Disclaimer: I don't own these characters - that honour belongs to ACD and Mofftiss
Turning away from the open back doors of the ambulance, Greg Lestrade did a double take, seeing the figure standing under street light, and suddenly he was thrown back three years, to the Jeff Hope case.
Thrown back to serial suicides, and the loner consulting detective suddenly turning up at crime scenes with an 'assistant'.
He swallowed, his eyes scanning the scene for Donovan and Anderson, reassuring himself that they were out of the way before crossing the short distance to where the doctor stood, watching.
"John?" Lestrade could hear the raw pain in his own voice. He hadn't seen this man since just after Sherlock's funeral, when he'd had to arrest him for being drunk and disorderly in Regents Park. "What do you need?"
John's eyes took in the tired, world weary look in the older man's eyes, the ill-fitting clothes and scuffed shoes. With a shock as sudden as it was unexpected, he realised that Sherlock had been right all along, that he saw but did not observe, until now. Now he observed Lestrade's loss of weight, his hours spent behind his desk rather than in the loneliness of his flat (his wife had finally left him), and his guilt at his part in Sherlock's suicide.
John nodded towards the scene.
"When you're finished here, d'you fancy a beer?"
