thought I was at the time, I quickly used only enough energy to heal myself, before channeling the rest into my severed hand, using it as a dead end radiation storage container if you will."
"Your severed hand?" Dean's expression was somewhere between disturbed, concerned and/or disbelief.
"Another long story I'm afraid, and hardly relevant at the moment," The Doctor brushed off the question, "The point of THIS story is that the radiation was too much for the hand – it eventually reached a critically energized peak, at which a companion of mine coincidentally happened to touch it causing an instantaneous biological meta-crisis."
"Sorry?" Sam blinked.
"The hand contained a great deal of energy, but that unique radiation was designed for massive amounts of instantaneous reconstruction, not storage. The introduction of another DNA sample caused the already unstable container to crack and release the impending regeneration, with unique results I imagine." Castiel stated, looking at the Doctor curiously.
"I couldn't have said it better myself," the Doctor beamed at the angel, "Two things happened rather swiftly – the hand extended into a full clone of my tenth regeneration, though one whose DNA was mixed with human and therefore not truly Time Lord. And my companion…
"Gained the mind of a Time Lord." Sherlock finished smugly. The Doctor looked at him, with that same slightly pained and very concerned look.
"Well… yes." The Time Lord finished, unable to deny the truth. "But it did come at a great price."
"Price?" Dean's brow furrowed at the catch he had been waiting for.
"The human mind is not strong enough to hold the complexities of the Time Vortex, which perpetually runs through a Time Lord's mind. Forcing a mind to hold far beyond its capacity… well, it's only a matter of time before it breaks."
"Of course. That sounds freakin fantastic. Tell me, why are we even considering this?" Dean asked, glaring at Cas pointedly.
"How long is 'a matter of time'?" Sam inquired.
"Last time… it was only a few hours." The Doctor confessed sadly. The reaction on the Winchesters faces was clear. Despite the fact he could not see them, Sherlock knew something had to be said.
"But was your companion a genius? I am by no means intending to further my own reputation at this point in time, but the fact remains: my brain far surpasses the capabilities of most 'humans'!" the consulting detective protested.
"That is also true." The Doctor nodded his head in thoughtful agreement.
"This is ridiculous. We're not going to let you throw away your sanity and your life for a few hours in god mode!" Dean argued.
"Dean-" Sam tried to reign in his brother.
"What happens after you pop, huh? What then?!"
Sherlock had a hand over his mouth, clearly thinking of the inevitable himself. After a moment however, he gestured to the Doctor. The Winchesters turned to the Time Lord expectantly.
"When Donna… my companion that this happened to before… when her mind could no longer function, I was able to reset it completely, to seal the Time Vortex and all the memories related to it deep within her mind. She no longer remembers me or any of her travels with me. But she is safe… and happy I hope."
"Like Death's wall!" Sam said instantly, looking at Dean. Dean frowned.
"Well I don't know how this Donna's doing, but I can tell you out experience with walls and keeping massive secrets isn't too positive." Dean said unenthusiastically. Off to the side, Castiel shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
"I could do the same thing for Sherlock – If we manage to save the world and solve all of this… Afterwards we place him back in his own world, there should be almost no risk of him remembering any of this… and therefore he would be perfectly safe to continue living his life. Just as it was."
Silence fell for a moment, as the group considered.
"All of this discussion is irrelevant. It's my mind – I can choose to do with it as I please." Sherlock said, brusquely waving as if to completely sweep the Winchesters' input out of the conversation.
"And as your caretakers by necessity, we can choose to tell you it's a stupid idea to risk so much for something that may or may not work." Dean returned crossly. Sherlock opened his mouth to no doubt issue a crushing reply, but he never got the chance, as the Doctor interrupted again.
"There is… one thing more," The Doctor said hesitantly. The rest ceased their argument and looked to him.
"As regeneration energy is… well, regenerative. There is a good chance – I'd say probably in the 90th percentile… that it will heal Sherlock's sight," the Time Lord informed them. There was a long pause.
"I want to go through with it." The detective's voice firm statement came unnecessarily. There was no one in the room who had suspected any other opinion from him.
Dean opened his mouth to protest, but this time Sam held out a hand.
