"John?" Paul whispered. "John?" Slowly and cautiously, he crept through the dark, feeling his way along a damp wall.

    A gunshot sounded and a scream rented the air and Paul looked around frantically, but it was too dark. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't see anything...

     Another gunshot.

     Another scream.

     Heavy footsteps.

    "JOHN!" Paul cried.

    The footsteps grew fainter and fainter until they disappeared completely and Paul began to run aimlessly, desperate to find John. He ran and ran until his foot caught on something and he toppled to the floor.

    He reached his arms out before his face could slam into the ground and his hands were met with something warm and wet.

     He yelped and leapt off the ground and turned around and shroud frantically. "John," he said, over and over again. "John.. John!"

~~~

    Three years.

     Paul had only ever had one of those weird, out of the blue nightmares and that had been three years ago. So why he was, all of a sudden, having a second, was completely beyond John.

    "Paul, wake up!" John cried, shaking Paul vigorously but it was to no avail. Paul's eyes were screwed shut and he was thrashing about, yelling nonsense. "Paulie, come on! It's okay! It's just a bad dream!!"

    Paul squirmed and yelled and sobbed. His cheeks were shining, wet with tears.

    "Paul, come on! Wake up! Wake up!" John huffed, gripping his boyfriend's shoulders and shaking  him with all his might. Yet still, his efforts were fruitless and Paul was still lost within the horrors of his mind. "PAUL, WAKE UP ALREADY!"

    "JOHN! WAKE UP!" Paul screamed in his sleep.

    John frowned, completely puzzled. "Paulie.."

     The bedroom door burst open. "Is he okay?" George asked.

    "I don't know.. I don't think so," John frowned, just staring down at Paul. He didn't know what to do anymore.

    "Has he had a lot of nightmares since the first one?" Ringo asked.

    "No," John shook his head. "None at all. He hasn't been sick since then, though." He pressed his lips to Paul's forehead.

    "Fever?" George asked.

    John frowned. "No.. I thought — I thought he had that nightmare because of the fever but.. No. He hasn't got one."

    "Please, John..." Paul whimpered weakly in his sleep. "Don't leave me. Not again."

    George and Ringo glanced at one another.

    John gripped Paul's hand tightly. "I'm here," he whispered. "I'm not leaving, okay? Not now, not ever. I'm here and I'm always going to be here, for as long as you want me to be.."

    Slowly, then all at once, Paul woke up. He woke with tears in his eyes, and he sat up and threw his arms around John. He hugged him tightly, refusing to let him go for a long long time.

~~~

     It was days and days later, after John had questioned paul about the nightmare an innumerable amount of times, that Paul found himself alone in the flat staring down a page of lyrics.

      There came a knock at the door and despite what his better judgement told him, Paul called out, "It's unlocked! Come in!"

    Soon, Yoko was seated beside him. "Hi... Everything okay?"

    Paul shook his head slowly.

    Yoko peered over his shoulder and down at the book in his lap. "'Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time...'" She read aloud. "You know, I've been meaning to ask you this for a while; if you're with John now, what about Linda? I mean, you loved her. So much."

    Paul drew a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, I did. And I do. And I always will. And that doesn't take away from how much I love John, because I love him more than I can ever say. But I will always love Linda.."

    "So how can you let her go so easily?" Yoko asked.

    Paul frowned at her.

    "I'm still trying to get used to all of this, alright?" Yoko sighed. "John being alive, not being with him...you being with him. It's still a lot to take in. Just answer me...please."

     Paul sighed. "Well, it was a few months before John and I started dating...still a while before I started becoming suspicious. It was in the paper. Linda Eastman, who had just recently moved to England, lost control of her car and crashed into a tree. She was dead by the time the paramedics arrived at the scene."

    "Oh, Paul.." Yoko frowned.

    "It's fine, I'm fine.." Paul shook his head. "At least, I think I am. It's been five years. Five years of forcing myself not to think about her too much because it just hurt too damn much, and all of a sudden I can't stop. I'm just thinking about her so much. So I wrote down these lyrics.. Her song. And I've vowed never to sing them again. Not in a world where she'll never hear them. Not in a world where I'll be the only one who knows these words are for her."

      "I know," Yoko said.

     "That doesn't change anything," Paul shook his head.

     "I realize," Yoko nodded. She spoke gently, comfortingly. "I'm just saying that even if you're never going to sing them again, they still exist. The song still exists, even if it technically doesn't. It exists within your mind and for a long time the song, and so many other songs, existed only within your mind. But they're in mine, too. I'm here now. You're not alone in this anymore."

    Paul smiled. "Thank you. It means a lot to me, really it does. I mean, having John and George and Brian back is bloody brilliant but..it has gotten lonely, you know, being the only one who knows all of this stuff that hasn't happened yet and all that. The only one who knows some stuff that will never happen. It's such a fucking relief to be able to share that with someone else."

     Yoko smiled back. "We're in this together."

     Paul nodded. "Yeah. I guess we are."

     "So what's eating at you, anyway?" Yoko asked. "There's something else upsetting you, I can tell."

     Paul sighed. "It was a few years back and I got pretty sick. Had a really high fever and I was hallucinating and I had this horrible nightmare. John died, to put it shortly. For three years I've blamed it on the fever but I had another one about a week back and I didn't have a fever and...I don't know. I'm just worried about it. Worried I'll have another, I guess, but it feels like more than that. Something feels off."

     "Probably just nerves, yeah?" Yoko said. "I mean, he died. And it was horrible. It seems natural to be afraid of failing what you're hear to do and having him die again, don't you think?"

     "Yeah, well, have you been having gut wrenching nightmares that leave you screaming in your sleep?" Paul asked, eyebrows raised.

     "Erm..no," Yoko admitted. "But perhaps we're just reacting differently to the situation and the matter at hand. You've been back in the sixties quite a while longer than I have, after all. Maybe the severity of it all is just really dawning on you now and your subconscious is reacting? Maybe in a few years time I'll be having nightmares as well?"

     "Yeah, maybe.." Paul shrugged.

     "So what's the plan?" Yoko asked quite suddenly.

    "We've already gone over this," Paul said. "I don't have much of a plan."

    "I don't mean the plan to save John," Yoko said as if this were completely obvious. "I mean..what do you plan do to about other things? Like, are we planning to save Brian? What about George? Are you going to try to keep the Beatles together? Are you going to keep with every song on every album exactly as it happened the first time round, or are you going to stray away from that and try some new things?"

     "Well, I'm definitely going to do all I can to save George and Brian," Paul said. "The F.H.O. wants me to keep the Beatles together for as long as possible and I'm by no means their biggest fan, but I would like to keep the band together, and when the Beatles broke up in the first place was when John and I were angry at one another so it's probably in my best internet to keep the band together anyway.. I've kept mostly to the original music and I probably will until we surpass Let It Be and go onto new albums that were never written before."

    "Sounds like you've got it all worked out," Yoko smiled.

    "Yeah, but I'll need help," Paul smiled back.

     "Right then," Yoko nodded. "Let's do it."