Jumping over rocks and kicking up sand, Sherlock looked over at John, and he didn't like what he saw. And he didn't know why. And that might have been the scariest part.


3 Hours Earlier


"Aaaaarrrridius," the Doctor drawled, rubbing his hands together. "Brilliant planet, brilliant species, if a bit easily swayed and a little morally objectional. Nothing serious, I'm sure by now it'll be well under control."

"What's the weather like," Amy asked, looking at the sparse desert in the console's monitor.

"It's a desert planet," Sherlock said, looking at her like she'd just said she thought the universe was geocentric.

"Hey," Rory said defensively, "We've been on tundra planets where it got up to 37 degrees in the afternoons."

"Impossible," Sherlock murmured, but he looked interested.

"Anyway," the Doctor edged in, "Aridius, great planet, let's go."

John was excited beyond words. Going back in time was exhilarating - who would've thought those American settlers had gotten caught in a time-sink on Croatoan Island? - but going to a different planet? That was beyond description.

Which is exactly why the Doctor let John take the first step onto new soil.

Of course, as soon as the sole of his boot made contact, the Doctor was outside bustling about, scanning the air and soil with his screwdriver.

"Looks like about... No, exactly 3,600 years after my first visit. Rude octopi must've completely cleared up by now. C'mon then, on we go, I've got some descendants of old acquaintances to see."

Amy and John took the lead, Rory right up with them, leaving the Doctor and Sherlock to trail behind.

"It's been 53 hours since we entered the TARDIS for the first time," Sherlock remarked.

"Well, here it's been over 1,000 years," the Doctor replied easily.

Sherlock stepped in front of him, bringing the Doctor to a halt. "How long do you plan on keeping us," he asked, his eyes stony. "One more adventure? Two? Or is this the end of the line? How do you expect us to go back after this? I can see it in Amy's eyes, in Rory's; they dread the day you drop them off, get tired of them, send them back to try to piece back together their lives, pretending they'd never met you. So how long, then? How long for me and John? He'll never be the same after this. You know that."

The Doctor looked tired suddenly.

"Sherlock," he started, then tried again. "Now, it's really quite charming the way you think yourself the only person in the universe capable of observing people, but I think you've forgotten just how old I am." He started forward, taking a few steps before Sherlock started following him. "I've been around humans since before you or your great-great-grandparents were born. So trying to sell this 'I'm really just worried about John' card isn't going to work on me. I know how you really feel."

Sherlock stopped abrubtly. The Doctor turned around.

"I'm talking about you wanting to travel with me, of course. What else would I be talking about?"

Sherlock's jaw clenched.

The Doctor turned around again, and kept walking toward the steadily shrinking forms of Amy, Rory and John in the distance.

"No contract, though," he called without turning his infuriatingly flippy-haired head. "I'm willing to have you on for as long as you'd like. Assuming you don't get too bored first."

Sherlock watched him walk away. He glared at him, but then the Time Lord's words sunk in. His lips curled in a half-smile, and he took a large stride forward, following the Doctor's shadow as it slinked across the desert sand.


The landscape had changed since the last time he'd seen it, the Doctor mused. The planet was still predominately desert, especially in these more remote areas, but he could see abandoned structures standing out randomly in the sand, the large stones used to build them bleached white from the sun. The last time he'd been here, the Aridians had been driven into hiding after war with the planet's indigenous Mire Beasts had nearly wiped them out. This more scattered collection of shelters seemed like a good sign, but the absence of life was more than a bit disconcerting.

Amy and Sherlock were beginning to tint pink, their fair skin exposed to this unrelenting sun, so the Doctor decided to authorise a brief stop in an abandoned shelter for a quick break from walking and to regain their bearing.

"What's wrong, Doctor," John asked, catching the worried look crossing the Time Lord's face.

"Nothing, Doctor," the Doctor replied cheerily. John grinned back at the nickname - their little in-joke. But when he turned his head, the Doctor cast a nervous glance behind them.

"Finally, shade," Amy grunted, rolling a stone back from the shelter's makeshift doorframe. "Really, Doctor, I don't see why you want to be ginger so bloody bad, it's not a walk in the park-"

Her body flew back from the shelter and crumpled in a heap on the sand.

"Amy!" Rory and John cried, running to her aid. The Doctor whirled around and held out his screwdriver, scanning the area. Damn, he thought, tasting bitter irony. Lifeforms.

Rory and John helped up a stunned but ultimately uninjured Amy as Sherlock and the Doctor circled round the shelter. They positioned themselves around the open door to the shelter and, nodding to one another, peeked in.

Sherlock was stunned to see several creatures clustered inside.

Their skin had gone almost brown, probably an evolutionary method against the sun's harmful rays; their heads were crowned with fins, and sharp teeth glinted from within their mouths.

