See end of chapter for notes.

The shimmering ball of light entered the chest of the Tenth Doctor with speed. He gasped slightly, bending as more memories burst forward in his mind. The process of absorbing so many memories, both painful and beautiful, was a momentary shock to his mental processes. The resiliency of the Gallifreyans had him up again in a few seconds, smiling at Sam Winchester as though nothing had happened, though Sam looked both dubious and concerned.

"Now then, where were we?"

"We were talking about what Bad Wolf means."

"Right! So, my friend, Rose, arranged a signal throughout space and time. It actually followed me around as I travelled in the TARDIS, isn't that amazing? It was a warning that my enemies were going to try and kill me, and a message to help Rose get back into the future." The Doctor continued on with his twisted explanations of the meaning of the phrase while Sam frowned at the repeated use of the name Rose. It was a pretty name.

"What was Rose like?" Sam didn't know what compelled him to ask, but he felt he had to.

"She was brilliant. She was one of the most amazing humans I've ever met. Rose Tyler." For the first time since they had met, the Doctor grew quiet and his smile turned to a slow grimace of thought. Sam observed the change in expression and took note of the fact that the twist in his own chest was reminiscent of that same expression.

"I wish I could have met her." An honest sentiment, Sam personally thought she sounded amazing. Dean would tease him if he ever said so out loud, of course. Dean had this bizarre obsession with trying to get his brother to get into bed with almost every pretty girl that crossed his path. Sam usually handed that with all the maturity he could muster, meaning he would make a face at Dean and punch him in the shoulder. Hard.

"She would have loved to hear about some of those creatures you meet. Rose loved learning about new things and new species. You know once, we were in Victorian London together and we met an alien werewolf! I suppose you've seen real werewolves though. Bet they're not as scary as the fellow we met. Blimey, he had big teeth. Gorgeous though. Howled at the full moon and ev-"

The Doctor broke off, frowning. Sam came to a halt, following the lead of his companion. The Doctor plunged a hand deep into his coat pocket, pulling out a shiny silver instrument. Now Sam could clearly hear the distinct buzzing sound coming from the instrument. The Tenth Doctor frowned as he brought it close to his face.

A rustle nearby had Sam automatically reaching for his gun, though in the strange state of dream walking it didn't exist. The Tenth Doctor barely noticed as yet another regeneration emerged from the woods. "Who are you?" he asked, clearly confused. Those were the only words he managed before he too became a ball of light, whizzing through the air to collide with the Doctor's chest. In his surprise, the Doctor dropped the silver instrument which Sam rushed to pick up.

At once, his senses were overwhelmed. His hands shook as the sonic continued its data dump, filled with things he didn't understand. Things about a trail left flashes of blue across his vision, culminating in a crooked ribbon leading off through the trees. That was the only thing to make sense; the rest spoke of particles and pieces of information that Sam's lack of knowledge on the subject made impossible to understand.

The only experience he could relate it to was the crumbling of his wall. Feeling the memories of Hell rushing back, crushing all imitation of sanity and drowning him altogether, it had only been dampened by the adrenaline pumping in his veins at the time. Now a similar sensation invaded him with no walls to hold it back, no chemicals to lessen the blow. His head felt full to bursting with information he didn't understand.

In the next moment, his hands were again empty and his mind cleared. "Sonic can have a bit of a kick right after I use it." The Doctor explained, turning it around in his hands before brandishing it towards where Sam had precious seen the blue ribbon. "There's a trail here. Could be dangerous." He grinned at the Winchester who continued to blink at the stranger.

"Do you understand all that?"

"Course I do! Easy peasy if you're me. It's a Time Lord thing." He winked outrageously. "Usually the sonic has time to adjust its information output from my intake capacity to my companion's, which is usually much more dampened, but you picked it up so fast it still automatically had my speed in it." Sam's reeling head had trouble comprehending it but he nodded along with the Doctor's words anyways. "It's a trail!"

"A trail of what?"

"Don't know! That's what makes it exciting. Could be an important piece of our puzzle. Allons-y!" Without further warning, the Doctor dashed off to follow the blue ribbon. Sam was only a step behind him, still puzzling over the intellect of the man they had fallen in with.

"Why doesn't he remember? If I can remember and my head doesn't explode, why doesn't he?" Clara was whispering fiercely to the man standing next to her. She didn't understand why he had chosen to tell her, a girl he had never met, even in the arena, as opposed to his best friend. This whole situation was beginning to make less and less sense as she thought it through. Still, Sherlock had spent much more time in the arena and with his memories of it than she had. Clara was constantly prodding him for more information about what had happened.

