"It's all a trick, a magic trick," Sherlock Holmes said in a shaky voice into his phone, standing on the roof of St. Bart's Hospital. Dr. John Watson and Sgt. Mallory Hudson stood on the sidewalk, the former clutching his phone held between them that delivered the consulting detective's words, which were projected through the phone's speaker.
"No it wasn't, and you know that," Mallory said vehemently.
Sherlock laughed ruefully. "Nobody could be that clever."
"You could," John replied immediately, his loyalty never wavering once.
"Shut up, Sherlock, and get down here!" Mallory nearly yelled, aggressively pulling the mobile phone closer to her.
"I'd love to, Mallory," Sherlock said in an aching voice.
"Then why don't you?!"
"Just…just listen for a minute," Sherlock pleaded. "Mallory, I love you. So, so much. Forgive me."
"For what?!" Mallory asked desperately.
"John," Sherlock continued, "thank you."
"For what?" John echoed Mallory.
"Just thank you."
"Why are you doing this?" Mallory asked, confused and a bit afraid.
"Isn't this what people do?" Sherlock replied almost apathetically. "Leave a note?" With that, he tossed the phone back onto the roof. He had accepted what he had to do, but there was no way to minimize the damage he was about to inflict upon his friends: his only friends in the world.
Sherlock took a deep breath, spread his arms wide, and stepped off the roof, hurtling down to the pavement three stories below.
"No!" Mallory shrieked as Sherlock plummeted to the ground, arms and legs pinwheeling wildly. He hit the street with a sickening crunch, and John and Mallory couldn't move because of the numb shock. After a few moments, they dazedly made their way across the street. Not even a bicyclist ramming straight into them could divert them from their destination.
"Let us through; we're his friends," Mallory vaguely registered John saying as they came to the crowd surrounding Sherlock. Mallory fell to her knees next to Sherlock (she couldn't bear to even think "Sherlock's body") and John collapsed next to her, checking the detective's right wrist for a pulse. There wasn't one, not anymore.
Mallory cradled Sherlock's head in her lap, her tears landing on his forehead. "What have you done?" she asked hollowly.
Mallory Hudson awoke with a start: she had dreamt of that horrible day again, the day her world turned dark. The sergeant rose from her bed with melancholy, remembering the solemn duty she was going to be fulfilling today. She silently dressed in the black jumper and trousers that seemed to be used the most out of her wardrobe nowadays, leaving her hair down: he had always liked it better that way. She left her flat, 221A, and found Mrs. Hudson standing out in the hallway, wearing a black dress and velvet coat.
"Hello, dear," she said softly, hugging Mallory in an effort to comfort her. "It's going to be alright."
Mallory resisted the urge to tell her it wouldn't be, and only said, "Okay, Mum."
John came out of the door of 221B and noticed the two women hugging. "Are we ready, then?" he asked somberly. Mallory knew for a fact she would never be ready.
"Let's go," she said, leading the way out of the door.
They walked through the lonely graveyard, made all the more sad-looking by the weather-worn states of the tombstones. They made their way toward the more recently-added plots and found themselves standing in front of a brand-new grave, inscribed with the name Sherlock Holmes.
Mrs. Hudson and John were talking quite a bit, but Mallory wasn't listening. Instead, she thought about the year she and Sherlock had had together. 'One measly year!' Mallory thought, cursing the cluelessness that kept the pair at bay for so long. It had been eight months until the two had actually become a couple—they were so afraid of rejection that they didn't even realize they wouldn't be rejected.
But now her beloved Sherlock was dead. Three months ago, he jumped off the roof of St. Bart's after Moriarty (curse that loathsome beast!) decided he was bored again and made Sherlock look like a fraud. Even though Sherlock's last call to Mallory and John was used to supposedly "admit" that he had done everything for the fame and recognition, they didn't believe him for a second. They did everything they could to prove that Sherlock was the genius everyone knew he was, but unfortunately, they weren't doing so well. After all, they weren't Sherlock Holmes.
John was walking away now after Mrs. Hudson, and Mallory was left standing alone at the foot of Sherlock's grave. "You bastard," she whispered, fighting tears. "Why did you have to jump? I know you could have come out of there alive, but you just…went for it. You're the world's greatest detective, the Reichenbach Hero! You could have saved yourself!"
Tears were flowing freely now, but Mallory didn't stop. "You don't know how much I miss you, Sherlock; you don't know how much I love you. Yeah, 'love', not 'loved': you've probably got a way to come back to life or something, don't you? Please? Oh, Sherlock, I miss you: I miss the way you'd look at me like I had three heads when I thought I had a reasonable hypothesis. I miss the way you would use me as bait to catch the killer. I miss every little stupid thing you'd do to me, Sherlock, and this was by far the worst."
The sergeant carefully walked along the edge of the more newly-turned earth and made her way to his gravestone. Trying not to openly sob, she bent over and kissed the top of it. "Remember when you kissed my forehead in the hospital after you found me?" the grieving woman whispered, watching teardrops fall onto the gravestone. Mallory straightened up, took one last look at the grave, and walked away, not daring to look back.
"What's the story?" John asked Mallory as they arrived at the condominium.
"Jerry Carson," she replied as they boarded the lift to the penthouse that was the crime scene. "He was discovered when his sister came round as a surprise. The scene's been closed off—apparently, he was CEO of a big-time department store. They want a very private investigation.
The lift slowed to a stop and the doors slid open. John stepped out first, went forward a few steps, but stopped abruptly when his head turned to the left-hand wall. His whole body turned that way has he stared at that direction in shock, eyes widening eyebrows rising.