"Aridians," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Always nice to see an Aridian, even a... bit of a different Aridian..." he trailed off, seeing the murderous looks on the creatures' faces.

"Who are you," one intoned.

"I'm the Doctor," he replied, his smile starting to fall.

The Aridians rose to their full height, the fins on their heads expanding and branching out. Their lips pulled back to reveal rows of teeth. Sherlock stepped back and slowly extended his arm out to protect John, who was standing directly behind him, his eyes wide and his throat dry.

"Doctor," the Aridian hissed, "it is because of you that the Aridian race has been nearly wiped out! If you had never come here, the Daleks would have never followed you, and our fathers' fathers would be alive today!"

One of the Aridians threw his hand out and struck the Doctor square in the chest. The Time Lord's body rag-dolled; he sailed through the air and landed in a heap, rolling backward and clamboring to his feet.

He spun around quickly and issued one word before whipping around and sprinting back toward the TARDIS: "Run!"

Rory seized Amy's hand and tore off after the Doctor. John, still staring at the creatures, was violently yanked as Sherlock slid his hand into John's collar, pulling him into a run alongside himself. John quickly fell into pace with Sherlock, running feeling familiar after their months of fieldwork.

John looked at Sherlock. He had just, with his very own eyes, seen a vicious, deadly alien attack another less vicious but equally deadly alien. Now he was running with his best friend across an alien landscape, running for what was without a doubt his life.

And here was Sherlock Holmes, grinning like a madman.

John started to laugh. Even when he looked back and saw the creatures bounding after them, he still laughed. Sherlock and John caught up with the rest of their group, and John turned his head, still howling at the top of his lungs, and locked teary eyes with the Doctor. And Sherlock saw.

There in John's adrenaline-drunk eyes was something he couldn't explain. Something familiar but complex; it was admiration, respect, loyalty, the kind of loyalty that would make a man take a bullet for another. But it was more than that. It was the look Rory had given Amy as he ran over to her fallen body. It was a look he'd seen John give him, very rarely, though he couldn't explain it at the time.

It was love.

Sherlock's own laughter died in his throat. They reached the TARDIS, the Doctor flinging the doors open. Rory pushed Amy inside, and John stood in the doorway. Sherlock just stood there, his eyes locked onto his, searching. John narrowed his eyes in confusion, and Sherlock looked stricken.

The Doctor, oblivious as always, just shoved Sherlock in, knocking him into John. The Aridians far behind them, the Doctor panted: "Everyone okay?" He reached out to close the door and had barely wrapped his hand around the door handle when they all heard a whizzing. Then the Doctor fell forward, a thin spray of blood floating in the air where his head had been.

The rock was medium-sized, one of the many littering the desert around them. It rolled across the TARDIS floor, leaving a trail of blood and dust behind it. The Doctor crumpled to the floor.

John saw and heard everything in slow motion. Amy shrieking and falling to her knees next to the Doctor, cradling his head in her lap. The blood from his temple staining her pretty yellow skirt. Sherlock, hugging Rory - no, holding him back, pulling him from the open door and slamming it. Rory leaning against it, pounding his fists, screaming rage-filled nonsense words around the tears in his throat. The hum and whoosh of the TARDIS as she began an emergency departure.

Then Amy was shaking him and everything came back in perfect clarity.

"You have to help him!" she cried, bloody hands staining the collar of John's jumper.

John pushed her gently off of him, dropping to his knees next to the Doctor. He took the Time Lord's chin gently in his hand and turned his head to examine the wound. It was a gash to the temple, contusions to the brow bone and jaw. The cut was deep but not long. The blood was pouring swiftly out from the cleaved skin, soaking the Doctor's hair and pooling in his ear. It was too much, too fast.

Christ, he remembered. Two hearts.

Sherlock was by his side immediately, holding out the scarf John had teased him for bringing, once upon a time, and cupping the Time Lord's head in his pale hands. John took the scarf, bunching it up and holding it to the side of the Time Lord's head.

Amy was clinging to Rory as Sherlock and John worked. She let out a sob as she saw the blood soak through the scarf, seeping through John's fingers. She dropped to the ground on all fours.

"You wake up, you hear me?" she screamed at the Doctor's unresponsive face. "Don't you die, God damn you! You can't change! You can't." Her head fell as she wept, the tips of her hair mixing with the Doctor's blood. Rory pulled her to her feet and led her away, out of the console room and down the corridor.

"First aid," John barked, and Sherlock got to his feet immediately. He was back in seconds, brandishing a heavy metal case with WATSON stenciled across it. Call him old-fashioned, or superstitious, but John still used his old Army field case. It never failed him before. He hoped to God it wouldn't fail him now.

