A/N: this chapter is so sad like no spoilers but DEATH THERE IS DEAtH sorry and before you look at this you might want to review the prologue just in case you're missing any CLUES

John

Dispatching day came too soon. Just a few months after his eighteenth birthday, right after he burned all his Converse and his Bon Iver album, right after he graduated year twelve. (Who the hell was Emma? And why was she forever ago? Couldn't Bon Iver send her a facebook message?)

He kissed his parents goodbye, and told Mary - promised her - he'd return, but not ready. He said he wouldn't be ready.

She said she would wait.

He hadn't heard from Emma, or Harry, or Pickard, actually - just that they up and left from that tiny house in Baskerville (without Pickard, thank God). John was glad to hear that, of course, but in his heart, he couldn't feel happy.

The general he worked under gave him promotion after promotion. Said he was the best in the brigade. His code name was Golden Hawk - he had no idea why, but soon, he was an officer, and then, at twenty-one, he was a lieutenant.

There was a really scrawny Spanish kid in his divison - David Harnos - and the guys on the team always teased him for not having the build, but he was the bravest, the loneliest, and he reminded John a little of a far off boy in a far off town nowhere near Kabul, Afghanistan.

John adored that kid. Christened him, "Ace ."

They had a conversation about their loves. "Yeah, I have a darlin' at home."

"What's her name?" John asked, biting down on a biscuit.

"My momma, my sister and my baby Alice," he joked, likewise eating some shit-tasting wheaty thing.

"Your mum and sis and your girlfriend?"

"Yeah." He removed a picture with their faces on it, all together.

"What about your dad?"

"My daddy too," His brown eyes lit. "He's just not in the picture. What about you? You got a honey at home?"

"A... honey?"

"A girl. You, lookin' all rough and tough and bein' a lieutenant, you ain't got a chick at home?"

"No one. Not anymore." John said, smiling, and he drank some beer guiltily. "Well," he stuttered. "I mean... I mean I did, but like I said, not anymore."

"What's her name?"

"His name was Sherlock." John smiled and looked at his shoes, which were covered in sand.

"Oh, heh!" David laughed about that a little while. "Shhhheeeerlock." His grin slipped a bit. "What happened to him?"

"He died a while back. Shot himself. I haven't heard from his family."

David's face went dark. He spit into the sand and spoke no more, hiding behind a rock.

Gunfire had exploded from behind the treeline, bright pops of light jumping from the sudden sparsely lit forest of Acadias. And John had told him to "stand down, that's an order, soldier," as he scrambled up from their hiding spot and sprinted for the trees, a cantine shaking on his side. John rolled his eyes, his revolver coming up from his side and being aimed into the brush. He shot, twice. A body in the trees collapsed.

And then there was a strange yowl, and a scramble of the opposing side towards David's position, and John was thinking: Shit oh shit oh shit oh shit-

His mouthpiece crackled to life. "Ace! Ace! Fall back on one o'clock, I repeat, fall back!" he shouted, before kicking up dirt with his heels, running up through the blood stained sand to find David.

"Man down!" someone yelled.

"Ace!"

"Man down!"

"Someone, get in there!"

"Golden Hawk, fall back!"

"Oh, Jesus," John cursed, hearing bullets zip past his ear as his feet listlessly scrambled on the forest floor. All he saw were the tanned and dirty pelts of the enemy, their guns popping at him.

"That's an order!"

"I have to get to Ace, General," John shouted, running through underbrush. He could hear his friend scream in the distance.

"Fall back, Golden Hawk!"

"I'm nearly there," John yelled.

And then he was hit.

And then he was falling.

And then he was saying, "Oh, God, please, let me live."

And then it was black.

Sherlock

Sherlock had stopped trying to bring him back.

He only came back when he felt like it anyway. Locked up inside nightmares, and lies, and broken down déja vu.

Like, Sherlock would be on the bus, going to work, alone in a sea of humanity, as always, and he'd see a boy with sunshine for hair on the street...

He'd swear, for half a second, that it was him.

