Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

- Psalm 139:5

Over the past eighteen months, Molly had come to accept that Sherlock's gravestone stood like a third person in her relationship with John – just as the man himself would be if he were present. John had diligently gone to the cemetery to "tell Sherlock" about all new and important developments in his life: his new relationship, his new job at Hammersmith. He'd brought Molly with him the day after their engagement had become official; and even on the afternoon they'd been married, they had gone there together, the train of Molly's cream silk wedding gown trailing over the damp October grass.

So it was no surprise to her that one of John's first priorities back in England was to 'tell Sherlock' the news about the baby. She'd agreed to go with him, with a lot of guilt but without hesitation. Once they were in sight of Sherlock's tombstone, however, John stopped short. His hand tightened around Molly's gloved one.

"Do you want to do this alone?" she asked him quietly.

He took a deep breath. "Sorry," he said. "It seems stupid when you're the one having the baby..."

"It's okay." She gently released her hand from his. The last thing she wanted to deal with was watching John torture himself over the grave of a man who wasn't, so far as she knew, dead at all. She had had no contact with Sherlock for over a year, but the thought of seeing him again was always half pleasure and half pain. She hadn't known, all that time ago, just how deep she'd be getting into things.

Or just how much, all this time later, John would still be hurting.

She wandered over toward the crematorium, puzzling out names and dates on a wall of shining plaques until John rejoined her twenty minutes later. He'd put his hand in hers, but as they were walking toward the car, he cleared his throat twice and flicked the finger of his free hand toward his eyes.

She looked down at her feet and said nothing. There were some places in John's heart that she couldn't touch even yet. And she had no right to touch them, since she'd helped hurt him in the first place.

Sherlock leaned back in his chair and sighed in relief. After a minor panic about online flight bookings—close to Christmas, Business and First Class completely sold out until mid-January – Singapore Airlines had come through. There'd been a very last-minute cancellation, and he was firmly ensconced in the horrors of Economy. He'd had his hopes on Business Class, since first class was wasn't ideal for travelling incognito with a fake passport and a fake identity, but it would have to do. He tucked the passport and other assorted paperwork of the fictional Christian Yearsley into his jacket pocket and shut his eyes, trying to will the plane to take off.

No chance of it yet. People were still boarding, chatting, tripping over each other in the aisles and throwing hand luggage in the overhead compartments. Sherlock watched them in sullen silence. Happy people on their holidays. Damn the whole lot of them. Mycroft had been right all along. Christmas was awful.

Sherlock wasn't entirely confident that Mycroft wouldn't have the flight grounded, if he made it to the airport in time. He checked his watch nervously, still set to Sydney time. Mycroft was going to be at work for another forty-three minutes. It would take him half an hour to get home in peak-hour traffic, and probably forty-five more to double back and reach the airport.

He could and probably would just put in a phone call for that, rather than coming in person. Mycroft sometimes found sitting on his backside in a car to be too tedious to be bothered with.

"Oh, sorry, could I just get in here, love?"

Sherlock looked up. An elderly woman—cropped silver hair, blinding orange suit, fake jewelry—was trying to edge into the row. Trying to suppress a groan, he shuffled back into the seat as far as possible and watched in annoyance as she plunked herself down in the seat right beside him. "Hello," she puffed, offering him her hand. "I'm Shirley."

"I'm Christian," he muttered. And I know from your rings that you got married in Queensland in 1964 or 1965.

"Where are you off to, Christian?" she asked without shame. "Oh, I mean, obviously Singapore. But are you going there, or just as a stopover?"

"I'm going back to London."

"Oh, have you been on holidays in Australia?"

"Um. Yes." He hadn't expected to be seated next to Chatty Cathy—his experiences with airline passengers had almost entirely been of Brits flying First Class who liked to pretend they were in a Cone of Silence and didn't make conversation with others. But he reflected in confusion that he needed to at least be civil. This was about being unmemorable. Shirley, the other passengers, the flight crew—they would be more likely to remember a man who was surly or who was obviously lying about himself. "Yes," he said again. "For a bit over a year."

"Well, I suppose you'll be glad to be getting home, then," she said, nestling into her seat. "I'm going over to my sister in Luton. She just lost her husband in—"

—Approximately last summer—

"June."

I've still got that, at least.

"So, I lost my Don four years ago and the kids are all grown up with their own families, so I thought, why not? I've never seen England, after all. Is it nice?"

At this, he felt an odd tightness around his mouth and realised he was smiling. "It's beautiful."

"I hope it snows. I've never seen snow before. Have you got someone you're spending Christmas with, Christian?"

Sherlock's thoughts went back to John. "Yes," he said. "I hope so. I... have a friend... but it's been a long time."

She smiled. "Cheer up," she said. "You know what they say about good friends. You can meet back up with them after years and years, and it's like you never parted at all. Now..." she leaned forward and pulled a pamphlet out of the seat in front of her. "Let's have a look at whether there are any good in-flight movies..."

Lestrade sighed into his cup of uninspiring coffee. Three-thirty. It was only three-thirty, and he was scheduled to be in this wretched bloody place until six. He'd never balked from his fair share of hard work, but that was the problem: afternoons where all was right, where the world's criminal masterminds were taking some time off (or at least not getting themselves caught) seemed to drag on forever.

It was part of the reason he'd taken to Sherlock Holmes, despite how obnoxious and rude and arrogant the man could be. He was also like a spot of sunshine in a dungeon sometimes, what with the way he could turn the most innocuous of cases into a grand adventure.

