Part One: A Lament

You were thirty-five years old when you left. I was forty, and I thought we were happy.

It was just barely day. There were no clouds over the city, unusually, and the early sun was brilliant but not warm and everything seemed overexposed, washed out.

Everything but you, because you were black against the sky, on the roof.

It was a bit ironic, I suppose, that it was the same building in which we'd met first that you stood on top of then.

You called me, as I was running to you, called me on my phone even though we were in sight of each other. You called me, couldn't even say goodbye in person, and I still think you were a coward for that.

I was so alone, did you know that? Before I met you at the hospital, I was so alone, and when you came into my life I think that my world exploded into color. And so that day, with everything leeched of just that, color, I suppose it was a fitting end to us, and the re-start to just… me.

Our rooms are so cold now, quiet without you being up at ungodly hours, and when I sit in my chair there isn't anyone in the one opposite of me.

Your violin is still on the sofa where you left it, silent now.

I've been paying your rent, though I think eventually — soon, possibly — I'll move out, not solely because the rent is steep in the middle of the city, but because it's really not home without you, honestly. Even with your sheets on your bed (they smell like you) and the gun — sorry, my gun, but you used it — in the drawer, and that stupid graffiti on the wall.

You broke my heart that day, do you know that? When you called me. It hurt so much that I thought I could feel a tearing in my self that ran so much deeper than heart.

And that wasn't all, because you told me first that you'd lied and that broke me, you know? No, you don't, you couldn't, but it hurt like hell and when you were gone I still didn't understand, not at first.

You were my best friend and I owe you so much and nobody will ever convince me of anything but the truth, and this is it:

You were the best, most real person I have known, ever known, and I am utterly convinced that you did not make a lie of your life. So when I saw you on the roof, silhouetted against the city sky, I believed in you. What the press said didn't matter, doesn't matter, nothing matters. I still do believe in you even though… well…

When you jumped from the rooftop… I don't know how long you fell. For those few seconds that physics insists upon or the hours that I saw, honestly, my mind was consumed with the fact that I could do nothing but watch and when I shouted your name, I hope you heard.

You were thirty-five years old when you left. I was forty, and I will never see your face alive again.

I will never again hear your voice, your low beautiful voice, and I will never watch your brilliant mind at work, and I will never in fact see anything of you again but the black gravestone that says your name on it.

You have made me terrified; you have made me feel wondrous joy and exultation. I have been the happiest with you, and the saddest now that you are gone.

Is it to late to say that all of the things we've done, all of the adventures we've had, they were the greatest things that happened to me, because you were there?

I still think you were a selfish bastard for choosing the fall. There were people who loved you, though you never acknowledged it, and you had friends, who were hurt beyond repair when you… when you died.

I still love you.

Your suicide broke me.

Part Two: A Letter

John,

It's been forever since I last saw your face. I miss you more than you can possibly know, more than you can possibly miss me. More than I had previously ever thought possible on my part, but it turns out that evidently, I can be surprised by myself. I haven't been able to stay in contact for the simple reason that you believe me dead, but let me now promise that this letter is not a fake, is the confirmation that I am coming back. I am coming, John, though you'll have to wait for another few weeks, but I want you to know that this letter won't be the last you see of me. Hold on, John, just wait.

Your friend,
SH

Part Three: Detective

Sherlock crumples the sheet loudly and tosses it in the fire. He watches it burn slowly, sees the edge bits turn black and fall apart.

He sinks back into his chair and drops the pen to the ground. This was the eleventh letter he's composed this month, the eleventh that he knows he can't send because it's not yet time for John to know. Sherlock knows also that he'll write a twelfth, and a thirteenth, and a fourteenth, and so on until the time comes when he can actually send one. Not today, however. And not anytime soon.

It's a sentimental pastime, one that occupies far too much of his efforts these days. But they're a way for him to tell the truth, if only for himself, and so he writes.

Half of the time, they don't even read like his voice. The language is varied and tense, sometimes nervous, and Sherlock wonders if his mind is breaking down under the stress he's been under, stress that he admits to himself is very real, though he doesn't show this on the outside.