"What?" Sergeant Hudson asked irritably, following him out. "Did Carson come back to life or something?"
"Someone did," John said in a clipped tone. Mallory looked in the direction that held him transfixed, only to freeze completely in place and forget the ability to breathe.
There, bending over the body of a 70-ish-year-old man, was another man with curly black hair and pale skin, wearing an almost-too-tight purple shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The trademark gigantic coat and navy scarf were thrown over a nearby chair carelessly: it was rather warm in the room. He stood up fully, reaching over six feet, and glanced up, only just noticing his audience. He held the woman's gaze with those emerald green eyes and said in that deep, heartache-filled voice, "Hello."
Mallory wanted to go forward so badly. She really did. But she was frozen in shock by Sherlock Holmes's mysterious resurrection. She could see the hurt her paralysis was causing grow as his expression grew more pained. He took a step toward her, but something inexplicably made her body involuntarily jerk away from him: it was as if there was a giant barrier preventing the two from going any closer. "Y-You're alive," Mallory finally squeaked out.
"Yes, I am," Sherlock replied just as quietly, hurt by her actions but also understanding them. The desperation in his voice reached out to Mallory, and it seemed to break whatever spell had fallen upon her.
"My God, you're alive!" she exclaimed, stumbling forward. Sherlock stepped over the body and they met in the middle, embracing as their eyes fell closed. It felt like a horrible heaviness in both chests disappeared as her body folded into his, almost like two puzzle pieces. His arms wrapped all the way around her like iron bands, seemingly intent on keeping her captive forever. Mallory held him close and relished his touch, and the feel of burying her face in the space between his neck and shoulder. Sherlock lifted his hand to the back of Mallory's head and threaded it into her hair, grateful to feel her soft brown locks running through his fingers. They clutched at each other desperately, like they never wanted to let go. After a few seconds, Sherlock felt tears soaking through his shirt.
Sherlock gently turned her face up to his and said quietly, "I missed you."
Mallory weakly smiled, tear tracks shining on her face. "I missed you, too." She stood up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, reaching up and holding the back of his neck with one hand. Sherlock kissed back longingly, savoring the precious contact he'd starved himself from for three brutally long months. She broke it after a few seconds, all too quickly in Sherlock's opinion, and searched his face quizzically, a hint of the agony she had gone through peeking out of her eyes.
"How?" It was a simple question, really. Only one word. But when Sherlock tried to explain, he found he was getting choked up. He tried to put together an explanation that would somehow justify the suffering he himself had inflicted, but he just couldn't conjure up the right words. Meanwhile, the same fear that had seeped into Sherlock's face now leaked into Mallory's, but there was nothing Sherlock could do to stop it. He could only look down at her sorrowfully, wearing an expression of utmost guilt and regret. "You know what?" she said before he could cobble a satisfactory explanation together. "Never mind. I'm not quite sure I want to know."
"I do," John's voice said tartly, from somewhere at the edge of their consciousness. Sherlock raised his gaze and looked at his best friend, sincerely apologetic. John was certainly less expressive than Mallory, but Sherlock could still read him: the doctor had missed the detective. "Care to explain?" he asked in a clipped tone.
Mallory untangled herself from Sherlock and turned to face John, but Sherlock kept the arm closest to his beloved sergeant at a slight angle, subconsciously reaching for her. Mallory knew how badly John had been suffering and that Sherlock had a lot of bridges to rebuild. John was damaged; every person in that room was. There was a lot of healing that would need to be done.
Sherlock said, "I don't know how." After a moment's pause, he ended up surprising everyone by adding, "I'm sorry."
John, always the one to take the most bizarre in stride, said, "We should have figured you'd survive. Just couldn't stand missing out on Mrs. Hudson's fudge, could you?"
Sherlock released a breath he didn't know he was holding as he chuckled. "No, I couldn't," he replied, wearing a crinkly-eyed smile: he had been forgiven, at least for the time being. Sure, Sherlock would have to explain everything later and everyone would have some serious recuperation to do, but for now, everything was okay.
"So, then," Sherlock said, back to his usual, blunt, knight-in-billowing-trench-coat self. "You two get over here." Sherlock moved aside and gestured for Mallory and John to walk ahead of him and examine the body. Just like old times, Mallory pulled out two pairs of rubber gloves for her and John to protect their hands, and they all knelt around the body as they pulled them on, Sherlock and Mallory on one side and John opposite on the other.
"Take a look at his neck; what do you see?" Sherlock asked, reaching an arm out and lightly throwing it across Mallory's shoulders. John had already begun examining the corpse, and the gesture went unnoticed by him. Mallory, however, did notice.
The sergeant glanced up at Sherlock curiously. "Since when are you all for physical contact?" she asked jokingly in a low voice, wondering what had brought about this change in behavior.
"Isn't this what boyfriends normally do?" Sherlock replied, genuinely confused.
"Yeah, but since when are you normal?" Mallory's reply left Sherlock speechless with a smirk, and she dutifully began examining the neck along with John. "Well, there's a slight abrasion on the collarbone…"
For now, it didn't matter that Sherlock had let them mourn for no reason for three months. It didn't matter that they were all fractured and in need of repair. Hell, it didn't even matter that if Sherlock had come back, then that means Moriarty might have, too. All that mattered in that moment was that they were reunited, and for just a little bit, everything was back to normal. The genius detective, the loyal doctor, and the spitfire sergeant were reunited, and if there was one thing in that moment that was certain, it was that they were unstoppable once again.