Disclaimer: I own none of these characters, they all come from the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and my interpretations of these characters are based on the BBC series Sherlock.
All Lestrade can hear as he stares at the empty blinking cursor on what will turn out to be a police report are the sounds of the previous night, the dull whisper of other officers comforting John and John's shell-shocked "Oh God..oh God" and the rustling of Sherlock's long black coat as Lestrade watched them zip him into the long black bag. He clenches his fists around the arms of his chair and spins around so that he faces the window. There's no sun today, he notes dimly. He tries to think something poetic about that, but doesn't have the heart.
The funeral is in two days. He will go. He will wear black and bring an umbrella and he will not let one tear escape. He's not even sure if he could cry. Words he once spoke come bounding too eagerly back to him, "Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and I think one day—if we're very, very lucky—he might even be a good one."
How well did I really know him? He cracked, he said he was a fraud, but never in the time I knew him did his work feel like a sham. Maybe itwasall a game to him…John, me, even bloody Anderson. I spent so much time with him. I should have know him better, should have gotten a sense of his character, but now looking back he seems to me like a mirror: I saw only what he wanted me to see and never what I was looking for.
A knock on the door pulled him out of his reverie. He spun around, reaching automatically for a pen and pad of paper.
"Greg?" a balding head poked in through the crack, "Can I come in for a moment?"
Lestrade nodded sharply, his hands dropping to the armrests again, palms pressed flat against the warm leather. The senior coroner sank into the stiff chair opposite him and rubbed his eyes and adjusted his smudged glasses before turning his full attention to Lestrade and even then they didn't quite meet eye to eye.
"I've just finished a preliminary exam of a Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
"And?" Lestrade asked, almost lazily, trying to sound professional and not like he's been emotionally kicked in the ribs. He's not sure if he wants the man to have found something unusual, drugs, alcohol, something to have altered Sherlock's perception or decision making, something that would have told him that Sherlock didn't do this, that there was something or someone else to blame.
"He was clean."
Lestrade said nothing. His knuckles whitened momentarily on the arms of his chair.
"Would you mind telling me why bloody Sherlock Holmes's corpse is on my table?" he said quietly, finally zeroing in on Lestrade's eyes with a new intensity.
It was Lestrade's turn to rub his eyes tiredly.
"I don't know. I…don't know."
They looked at each other for a moment. A sort of understanding passed between the two men then, that Sherlock had been the kind of person that one doesn't come across very often. They didn't know what that meant though. He hadn't been a ray of sunshine, or a firework. He wasn't the kind of person who radiated kindness. But then he wasn't on the opposite end of the spectrum either, not a dictator or a killer or a happy tax collector, of all things. But he was extraordinary.
Lestrade cleared his throat, "I don't know, but I intend to find out, for all our sakes."