Lestrade was interrupted in these musings by a brief knock on his office door. Coughing a little on his coffee, he looked up to see Gregson standing there.

And he wasn't happy.

But then, Tobias Gregson was hardly ever happy. People found the occasional appearance of his smile honestly terrifying.

"Gregson." Lestrade had never referred to his colleague by his first name, and Gregson had never called him by his, though they'd known each other since Lestrade had been transferred in nine years before. "What's doing?"

"That bloody sergeant of yours."

Lestrade sighed and dug his fingertips into the corners of his eyes. "She's an excellent copper, Gregson," he said.

And that was the problem, and always had been. She was. Nowhere in her work contract did it say she had to be likeable. Lestrade had always been of the opinion that Donovan and Sherlock had more in common than either would have liked to admit, which was part of the reason they'd spent years bickering with each other. Until Donovan had gained the upper hand.

"Oh, aye—not doubting you there," Gregson was saying. "But too curious for her own good. What's she want to dig around in Holmes's suicide files for?"

Lestrade leaned back in his chair, trying for casual. "Dunno," he said. "But I can begin to guess. You've heard, right? The Bruhl girl's pretty much said it wasn't Sherlock who kidnapped her."

"He's still dead."

Lestrade flinched and tried to remind himself: Sherlock was a victim. A suicide victim. And while he was at work, that was all he was supposed to be. "Yeah," he said. "But now Donovan's got it in her head that he wouldn't have committed suicide, 'cause he was innocent of the kidnapping."

"I assumed that's why he committed suicide."

Lestrade felt a sudden flash of kinship with Gregson. He might have been about as much fun as a funeral, but he'd assumed, and all along, too, that Sherlock was innocent.

"So did I," he said tiredly. "I mean, you worked with him too, right? He could be a pain in the arse, but he wasn't a kidnapper or a poisoner, for God's sake."

"No. And so what, Donovan thinks it was a murder?"

"Hasn't pointed the finger at anyone in particular, but I guess so. Can't have been an accident. He was on the phone to John Watson for a few minutes before he did it, talking about how it was his note, which sounds a lot like a suicide to me."

And to John, for that matter. I should call him about this before someone else does.

"John Watson testified at the inquest that it was a suicide."

"Yeah." He's also told me about a hundred and thirty times that even he has no idea why Sherlock would suddenly say he was a fraud and then kill himself.

Lestrade suddenly remembered: although John had told him that Sherlock had claimed he was a 'fake' in that last phone call, he'd never told anyone else, leaving that detail out of his testimony at the inquest. He wondered if even Molly knew about that one. Gregson certainly didn't. "So'd you give Donovan access to the records, then?" he asked.

"Yeah. Be it on your head if she gets an idea and runs with it," Gregson said sourly. "Every now and again there's one who snaps and acts like a lunatic over a case. Had one in my team, once... ended up punching a suspect."

"Shit, really?"

"Didn't last long after that, I'm afraid."

"No, I can imagine."

Gregson rose. "You'll keep me informed if anything comes up about Holmes, right?"

"Yeah, no problem. Thanks for being a sport with Donovan, mate."

Gregson grunted and stalked out without a word, and Lestrade smiled to himself. Mate. Gregson hated it when people called him that.

Less than half an hour later he was loitering at the far end of the open-plan office, waiting for the photocopier to spit out seventy pages, when he became aware of Donovan herself out of the corner of his eye. He turned to her. She was standing with her hands down by her sides, looking more nervous than he'd seen her in ages.

"Donovan," he said. "What's happening?"

"I need to talk to you, Greg." She swallowed hard and drew one sleeve carefully over her wrist. The gesture caught his attention, even though he didn't quite know what to make of it.

"What, now? In private?"

She gestured to his office door. Sighing and leaving the photocopying for the time being, he led her back across the floor and into his office. He sat down. She did not.

"I've had Gregson in here already," he said, seeing that she was reluctant to start. "You know I'm always on my team's side, Donovan, but—"

"Those records are fake."

Lestrade raised an eyebrow. "What records?"

She shut her eyes for a second and exhaled. "You know what records," she said, obviously trying to keep a hold on her considerable temper. "Gregson showed me. Sherlock's autopsy file."

He looked at her blankly. "Wrong," he echoed. "Wrong, like how?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that they just are?"

Lestrade was silent, looking at her carefully. Whatever else she was, right or wrong, she was in deadly earnest. She had excellent powers of observation, and he'd never known her to be a liar.

"So what do you want, then?" he asked her.

"I want the case reopened and examined," she said. "Top to bottom."

"He's dead, Donovan."

"He may well be, but that PM report isn't his. The body... there are distinguishing features he had which aren't mentioned. They should be—"

"Then probably someone just buggered up the paperwork." Lestrade was trying to remember if it was Molly Hooper who'd laid him out after. Not the sort of mistake Molly would make. He sighed and rubbed his aching forehead. "Okay," he said. "I'm trying to treat this like I'd treat anyone else. If it was anyone else, I'd tell you this: go and prepare your case in writing, with a full breakdown of what you want as a course of action, and submit it to Gregson. I can't do much about this myself, 'cause it was never my case in the first place. If you get no joy from Gregson, work your way up the chain until you're barking up Dawson's tree about it. I've got to warn you, though, Gregson thinks you're a nutter."

"And what do you think?"

Lestrade looked her over. "I think you're a good detective, and that you made a mistake two years ago," he said. "I think if it sets your mind at ease to find out why someone made a mess of the autopsy report, you should go ahead and do it. But Donovan..."

He trailed off. After an awkward silence he stood up and waved her out, without completing his thoughts.