"No." Someone wrapped John's fingers around something cold. A cylinder. He instinctively jerked away, but the person was insistent. "No, he shot the vine, that's not possible."

"When he shot the pod he scattered the spores." The Doctor's voice was very close to John's ear. It was his hand curling John's fingers around what had to be the screwdriver. "He told you to duck because he didn't want you breathing them in. He must have known there was a chance he'd get infected." Warm fingertips pressed against John's ribs, feeling the progress of the spore inside the ex-medic's lungs. "Oh, John Watson." The Doctor sounded very soft and very sad. "Whoever you can save, not just who you want to save. Including yourself."

"Shut up," Sherlock snapped, hard-soled shoes pacing across the metal floor, a faint sound John clung to. Sherlock was fine, he was walking and sounding angry and exasperated. That was worth something. "Just be quiet, don't even think, you think very loudly— we have to come up with something to stop them, reverse the effects. How long do we have?"

"I've given him my screwdriver; I put it on its lowest setting, with a few modifications. It won't hurt John, but it also won't stop the spores. It'll slow them, though, so I'd say we have—" John felt one of the Doctor's hands lift from his torso, imagined him glancing at a watch, or his wrist— "two hours? An hour and a half?"

"Not enough time." Sherlock was muttering under his breath, his pacing faster and faster. John forced his eyes open slightly and watched the other man place his palms together beneath his chin, thinking, thinking, thinking. The Doctor's hands never stopped moving, pushing against John's temples, making sure nothing had started budding or growing inside him. "That's not enough time, it'll start spreading as soon as it can and there's no knowing what sort of damage it could do—" Agitation was showing on Sherlock's face. Frustration and rage. "Why the hell did he do something like that?"

"Because he's not your assistant," the Doctor said slowly, standing. "Because there are people you wish had never met you, and he's one of them. Because when you're around, people want to impress you, and that makes you dangerous." John's sight was fading, but he could see Sherlock's gaze fixed on the Doctor's face. "And because you need him."

"You know nothing about me."

"I know enough to want to hit you," the Doctor continued, in a slightly louder voice. "He does all that for you and you call him your assistant? No wonder his limp's acting up!"

"How do you know about that?" Sherlock's voice was shaking again, but it sounded more like barely restrained fury.

"How do you not? the tremor in his hand was more like a quake back in the lobby—"

"Shut up."

Silence descended between the pair of them. In the tense, angry pause, John decided he needed to intervene and began maneuvering himself back onto his elbows, still clutching the screwdriver. The Doctor was back at his side in seconds, helping him sit up and lean against a rail of some sort. He opened his eyes slowly, taking in his surroundings even more sluggishly. He was in a… room. Of sorts. It was unlike any room he'd ever seen, a lush golden-red, with a circular type of tower in the center, and another, larger circle of bizarre levers and buttons around it. There were hexagons cut into the walls, and he was leaning against strange metal framework, head lolling against the crossbar as he looked at the curving metal staircase and the cushy looking chair on the other side. The entire place seemed to glow and groan with life. John shifted slightly to look at the Doctor. "…Alien, hmm?" The man simply grinned.

"I'm guessing I'm dying?" John continued as casually as possible. "Unless you two are planning on bickering loudly once every hour and I should just get used to this."

"You'd hardly have long to get used to it," Sherlock growled, "You only have two hours to live. At most." John frowned at his friend, It was a bloody joke, but the prat wasn't in the mood to laugh at himself. He began thinking, hard, about all he knew about parasites and killing them. Removing the spore wasn't possible and wouldn't do very much good.

"So, guns— a no go." The Doctor's grin flitted across his face again.

"Like I said, not terribly effective when you need them. And I'm not that keen on setting you on fire, though that would definitely kill them."

"Some sort of antibody then? No, it's fungus-like— ah!" John managed to gasp, pain contorting his features as he felt something reach out, spreading through the lower part of his lungs. "There are certain plants that we have people eat when they've been infested; they reboot the immune system and attack the organism—" It was suddenly much harder to breathe. The Doctor, however, gave a cry of happiness and pressed a kiss to John's forehead.

"Yes, of course, yes, we've been panicking instead of really considering all our options— Sherlock, go out, get the others out of the building, I'll rummage through the sick bay, I have specimens from all different galaxies, I'm sure I can find something that the taikreng'll have an averse reaction too, like a parasite allergy, or, rather, an allergy for parasites!" John acknowledged him with a smile, but the lack of oxygen was making him slip away, try as he might to stay awake. He could see that the Doctor was up and dashing to the staircase, pulling off his tweed jacket as he did and snapping his suspenders as he turned to look at Sherlock. "You haven't moved! Go, get a move on!"

"No."

The Doctor's smile slid from his face, and John fought desperately to remain conscious. What was Sherlock playing at? "Mr. Holmes, the rest of the Met's out there. I'm not definite about the taikreng's plan of action, but if it's what I think it is— and it usually is— then we're all in for a lot of very nasty fun." He twitched awkwardly. "Not like that."

"I'm not leaving."

"The fate of the human race is in your hands!" The Doctor tripped back down the stairs, eyes fixed on Sherlock's. The detective scowled darkly, stepping forward, suddenly making their conversation quiet, private. Impossible for John, who was barely concentrating anyway, to hear. "This is where you save the world," the Doctor suggested, tilting his head towards the door.

