"Okey-dokes, mate, wake up…"

Sherlock surfaced slowly out of sleep. It was bitterly cold; an overwhelming, pitiless chill that was not one bit abated by gloves or boots. There was a light shining in his eyes. He sprang up in alarm to find three well-dressed young men had come into the tunnel and were standing before him. Each held a torch. The one who had his torch trained on him dropped the beam to the floor.

"What do you want?" Sherlock demanded.

"It's okay," the nearest one said calmly, holding his hands up, palms-outward. "Someone gave us a call and let us know you were down here. We just came to see if you were all right. Cold night for you to be sleeping rough. What's your name?"

"Christian," Sherlock said, reaching for the name instinctively. "Christian Yearsley."

"'You got anywhere warmer where you can sleep tonight, Christian? Any money for a motel, or maybe a backpackers…?"

Sherlock scanned the three intruders. Clean-cut. Caucasian. The youngest was married, though he couldn't have been older than twenty-one. All of them were teetotallers, and -

Oh, dear Lord. I've been waylaid by God-botherers.

"I, um, not really," he said, trying to control the chattering of his teeth. "I'm not… really homeless…" He managed to stop himself before using the word indigent. That would have drawn attention to himself. "I'm travelling…"

"Have you eaten today, mate?"

Sherlock hadn't eaten since leaving Sydney, but that had completely slipped his mind until now. He'd never even considered the connection between four days without food and the thumping headache he now had. Sleep deprivation... extreme cold... of course, he reasoned. Of course I can't work like this.

He shook his head.

"Would you like to come with us? We can give you a meal and a bed."

Sherlock hesitated. He hadn't expected to be "rescued" in this way, and now his dilemma stood on whether it would be more conspicuous for him to refuse help or take it, and how much longer he could survive mentally without shelter or food. At the last second, he decided. "Where?"

"We'll have to ring around, see where we can put you up for tonight. Come on, now."

It was ten past three when Sherlock arrived at Southwark Cathedral, and the communal dinner was long over. He was given a sandwich and a cup of tea instead, and wolfed them down gratefully, in between rationalising to those there to help that he wasn't mentally ill, he wasn't a drinker, he wasn't an addict. He didn't need counselling. He didn't need long-term help. He didn't need medical care. He was, he explained, en route to his brother in Bristol and was simply waiting for said brother to send money across so he could complete his journey.

And no, he absolutely did not want to be prayed with. He didn't want to be prayed for, either, but he knew that he couldn't avoid that one.

They left him alone after that, and he slept uneasily on a camp bed, alongside seven others until woken up at nine. No breakfast. Sherlock wasn't used to eating two meals in such quick succession, and taxing his digestive system like that was definitely going to slow him down, just when he needed to speed things up.

He had some enquiries to make among some very old friends.

"Okay, so you've got me here at last, and at a stupid hour of the morning, too."

How very like Sherlock. Though really, Lestrade reflected as he shivered into his coat and shoved his hands into his pockets, he couldn't blame Sherlock for dragging him out to the cemetery while it was still dark. Sherlock was dead, and couldn't make those demands anymore. But Lestrade had been awake since four, thinking over both Donovan and Melissa's words and attempting to smoke himself into a coma on the bedroom balcony of the flat. Finally he'd picked up the keys, kissed a groggy, sleep-flushed Melissa on the temple, and driven out to the cemetery.

Miserable place.

He didn't quite know what he expected, really. Were cemeteries supposed to be cheerful? He'd never been in one long enough to even think about it. But now he was standing dutifully in front of Sherlock's glossy, stark grave, talking to it like an idiot.

Sherlock Holmes. Nothing else – no dates of birth and death, even. He wondered about that one, and not for the first time. Presumably, that sort of cold, no-frills proclamation had been Mycroft's idea.