He does miss John. He wants to do something, anything, to let his friend know that he is alive, but to endanger himself and his current mission is irrational and he will not risk everything he's done thus far for the sake of sentiment.

He hacks Mycroft's CCTV feeds on occasion, but it is nowhere near the same as seeing John in person.

Part Four: Mourner

The first time I saw Sherlock after his dea — fall, I was at the shop at the corner.

I was getting milk. It was late at night and the shop was nearly empty, about to close, and I saw his reflection in the metal surface of the freezer.

If you've even seen Sherlock Holmes, ever seen a photograph of that brilliant man, you know that he was… distinctive. I loved his curls, chocolate and unrulily flapping about every which way.

I saw the reflection of those curls. I could have sworn I saw his face, could have sworn it was him.

I spun around, unable to breathe, and realized I'd seen the girl at the counter, coming to warn me of the store's closing in a couple of minutes. The worst bit was that her hair wasn't even the same color, much too light, and altogether the wrong length, although tied back, so it had appeared to be shorter.

It only became worse from there.

I started seeing his ghost on street corners, under umbrellas, in the retreating backs of strangers. The other residents of Baker Street began calling me names. The more considerate ones considered calling the madhouse.

I wasn't dependent on him, don't mistake me for that, but I couldn't seem to find excitement anywhere. I suppose I'll mourn him for a long time.

Two months after I first started seeing apparitions of Sherlock, I ran into, quite literally, a homeless couple at the Baker Street Tube station. I apologized and was helping them pick up a few packages when a little slip of paper fluttered down. I didn't have time to read it before the homeless woman grasped it quickly but the handwriting on the paper had looked just like Sherlock's.

I told Lestrade. He was mildly interested but he'd heard about my other Sherlock sightings and didn't seem like he was taking me too seriously.

He went with me, off-duty, to the Tube station. The couple wasn't there the first day, but they were on the second, and he tried to ask them about the paper sheet. They mumbled something unintelligible and walked away.

Lestrade wasn't curious enough to pursue them, and I probably would've been brought up on harassment charges if I'd tried to ask them more questions.

Part Five: Weary

Colonel Sebastien Moran, formerly of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, is a slippery dog to follow.

Sherlock's been tracking the man for months, starting just after the Fall, and he's only now begun to close in on him.

In India, he is nearly killed by a gang of Moriarty's old acquaintences, but he'd gotten a glimpse of the man Moran and he now has people in the city to inform him of the Colonel's whereabouts.

Every night he writes to John, in letters and emails and text messages, but he never allows himself to send them.

He loses Moran a month later, and is near despair when he discovers that the man has vanished again.

Sherlock knows he'll find him again, inevitably, but how soon?

He receives a call from one of London's homeless one night, containing a URL.

The web address goes to a short article about a violent assault in London, which Sherlock is inclined to disregard — dozens of people are mugged every night — until he reads the name of the victim: Doctor John Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. He reads the article and is immensely relieved when he sees that John is alive, but with a concussion, several broken ribs, and a punctured lung.

He'll go back to London, just for a day, he decides, to see John. Just once. A peek through a window. His friend won't even see him, and that glimpse will sustain him for weeks, even months if he takes that long to complete his work.

He starts packing up his work in India and makes plans for travel to England.

Part Six: Desperate

I started seeing Sherlock daily. It didn't get better with time, as it's supposed to, but Sherlock wasn't coming back. I knew that. So why did my eyes keep on playing tricks on me?

When I was mugged that night, it was due to a lack of vigilance on my part. I'd tried to dull my soldier's instincts, hoping that it would keep me from noticing details that reminded me of him, but it didn't work. I tried drink. Didn't really work, either, but the buzz helped me forget, sometimes, not always.

So that night when I was assaulted in an alleyway, it was my fault. I wasn't paying attention.

That morning I'd given Lestrade another false alarm. He was probably getting sick of it, and I was, too, to be honest. But I couldn't give up on Sherlock, because it'd be just like him to fake his own death and wait two years, three even, to come back. Because he was just that kind of idiot.

At noon I could've sworn I saw his silhouette in the window of Baker Street, just as I was returning from my part-time job at the hospital.

I rang Lestrade immediately and raced upstairs. There wasn't anyone there but one of the windows was open. I was sure it hadn't been before, but by the time Greg arrived, my argument sounded pretty weak.

