Funny. Funny how it doesn't feel like it had a year and three months ago, when someone I hated almost as much as I loved was torn away from me. Someone I couldn't stand yet found myself near almost constantly, like a curse.

Mary had never been a curse. I could always stand Mary; in fact, I looked forward to seeing her every moment I was away. Everything I felt for Mary was love. No hate, no anger, no irritation. The disagreements were few and petty. Mary was everything I had ever wanted when I dreamt of a perfect wife.

So it's funny that, standing here in front of my perfect wife's grave, I don't feel any more empty than I already had.

Of course I'm sad. I can hardly bear the thought of going home to an empty house. I break down in the morning when I wake up without her beside me, and have to pull myself together by reminding myself that she would hate to see me that way. That she would be there making me breakfast, making my life wonderful in every way she knew how, if she had the choice. I'm angry at cancer for taking that choice away from her. I'm angry at the rest of the world for not finding a cure, for not being brilliant enough- even though I know that's unjust. How could they be brilliant enough?

I am miserable and infuriated, but it's not the same feeling of devastation that has haunted me for the past year and three months, since the fall.

It's morbid. I should not be able to compare the magnificent woman that was Mary Morstan, no, Mary Watson, to Sherlock Holmes, but it keeps happening without my consent. I keep remembering what's buried four headstones away and realizing how different the feeling was when I visited him the first time, and the second, and the fiftieth.

The guilt makes it worse. The guilt deluges my mind and exacerbates all the other emotions, blinding me from the truth and from reality. Everything is emotion. Everything is pain. Everything is the meaning of the engraving in front of me that I read over and over again and that never changes no matter how much I disbelieve it.

I'm on my knees. I feel a hand on my shoulder and hardly notice it. Rather than alarming me, the warmth has a calming effect. Reality doesn't seem real anymore. Whoever is here, either concerned about me and offering comfort or insensitively interrupting to gain information, is not real, and does not matter. They could kill me now if they wanted to. I have nothing left to live for.

I am in the stranger's arms. Broken, quite possibly deranged. It doesn't matter what they think of me now. The embrace is uneager but less than foreign. The shape, the scent, is familiar, too familiar. I'm reminiscing. A ghost has come to comfort me. A ghost borne of my own mind.

"I've never seen you cry like this, John."

I try to regain my breath, to speak, but I can hardly keep my heart out of my throat.

"Though I suppose I was never as important to you as Mary, was I?"

The satirical tone, the forced smile I can hear on his face, the awkward reluctance of his comfort; it's too much, it's too real. Through all the sobs and memories and sudden lack of air I manage to choke out one syllable. "Wrong."

"Wrong?" he asks, and although he doesn't say it out loud, I hear him thinking. Sherlock Holmes is never wrong. At least not completely wrong. And when he's wrong, he learns from it and never makes the same mistake again.

I nod against his chest because I'm afraid I'll suffocate if I speak.

"Explain."

Before, he was the spark, the adventure, the thrill. He represented everything that humanity needed to be worthwhile and lacked. Without that, I am a broken man with a hole in my chest that I tricked myself into believing a perfect wife covered up.

But how could I ever explain that to him?

"John," he says, giving my shoulders a gentle push. "John, look at me."

I pull away just enough to look up at him, and instantly wonder why I had been stupid enough to comply. The last of my breath is gone. The last of my certainty in reality is shattered. I cannot fathom what is real and what is not, what are memories and what are dreams, what is logical and what is impossible. All I know is that Sherlock Holmes is here in front of me.

"What do you believe?" he asks.

"I must be mad."

"Will you believe me if I tell you you're not?"

I look past his shoulder and ensure that the past year and three months has not been a lie, that the name Sherlock Holmes is still engraved where I remember it. "No way in bloody hell."

Suddenly the world spirals upward and the sky percolates into black, the concerned and always brilliant luminosity of his eyes the last thing I see.

The world is clear again when I wake up. Not my mind - my mind is cluttered, confused, inconsolable - but at least I know for certain that the view of the flat ceiling is real and the same as it has always been. I am back in reality.

