When Sherlock wakes up, he's in the smouldering wreckage of what used to be the pool where Carl Powers died and John is watching him with unblinking blue eyes.
"Bomb went off," Sherlock says unnecessarily, sitting upright and coughing smoke out of his lungs, ears ringing with the echoes of the explosion.
John says nothing.
"Don't be dull, John," Sherlock tells him sternly and the world tilts around under him. He closes his eyes to try and find his equilibrium.
When he opens them again, he's in a hospital bed and one look at Mycroft's grim face tells him everything he never wanted to know.
.
.
Everything is hateful without John.
They bury him with a soldier's honour, and Sherlock hates the ceremony, hates the people who cry and weep and dare to grieve for a man they never knew.
They never ran through London with him after criminals, or told him that they weren't hungry just so they could steal food from his plate, or watched terrible telly with him.
They have no right to mourn him.
Sherlock glares at everyone and no one approaches him.
.
.
"Oh, Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson scolds. "You must get out of bed someday. What John would say if he was here now?"
"Go away, Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock mumbles into his pillow. He's not grieving, he doesn't need her fussing. He just doesn't see the point in getting out of bed if everything persists in being so boring. "You've already had your quota of meaningless advice yesterday with your frankly idiotic statement about 'everything happening for a reason.'"
There's a moment of hushed silence and a sigh. "That was Monday, dear."
"That's what I said." Will the infernal woman never just leave him alone?
"It's Sunday."
Oh.
"Perhaps I should call your brother?"
Everything is hateful now.
.
.
"Oh, bloody grow up you great big child," snaps a familiar voice one day and Sherlock just about chokes on the cigarette he's moodily smoking to spite Mycroft. "Really, isn't moping about for three weeks quite enough?"
Sherlock sits up and stares at the figure hunched over angrily in John's favourite chair. "I've gone mad," he announces to what was, until moments ago, the empty room.
The Can't-Possibly-Be-John jolts and looks up with wide eyes that hurt to look at. "You can see me?"
"Mad," Sherlock repeats, this time gleefully. "Completely starkers. How interesting."
The Not-John looks relieved. "Oh finally. It's hardly the same when you're not ignoring me deliberately."
.
.
John-the-Ghost is, if possible, more interesting than John-the-Human.
"Did it hurt?" Sherlock asks him one day, when it feels almost normal to have the slightly transparent figure wandering about the flat. "Dying?"
"Of course it bloody hurt, I was in an explosion," John grumbles. "Turn the paper for me? I want a peek at the crossword."
"Did you come back straight away?" Sherlock asks him another day, watching with interest as John practises walking back and forth through his bedroom door.
"Soon enough to see you completely neglecting yourself." There's a heavy note of disapproval in John's voice and Sherlock's never been gladder to hear it.
"Eating is boring."
"You have to eat to live, idiot."
"Living is boring."
A long silence follows his words until Sherlock coughs softly and apologises. He lets John pick the station to watch on the telly that night to make up for it, and doesn't even complain when he hovers too close behind Sherlock's chair and makes his phone hum.
.
.
Mycroft has been especially tedious since John's… removal from the plane of the living. Sherlock refuses to call him dead, especially when he's still in the flat and being as obnoxious about Sherlock's cleaning habits as always.
Sherlock is extra careful not to show any hint of believing his flat was haunted to his brother, but sometimes he catches Mycroft looking about the room with a suspicious eye and a cold trickle of trepidation shivers down his spine.
Then suddenly it's Christmas and the flat is full of people trying to look everywhere but at him.
"John's stuff's still here, I see," Lestrade says carefully, his eyes worried. Sherlock responds with something sharp and biting about his wife and is savagely pleased to see the detective's face crumple.
"For god's sake, be nice Sherlock," John says furiously from his perch on the mantle where no one can accidentally walk through him. "Would it kill you?"
Sherlock wishes it would. At least then he could actually touch John again, feel for sure that he's real.
A thought he's never going to share with John.
"I miss him," Mrs. Hudson says later that night after her fifth glass of sherry, red-cheeked and swaying and blinking back tears. "He was the best of you, Sherlock."
Sherlock looks straight at John as he replies. "Obviously."
.
.
As soon as Sherlock steps through the front door, he knows something is wrong. The air is bitingly cold and there's a sense of icy rage permuting the flat that has the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
He sprints upstairs and finds the American hitman sprawled unconscious on floor of their flat, John standing over him and positively vibrating with anger.
Mrs. Hudson is pressed against the wall, eyes wide and skin pallid with shock. "He just fell," she whispers as Sherlock takes two great steps over to her and runs his hands along her arms, checking for injuries. "He was hurting me, and then he just fell."
"I wish I'd killed him so I could hit him again," John snarls behind him and Sherlock feels Mrs. Hudson shiver against him.
Later that night he's settling her into her bed when she grabs his arm, grip tight despite the amount of 'soothers' he'd pressed upon her. "I didn't hit him," she says calmly.
"I am aware, Mrs. Hudson. I do observe."
"Do you?" Her eyes are clear. "I know what I saw, Sherlock."
"I believe you do."
She waits until he's almost out of the door, heart hammering in his chest with the prospect of discovery, before calling after him. "Tell him thank you for me, would you dear?"
He smiles even though she can't see it. So, he's not mad after all. He didn't think he was but it's nice to be sure. "Of course. Goodnight, Mrs. Hudson."
.
.
He's composing, focused completely on his violin and the music when John appears in front of him and pulls a strange face at the sheet music.
