NOTE: It's not even 9 in the morning yet and I am stricken with inspiration, in desperate need of closure (no pun intended) after last night's grueling yet brilliant episode, The Reichenbach Fall. Of course, this story contains spoils and all that jazz, but if you need a fix as I do, read this.

CHAPTER 1

Sentiment

They had a funeral. Funny things, funerals are. I'd only remembered being to one or two in my youth. Curious, the things people do for sentiment.

John identified the body previous to said funeral. He saw the slightly mangled face, the bashed in skull, the wide open eyes, and he grimaced. Streaks of bright red across a porcelain white face, electric blue eyes paling to white. John swallowed.

"That's…" he managed to squeak. He looked away and nodded. Molly refused to come in and do the autopsy that Lestrade had requested.

When John had returned to the flat from the hospital, he found Mrs. Hudson. She was holding the skull, petting it gently. She was sniveling and crying, mumbling things. John had come up next to her on the couch and put an arm around her rigid, feeble frame.

"I know," he kept saying. His voice was weak. His eyes were tired. "I know."

I kept watching until I found it boring and uncomfortable. I went to the spot where I had fallen and had hit the sidewalk.

Instantaneous, painless death.

There was only a brief moment of shock.

The blood was still ground into the pavement.

I shuddered. Odd, how a ghost can shudder.

I looked up. In the seconds that it took for my body to fall off the ledge and hit the ground, I had come up with only two scenarios that could only potentially save my life. Only two. And they weren't even close to being a guaranteed success. Two. I could have done better.

Damn John. Every time I thought about him I was somehow teleported back to wherever he was. That's how I ended up attending my own funeral.

They had a funeral. It was surreal, to be there standing above my own headstone while people in black gathered around it. My body was there, below their feet, in a box, dead.

I shuddered again.

Lestrade showed up, accompanied by Sally. She looked devastated and she cried silently, tears streaming down her face, yet not making a sound. Lestrade stood reserved, a permanent grimace on his face.

Mycroft, to my surprised, also made an appearance. John went to shake his hand and thanked him for coming. My brother said nothing. He approached the headstone and stared for a very long time at it, while the others waited. He didn't move, and it almost seemed like he didn't breathe. Then he took a tiny white flower from his jacket pocket, and placed it gently on the stone.

"You're a bastard," he muttered, his voice cracking just slightly. Then he left.

Molly had come. She was the first to arrive besides Mrs. Hudson and John, who came before anyone else several hours earlier. She was sobbing before she even reached the grave site. I felt a knot form in my throat.

Molly loved me. She told me that night at St. Bart's. I had stood in the dark, surprised that I was finally able to confront her and tell her the things I told her.

"What do you need?"

"You."

She had stood there, frozen. I had thought I might have given her a fright. Then she smiled.

"I love you, Sherlock Holmes."

"Molly—"

"I love you. I don't care if you don't feel the same. I know you probably never did, or never will, but I love you. The way you stare into the microscope like no one or nothing else matters, the way you work so much sometimes I find you passed out on a slab in the morgue, the way you look at people like you know they can do better…I love you Sherlock Holmes."

Those are the moments when I needed John the most. To tell me what was humanly acceptable to say. I instead chose not to say anything, partly because I felt the familiar sensation of tears building behind my eyes and a clamp forming around my heart.

"You said you needed me," she continued, drawing near to me. She wrapped her arms, thin but slightly masculine, around my waist. "You know that whatever you need…I'll do anything for you, Sherlock."

I swallowed, had to look away, gather myself before looking back down at her.

"I'm going to die."

"We all are."

"No Molly. Someone is going to try to kill me. I'm going to die. I know it. I don't know when, I don't know how, I don't…" God I hated admitting how much I didn't know.

She just smiled and put her hand on my face.

"What do you need from me?"

At that moment, I wasn't exactly sure.

"I…needed to make sure that…" I searched her face for some hint. Bags underneath her eyes. She needed sleep but she wouldn't tell me. Same clothes and make up as yesterday. She hadn't been home. Small smudge of coffee on the side of her lip. Worked late last night.

No Sherlock,

John's voice in my head. I blinked.

Don't do that. Look for something else.

Eyes fixed on me…waiting…

"I needed to make sure that you didn't hate me," I croaked.