"I've been studying what happened to him. Access to information on the virus John was struck with is very limited. There's an international group of people called the Men of Letters. They hold control over the vastest collection of information on the supernatural world wide." Sherlock talked very fast, and always with a tone as though he were talking to some intellectually stunted child. Clara didn't like that one bit and intended to correct it very soon, but now wasn't the time.

"It took me a while to get some of my contacts into their files. The chapter in the U.K. is the strongest in the world and their security is actually moderately acceptable. John was infected by the Croatoan virus, one of the rarest epidemics in existence. Apparently, it was engineered by demons, or one demon in specific. The Apocalyptic Horseman, Pestilience, also goes by the name of Croatoan. He created the disease to turn humans into a sort of demon/zombie hybrid. There's very little information on it because everyone that has been infected has mysteriously disappeared. Whole towns just go missing in the blink of an eye."

"So why didn't John disappear?" Clara eyed the doctor who was currently across the room explaining the use of one of the devices the Doctor had given them to another regeneration. Honestly, she was still trying to figure out demons, let alone demonic/zombie diseases and the Apocalypse. She started with the easier questions first.

"First, he only got infected in the hallucination arena. He was never really infected. Second, a woman named Martha Jones shot him in the head before he could go and infect other people." Sherlock pressed his fingertips together as he spoke. "The experience may have been so traumatic that he's blocking it out. Your death was instant, his was slow as he went mad. He must have blocked it out. I've tried jogging his memory out but I just don't know enough about the circumstances of his infection and experience in the arena."

Clara made a noncommittal noise as she thought through this information. If she herself was slowly going insane, what would she do? Would her brain hide away her memories to protect herself, or would she face that insanity head on? Clara struggled to mentally put herself in that situation where a decision could be made, but she honestly did not know what the outcome would be. "So if someone who was there at his time of death could jog his memory, he would remember the virus? And going insane? What would that do to him?"

"I don't know." Sherlock almost had to tear his eyes away from his best friend to look at the woman beside him. "John is a soldier, he's trained and equipped to look danger in the face. Either he'll block out the trauma, deal with the facts, and carry on or…"

"Or what?"

"He'll go insane again." Clara looked up at the consulting detective with apprehension. His grim face gave no indication that he said this in jest. John had some potential of going insane if he remembered, and the two didn't know if they could keep this from him for long. "When the Doctor wakes up, he'll remember everything that happened in that arena. Either we find the part of him that remembers, or Miss Amelia Pond and the Winchester brothers do. Regardless, he might have some information about John's death."

"So, everyone is going to realize what happened, and eventually John will too?" Sherlock gave a brief nod. "What do we do? If he goes mad, I mean."

"I'm still working on that."

"But why are they doing this? Moriarty and Crowley, why play this game at all?"

"It's a distraction."

"Why do they need to be distracted?"

"We're the ones being distracted. I haven't figured out why yet, but they're looking for something, or they've already found it. What they need is time and they're buying it in any way they can. The arena was just the first way. Turn us against each other, get us to kill one another, and they have plenty of time. They erased our minds when the dream ended so that when we got back, we wouldn't know we were being distracted. Now that we're getting our memories back, we'll turn against one another. We killed each other, even if it was just in an arena. We still won't trust each other and they have more time."

"I didn't kill anyone," Clara reminded him bluntly, "And I'll make sure everyone remembers. No more squabbling, we're going to find out why they did this and we're going to put a stop to it."

Sherlock blinked down at the girl. He had previously assumed she was just a bubbling cauldron of smiles and curiosity. He was intrigued to see the fire inside of her burn brighter. Clearly there was much more to Clara Oswald than first met the eye. Sherlock wasn't used to missing things, and now his curiosity was piqued. "We'll start by putting the Doctor together."

Author's Notes: Yes, yes, I know it's been a long time. And I also promised to upload this a couple of weeks ago. I've been going through a rough patch lately, though, and I had a lot of research do to on my own story to actually remember what I had planned and what I had already done. It took a long time to read through what I had written both for this story, for Demon Games, and for the third book which I had been plotting out. But hopefully I'm back for a good long while to finish up this story! I would like to at least have the ending for this story written before the end of this month, but we'll see how that goes. It's an optimistic dream, especially as I'm about to settle into a new job. Anyways, if any of you are still out there, I hope you enjoy this! Comment and tell me what you think! Feel free to totally bash me about being gone for so long (in a loving way, please!) I don't know when the next chapter will be written/posted, but I'm planning on getting it done within a week!