Gregory Lestrade looked at the hole in the ground in front of him and wished he were dead. He wished it were him, being lowered into the cold, unforgiving ground. He wished it were him, stiff and frozen, no longer able to breathe, to laugh, to cry. He wished it were him, instead of Mycroft. The coffin was at last settled into its final resting place and he suddenly had the urge to jump in after it, to insist they buried him alive with the man he loved. Had loved. But how can you be in love with a dead body, an emotionless piece of tissue that was rotting away day by day? All he had left was the memories.

And that was all he'd ever have. Photographs, emails, the ghostly reminder of a man that could never be replaced. And always that clinging sense of loss and longing: that empty space in his heart, in the back of his mind, his very soul – the empty space that told him Mycroft would never be coming back.

It began to rain, and Greg was sure that this was the Earth mourning the loss of a great man. Droplets of water mixed with his tears and fell gently onto the ground. His face was wet – what from, he neither knew nor cared. He carried on watching as the grave was filled, and with every spadeful of soil he felt more and more hopeless until the last pile of earth had been thrown on top of the coffin and he felt like he was going to collapse.

Mycroft.

That wonderful, charming, intelligent, witty, handsome, brilliant man – and even those were poor adjectives to use – now buried under six feet of earth. He felt a hand grip his arm as the world swayed slightly and his knees threatened to buckle. Dimly, he became aware that he was being guided towards a bench and that someone was sitting next to him, a hand on his back. John. Always there when someone needed him. Lestrade put his head in his hands, allowing the barely supressed feeling of devastation to overtake him. Sobs wracked his body, tears soaking his face and blurring his vision, taking shuddering breaths between his cries, the pain in his chest threatening to cut off his air supply. John stayed with him until the sobs had dissipiated into whimpers, and then finally they drew to a halt. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't know Mycroft as well as you or Sherlock, but I knew him well enough to know that he was a good man.'

'He was the best,' Greg replied quietly. They stayed in silence for a while after that, Greg looking at the grave and John watching the rain. After a while, John stood up.

'We'd better get to the wake,' he said uncomfortably, not wanting to disturb the other man in his obvious grief but aware it was getting colder and wetter and Greg didn't seem to notice.

'I don't want to leave him. I can't.'

'Greg...'

'I can't!' He almost shouted the last word, respect for his newly-buried husband and the place they were in the only things keeping his voice quiet. He shook his head. 'I can't – just – leave him.'

'He wouldn't have wanted you to stay here,' said John, his voice taking on an almost pleading tone. 'Come on, Greg.'

'John.' He turned round to see Sherlock. 'Can I talk to him?'

'Sherlock...' He wasn't called a sociopath for nothing. John wasn't entirely sure letting him loose on a grieving man would help the situation.

'Just let me...' He stepped round him and walked to the bench, sitting down beside Greg but not speaking, just looking in the same direction as him. John sighed and walked a few paces off, knowing that against his better judgement it was probably best to leave the two of them alone.

Greg knew that there was someone sitting next to him, and he had his ideas about who it was, but he wasn't going to attempt to talk to them because he didn't want them to hear the tremor in his voice. 'Lestrade, you're going to have to move sooner or later.' Sherlock's voice. It was different to usual, but he couldn't quite place why. He shook his head. 'You can talk, you know. I don't mind if you cry.'

'I can't move.'

'Can't or won't?'

'Both. I can't – won't – whatever – I'm not leaving him.'

'He wouldn't have wanted you to stay here.' John had said the exact same thing, but coming from Sherlock it sounded different. 'He's dead. He can't come back.' If Greg hadn't known him better, he would have said his voice faltered then. 'And sitting here for the rest of eternity isn't going to change that.'

'I know, I know... It's just... I... I don't think I can do it without him.'

'Do what?'

'Anything. Everything. Stay alive.'

'We both know that's not true.'

'Well that's how it feels!' Greg shot back. 'I don't know if you're even capable of emotion, Sherlock, but right now it feels like – like a...' He couldn't even begin to describe it.

'Like there's a black hole inside you that's never going to close, and it's going to keep eating away at you day by day until one day you're going to be dead too, and you can't tell where the pain stops and the grief begins, and you just want to shut yourself in a dark room and cry, and then sink into a depression where you never have to move again, and live a hollow, empty life until you die too, because you can't bear the thought of the earth without him.' Sherlock's voice cracked on the last word.

'...Yeah.'

'But you've got to keep going. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for Mycroft. He didn't talk about you much – to me, anyway – but when he did, it was in the highest respect and... love.' The sociopath couldn't believe he'd just said that. 'I've never seen him happier than when he was with you, and he wouldn't want you to completely throw your life away just because he's dead. Yes, he's gone, but we move on and remember him. You can't let your life grind to a halt, Gregory.' Greg registered somewhere that that was the first time that Sherlock had called him anything other than 'Lestrade', 'Detective Inspector,' or 'stupid', but he was mainly just turning over what had just been said in his mind. He nodded.

'Yeah. Yes, that's... Thanks.' He'd always thought the kind of 'pep-talk-at-a-funeral' thing was a bit overdone and useless, but to hear something that wasn't sarcastic or deductive coming out of the consulting detective's mouth was rare: he meant it. Standing up, Greg glanced down at Sherlock. 'You coming to the wake?'

'Definitely,' he replied, standing up next to him. 'Before you go, there's something...' He extracted a CD from his pocket. 'My brother asked me to give this to you.' Greg looked confused as he turned it over in his hands. It was a blank CD in a plain case, a piece of folded paper tucked in the front the only clue as to what it was. There was a listing of tracks on the back – or at least he thought it was – but they weren't songs he recognised. More like sentences.

'Do you –'

'No, I have absolutely no idea what it is. But he said it was very important that you recieve it, after he'd...' He left the last sentence hanging. Died was one of those words you didn't have to say to say it.

'Right,' said Greg, pocketing it. 'I'll listen to it later.' He wanted to find the nearest CD player and play it there and then, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it would be best to listen to it alone.

The wake was uneventful, like almost every other one he'd been to. John had invited him back to 221b afterwards but he really badly wanted to get home. He didn't think he could handle attempting to be social for any longer. As they went their separate ways, John pulled him into a sort of one-armed hug. 'You gonna be ok?' Greg nodded briefly. 'Don't do anything stupid, alright?' Another nod. Sherlock shook his hand.

'I... er... sorry, again.' They hailed a cab as Greg turned towards his car, barely remembering to put on his seatbelt in his haste to get home.

He spent a while just looking at it, turning it over in his hands, reading the words on the back – not paying attention to what they said, but more the way they were written. The writing, though slightly shaky – most likely written in his last few days – was still unmistakably Mycroft's. His familiar blue fountain pen, the writing flawless as ever, wobbly towards the end, but that was to be expected. He opened it and the piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Three words were written on it: Listen and remember. Greg pressed play and leaned back.