Molly looked surprised.

"Why would I hate you?"

I cleared my throat. This was difficult.

"A lot of people do. They don't…understand that I'm not used to being…"

"Connected?"

She smiled. Suppose she felt smarter.

Stop that Sherlock. Not the time.

"Right."

She leaned up then, and her lips touched mine. She kissed me. I didn't know what to do. I held her as she clung to me and kissed me. She entangled her fingers in my hair.

Close your eyes, Sherlock, kiss her back. You'll know what to do. For God's sake Sherlock, you can't stare at people when they kiss you, you idiot.

My eyes shut. I concentrated on collaborating the movements of my mouth in response to hers. This was so difficult. She started pushing me towards a table, and I put a hand behind me to steady myself as we reached it. I knew where this was going, I knew what she wanted, and I wasn't sure if I wanted it too.

Don't be an imbecile, you came here for this!

Did I? Did I know that Molly Hooper loved me, and that she would allow me to free myself of my virginity because I knew I was going to die? Something told me this wasn't how things like this happened. I don't think she cared. Neither did I.

She broke the kiss first.

"Sherlock you've never done this before," she said. I had somehow gotten to be lying down on a lab table, which was thankfully devoid of everything but some papers. I looked at her.

"Done what?"

"This," she said, smiling. "Kissing, touching, loving."

I thought for a moment.

"No."

She giggled, and for the first time I actually noticed how pleasant a sound it was.

"It's fine then, we'll take it slow," she said. She began to unbutton my blazer, then my shirt. I swallowed.

"Molly," I began. "You know that if we do this I—"

"You don't seem like someone who can commit anyway, Sherlock Holmes," she replied. "I know this is what you wanted, and to be honest, I'm strangely alright with it."

Molly Hooper was not like this. Or maybe I just didn't know that she actually was.

"Molly," I sighed.

Let it happen, Sherlock. Stop trying to be so smart and let it happen. This is why you ruin everything.

A pang of guilt at the thought, a rush of cold as my clothes were removed, and a surge of pleasure as I felt her begin touching me. I closed my eyes because I felt that if I watched or looked at anything, I'd feel compelled to distract myself from this…this…

Ecstasy.

The funeral was over. Mrs. Hudson and John were the only ones who remained. I looked at them.

"I'm angry," John was saying. I came closer to them, standing between them and the headstone.

Mrs. Hudson walked away after complaining, perhaps reminiscing, before John spoke.

"I owe you so much," he said. He went to touch the headstone, and I moved out of the way. I watched him, transfixed. I wanted to tell him that I was there. I wanted to touch his hand and let him know that I was alright now. That I was a corpse in the ground.

He started to walk away, then turned. His face was flared with emotion.

He asked me for "one more miracle."

"Don't be dead."

I felt a tear escape its threshold in my eye.

"John," I said. He didn't hear me. Of course he didn't.

He stood there, and he cried, just briefly. I watched him. I cried.

Then he took a deep, heaving breath and straightened, as if at attention, and militaristically walked away. I blinked away remaining tears and thought. I looked at the headstone.

SHERLOCK HOLMES

1984-2012

MAY HE REST IN PEACE

I sighed. Then a rush of thought.

A film, long time ago, John made me watch it with him. Ricky Gervais, awful movie, John laughed, I didn't understand. Something with the undead, couldn't move on, unfinished business, ghosts everywhere. Minutes of death, back to life, could speak with them, solved their problems.

Search for title:

Ghost Town.

The film.

I smiled and looked back at John. He and Mrs. Hudson were consoling each other, Mrs. Hudson sobbing away and John crying silently, holding her.

Ghost Town.

It could work. Couldn't it? How accurate was the film? Think, Sherlock.

I'm standing here, at my grave site, and supposedly I'm supposed to move on to some afterlife, unless this was after life.

Assess that possibility.

Doubtful.

Afterlife: definition: the lifetime after the one in which we find ourselves in: correlate: I'm still in the same life, invisible, undetectable: conclusion: highly unlikely.

Ghost Town.

Plot: a man is in an accident, and "dies" for a few minutes, then is able to be revived. Now he can see and communicate with ghosts who have not been able to move on to said afterlife because of "unfinished business." He helps them solve their worldly problems so that they may move on.