"Um," he said, swiping the back of his hand over his mouth and casting a quick look around to see that nobody was watching. "So Mel's sort of making me do this, but I guess it can't hurt. You... you probably knew, anyway. But you know, that night I took the Bruhl case to Dawson... God help me, but for a minute or two, I really started to wonder..." He stopped and cleared his throat. "God, it was only for a minute, Sherlock. I don't know what was going through my head that night. I should have told Dawson to piss off when he told me to bring you in."

No response. Only the swish of the dawn breeze in the trees ahead and the twittering of some sleepy sparrows greeting the brand new day.

All the same, Lestrade could practically hear Sherlock's lecture in his head.

Any officer could have made that arrest, Lestrade. Dawson sent you to punish you. You went to make sure I wasn't introduced to a phone book back at the station. Your opinion of my innocence had no bearing at all on the outcome of the case.

He grimaced and turned away from the tombstone. If he thought more people believed in him, maybe he would have been able to wait things out, instead of stepping off a roof.

Melissa had all but promised that the confession would make him feel better. But as Lestrade slammed the car door shut and shoved the keys into the ignition, he reflected to himself that if anything, he felt worse.

"John, you should have woken me."

Ordinarily, John would have. It was the usual routine in the Watson household, even before their marriage, that John would wake Molly on his return from the hospital. He would sort out breakfast while she had a shower; they had time to sit leisurely over tea and toast and talk.

But John hadn't woken her this morning. He was hoping she'd take the hint and call in; instead, she'd gotten up on her own twenty minutes later than normal and was now wandering around with wet hair, trying to find her shoes. John, as keyed up as he was this particular morning, couldn't help smiling to himself. Molly had a lifelong inability to keep her shoes in order and was forever hunting them down when she needed them.

"You needn't go in if you're not up to it," he said, pretending to read the morning paper.

"I have to," she said. "Those cultures will die if I don't look after them."

"Can't Mike do that?"

She gave him a withering look, and John silently conceded the point. Mike was a good doctor and an even better teacher, but even in his student days he'd had spectacularly bad luck keeping the "live" in "live cultures." Black thumbs, too, if you believed his wife. The fact that Mike had children was sort of terrifying.

But Molly was no longer thinking about her delicate slide cultures in the pathology lab at Barts. She was still half asleep, but could not fail to notice how pale and uneasy John was looking. She sat down at the table opposite him and leaned across to give his hand a brief squeeze. "What's wrong?" she asked with artless grace.

John paused for a few seconds before clearing his throat. "Had a patient brought in last night," he said. "He fell off a balcony at a party in Brent Park. I'm afraid he died."

For a second, Molly looked angry. John had no idea that she'd made Dhaval, and all of his other regular colleagues, promise to make sure he never had to treat trauma caused by a fall… "Oh, John," she murmured. "I'm sorry."

"No, I'm - I'm okay. He died in the ambulance, and I never directly…" John cleared his throat, wondering how he could proceed with his explanation without distressing Molly, or having her rush to the bathroom to vomit again. "This guy who died," he continued carefully. "There were some… things I noted about his injuries that seemed a bit… inconsistent, to me."

"Inconsistent with what?"

He looked at her. "You know what."

Silence. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath. "John, please," she said. "It's over. Don't torture yourself."

"I'm not torturing myself," he said. "But… those inconsistencies aren't going to go away if I ignore them. I don't believe... I mean, I've seen enough cases by now to notice... I..." He trailed off, unable to explain that he didn't seem to remember Sherlock's head crushed in, the way the poor kid from Brent Park's head had been. "Molly, if I asked you to help me with something… something that might be difficult for you… would you do it?"

She looked across the table at the man she'd married. There was nothing he wouldn't give her, and give her freely. Nothing, she felt, that he would ever keep from her. Nothing he'd grudge her.

He trusted her. Had no idea how many lies she'd told him…

"I would always try," she said. It was the only thing she could say that would please him and still not be a lie. "What do you need?"

"I need to see a copy of Sherlock's autopsy report," he said. "Along with any recordings, photographs, and findings. I suppose there's one at the hospital?"

