A/N: Inspired by the song Ghost Story, by Sting. You really should listen to it. I wish we had footage of old, retired Sherlock so someone could make a perfect Sherlolly video set to this song, but I can't figure out how to do it...so I wrote it instead. Warning: angst ahead.

Ghost Story

Sherlock Holmes sits on the enclosed porch of his cottage in Sussex, bathed in the half light of the dying day. Facing west, he appears to be watching the sun slip below the horizon, but his eyes see neither the sunset, nor the flock of geese winging its way south. He doesn't feel the chill in the air, nor the night breeze beginning to stir around his feet. The former detective's bees have been put to bed for the winter, which leaves him with ample time to retreat to his mind palace.

A memory device like no other, lately his mind palace offers less comfort than before. Summer is an easier time, his days full with beekeeping and his age advanced enough that sleep often claims him before too many painful memories can stir. Winter, though, is all restlessness and disquiet, an entire season of what his late brother would have called "danger nights", and had Holmes been a younger man he could easily have slipped back into older, more dangerous addictions.

Sherlock Holmes would look with approbation at anyone who would call him lonely. He knows that being alone does not equate to loneliness. Yet since receiving a certain text message from his oldest friend, John Watson, he has been fighting a losing battle with that very emotion, among others. Indifference is his shield, but it is battered and worn, and ready to crumble. Frustration, sadness, anger: all of these have been swirling around in his brain for three days, and his mind palace is the only place he can go to rationally deal with them.

Tonight's sojourn ends up at the same place as the past two nights'. There is a large chamber in his mind, as a courtroom, filled with the people with whom he used to spend a good deal of his time. Somewhat appropriately, Mycroft presides over the scene as judge, with John Watson serving as the prosecution in this court of the mind. Sherlock is the accused in this trial, his accuser a small, brown-haired woman, wearing a ridiculous jumper and a lab coat. She is his former friend and confidant, Molly Edgerton, neé Hooper, and she looks at him with sadness and love in her eyes.

John steps toward the witness box where Sherlock sits. Sherlock is feeling annoyed that once again, his mind has brought him here. He understands empirically that his mind is forcing him toward some conclusion, but he thinks the trappings of a courtroom are a ridiculous metaphor. He scowls at John, ready to be deluged with the same questions as the two previous nights. John asks him again why he is lonely, what is making him sad and angry. Sherlock insists, again, that he doesn't know, and that nothing has changed.

At this, Mycroft bangs his gavel, causing the entire room to jump.

"LIAR!"

Now John is asking about his feelings. Why were we friends? Do you miss your friends? Did you like Mary? Did you love Molly? Sherlock just mumbles, again, that he doesn't remember, and even if he did miss his friends, why should it follow that he must have liked Mary, or loved Molly? Emotions are something Sherlock works hard to suppress, even as the years and his friendships try to mellow him, but they are something he can never truly purge.

Again, Mycroft bangs his gavel, more forcefully than before.

"LIAR!"

Sherlock leans forward to protest, but before he can say a word, he catches sight of Molly with a single, small tear running down her cheek. John begins again, but the questions are new this night. Why do you deny missing your friends? Why do you feign indifference toward your own pain? Sherlock barely hears them. The sight of her crying is etching itself into his brain. A wave of guilt washes over him. Real guilt, a kind he only feels when he thinks of her in a shiny black dress at Christmas, or staring after him at a wedding, or seething in anger at the risks he takes with his own life. As he returns his attention to John, Sherlock begins to realize what this trial is about, why he keeps returning to it night after night.

Sherlock's eyes widen as John continues to pepper him with accusatory questions. It has – all at once – become obvious to him, the answer to all this. As John speaks, he turns to face his mind palace jury. Mary Watson, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, his mother and father, Mike Stamford, Mrs. Hudson, and even Anderson, they all look at him with a mixture of pity and sadness, as if to ask him how he could have been so stupid. And they are right, he is the stupid brother, the slow one. There is only one thing to do now: confess.

Sherlock faces Molly, and thinks back not to all the times he used and disparaged her. Now he recalls when he relied on her judgment, when he laughed with her, and solved crimes with her, and did experiments with her. He realizes now, after so much time has passed, that there was no other person with a temperament better suited to his, her light to his dark, softness to his sharp edges, kindness to his cruelty. There is nothing more to discover, as the trial has laid him bare.

So he tells her. There, in his mind palace, he tells Molly all the things he never told her before. That she is his moral compass. That when he measures himself as a man, he uses her as his ruler. That he knows, but never fully appreciated before, how well she can see him. That he knows she loved him and he never knew how to handle it. Except now he knows. He admits what everyone around him always knew.

He loves Molly Hooper. He loves her only as Sherlock Holmes can, fully, completely, with every part of his being, because he is Sherlock Holmes, and he doesn't take half measures.

Mycroft sadly smiles at him and bangs the gavel one last time, softly now, to drag him from his mind back to reality.

Sherlock Holmes shivers slightly as he returns to full awareness. His mind feels clear and unburdened, but the heart that he so desperately tries to lock away is heavy with grief. He gazes to the west to see the moon setting behind the trees as the first light of dawn blooms in the sky. A new day begins, and with it a new understanding. Once again he reads the last message from John, and finally allows himself to feel.

Not sure you read papers anymore, but you should know, Molly Hooper's passed. Funeral in Guildford next Monday. You're going. I'll drag you there myself. Be ready at 9 am. -JW