Violet rounds the corner in time to see Sherlock fall to his knees, face pale and dazed, blood seeping from the holes in his torso. And in that moment she knows she's losing both of them tonight.

He topples to the ground, limp as a doll, lying there shaking, half-curled against the pain, eyes squeezed shut. She kneels beside him, pulling him into her arms and leaning his head against her chest. (It always comforted him when he was a child.) His fingers slide up her hand and hold weakly onto her wrist, as if that will hold him to this afterlife.

"Just hold on, sweetheart," she murmurs softly, hoping to reassure him, hoping that he won't worry, hoping that he doesn't realise that John is gone with the severity of his own wounds. She doesn't think she could bear to explain that to him, she doesn't want him fighting that pain too along with his injuries. "We'll get you back to Baker Street and Martha will treat these wounds. You'll be fine."

Sherlock shakes his head weakly, though he hasn't the strength to be able to afford to waste it. Violet knew he would but she had to ask anyway. Had to try to say something to fight the aching that has taken up residence in her own chest. "No . . . time," his voice is faint. "Two minutes . . . to sun-up."

"Oh, Sherlock." With the hand supporting his head, she strokes his curls gently, hoping to ease some of the pain he's in, or at least to distract him from it.

"Sorry." He swallows back the blood in his throat. "Promised . . . be fine."

Tears burn Violet's eyes and she holds him closer, kissing his cool forehead before laying her cheek against it. "It's all right. It's all right. It's not your fault."

"Tried save . . . John, but -" His voice cracks and Violet put her finger to his lips, not wanting him to exhaust himself with too much talking, or to make him relive the memories.

"Don't say anything. I know."

Mycroft kneels beside them, and she shakes her head just slightly at him. He takes Sherlock's other hand but doesn't say anything, just needing to be here.

"Tired." The word is hardly a word, more like a stray breath.

"Sshh. Rest all you want. I'll stay right here, all right?"

Sherlock nods, too weak to muster the strength to say anything. Violet can feel him slipping away, knows that there's nothing that can be done, but that doesn't stop her hoping that somehow there's some way that he can survive this, that he can pull through and go back to Baker Street. (There's no point in wishing, because he's dying for the second time, and she knows that without John he'd only be tempted to let himself get dusted anyway. So all that she can do is hold him, and pray that it doesn't take too long, because much and all as she wants him to live, she doesn't want him to suffer either, and if he's not gone when the sun comes up, then it's going to be the worst suffering that he's gone through.)

"Thank you . . . Mike," Sherlock slurs, pale, boodied lips hardly moving now. And Violet can see the pain that crosses Mycroft's face at his words, the tears that well up in his eyes and he fights back, because Sherlock hasn't called him Mike since he was five years old and couldn't say Mycroft.

"You're welcome, brother." Mycroft's voice is hoarse, but the tears don't break through. He's had too much practice at fighting pain for that to happen.

Sherlock's lip twitches into a slight smile, before a groan escapes him and he tries to arch his back against the pain, but he's too weak and it all hurts too much, and he wants to hold on to see the sun so that – on the extreme unlikelihood that there's something after this – he can tell John about it.

The morning is lightening, sky gone from black to grey with the first, faint blue creeping in. Violet knows it won't be much longer. Another minute will bring the sun a long way, but this waiting is agonising. It's even worse than when Sherlock was changing, because at least then there was the chance that he'd wake up in five days. That chance is a decade gone now, and this second death is going to be permanent.

Finally, at long last, the sun creeps over the horizon. Sherlock shudders in Violet's arms, but he's still holding on, still fighting.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" The words are almost inaudible, spoken so impossibly low, and Violet looks down to see that his eyes are half-open, watching the sun, the lightening sky, glazed and dazed though they are.

"Yes. It is."

The first ray of light hits Sherlock and he stifles a scream, teeth sinking into his bottom lip as his heart shudders back to life. (Curse of exposure to daylight, becoming half-human before death, heart beating, lungs fighting for air, all old wounds scorching open again, blood pouring forth. Rapid death from exsanguination. Ironic, for a vampire.)

They're all open again, all of the old injuries from the pool and since, bleeding now the way they should have then. Blood in a stream down his leg from the stake eight years ago, and the sniper ten. Seeping through his shirt from the hole in his chest that John stitched that night, tonight's bullet wounds collapsing lungs, leaving him gasping for breath, feeling as if he's suffocating. The minor cuts and abrasions coming back to life now, the shoulder injury reminding him of its existence. (It all burns, raging along his nerve endings, searing him from the inside out. Violet knows that death will be a mercy after this.) Blood bubbles from the side of his mouth, a frothy mess, a trickle from his nose. Lungs failing, heart struggling. (Familiar story.)

His eyes roll in his head, and though he is mouthing words, he can't get enough breath to even moan, organs all collapsed. Violet grips him tighter, holding him. (He needs to know she's here, that she's stayed though it's hopeless, and she feels so damn helpless watching him die like this, body thrown into convulsions, pain ripping through him. Blood trickles across the frosty concrete, scarlet on ivory, warmth on cold. Life on death.)

Sherlock's hand limply sitting on Violet's wrist twitches, fingers snagging on the sleeve. Another shudder passes over him, a breeze felt by neither Mycroft nor Violet, and with it he is gone. Eyes blank, limp body sinking into his mother's hold. Violet chokes back a sob, kisses his forehead, closes his eyes, hugs him close. And in a moment he disintegrates into dust, clothes, body, everything that was Sherlock Holmes except the blood that he's left on his mother, soaking into her skin.

(And, so, this is how it ends. The boy never meant to survive his first night on this earth acquires a family, a life. People who love him and whom he loves. And through death, and pain, and condemnation to darkness, it is the final sunlight of his life which causes his death, leaving him to simply fall into dust on a January morning, his mother and brother staring at the ash that only a heartbeat ago had been a part of their family.)