Sherlock Holmes sat on the wall that surrounded the cemetery and watched his grave intently. Dr John Watson, kneeling in front of it, Mrs Hudson, placing a comforting hand on John's shaking shoulders. Sherlock watched them visit at noon every Saturday; watched them visit an empty grave and mourn a man who was very much alive.

"Bah, alive," Sherlock spat bitterly, watching Mrs Hudson lay a bouquet of orchids. Sherlock was dead; the entire world knew that to be fact. Well, all apart from Molly and, while he appreciated what she had done for him, he had quickly grown bored of her company. She was ordinary. John was not. He missed Baker Street, solving unsolvable cases and, most of all; he missed John—although he hated to admit it, even to himself. Which is why he came here, to catch a few glimpses of the life he left behind. To remind himself of what he was missing. He liked to watch them mourn him, so he could mourn the loss of them.

Molly had given him her spare room. They lived in uncomfortable harmony. Sherlock mainly stuck to his bedroom, composing on his violin, smoking and generally staying out of Molly's way. Sometimes John would visit and Sherlock would listen eagerly to him chatter on about anything but his dead ex-partner. Whenever Molly mentioned an old case or a quirk of Sherlock's, John's voice would thicken with emotion and he would immediately change the subject. Sherlock would sit in his room wishing he could run and comfort his dearest friend. Once, he had actually ran to the living room door and had to stop himself from bursting in and collapsing at John's feet.

Instead he'd tiptoed to his room and injected himself with heroin. Most days were danger days for Sherlock now. He welcomed the familiar numbness with open arms. Anything to take away the guilt—an almost entirely new emotion to Mr Holmes: the man who feels nothing. His cool, emotionless mask had slipped and he was just grateful that John was not around to see it.

It was in one of these almost comatose like states that Sherlock overheard something that disturbed him greatly. He had rolled off the bed and was lying flat on his back examining a damp stain on the ceiling as if it were a Picasso original. He heard Molly open the front door and welcome John into the apartment warmly. Sherlock tried to get up but was so intoxicated and weak from the drugs and lack of food that he crashed back to the floor like Bambi on ice. Instead he dragged himself over to the wall and pressed an ear to it to listen in.

John was mumbling about therapy and his seemingly growing alcohol problem.

"You know that won't help, John, you're a doctor!" Molly sounded concerned.

"It's just… it helps me to… see him again," John was hallucinating. A common side effect of grief, Sherlock analysed, a habit that he had been neglecting of late.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock knew that John would be wincing, heard him make a sharp noise through his teeth and smiled dully at the proof of his hypothesis.

"Don't…"

"You have to talk about him John, it'll help you grieve! Sherlock was your best friend!"

"I see him everywhere, Molly," John choked, his voice cracking and full of so many conflicting emotions that even Sherlock could not decipher them all. "It's like Sherlock's ghost is following me. More so when I drink but I know it isn't healthy! Which is why I'm leaving Baker Street?"

"Where will you go?"

"Not far, I've rented a place about ten minutes from here,"

"And Mrs Hudson?"

"Mrs Hudson, leave Baker Street? England would fall!" John and Sherlock muttered in unison, reminiscing something Sherlock had said what felt like an age ago.

Molly came in a half hour later, finding Sherlock lying against the wall, wrapped in a sheet and sobbing like a child. Molly rushed over and lifted him to his feet before helping him back into bed. He lay in the foetal position, staring at the wall connecting his bedroom with the lounge. Molly began collecting all the used needles carefully and folded Sherlock's stash into a brown paper package.

"No more Sherlock! You hear me? You need to get clean!" Molly said sternly, waving the parcel of drugs in Sherlock's face. "I will not have you using this crap to numb the pain!"

Sherlock stared blankly at the wall. He was vaguely aware of what Molly was doing but was powerless to stop her. He was still reeling from his unexpected emotional outburst, crying quietly to himself and unable to do much else. This was another practically unexplored emotion for Sherlock.

"Isn't it time you told them all you aren't dead?" Molly soothed, returning from disposing of the package. She rubbed Sherlock's back like a child. "Time to come back and clear your name, eh?"

Then an idea suddenly struck Sherlock's genius mind like a lightening bolt. He sprang upright, his brain whirring dustily as it had not been properly used for a very long time.

"All in good time, Molly Hooper," Sherlock kissed her on the cheek. "You have given me a most brilliant idea." He flopped back into the bed with a slow smile spreading across his unshaven, angular face. It was as if the light had suddenly returned to his bright blue eyes. "For now I need to rest."

Molly left the room beaming from ear to ear. Sherlock was back.

Meanwhile, John Watson sat in his newly rented flat, sipping a cup of tea out of Sherlock's old mug with Sherlock's famous blue scarf laid out next to him on the sofa where the man himself should have been sitting. John did this a lot since Sherlock had… fallen. They were the only things he had left of the genius that was once his best friend and so much more.

Sometimes John would hear Sherlock's voice; see him on the street, or at his grave. Each time that day would come flooding back into his mind and he would be left catatonic. He would be consumed by all the things he wished he'd said, all the things he could of done to stop Sherlock from jumping but didn't. He would then slowly realise that he would never see his best friend again and the anger would descend. If Sherlock were somehow alive, John probably would have killed him himself for doing that in front of his so-called "best friend".

Well Sherlock Holmes was very much alive and well. He was, in fact, sat on a bench across the road from John's new flat. He had his hands clasped as if praying and was thinking intently. A beep from his phone snapped him back into awareness. A text.

"MY THERAPIST SAID I SHOULD WRITE YOU A LETTER, BUT I WAS NEVER TOO GOOD WITH WORDS. HOW ABOUT A TEXT INSTEAD? I MISS YOU, SHERLOCK HOLMES. –JW"

Sherlock, now clean shaven and well-fed, had been sat on that bench for eight whole hours attempting to work up the courage to tell John that he was alive. He had devised precisely 536 different ways to tell John what had really happened but he had been beaten by the third new emotion to confront Sherlock in the past few months: nervousness.

Sherlock craved a nicotine rush and so walked to the nearest shop for a carton of cigarettes. He had smoked half the packet before he mustered up the courage to reach the doorway of John's flat.

Sherlock noted the chipping paint on the door, the flower pot next to the doormat, no doubt concealing a spare key. He could tell by the apartment building that this flat was ridiculously overpriced and nowhere near as nice internally as the one they had shared at Baker Street. Why did John have to move? He could have killed two birds with one stone and told John and Mrs Hudson he was alive in one cab fare.

He lifted up his fist to knock when the door swung open and John Watson, clearly on his way out to do an errand, stared up at Sherlock's surprised face. Their expressions mirrored eachother: joy, confusion, relief, anger. Sherlock opened his mouth to say something more witty than "hello" when John dropped down unconscious to the floor.