But why am I back in the flat? How?

In sudden shock I tumble off of the sofa and propel myself to my feet. When the black grain of my inevitable headrush recedes, there he is. Standing behind the coffee table with his finger in a book like nothing had ever happened. Like he had never died, like James Moriarty had never existed. He looks up, and I run to the nearest sink to splash myself in the face with cold water.

When I come back into the room he's still there, and he hasn't said anything.

"Sherlock?"

He is hesitant. "Yes?"

"Get your bloody ghost out of here before I kill it, or myself."

"I am not a ghost."

I walk up to the figure, apparition, whatever it is, and punch him in the face. "Do you understand that now is the worst possible time you could come back to play a prank on me?!"

"This is not a prank, John, and don't you dare-" As he recovers, I swing, but this time he's prepared. My fist grazes the hair on the top of his head and the texture is much too accurate to be my imagination. "Put your fist down and allow me to explain."

"Explain what?! That you thought this would be funny, or a good thing?!" I cannot restrain myself. Knowing he'll block any further punches, I tackle him to the floor. "It is absolutely...not, either one of those!"

Then I find myself beneath him with both wrists restrained and I notice the tears in my eyes and the resulting physical weakness. I'm broken, even more broken than before, because I no longer know what's real. I cannot believe what I want to believe.

After a few seconds he lets go, but I don't move. I can't move. I don't have the energy.

"I'm sorry," he says, sounding more unsure of himself that I have ever heard him. "I'm sorry. And I'm alive."

I look up at him and try to find something, a transparency, a mistake, any discrepancy to indicate that this is not the real Sherlock. I only find perfection. I reach up to run my fingers along his jaw and am surprised to find he does not shy away from the touch. It must be a sympathy act. "How?"

"It's a long and complicated story." He almost smiles as he stands up, holding his hand out to assist me. I take it and I never want to let go. "I needed to protect you."

"I don't believe you," I mean to say, but my heart is in my throat again and it comes out as barely a whisper. I try again without much success, the final word foreign, a pathetic disbelieving whine. "I don't believe that you're...alive."

"Yet, here I am."

"Yes," I respond, staring at him. For the first time, he comes to me without me having to ask, without me having to tell him how much I care about him and how goddamn much I miss him and how sometimes it's humanly necessary to relieve some of the pressure through physical affection, which I had never had the chance to do. "Here you are."

He lets me discharge the rest of my tears freely, and I cling onto him as if it will help me believe he exists. When I seem calm enough to listen, he speaks softly, and I am grateful that he doesn't try to break away. "Before I explain what happened and where I've been hiding, I need to explain a few things I realized I never had the chance to tell you, and that I would be upset about not having told you if I really died."

He takes a moment before continuing, as if he's trying to mentally attune himself to his next words so that they don't come out unnaturally.

"I never had a friend before you, and I never thought I would have a friend. I thought I would never need friends, especially considering the absolute idiocy of everyone else in the world. I didn't think someone worth being a friend to existed. You proved me wrong on two accounts. Being a friend to you has far exceeded any expectations I ever had about it being worthwhile. I believe I owe you more than I will ever be able to repay."

I want to shout out that the only thing he owes me is an explanation, a worthy reason for every ounce of pain I've felt over his death, but I'm too shocked to interrupt. This is the first time, besides my own near-death experiences that he rescued me from, that he has demonstrated any proper emotion.

"Second...you have taught me that I do need friends. One friend in particular. Because as inconvenient as it is to care about someone, it is unbearable to try to live without all the wonders that come along with it. I was not alive before I met you, John. I did not know what it meant to live."

"Do you..." I sniffle and pull back to see his face without letting go of his coat, afraid that he'll spirit away again if I do. He watches me and there is nothing but sincerity and the subtle shade of concern in his eyes that I have learned to recognize where no one else would. "Do you know what you're saying? It doesn't sound like you."

