Someone was…singing. It was a language Sam felt like he could almost grasp, but the meaning floated just out of reach, golden streams of melody that were tantalizing and beautiful. He shifted, stirred, and reached out for it.

And felt a hand on his shoulder. "Sam? You okay?"

Sam squinted his eyes open. Dean's head was framed against the dim overhead lights, his face in shadow. At his movement, Dean sighed and sat down on the coffee table.

"Whe—where are we?" Sam started to sit up, pushing a thick, fleecy blanket away from his torso.

"Hey, take it easy. You passed out after the Vashta Nerada grabbed you. Had us worried for a bit."

"That's nothing new." Sam rubbed his side. He swung his feet to the floor and grabbed the arm of the couch as the room whirled.

"Sit tight. I'll get you a drink." Dean walked into the kitchen.

Kitchen. Sam looked around. He sat in a sunny yellow living room on a dark green couch. It seemed familiar…where had…

The TARDIS. He leaned back into the cushions with a sigh of relief. Dean came back with a glass of water. Sam reached out for it, and as soon as his fingers touched the cold glass, the memories rushed back in.

Pain. Agonizing, terrible pain, like a thousand needles digging into his bones. Sam grunted and curled forward, digging his fingers into his skull. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the glass shattering on the floor, Dean talking to him, but he couldn't respond.

Kill them.

Kill them all!

We know what you are, Samuel Winchester.

But it wasn't them. It was just an echo, just a memory.

"Sam, c'mon, talk to me!" Dean's face swam into view in front of him, eyes wide in panic.

"I'm okay," Sam gasped out.

Dean wrapped his arms around him, and Sam could feel him trembling. "Don't do that to me! Dammit, Sammy. What's going on with you?"

"I don't—" Sam shook his head. Too many things swirled in his brain, and he felt fuzzy-headed. "Just give me a minute to sort stuff out, okay? It's…it's really strange."

Dean eased back. "Okay, but you tell me the second you start feeling weird, okay?"

Sam snorted softly, but nodded. Feeling weird? Since when had he felt normal? Even back in college he'd just gone through the motions.

Dean cleaned up the broken glass, then, apparently satisfied Sam would be okay for a few seconds, left the living room. He came back carrying their weapons from the vampire raid and the cleaning kit and set up shop in the middle of the floor.

They sat like that for a while, the only sounds the scrape of the cleaning tools and the distant, throbbing hum of the TARDIS. Sam closed his eyes, drifting, letting the hum pull him back to half-asleep. He felt exhausted, and his entire body was sore. He could almost hear the singing again.

"Wish the Doc had a TV or something in this place," Dean muttered. "Not that listening to you snore isn't entertaining, it's just not my first choice."

"Ha-ha," Sam said, opening his eyes.

Dean smiled.

"Didn't you bring your cassette player?"

"Yeah, I did, but…" Dean shrugged.

Something chirped.

Dean jumped up from the floor, looking around. "If this thing shocks me when I wasn't doin' anything, I swear the Doc will find it in pieces."

Sam smiled. "The entire spaceship, in pieces?"

"It's a wooden phone box on the outside, and I have a machete." He looked up. "You hear that?"

A trill that almost sounded like a giggle filled the room, and Sam cocked his head. He could hear a slight change in the TARDIS's hum. A section of the wall popped out beside the couch, along with another chirp.

Sam leaned over the couch arm and examined the new slide-out. "Hey, look at this! It's an old tape deck. Who would've thought the Doctor still had one of these around?"

Dean grinned and looked up at the ceiling as he patted the wall. "That almost makes up for the shock earlier." He hurried from the room.

Sam laughed. First a car, now his brother was talking to a spaceship. Just when he was convinced their lives couldn't get weirder.

Dean returned with a handful of his cassette tapes, then inserted one into the deck and pressed the play button. The room immediately filled with the opening strains of Styx's Man In the Wilderness. He sat back down, drumming out the rhythm on his legs and nodding his head.

"Don't enjoy yourself too much, you'll break something," Sam said.

Dean threw a dirty rag at him.

Sam laughed again.

After a few songs had gone by, and Dean had stopped goofing off and had gone back to cleaning the guns, Sam slid down to the floor beside him. Dean handed him a pistol and a rag. Sam selected a rod from the kit and attached a piece of steel wool to it.

"So, you gonna tell me what happened?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged as he disassembled the pistol. "Not much to tell. Those things swarmed me, and I could barely move, it was so painful." He sighed, then said quietly, "They talked to me."

Even though he wasn't looking at Dean, Sam knew the exact second when his brother looked up at him.

"They what?"

"They talked to me, Dean. It was like—" Sam shook his head. "I don't know even know what it was like. I could hear them in my head, screaming at me."

"What were they saying?"

"You're gonna think I'm a freak."

Dean snorted. "Sure, you're a freak! You're my little brother, I'm always gonna say you're a freak!"

Sam glared at him. "Be serious, already!"

The twinkle in Dean's eyes died. "You're not a freak, Sam. Just tell me what the Vashta Nerada said."

Sam rubbed his face. Before he could answer, though, they heard clanging footsteps in the hallway outside. Dean hit the pause button on the tape deck and stood just as the Doctor, Amy, Sherlock, and John came into the room.

The Doctor screeched to a halt, looking irritably from the mess spread out on his living room floor to the tape deck. "Wha—she—how did you find that? I haven't seen that in years!"

"And what were you playing?" Amy asked.

"Wouldn't expect you to know, Red. Apart from Led Zeppelin you Brits really don't have much of a taste in music."

"Umm, excuse me? Deep Purple?" John said.

Dean looked thoughtful. "Smoke On the Water was pretty good, yeah—"

"Why are we talking about classic rock anyway?" Sherlock asked. "There are more important things to discuss. Namely, Sam Winchester—how are you feeling?"

Sam was surprised by the question. Before he could open his mouth to answer, though, Sherlock breezed past him and sat down in an armchair.

"Good," the detective said. "Because we've got a puzzle to solve, and you're a good-sized piece of it."