Sherlock's heavy breathing in his ears, John cleansed the wound and started to stitch it up. He gave Sherlock orders every now and then. Sherlock followed them without a word, wiping the Doctor's brow, pouring water over the wound, handing him foreceps. Whenever he saw John's hands start to shake, he would say something low and reassuring, you're doing great, John, just fine. If he weren't so preoccupied, John might have thought it shocking. But it stopped his hands shaking and brought him back from Afghanistan and back into the TARDIS.

Fifteen minutes after the initial attack, the Doctor's wound was dressed and his condition stabilised. John checked his pulse again, but realised he had no standard to measure it off of. With a shout, he hurled the foreceps across the room. They bounced off of the console with a metallic clang. He picked up Sherlock's scarf, soggy with blood. He was repulsed for a moment before he realised that his arms were coated in blood up to the elbows. He looked at his fingers, fingernails dark red from trapped blood, and there he was, right back in Afghanistan.

He slumped against the TARDIS doors, the Doctor breathing softly at his feet, and he began to sob. He didn't stop it once it started; he didn't care that Sherlock was standing to the side looking at him. He didn't care when Sherlock sat down next to him. And he didn't care when Sherlock threw his arm around him, letting him sob into his bony shoulder. He just sobbed, confronted by how useless he was in trying to save a man he knew nothing about, and how useless he had been to save the men he had sworn to protect, all those years ago.


The Doctor's eyes fluttered open. Immediately, he tried to sit up. His head flipped and his stomach turned.

"No you don't," a stern voice came, and he felt himself forced back onto his back. His head connected with something soft, and he looked up into Rory's upside down face.

"Oh, don't get any ideas," Rory said to the Doctor, "It's just my shift."

They were all in the console room, the Doctor laying his head in Rory's lap. Amy and John were leaned against each other, sleeping. Sherlock was sitting with his back against the console, his fingers steepled in thought, his eyes travelling over the Doctor's face and body. The Doctor's head was still a bit hazy, but he knew a deduction face when he saw one.

The Doctor tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He swallowed and managed to get out, "Let me sit up." Rory helped him into a sitting position, leaning his back against the TARDIS doors. Satisfied that the Doctor wasn't going to slump over or start spraying blood out of his his head, Rory sat back down.

"Something to drink," the Doctor rasped, and Rory reached over for a nearby glass.

"Can't I get something else," the Doctor asked.

"Just water for you," Rory said dangerously. "Doctor's orders."

"What if I say tea," the Doctor replied saucily.

"Sorry, mate," Rory said with a wry smile. "John outranks you."

"Rory, please."

Rory looked at the Doctor for a moment, then looked at John's sleeping face. Even asleep, he didn't lose that worried look.

"Fine," Rory said, "but if he finds out, you used alien mind control on me." With that, Rory stepped around his sleeping wife and padded down the steps toward one of the kitchens.

As soon as the door closed, the Doctor looked to Sherlock.

"Mass extermination on the planet," Sherlock intoned. "Daleks, apparently. I checked your codex, I hope you don't mind considering the circumstances, but I'm sure you know I really don't care. What I'm more interested in is why you would intentionally return to a planet where you know that the inhabitants betrayed you and sent you and your companions to your deaths."

"Have you told the others," the Doctor said groggily.

"Of course not."

"Thank you."

They were silent for a while, listening to the hum of the TARDIS as she stood by in stasis mode.

"They were peaceful before the Daleks came," the Doctor said. "I always look for the good in people, and in Aridians. I wasn't aware."

"If Amy knew you were walking into danger, she'd kill you herself. And John..." Sherlock swallowed. 'John would also be upset."

"John would be fine, you do it all the time."

"But he doesn't look at me the way he looks at you."

The Doctor looked up at Sherlock, but the detective was looking at John.

"He looked at you today, when we were back on Aridius. He had this look about him, like he would die for you. Like he would do anything for you." He redirected his gaze back on the Doctor, and for once the Time Lord almost felt uncomfortable. "You don't understand how much he needs this," Sherlock continued. "And if you end this for him, I promise that I will make things very unpleasant for you next time you decide to come visiting London in the 21st century."

The Doctor smiled faintly. Oh yes, he'd met Mycroft Holmes. And he knew that both Holmes brothers were men of their word.

Sherlock stood and turned around, striding down the stairs toward the corridor.

"He looks at you like that too, you know," the Doctor called casually, and of course he noticed the falter in Sherlock's last step, the hesitance in his walk toward the door. When the door opened and Rory walked in with a steaming cup of tea, Sherlock grabbed the other man by his elbow, steered him around, and marched him down the hallway. The door closed behind them, and the Doctor pouted.

Oh come on, he thought. That's just rude.

He let out a long sigh, leaning his aching head against the TARDIS doors.

"Oh, Doyle, my boy," he murmured to himself, "what have you gotten me into?"