"Dean, Cas is right. It's not our place to stop his sacrifice if he wants to make it," the younger Winchester said solemnly.
"Sammy that's a load of bull and you know it!" Dean turned on his brother. Sam was above arguing though, and merely looked at his brother pointedly. This unspoken reminder was enough to silence the elder Winchester, though Dean looked by no means satisfied with the decision.
"Alright. Now that that's resolved… how do we proceed?" Sherlock clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. Castiel moved forward at the detective's inquiry.
"I retrieved the items requested." the angel told the Doctor, raising a plastic grocery bag.
"Good, good… now I know in order to successfully pull this off, it probably would be the best course of action to copy everything as close to the original process as possible but…" the Doctor quickly seized Castiel's bag and started digging through it absentmindedly.
"But what?" Both Winchesters and Castiel asked in unison.
"But I would rather not have another clone running around… much less one with Sherlock's personality. It would be a much better use to put all of the regeneration energy into Sherlock's mind."
"Wouldn't that risk overloading it sooner?" Sam asked frowning.
"Possibly. But just as possibly it might lend itself to rewriting his DNA more successfully into something that can contain a Time Lord's intelligence more successfully. Regardless, in order to attempt such a thing we'll need to permanently prevent another clone from sprouting from my severed limb… " the Doctor said, still rummaging through the bag, "Ah ha!"
"Fishing line and a tomato pincushion?" Sam asked, slightly concerned as the Doctor pulled the items out with a flourish.
"What on Earth are those for?" the confidence drained seemed to drain rather rapidly from Sherlock's face at the announcement of the items.
The Doctor had continued pulling out several other equally comforting items, including heavy bandages and a tourniquet. Last but not least, he produced a large knife that looked like it had been retrieved from Bobby's kitchen.
"Oh this scene has Medical School written all over it." Dean commented sarcastically.
"You know Doctor, we do have real medical stitches… Cas is just used to us using fishing line." Sam offered.
"I'm sorry, but did I miss something? I clearly recall you saying several times it was only a touch that instigated exchange of DNA," Sherlock mentioned, growing paler by the second.
"Right. But while we are attempting to recreate an accident, it is not fundamentally an accident this time around. Which gives us the chance to remedy some of the more ridiculous side effects. Like the clone."
"I won't deny we have enough doppelgangers running around at the moment…" Dean muttered to Sam.
"But… fishing line and a pincushion? You'll be regenerating – you won't need them. Surely you don't intend to…" Sherlock trailed off. He realized he knew exactly what the Doctor intended.
"It needs to be reattached somewhere so it's prevented from growing outwards." The Doctor explained grimly. "I would reattach it to myself but, the regeneration will already be in effect and I will be growing a new hand too quickly…"
Dean smiled smugly like a petulant child who had proven his point. Every further bit of evidence was reinforcing his position that this was a bad idea.
Sherlock sighed.
"Alright. Do it."
The Doctor nodded and gestured to the others to start helping him prepare. Neither of the Winchesters seemed to quite believe they were actually assisting in this twisted process, but they carried out the Doctor's orders as he gave them, Dean applying a tourniquet to Sherlock's forearm, Cas spreading a new plastic tablecloth over a TV tray to create a pseudo-operating table, and Sam sterilizing and prepping both the knife and the stitching needle to the best of his ability.
"Okay. That's the best prep we can give you." Sam said as he finished his task, and moved to stand next to Dean and Cas.
"Alright. I'll need a jar of ice for my hand and… well, do you want to keep yours too?" the Doctor glanced down at Sherlock, who was whiter than a sheet and looked in no condition to respond. "Hmm yes, I think we'll make that two jars of ice. He'll probably want it later." the Doctor decided for him. Cas quickly left to get them.
"I… know it's a bit of an awkward request, but I think I would prefer it if one of you two would do the honors." the Doctor said hesitantly, tilting his head in the direction of the 9mm pistol on the desk nearby, "It wouldn't feel right if I did it myself… and I think I'd prefer it in the chest rather than the head."
Dean looked repulsed by the idea, but Sam nodded curtly and moved to grab the gun.
"Once it starts you all should get out of the room – regenerations can be… explosive. I also don't want to risk the regeneration energy channeling into any of you." the Doctor told them as Castiel reappeared with the two jars of ice, setting them on the desk.