"We keep hard copies of all post-mortems done at the hospital," she said.

"Do you have access to those records?"

"Yes. John, I…" She stopped herself from saying I can't. "I could get fired for giving out information like that," she said instead. "They could prosecute..."

"I know." There was no hint of mischief in his gaze. "And I would never, ever ask you to do something that could put you at risk like that unless it was so important…"

"John, I don't understand. It - it can't change anything…"

He shook his head. "If you mean 'it can't bring Sherlock back to life', no. No, it can't. But the truth is always important." He exhaled and squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry that this is something I have to ask you to do. But I don't trust anyone else to help me, Molly. Will you do this for me, please?"

Her voice was soft, but never wavered. "Yes."

Once Molly had finally collected all she needed for the day ahead and left the house a half hour later than usual, John washed the breakfast dishes and cleaned the kitchen. He was just contemplating going upstairs to bed when the doorbell rang.

Greg?

John had never perfected Sherlock's way of knowing who the caller was based on minute differences in doorbell pressure, but Greg's prolonged, aggressive summons had always been unmistakeable – and that was when he even bothered with the doorbell. John hung the dish towel over the oven handle and went to answer it.

"Greg," he said pleasantly, ushering him in. "Hi. Is it your day off?"

"Going in later," he explained. "I shouldn't be too long about it, really, so I can't stay..."

He accepted the offer of coffee, however. It wasn't until they were sitting in the living room, with John trying to keep an eye on both kittens at the same time, that he cleared his throat.

"So," he said. "Um. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but, um." He pulled a phone out of his pocket. John quickly noted it wasn't the one he was currently using, but an older Blackberry model. "Do you remember that time I had to come and take your sorry arses home from that apartment in Belgravia, with Sherlock as high as a kite?" he asked.

John chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "To be fair, he wasn't hitting the cocaine then. Irene Adler stuck him with a vial full of ketamine, of all things, the poor sod."

"That poor sod threw up all over the back seat of my car," Lestrade reminded him.

"I know - I was sitting next to him and caught some of the splashback. Good times."

Lestrade smiled. "Anyway," he said. "You mightn't remember, but the way he was ranting was actually pretty funny... I filmed it on my phone for a bit of insurance against the next time he nicked evidence or what have you. Did I ever show it to you?"

John shook his head. He winced for a second, but took the phone Lestrade held out to him and flicked the video icon to on.

There he was. Large as life, twice as loud, sitting on the edge of his bed slurring something about being the world's only assaulting detective while they were trying to get his shoes and jacket off.

"Stop laughing 'me," he croaked at Lestrade, with the bruised dignity of a child. He lost his balance and swayed into John, bouncing back with a little bump. "S'not funny..."

"Say that again, sunshine?"

"Shut up, 'm'not Sunshine, 'm... world's lonely salted... perspective..."

That voice. John had missed that voice. Even if it had just then been pitched high with how out of it he was. Filming him had been a bit funny and a bit mean, though to do him credit, it seemed Greg hadn't even looked at it before now, let alone gone through with the threat to email the MP4 file to every single officer in Scotland Yard. On tape, both of them were blatantly laughing at Sherlock's increasingly mashed attempts to tell everyone he was the World's Only Consulting Detective, and John felt an unpleasant pang.

He had been the only Sherlock Holmes in the world. Unique and precious.

When the fifty-two second long film had finally run its course and gone dark, it felt a bit like losing him all over again. He held the phone back out to Lestrade; feeling an itch on his cheeks, he swiped at them, almost furious to find they were wet.

"Could you email that file to me?" was all he asked.

"No problem." Lestrade frowned. Finally, he offered, "... Sorry."

John smiled and swiped at his face again. "No," he said. "No, it's not that. This is good... I... I was thinking only yesterday I'd sort of forgotten what he sounded like. At least I'll be able to remember what he sounded like when he was off his face, the poor bastard."