"Of course I know what I'm saying. It's important that you believe me, in case someone walks into this home right now and shoots me in the head."

"Don't say that, Sherlock."

"Is my point across?"

I nod, and as I nod I accept his words as true, I accept his affection to be genuine, I accept his voice to be his rather than an amalgam of my imagination, and I'm almost embarrassed of myself but my eyes fill with tears all over again and I want to turn my back to hide it from him but I'm much too afraid to let go. "Don't leave again."

"I won't. Not unless I have to."

The urge to punch him again is overwhelming but I see the mark I've left on his cheek, reminding me with its tiny trace of blood that he's real, and that's enough. "Do you know how it's been for me, thinking you're dead?"

"You know the only reason I'd have to is to protect you."

"I don't give a damn, Sherlock. Next time I'd rather die with you."

There's a change in his expression, like he's appalled but won't show it, like he had never considered such a scenario and never would, even if he didn't verbally object to it. "That must be your sorrow speaking."

I don't try to redeem myself because I know we're in the same situation, the same state of stubborn resolution that would never find a mutual agreement no matter how long we argued about it. I simply gesture toward the sofa and say, "Explain how you survived."

We sit beside each other with his back to the armrest and his legs crossed over mine, my hand still clutching the end of his coat, my eyes never leaving his face as he tells the story. Sometimes I miss parts because I'm concentrating too hard on memorizing everything I've forgotten about him, and have to ask him to repeat himself. He does a decent job disguising his irritation. I don't mind listening because I've gone so long believing I would never hear his voice again.

With all the interruptions he talks long into the night. I find myself fading despite how determined I am to keep watch, to ensure that his tangibility lasts until morning. My head falls against his shoulder, my eyelids droop, but my fingers, which had impulsively interlocked with his sometime during his description of the jump, never lose strength in holding on to the truth of his existence, even in slumber.

Three weeks later we visit the cemetery together. I kneel before Mary's grave first, set a bundle of her favorite flowers at the base of the headstone, and tell her that I miss her. I tell her that she could never be replaced, that she was the most selfless and compassionate person I have ever known and ever will know. I tell her that I would never knowingly do anything to dishonor her memory, that I love her. I tell her that I'm sorry.

Then we walk the length of four headstones. By this time all the important people know that Sherlock is alive and that the danger has been eliminated. He wants to keep the headstone up - sentimental value, he says, but I know that he only finds egotistic amusement in it - and no action has been made yet, but Lestrade has already spoken to the city about removing it.

"Charming, isn't it?" he says, picking a bloom from the nearest bush to leave on top on the monument. "Though I never really liked the font. Too...professional. The type of pretentious font that Anderson would probably want on his headstone."

"Says the man who's currently leaving a flower on his own fake grave."

"It's the social custom." He smiles. I smile back, but the gesture doesn't last long. How different it is, coming here knowing that there's only dirt buried beneath. It's unnerving. And it's such a relief.

We walk home. At some point he knows I'm upset, so he doesn't speak. I say I'm tired and he follows me upstairs. He never reinhabited the other bedroom; Mrs. Hudson didn't bother asking why.

"Would you rather it was her beside you?" he asks as we're laying there, his arm around my waist, his forehead pressed against the back of my neck. I knew the question would come eventually. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the answer, but it's hard to find the right words for it.

"No. I wish she was still alive. I wish that if she was, I wouldn't ever have to hurt her. But I think this is where I belong."

It's at least twenty minutes since I responded. He probably thinks I'm asleep, but as always his mind is working on overtime. "I love you, John," he mutters.

I smile and allow him to maintain his facade of secrecy, the public illusion that he still has complete power over himself, though I know he lost that long ago. The temptation of speaking the overwhelming emotion in his heart that he fell victim to just now is proof of that.

I mouth the words back, knowing I'm a victim to the same emotion and accepting it entirely. It's the most wonderful illusion that we put up for each other, trying to keep the adventure alive when we know it will never die anyway. Not as long as I am John Watson and he is Sherlock Holmes, and that we remain together.