"Thank you Castiel. Alright, shall we get this over with then?" the Time Lord asked no one in particular.
"Yes." Sherlock found his voice. "The sooner the better."
"Alright. Lean back and uh…" the Doctor glanced hesitantly towards the Winchesters, but Sam was already there, offering his belt.
"Right, you probably ought to put this between your teeth…"
Sherlock closed his eyes, and the Time Lord steeled himself, visible sweat dripping down his brow. Though the Doctor knew enough to know counting down aloud would only serve to panic Sherlock, it didn't stop him from mouthing it to himself.
Three. Two. ONE.
The sound of the knife slicing through flesh was surprisingly mundane. To anyone who might have experienced being in a butcher shop when a new shipment was being processed, it would have been almost familiar, as there is not really that much difference between the muscle and fat of a human versus other animals. But the calmness of the butcher shop was not mirrored in Bobby's living room, as the vocal difference between dead animals and a live human being is very very noticeable.
Whatever hypnotic tranquility the scene had possessed a moment before was now broken half a second later with Sherlock's blood curdling cry that was really not muted at all by the leather clamped between his teeth.
Gone. It was there and then it was gone. It was almost as if he could still feel it. But no, it was missing. It was almost a good thing the pain was there, for it was the only thing keeping Sherlock from coming to the full realization of what it was like to miss an appendage.
As soon as the deed was complete, the Doctor moved back, almost shell-shocked by what he had just done. Castiel and Sam quickly moved to Sherlock to cover the bleeding stump left behind. Dean took one look at the Doctor, and then took up the role himself to pick up Sherlock's severed hand and put it in the ice jar.
The consulting detective was doing as well as someone who had just had his hand cut off typically did. His hair was damp with sweat and as Castiel gingerly removed the belt in his mouth, Sherlock leaned over and vomited into the bucket Sam wisely had waiting. When he was done, he sank back, gasping out of pain and a need for air.
"It looks like he has just under three minutes of adrenaline left before he will go unconscious." Castiel reported to the Doctor, carefully examining Sherlock, who was in too much of a state of shock to speak for himself.
"Well I guess it's my turn then. Dean?"
The elder Winchester had just finished gingerly placing the severed hand in one of the jars and screwing on the lid. Startled by the Time Lord's sudden address, Dean barely had enough time to wipe the comically disgusted look off his face in order to fully realize his next current task.
"Right," He swallowed hard. "Sure thing."
Dean handed Sherlock's severed appendage to Castiel then moved forward and reluctantly accepted the now wiped clean knife from Sam. Castiel took Sherlock's hand into the kitchen.
"Ready Sam?" the Doctor looked to the younger Winchester, who nodded curtly, the 9mm unusually tight in his hand.
"And Sherlock? How are you doing?" the Doctor looked over in his direction.
"How… do you think?" Sherlock gasped, his voice cracking with pain.
"Sarcasm. That's good. Keep it up. It's imperative you remain functional to complete the last part of the procedure," the Doctor instructed before looking to the others. "Remember: only Sherlock can touch the hand. If anyone else does… the whole process will be for nothing."
"How are we supposed to sew it on then?" Dean asked critically.
"I'll… hold it in place…" Sherlock breathed. The Doctor nodded.
"And the rest of you… go don those latex gloves. Alright, enough talking. We need to get this next part over with before Sherlock collapses." The Doctor finished, taking the belt from a waiting Castiel, and biting down on it hard.
The ritual was fairly the same, despite the fact it was a Time Lord now undergoing the procedure. The Doctor closed his eyes, accepting his fate, and Dean counted down to himself as he steeled himself to perform the deed.
The Doctor's scream was every bit as ear shattering and unnerving as Sherlock's was – perhaps a bit more as the Doctor instantly dropped the belt out of his mouth to favor gasping as tears streamed down his face.
"Quick Sam… do it quickly…" the Doctor's request came through ragged breathing. Dean moved out of the way swiftly with the Doctor's severed hand, to place it in the second ice jar, positioned a little ways away from the Doctor, within reach of Sherlock. Then the hunter stood back, next to Castiel.
Sam's face hardened as he raised the gun. A few seconds passed and for a brief instant it seemed the younger Winchester could not bring himself to do it.