Correlate: I have not moved on because there's something I need to finish, and I need help finishing it.

Assess: What do I need to finish?

Search for possible unfinished tasks:

Songs; conversations; chores—

Bigger.

Experiments; cases; goals—

Possibility 1) Unfinished case.

Experiments; cases; goals; relationships—

Possibility 2) Reconcile Mycroft

Experiments; cases; goals; relationships; dreams—

Possibility 3) Self-fulfillment?

Assess: What have I done to achieve self-fulfillment?

Search for meaningful events:

Save lives; solve cases; protect; serve justice—

Back.

Save lives; solve cases; protect—

Protect.

John.

I felt someone touch my arm. I opened my eyes. It was dark. I had been there for hours.

Who could have touched me? I was intangible. I was ectoplasm, or something of the sort. Then who—

"So you've figured it out, have you?"

Moriarty.

"We're in the same boat, you know."

My eyes were wide.

"We've both got a few things left to do. Though I suppose yours is a little more heart-warming than mine, hm?"

I was frozen.

"Oh come, Sherlock. Dear dear Sherlock. We're dead! Isn't it fun? We can frolic about and not give a care in the world! Though you'll probably want to take care of that 'unfinished business' thing, won't you?"

He pinched my cheek. I stared at him a long while as he danced around the headstone, my headstone, and sang off key.

"Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, AH AH AH AH!"

"You can't be serious," I finally said. He turned to look at me.

"One FINAL PROBLEM, my lovely Sherlock! The final problem!"

"No…"

"Yes!"

"You couldn't have known…"

"See? That's why you're ORDINARY! You don't think ahead! You don't think that any moment you could be DEAD and once you're DEAD you have the ability to FUCK with the LIVING!"

I watched him. He was dead, like me. But he looked so real.

"How—"

"Ah ah ah, Sherlock! This is where you get to play my game and I get to watch and make sure you're playing it fairly! Good luck my love!"

With that, he faded. I reached for him. He was gone. I growled in anger. I shouted his name. I punched the tree. I fell to the ground and cried, grasping the moist earth above my coffin.

"John," I sobbed. "Oh John…my John Watson…"

John sat in the chair for hours. He went through the scenario thousands of times in his head. He played it back over and over again, searching for some way to rationalize the possibility that it was just another trick, just another fluke, that Sherlock would walk through the door in the next hour or two with some spectacular story and life would carry on. He looked at the empty doorway.

"Dammit!" he shouted, flipping the side table over. The tea tray clattered on the ground and the books and papers flew sporadically in the dank, empty air of the flat.

John stood and robotically picked the things up and replaced them. He sat back down. He looked at the chair across from him.

Sherlock's chair.

The violin rested, poised, as if at any given moment someone would reach for it and play.

John closed his eyes tightly. Everything in the flat made him want to be dead next to his friend. Everything in the flat was Sherlock's life, sprawled meticulously throughout every crack and corner so that if John just sat long enough with his eyes closed he'd feel Sherlock all around him, still there, not…

"Dead."

The word fell to the ground like a weight.

"Sherlock is dead."

John gripped the chair.

"Sherlock is dead!"

His voice escalated.

"Sherlock is DEAD!"

The shout hung in the space around John, echoing deep within him.

Hot tears seeped from his tightly closed eyes as he panted, trembling.

"Sherlock…" he murmured.

Moments passed like rocks falling in water…

"Yes John," I whispered. I stroked his head. "I'm here, John. I'm here. I just…haven't figured it out yet. I'm still here."

"Sherlock…"

"It's alright John. I'll find a way."

"Please Sherlock…I need you to come back."

"I know John. Soon. Just wait for me."

"Sherlock…"

I stood. He was falling asleep, exhausted. I gripped his arm, but he didn't feel it. Odd sensation, how I could feel and touch and yet it was no reciprocated. I hated how he couldn't hear me, how I could make him ok. I needed to fix this. I looked at the skull on the mantle.

"You warned me of this," I said to it. "Didn't you?"

NOTE: Choppy I know, but that's that for now. I'll of course continue, since I've got a few things planned, but I just needed something to set my mind at until season 3…maybe? I don't know. Leave reviews please and thanks.