A/N: There are a few thank yous that need to be done before you carry on reading:

Thank you to Feagalad for all your help and support - and becoming my BETA. *raise glass in a toast* To many more stories, ideas and BrainWaves! *clink glasses and for some reason automatically say "Destiny"* ;)

Thank you as well to the Guest who commented on my "The Reichenbach Fall - my way" fic. Your comments were very helpful and I have used them to make this one better

And thank you, so much to the readers. Even if you do not leave a comment I can still see how many of you have read this because of this little thing called Traffic Stats! ;)

Anyway, enjoy and you will find more from me again soon!

PLBP out!

He watched his friend die. He watched his friend fall from a dizzying height, long coat flapping out behind his form like the wings of some great bird struggling to take flight. But gravity claimed its due prize and the dark figure hit the pavement. He rushed across the street, blond hair flashing in the sunlight as he raced towards his friend, his only friend...his best friend. Though it would be only a few steps it seemed an agonising age as he ran , eyes fixed on the place where Sherlock must lay broken and bleeding. He crossed the street and got knocked down by a bloke on a bicycle, cracking his head on the street. John lay there for a few moments, dizzy and disorientated. Stars flashed inside his skull and he could feel the imprint of the pavement on his face. If it hurt so much falling like this, what must Sherlock have felt as the impact tore his life away…no. No! Sherlock couldn't be dead! Spurred on by this, he got up and painfully crossed the rest of the street, pushing through the crowd of strangers that Sherlock would have so detested gawping at him and reaching desperately for his friend. The others try to block his way; but they don't understand. "That's my friend, please; he's my friend." The doctor in him reached for a pale, limp wrist, searching desperately for a pulse under the cooling skin. There had to be something, anything! Oh please, God or whoever might be watching over us!

Strange hands pulled him away from his quest before he could properly feel anything [not that he really thought he would – the doctor in him understands the improbability of surviving a fall like that, but the brother and friend refuses to accept anything else] and those same hands firmly held him back from Sherlock's stricken form. Oh God! Those sharp, blue-green eyes that should have been deducing and sneering at all this sentiment were wide open and dulled and horribly red blood was spreading in a pool behind the detective's head, matting his curly black hair. The shock of seeing his best friend lying there unmoving hit John hard and he felt his 'bad leg' [the very one that same friend had cured the first night they met] crumple under the weight of what he had just witnessed. Everything about this scene felt wrong. Sherlock shouldn't be lying there, dead at his own hand. He shouldn't be doing this. His body shouldn't betray him by reacting this way. He'd seen worse; he was an army trauma surgeon, for goodness sakes! Yet somehow the sight of Sherlock's empty, vacant eyes hits him harder than any of the Afghanistan patients that had haunted his dreams for so long and so he just watched, uncomprehending of the myriad of voices around him and unable to do anything except watch his friend get wheeled away on a stretcher into the hospital – the same hospital from which Sherlock had just jumped off the roof and taken his own life.

He was sitting in a taxi with his landlady (not housekeeper!) on the way to his best friend's grave. Months had passed since the fateful day at Bart's, but the wounds were still very fresh and raw. Mrs. Hudson sat beside him, chattering away about random Sherlock trivia and tearing at his heart even though he knew it I was just her way of dealing with her own pain. How she too must suffer! Sherlock was like her son; is like her son even though his genius now lies cold and dead in the ground. John aches to comfort her, but he just stares out the window, tears coursing down his cheeks in silence. It is all he can do not to break down and sob. Keep calm and carry on indeed! Is there a word for that kind of deep, paralysing pain that no amount of determined British stoicism can balm? He didn't dare to open his mouth or draw in a breath to speak lest what shreds of emotional sanity that remained in his control would take their leave forever. Once Mrs. Hudson realised she was not going to get a response out of him, she patted him kindly on the knee and kept quiet for the rest of the ride. She understood – Martha Hudson knew the bitter bite of grief only too well.

At the grave they stood in silence, half-afraid to break the sacred quiet of the place with speech. The plain black marble gravestone with HIS name on it seemed to mock them. John had the sudden thought, accompanied by a flash of hysterical, morbid humour that Sherlock was probably horribly bored in the afterlife – whether it be heaven or hell – and John wondered if God would take offence to bullet holes in one of His mansion's walls. But the moment of sad levity quickly passed, leaving only darkness in its wake and he just stared at his reflection in the gravestone, waiting until his landlady finished what she had wanted to say – he can't even remember what it was and perhaps it is better that way. Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson were always very subtle and private about their relationship, though it was there for anyone with eyes willing to see, and it is fitting that her words to him should remain just as private. She tearfully concluded by placing a bunch of flowers on the grave and then stepped back patting John's arm sadly. When he expresses his tumultuous feelings in an effort to say something, she tried to comfort him, focusing on all of Sherlock's annoyances in an effort to remain composed, but when she say that it was only driving the knife ever deeper into John's heart she stopped talking and walked away, giving him time and privacy to say his own farewells. For that he is grateful to this very day. He had things to say, just like Ella had more or less forced him to admit in their last therapy session, but now that he was actually standing before the gravestone he couldn't get them out around the lump in his throat. He felt that he was drowning in his grief and guilt. Guilt? Yes – guilt. Much as he had tried not to think about it over the past weeks, John could not force his thoughts away from going over his past with Sherlock in an effort to understand what had happened. Something wasn't right about Sherlock's suicide. Only hours before Sherlock had been upset, but determined to fight back against the lies of the master trickster. John may not have been a psychologist, but he remembered enough of his courses from med school to know that a person who is going to commit suicide doesn't plan for the future. So what had driven Sherlock, easily one of the most arrogant, self-loving men alive, to kill himself? Though he hoped and prayed that it was not so, John wondered if his final words [calling Sherlock the 'machine' so many fools saw him as] had finally pushed the genius over the edge. After all, hadn't all the signs shown that Sherlock did not care what the others were saying about him, so long as John still believed in him? Had he driven his best friend to suicide?

There were so many things left unsaid – he had never told Sherlock all that the detective had meant to him, nor had he ever verbally affirmed the friendship that Sherlock clearly had so valued. He was angry that his friend had left him behind, yes, but at the same time John was only too aware of his guilt in not giving Sherlock the emotional support he needed. Well – perhaps now he could finally say everything that he had not been willing to express before, even if it was too late. Perhaps, if there were any mercy to the powers that be, Sherlock would be able to hear these words from beyond the grave. He took a deep breath and tried to put what he was feeling into words. It had been easy enough when writing his blog – why was speech eluding him now? Suddenly he blurts out words and sayings, things he should have said when Sherlock was alive. He didn't even know where they came from; he just talked; unable to stop once he had begun. With a tearful sniff he finished. "Just one more miracle for me mate … just don't be dead." With that he looked at the gravestone one final time and dismissed himself.

The figure in the long coat with curly black hair and blue-green eyes watched from across the cemetery. The wind had carried bits and snatches of the speech to his sharp ears, almost as if God himself was granting the soldier's one wish. Keen eyes scanned the small form of his doctor, his conductor of light, his one and only friend – the incredible mind analysing the stiff military posture, the slight limp returning as he walked, and the clenching of the left hand. There was an ache deep inside of the dead detective that had nothing to do with the chilled breeze and, though he had to admit that it was…nice to see that John really did miss him, he had not foreseen just how extensive the damage his death would do to them both would be. He watched until the small form of his friend vanished into the waiting taxi. Then Sherlock Holmes turned and resolutely walked away.