Then he fired. Once.
The Doctor gasped and staggered, using his remaining hand to grab the desk for support.
Sam began to lower the gun but the Doctor instantly protested.
"NO! It's not working yet! You have to… hit the other one!" the Time Lord could barely speak for all the pain he was in. As he glanced up however, the Doctor saw Sam's confusion.
"My other HEART! I have TWO of them!" the Doctor nearly shouted, his voice laced with agony.
Sam's hands were shaking as he lifted the gun a second time. And fired.
As the bullet punctured the Doctor's second heart, the Time Lord was knocked backward, no longer possessing the strength nor control to resist the force of impact. He hit the desk with a thud, then crumpled to the floor.
For a moment nothing happened, and in that fleeting moment of heightened sensitivity, the terrifying thought coursed through the room that the Doctor had really just been shot dead. Then…
"Is that… light?" Even though it had been their goal to cause the regeneration, the incredible sight was something Dean couldn't help but voice his amazement at. The Doctor could not speak, but he tried to get up slightly, using a hand and his own bleeding stump to support himself. But the severely injured limb proved unable to support any weight, and the Doctor collapsed again.
At the sight, both Winchesters moved forward on instinct to go help the Time Lord, but Castiel held them back.
"We should go." the angel said urgently, grabbing the two Winchesters by the arms and tugging them back out of the room.
"Wait a minute." Sam moved forward, seized the jar containing the Doctor's hand and placed it in Sherlock's lap.
"All yours."
"T-thanks," Sherlock seemed close to unconsciousness, but he still managed to pour some of his sarcastic personality into his acceptance of the severed hand with a tired smile.
"Good luck," Sam told him genuinely, before hurriedly turning to leave the room to take shelter in the kitchen with Dean and Castiel.
Sherlock could not see what was happening, but he could feelthe change in the atmosphere. The air was charged with energy – not quite a heat, but a buzzing radiation. There was a high pitched noise between a machinelike whine and a whistle. Then it happened for real.
To one who could not see anything, it felt like an explosion. It sounded like one as well. And yet, the waves of heat were not BURNING so much as full of a vibrating energy that filled everything. Sherlock could FEEL the light on his face, and the power that filled the air.
Suddenly there was a change in the radiating energy. At first it had been EVERYWHERE in the room, but then it was suddenly focused. In a direct stream. And the target was in Sherlock's lap.
Sam's gesture had been meant kindly. But as kind misunderstanding gestures often are, it was also very stupid. For Sherlock, it felt as if someone had placed a laser target in his lap and was now proceeding aim and fire.
And to be perfectly honest, the situation was not all that different. The ice in the jar was not only melted but also vaporized as the intense radiation that scattered their molecules into the air. The jar itself began dripping liquid glass that soon were sliding dangerously close to Sherlock's lap.
But as soon as it had started getting serious, everything suddenly stopped. The beam of energy subsided and as the dust settled, the Winchesters and Castiel warily peaked around the kitchen doorway.
"All good on my… side of things…" the Doctor raised a newly grown hand and smiled wearily, "but I have to say I am… tired… re-growing limbs… tough business…" and with that the Time Lord collapsed onto the nearby sofa, and slumped over, presumably unconscious.
"Sherlock?" Sam called, and the party turned its attention towards the other member of the party.
When the first light show had stopped, Sherlock thought there would be a brief reprieve before they could start with his own reattachment. But it turned out instead to be one of those rare occasions where Sherlock Holmes was wrong. Though he still could not see anything, he could feel the radiating energy filling the air again.
Before they had either been mindlessly everywhere or directed at the hand. Now however, they were enveloping him.
The first time he had been a bystander, subject to the intense almost destructive side as the extra energy discharged. But this time was different – he was the focus of the regenerative energy, and as it embraced him he felt warm… comforted… then hot as the energy began to induce something akin to a fever. The regeneration state perhaps. Most fine craftsmanship first had to be forged and formed in fire, after all.
The glass jar in his lap shattered, and Sherlock barely raised his bloodied stump in time to shield what was left of his face. The heat coming off the hand was now incredible, and Sherlock was sure it was glowing.
