At the end of the world
Or the last thing I see
You are
Never coming home...
And all the things that you never ever told me
And all the smiles that are ever gonna haunt me...
Could I? Should I?

"The Ghost of You" - My Chemical Romance

"John…"

He looked down at the soldier standing in front of him, trying not to make his own pity obvious. He was broken, an empty shell of the man Sherlock Holmes had made him. John didn't know Sherlock was faking, and the Doctor had to keep reminding himself that it was for John's own good and that he shouldn't tell him. He could possibly solve all of John's problems, give him the hope he needed to keep going without what he had requested of the Doctor, but he couldn't. He couldn't tell him. It wasn't his secret to be telling.

"You've done it before, haven't you?" he all but pleaded, leaning on his cane. His psychosomatic limp had come back, that didn't surprise any of them, and his hair had grayed significantly since the last time the Doctor had saw him. They had both become different men since that time. The Doctor had regenerated, and John was without Sherlock. "Unless you lied about that as well, which isn't an uncommon occurance."

The Doctor looked down at his feet. He thought of Donna Noble, the only person he had ever been forced to remove the memory of. "Yes…once, but…"

"Please, Doctor. I'm begging you." He refused to meet John's eyes. There was too much hurt in them, too much sadness. The usually bright blue and green irises were a cold gray, and everytime the timelord looked into them, he could feel the despair growing and blooming inside of him. He knew what it felt like to be left by the one person in the entire big, dark universe he loved. He knew what it felt like to never be able to see them again. He didn't like the feeling, and whenever he looked into his eyes, he could feel it as if he was the one who had been left all over again.

"I understand what you're going through, John, trust me, but it's not a preferable solution. It's only for emergencies," the Doctor said, looking at John right in between his eyes. Anything to avoid them, anything to avoid that feeling. Anything to never relive that ever again.

"Was the other person an emergency?" John asked incredulously, as if anyone else's emergency wasn't important to him at the moment, because it wasn't.

The Doctor sighed. He tried not to think about what had happened too often. "Yes. She would've died had she not forgotten."

"Yes, well if I don't forget, I might die." The Doctor closed his eyes so that John wouldn't see him rolling them. Humans and their dramatics.

"Don't act like I'm all melodramatic. I don't mean I'll just spontaneously combust or something. I mean something very more…serious. Something…" John paused and looked down at his cane, as if it pained him to say, before turning his head up to the Doctor with his eyes closed. "Something very similar to what Sherlock did."

The Doctor felt his heart jump into his throat as he processed what John was saying. It all made sense. John didn't know Sherlock wasn't really dead, so he thought that dying would bring him closer to Sherlock, or at least get rid of the empty feeling that not having Sherlock left. If he forgot Sherlock, he wouldn't feel any need to…commit suicide. Just thinking the words made the Doctor feel sick to his stomach.

"John, please…" The Doctor urged, fighting back the stinging in his eyes. "Please, please, don't."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" John said, leaning onto his good leg.

"To wait!" The Doctor yelled before he realized what he was saying, opening his mouth to correct himself but simply gaping at him.

"Wait for what, Doctor?" John yelled back, raising his free hand in exasperation. "Wait for Sherlock to come back? Because last time I checked, you can't reanimate the dead, even some martian like you, and he's not coming back. Ever."

But he is coming back, John. It's been a year and a half. You're half way there. You've made it so far, you've done so well.

"What about Harry? Sarah? Mrs. Hudson?" The Doctor asked, scrambling for any reason to convince John not to do anything…rash.

John laughed humorlessly. "I know it's selfish of me, but I don't care anymore. They kept me from doing it in the beginning, but it's not helping now. Anything to escape, you know?"

The Doctor did know. John had only lived a short amount of time, in comparison to the Doctor, and Sherlock had been his entire world.

"…I don't want to do it, John," the Doctor admitted. "I don't want to let you do it to yourself."

"I was so alone before him. Now it's worse than it was before, because I can remember what it was like when he was here." John rubbed at his eyes, and it was then that the Doctor realized he was near tears as well. "He was…everything? If that doesn't sound too cliche?" he finished with a watery chuckle.

The Doctor exhaled deeply, trying to regulate his breathing as he crossed his arms across his chest. They sat in a small silence before the Doctor finally asked what was on his mind. "Were you…did you love him, John?"

John smiled, and it was quite possibly the saddest thing the Doctor had ever seen. He was broken, and beyond repair. "I thought that was obvious, Doctor."

The Doctor rested his one elbow on his other arm, covering his mouth. "But why forget all the good times?" He asked through his hand. "All the laughs, all the triumphs, all the times you were just…together?"

"I don't think you realize just how painful it is to remember him." John started, holding his cane with both hands. "He made me a different man, a better man. He made my life hell sometimes, but it was worth it. He was the best man I ever met, and what I wouldn't give just to have one more minute with him, to tell him everything I didn't, or just so that the last time I see him, he isn't…" He trailed off, staring off into the distance somewhere to the side of the Doctor. But the Doctor had visited the scene after hearing what had happened, viewing from afar, and knew what the sentence was supposed to end with. "Covered in his own blood, staring blankly into nothing."

As he watched John look off into the distance, as he looked into the eyes of a man broken by war and broken by love, the Doctor finally, resignedly, realized what he had to do. He couldn't let John kill himself, and he couldn't tell John about Sherlock. It was the only option, no matter how much he resented it.

He sighed. "John…are you sure?"

"Yes," John replied without hesitation, standing up straight and meeting the Doctor's eyes.

"You have to be absolutely, completely, 100% sure that you want this," he specified slowly, rolling his sleeves up his arms a bit and stepping closer to John so that he was directly in front of him.

"Please," the former soldier whispered pathetically, barely audible, his eyes slipping closed. The Doctor could practically hear all three of their heartbeats in the small living room of 221B.

"Oh, John…" he sighed, laying his hands gently on either side of John's face over his ears, each of his index fingers at each of John's temples. "Such a good soldier, such a good friend, such a good man…"

The Doctor slid his eyes closed as John managed to slip out a quiet "Sher…" before the process began, and then secondhand memories that told the story of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson began flashing behind his eyelids; an old classmate, a taxi driver, yellow graffiti, a painting, a woman, a hound, a fall. And then the much, much sadder story of John Watson sans Sherlock Holmes; a lot of sitting, a lot of staring into nothing, and not much else.

John's almost silent "-lock" resonated through the apartment as he fell forward onto the Doctor, completely unconscious. He held John's short body up by scooping his arms underneath John's shoulders and wrapping around to hold him in a hug, looking down at the peaceful face pressed against the lapel of his tweed jacket, and let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

He began to ungracefully drag John towards the stairs and to his bedroom, trying not to hurt his legs as he pulled him up each step and towed him onto his bed. He laid him on it and pulled the blanket out from under him, draping it over his limp body. The Doctor leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead, looking down at the lonely man and trying to ignore the guilt creeping up into his body.

"John Watson," he stated dryly, clasping his hands behind his back as he started to walk backwards to the door, "the man who couldn't have waited."

A/N: I'm thinking of adding a second chapter in which Eleven tells Sherlock what happened. What do you think?