It had been one of the more believable incidents. I ended up in a pub early that evening, somewhere along the Thames. I didn't know much else about where I was because I was half drunk off my ass already, but I was knocked down and robbed, barely out the bar door.

Apparently I didn't put up much of a fight.

I ended up in a hospital instead of a mortuary, or the river, because one of the bar patrons saw me as they were leaving and phoned the police.

Part Seven: John

The flight back to London is tedious. Sherlock's never liked flying. Sitting in a metal box hurtling through the sky is not his ideal in terms of transportation, but it's the quickest, and he wants to see John as soon as possible.

When he arrives in London, he considers letting Mycroft know that he's alive, and not for the first time. He decides against it again because even Mycroft is susceptible to sentiment and he can't be sure that he won't let anything slip to John.

He does meet up with Wiggins, one of his most reliable correspondents among the homeless of the city. He is informed of John's whereabouts and condition, in addition to a few interesting things happening in London recently, and then makes his way to the hospital.

Sherlock manages to get by the young nurse at the front desk with a smile and the assurance that he is John's cousin, despite the fact that they look nothing alike.

When he gets to John's hall he makes his way to the room and sees from a ways down that the door is open. He's lucky that he won't have to break in or make a fuss to get someone to open it for him.

He decides to just walk past the door, having been told that John is under sedation. He'll just take a peek, one glimpse to be sure that his army doctor is still the same.

But when Sherlock reaches the door he sees something's wrong. First of all the mustache, which is entirely new and unexpected. Nobody had informed him of this development but he supposes that he hadn't specified exactly what kinds of information he'd wanted from his homeless network.

The other problem is a bit more severe, because John is very clearly awake.

Sherlock is unable to continue walking past the doorway. He nearly freezes when he locks eyes with John for a moment. There is no way that his former flatmate cannot see him, even though he's wearing a fedora over his now-cropped hair and his skin is much darker after all the time chasing Moran in Asia. But John sees him.

Sherlock gets his legs moving finally and nearly runs down the hallway to the stairs, which he takes three at a time. He's scolded on the way out of the hospital and it takes him a while to realize that he isn't being pursued.

He slows and re-orders his mind. Realistically, he decides, it had only been a second. John was most likely still partly sedated and he probably hadn't even recognized him. He probably doesn't even remember what he looks like anymore, he thinks, melancholy again.

He's happier, though, because he's seen John again and now he can go back to Asia and pick up Moran's trail again with a new spirit, and this time he's going to catch him.

Part Eight: Sherlock

It was him. I knew it was him, at the time, and nobody could convince me that it wasn't. It was clearly him but nobody believed me and some days I knew that I didn't even believe it myself.

Lestrade didn't believe me when I told him, after I was released, about seeing Sherlock at the hospital. Of course he didn't, and he was right to do so.

I was deluding myself. I needed help, but I wasn't going to find it anywhere on this plane of existence.

Sherlock was out there, somewhere, but he wasn't coming back. He was on the roof of Bart's, on the pavement below it. He was in the cold, dark streets of London, and in the warm home of 221B, but nobody alive was ever going to see him again so since I still lived I supposed I'd have to change that.

Part Nine: A Call

"Mycroft. It's me."

[silence]

"Mycroft. It's Sherlock. I know I have a lot of explaining to do but it was for a good cause this time, I promise, and it's done now. I'm coming back to London—"

"Sherlock…"

"I know, I'm… sorry. I should have called or let you know but—"

"Sherlock, he's dead. My people heard a gunshot in 221B just an hour ago—"

[pause] "John? You're not talking about John, Mycroft, he wouldn't let himself be killed in his own home—"

"He took his own life, Sherlock. He thought you were dead for two years. I — I'm so sorry. I couldn't do anything about it; he gave no indications towards being suicidal and he knew very well how to use that firearm of his—"

[click]

"Sherlock? Sherlock, are you there?"

[silence]

Author's note: I originally published this on AO3 the day the Season 2-3 Hiatus ended, and though I had originally intended for my last fic of the Hiatus to be a bit more light-hearted it obviously it didn't turn out that way.