He would've liked to shove it away and kick it further, anything to get the crazy alien anatomy away from him. But by now Sherlock had stomached his pain, and however difficult, his mind WOULD remain in control. It had to.
So it was with his one remaining shaking hand, he unwound the loose rag around his stump, and then reached forward to grab the Doctor's glowing appendage in his lap. As he touched it, Sherlock grimaced and almost dropped it, for it was burning hot. But as the heat intensified and appeared to be heading towards another explosion, Sherlock turned it around and slammed against the stump
The explosion commenced and Sherlock felt a searing pain, not only at the tip of the stump, but suddenly shooting up his arm.
He held it as long as he could, he really did. Soon it felt as if his entire body was on fire: his arm, his mind, and soon his eyes, which burned more ferociously than all the rest of him – as if fire and electricity were battling it for dominant destructive force.
In the end it was simply too much, and darkness crept in on his fevered brain. The explosion seemed to have stopped – but he did not possess enough consciousness to be aware of anything except the strange foreign hand that was now fused to his arm.
He could feel the steam rising off it. He could FEEL it.
It was his now. It was part of him.
He was no longer completely human.
As strange as it was to consider, the thought made him smile as he slipped into darkness.
What would John think?
. . .
Far, far, away, just as the consulting detective dropped off into unconsciousness, his counterpart was slowly dragged from it.
Waking up with his head pounding seemed to becoming a regular thing for John Watson, but it didn't mean he would grow any fonder of the sensation.
Rubbing his head, the good doctor sat up slowly, cracking his eyes to seedy flickering fluorescent lighting. His vision swam with his pounding head, but after a moment it cleared. And the sight before him was not comforting at all.
He was in a small confining room that could be best described as a rundown clinic patient room. Broken tiled floor, broken tiled walls with strange metal circles sticking out of them, and a broken mirror on the wall. There was no furniture in the room, save a tilted operating table that had straps on it, and a smaller instrument table next to it, that had more than a few disturbing instruments on it.
John didn't consider it for long, before he selected three of the tools with the sole purpose of using them to get out. The scalpel he slid into his shoe for later. The other two would have to serve as functional lockpicks.
John moved to the door and inserted both tools, one as a lockpick and the other to apply torque. As he held them in place with one hand, he used the other to jiggle the handle to start testing tension… and was surprised to find the door was already open.
Pocketing his two woefully inadequate lockpicks, John pushed the door open cautiously and was rewarded to find himself facing a seemingly endless hallway that was quite as tastelessly bland with a side of creepy as the room he had just come from.
There was no one in the hallway, and there appeared to be only one way to go. So with a hard swallow, John Watson set off.
He had not gone a minute before he came to another door. Predictably locked. The retired army doctor spent a good minute trying to open it before he had to come to terms with the fact he just did not have the skill Sherlock had. Or the Winchesters for that matter.
Continuing down the hallway, he passed two more doors on the same side of the hallway as his door, and one on the other side. All the doors were locked and silent.
Finally through the seedy light, John spotted the end of the hallway – and one more door on his side.
He expected it to be locked like all the rest, but surprisingly it was not. John turned the handle and pushed the door open – and instantly wished he had not.
The room was fundamentally the same as his own had been. But this one the light cast a terribly disturbing red glow on a horrifying scene.
The metal circles were for hooking things on apparently, for in this room, massive rusted chains were attached on either side of the room, some pulled taut, other hanging looser. There were probably about ten in total, and they all met in the middle, wrapped tightly around what appeared to be a corpse.
Suspended slightly so the feet dragged on the ground, the grotesque figure was clad, as far as John could tell, in the remains of a once fine suit. But both the suit and its wearer had been burned, slashed, and bloodied far beyond any recognition. Upon closer examination however, John was dismayed to discover the chains were barbed in the middle, and were actively embedded into the prisoner.
As disturbed as he was, John couldn't help the medical expert inside him, and he reached a hand forward to trace one of the chains in its horrifyingly well accomplished torture across the victim's face, which looked… familiar?
That was when the corpse shuddered and took a rasping breath.
"Oh. My god," John breathed, stepping back.
The corpse made another rasping sound that might have been a laugh in another lifetime, and then opened blood-red eyes to look at John Watson.
"Guess again," Crowley grinned.