"You're getting good at materializing," Sherlock mentions with interest as he lowers the violin.
John is staring at the sheet music, seemingly as solid as Sherlock. Sherlock's struck with the bizarre desire to reach out and run his hand down John's face and along the ratty jumper that the man has worn since that day in the pool. "She's not dead, you know."
Oh. He's talking about The Woman. "I am aware, contrary to Mycroft's vapid efforts to inform me otherwise. He seems to believe I need handling with kid-gloves."
"I don't know how I know," John muses, mouth twisting. "But I know." He looks away.
Sherlock doesn't follow him when he wanders off, just continues playing the mournful melody.
Even as a ghost, John has body language to read. If he wants to continue in the mistaken belief that Sherlock created this music for The Woman, he's welcome to it.
He wonders if there's a way to incorporate the sound of the desert.
.
.
He returns home from Dartmoor positively bristling with the excitement of his last case and sprints up the stairs to tell John just how wonderfully clever he's been once more.
John is by the window, the light filtering strangely though his body, and Sherlock is halfway through his story when he realizes that the light is terribly strong.
John turns to look at him when he stops talking abruptly and the colour of his eyes are almost impossible to see through the yellow sunlight. "You've faded," Sherlock says, and this time when he feels fear, it's not the fault of aerosolized fear gas.
John shrugs and slowly moves across the room to sit in his chair. His edges blur around the armchair, making it hard to tell where John and plaid cushion meet. "I'm tired," he says softly. "You were gone for so long and I got tired."
Sherlock isn't often lost for words but he finds himself speechless now.
How can he hold onto something that slips through his grip like it's trying to cease to exist?
This can't happen again.
.
.
"Do you enjoy this? This… dance you've got going with Jim bloody Moriarty?" John is annoyed and Sherlock gulps down his tea quickly before the ghost's bad mood can chill the liquid.
"You're being ridiculous, John. It's just a puzzle."
"The papers are saying you're unhinged, you know. They're saying my death made you mental, that you've got a death wish. Don't you even care what people are saying?"
Sherlock snorts and glances at the doorway. Mycroft is here. Tedious. "People do little else but talk, they hardly say much worth paying attention to," he says quietly, before standing and pulling a face at the doorway as Mycroft saunters in.
John stays quiet while his brother is there. He's unwilling to say anything to draw Sherlock's attention and consequently, Mycroft's, but the elder Holmes takes a long, slow look about the apartment anyway.
"Doing the crossword, Sherlock?" he asks carefully, tracing a careful fingertip along the paper. "You've done a terrible job of it. Positively… ordinary."
"I hardly think you're here to judge my crossword skills," Sherlock hisses back with venom in his voice. "Kindly piss off, Mycroft, you're wasting my air."
Mycroft pauses by the door, gripping his umbrella tightly. Stress. How odd for him to show it so openly. "I worry, brother," the man says gently. "Perhaps it would be best you move from Baker St and its… ghosts."
Sherlock throws the paper at him and only just misses.
.
.
"Your friends will die if you don't," says Moriarty with a mad gleam in his eyes and Sherlock feels like laughing with the knowledge that this man has already hurt him as badly as he can.
What more can he possibly do? Sherlock has so little left to lose.
Oh.
"Mrs. Hudson," he says softly.
His opponent is grinning now. "Everyone."
"Lestrade."
"Everyone."
"Who else could you possibly..?" Sherlock snaps, his voice edging on the verge of frantic. There's a flicker of disappointment in Jim's eyes at the humanness of his panic, as though Sherlock has disappointed him somehow.
"Harry Watson," he says, baring his teeth in what should have been a smile. Instead, he resembles a monkey leaping at its prey, fangs bared.
"Why on earth would I care about Harry Watson? Sherlock sneers. "I've never even met the woman."
But he does care. Sentiment. John would be so proud.
Mycroft would be horrified.
"The last living thing on this earth that shares blood with John Watson? If she's gone… well, who's left to remember him?"
No. Impossible. John can't be forgotten.
When Sherlock steps onto the ledge as Moriarty's body cools behind him, he wonders if John will know when he dies. He wonders if he'll wait, trapped in 221B, waiting in vain for Sherlock to come home.
He wonders if he'll come back too.
"Goodbye, John."
.
.
When Sherlock opens his eyes, he's in Bart's morgue standing over a body with blood-soaked curls and pale unblinking eyes.
"Are you going to try and tell me the world's most observant man couldn't have found a better way to end this than jumping off a bloody building?" John's voice is angrier than Sherlock's ever heard it and he turns slowly to face his infuriated friend.
"This had the most pleasing resolution," Sherlock tells him shortly, stepping forward and reaching a shaking hand out to touch John's arm. "You're here. You're out of the flat and you're here."
He's solid. Solid and warm and so real Sherlock could shout. John freezes as their skin touches, staring in shock at where Sherlock's fingers indent into his arm. "That's… something," he breathes. "What now?"
Sherlock shrugs. "I didn't really think this far ahead. Can you show me how to strike people?"
Narrowed blue eyes meet his. "Maybe. Why?"
He smiles and his fingers tighten around his friend's arm. He's not sure he remembers how to let go. "I can hardly leave Mycroft to clean up after Moriarty alone now, can I? And we appear to have all the time in the world to do so."
John sighs and scrubs a hand over his worn face, deliberately not looking at the body on the table. "Alright, let's get on with it then."
Sherlock follows him out the morgue, two paces behind and it's very much like the end of a nightmare he's been trapped in.
He supposes this is how it feels to wake up.