Or he'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming because of another terrifying nightmare, and he'd cry, "John, John, John," like it was the only word he knew. Sometimes, when he was almost overdosing, maybe trying to end it all, maybe not, he saw John, touching him, kissing him, making him feel real again. But Sherlock couldn't summon him. In the memories he had, in the photos he'd taken, John never truly looked like John. He was always penciled in too thin, his figure too angular, his lips too full and his eyes not quite slate blue.

He'd stopped trying to bring John Watson back.

When he realized John was gone, when he knew that the only thing that reminded him of that blue eyed wonder was the man named Pickard who occasionally appeared in his neighborhood, it gave him closure. When Sherlock heard that John had finally been deployed, although he'd wanted to be a doctor... Sherlock sat down.

He loaded the syringe.

After that, he didn't move.

Didn't even think.

Didn't even think about John or Molly or that old lady at Asda that always cursed or Myc or Lestrade or Mike or Tom or Mr. Barrymore or Sally or Anderson or Mrs. Hudson or Moriarty or Fargo and his dead wife or Siger and his dead wife and her soon to be dead son.

He didn't think about the Golden Boy, or about thunderstorms and winter nights and the smell of comic books.

He didn't think about loss and feeling or pain or happiness.

He wondered, for only a moment, if God was real. Surely, he must be, if the tides would sway Sherlock so. If his terrible and beautiful creations could make him swallow a gun, make him self-destruct so violently.

God surely must be real, if this tragedy is possible.

Sherlock breathed deeply, trying to make himself feel pure in his last moments. Trying to make himself feel whole. He was missing pieces in his life - he was a train without tracks. His previously glimmering mind palace had gaping holes in the floors, and any moment he felt like it could all give out and collapse in on him. The room where John had been in his mind - the room where music and happiness and feeling had been was now dirty, ruined. He'd gone in there when he was trying to remember, and smashed everything that reminded him of the boy with sunshine for hair when he wanted to forget. Maybe he could go into the dark gently.

In the end, he always ended up feeling. That was the worst thing.

Because he went inside his mind when he wanted to feel. Because there was nothing more, and nothing less to do than let himself be overwhelmed. He'd gone in that room to remember how to feel, but he'd left it with cuts and scrapes from the wounds he'd gotten destroying it. Now... he wasn't even sure what love felt like. He wasn't even sure what anything felt like, anymore. He could remember being loved... but he couldn't remember loving. He couldn't remember John anymore. He couldn't remember his voice. It was gone.

So did it really matter if everything he hadn't believed he was - everything John had told him he was, was the truth? Did it really affect the course of his lack of a life, did it give him reparations for the things people had done to him? The things he'd done to himself? Abusing himself, hurting others, and that heartbreak... was it worth the trouble? Because Sherlock needed John. He lived for the people that told him that he wasn't as broken as he seemed.

Had I loved him? he asked himself. Or did I love what he did for me?

Sherlock slid the needle into the crook of his elbow, licking his lips once and closing his eyes. He only prayed that his mother would be waiting.

John

When John woke up, his heart felt a little more broken, his soul a little more empty - like the sun had been extinguished and the stars had ceased to shine.

"You were shot in your articulatio humeri. Your shoulder," the doctor clarified.

"I know damned well what that means," John spat shortly, forcing himself to sit up. He turned away, staring daggers into the wall. "Did David make it?" he asked.

"David?"

"Soldier David Hornas."

"Oh. No. Sorry," the doctor said. "Were you close?"

"Yeah," John said, voice hitching, although he expected it. "He was a good soldier. Sorry to hear it."

"Yeah."

They sent him back a month later.

John hated the quiet. It was so... quiet.

He still listened to punk. Stopped wearing the leather jackets, though. And the skinny jeans, God, they were awful.

Also, in later news in the daily life of John Watson the Average, he rented out 221B. Mrs. Hudson was still there, thank God, at the ripe young age of sixty one.

And Mary.

Mary asked him out for coffee.

He said, "Yeah, course," on the phone, though, in his heart, he was still waiting for Sherlock to call back.

A/N: I am so unhappy now for so many different reasons jesus christ