"The world can hang," Sherlock growled, glaring back at the Doctor. "John's sick and I'm not leaving."

Expressions flit like moths across the Doctor's face, settling on something akin to relief, mixed with recognition. "That's very human of you, Mr. Holmes," he stated quietly. "–but I'm afraid you're needed elsewhere." A smile broke through his contemplation. "John will understand."

—

When he woke later, it was to the smell of tea.

The Doctor was pottering about, when he wasn't twirling and humming and throwing things that looked like full beakers into the air. "Hello! Conscious again, then?" he said cheerfully, whisking something awful-smelling in a what looked like a pot hooked up to a miniature electron collider. "I'd tell you what I was doing, but I don't think you'd want to drink this then, and it's very important that you do." John considered him silently for a few seconds, before forcing enough air into his agonized lungs to speak.

"…What are you doing?"

"Making tea!" the Doctor cut in, almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth. The corner of John's lips quirked.

"Are you lying?"

"Only somewhat!" the Doctor laughed, throwing something that looked horribly like a spiny water balloon into the pot. "There's definitely some Earl Grey in here— tea really does help all things, it saved my life once, maybe more than once— you English got that part of life down to a science. Tea science, that sounds like so much fun; maybe it'd be a quantum mechanics study: how much tea can you drink before you start seeing the waves in the cup as particles? But yes, there's a lot more in here that you don't want know about. Liiiiike the skin of the Yerolnckzer! And a particular fluid that isn't good to mention in polite company, ever, partly because it's illegal but mostly because it's disgusting." He put the lid on the pot, latched it, and pressed the button on the electron collider, causing the thing to spin very, very fast. John glanced to the Doctor, concerned, and the other man grinned wildly, running away from the whirling kitchenware as fast as his long legs could take him. A second later, the pot went flying and slammed into the opposite wall.

The collider went "ding!"

"Nothing like a piece of outdated technology to make a delicious tea-medicinal-type-stew-thing!" He bounded to the place where the pot had landed and, hissing as it burned his fingers, carried it back over. John watched him without much assurance in his eyes. "John, this was your idea— you have to trust me."

"How did you know about my hand?" John said abruptly, surprising even himself. "And my limp." The Doctor paused, becoming serious.

"I live right under you, John. I could hear you go both up and down the stairs for several days. It wasn't until after I heard you two fighting that I ever heard the tread of your footsteps vary. And then I saw you in the morgue that day, and you looked—" He stopped, seeing John's expression. "It was only natural to assume that if your limp was psychosomatic, and was affected by the argument, that your nervous tremor had a similar beginning, and trigger. The war— and Sherlock."

John was silent for a few seconds, looking down at his hand. "And I'm guessing that when you saw me in the morgue, you could tell from my posture and tan lines that I had been a shoulder, and figured out that I was working with police by seeing how I reacted to you breaking in." The Doctor looked slightly guilty.

"Er, no." He gave a hesitant smile. "I talked to Mrs. Hudson." John stared at him. "She told me everything about you two. And gave me tea." The Doctor paused. "And jammy dodgers." They both started to smile. "Which isn't to say that I couldn't have worked it all out like that."

"So why didn't you?" John's smile was growing inexorably wider. The other man shrugged.

"Not as much fun!" He couldn't help it: the giggles that burst from his lips hurt his lungs awfully, but John just couldn't stop laughing. Of course, he thought, another chuckle escaping him, an alien doctor that was trying to feed him strangely concocted medicine inside his spaceship would think that having tea and jammy dodgers with his landlady was fun. Fun.

"You— you have an odd idea of fun—!" he choked out, holding his stomach as laughter convulsed through him. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow and grinned back at him, unlatching the pot.

"You haven't even seen the best bits!"

—

Sherlock ran back through the corridors, armed with John's apparently useless firearm and a furious need to hurry, get back to the— blue police box… as soon as possible. He was also cursing the Doctor for existing, for dragging John into a situation that they clearly could not handle and that was not a part of their world, but that wouldn't help. Becoming angry at the man who had possibly just gotten his only friend killed would not help matters. Though it would keep the guilt from rising inside him like a wave, swallowing him and making him sick at heart.

He rounded a corner and ran almost directly into Lestrade, who shouted and jumped back. "Sherlock! Where have you been? Where's John, we heard shots and screaming, I sent people in to look for you!" Inwardly, Sherlock began cursing every busybody, idiot policeman who entered the building as well, racking up a grand total of fifteen people he would surely murder with his own hands if John died that night.

"I've been told to get you out of the building," he nearly yelled, already realizing that this rescue mission of his was futile; they'd all headed for the mortuary. "The taikreng are on the move, and if anyone goes near them—"

A broken, horrifying chorus of shrieks cut through his sentence. Sherlock and Lestrade dashed down the corridor, following the sound of something sure to be sickening, screeching to a halt in front of the morgue. Lestrade shouted something incoherent and Sherlock, for once, was speechless. The corpses were moving— an army of murdered men and women, vines sprouting from their collapsing, mutilated bodies, were climbing from their drawers and blowing spores in the faces of the officers who sank to the ground screaming. Dashing out of the mortuary came Anderson, panting and whining pathetically as he tried to slam the door, almost locking Donovan on the other side. "Zombies!" he yelled. "The living dead!"

"No," Sherlock said quietly. "The taikreng's army."