The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.

- Isaiah 21:12

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

How very like Sherlock, Lestrade thought, as he shivered into his coat and shoved his hands in his pockets. Never a convenient time for anything. But he couldn't really blame Sherlock for dragging him out to the cemetery while it was still dark. However annoying he'd been while alive, he was now 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 his 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. 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, 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, for a minute or two, I really started to wonder..." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Only for a minute. 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. 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 thought that if anything, he felt worse.

It was the usual routine in the Watson household, even before their marriage, that John would wake Molly on his return from the hospital in the morning. He would sort out breakfast for her and dinner for him while she had a shower, giving them both time to talk over whatever meal he came up with.

John hadn't woken her this morning. He was hoping she'd take the hint and call in; instead, she'd gotten up 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 know you don't have to go in if you're not up to it," he said, pretending to read the morning paper.

"I do, sorry," she said, as if her staying home was for her husband's benefit and not her own. "Those cultures will die if I don't look after them."

"Can't Mike do that?"

She gave him a withering look, and John conceded the point. Mike was a good doctor and an excellent 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 was the father of three children was sort of terrifying.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as she padded into the front room, then gave a little cry of triumph as she apparently found the shoes she needed somewhere out there. By the time she came back in, heels clicking on the stonework of the kitchen floor, he'd reached the bottom of his cup of tea and was about to get up to take it to the sink. She dropped into the chair opposite him, leaning across to give his hand a squeeze. "Okay, I'm not leaving for work until you tell me what's wrong," she said.

John cleared his throat. He'd promised a million times not to fob her off… "Had a patient brought in last night," he finally said. "He fell off a balcony at a party in Brent Park. Twenty-year-old kid. He died."

For a moment, Molly looked angry. It was to be a long time before John found out 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 okay," he said. "He died in the ambulance, and I never…" He cleared his throat. It was not what he had done, but what he had seen. He wondered how he could proceed with his explanation without the details sending her into the bathroom to vomit again.

"This guy who died," he continued, "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 murmured, "it's over. Don't torture yourself."

"I'm not torturing myself," he protested. "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 bit her lip, considering this for a long time… longer than he'd expected. Was she just giving this the consideration it was due? He hadn't asked lightly.

"I would always try," she finally said. "What do you need?"

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

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

"Do you have access to those records?"

"Yes. But John, I…" She pulled herself up short, flicking one hand nervously over her lips. "I could get fired for giving out information like that," she said.

"I know. 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. Why now? It can't change anything…"

He shook his head. "If you mean 'it can't bring Sherlock back to life', I squared with that long ago. But I need to do this, Molly." He exhaled and squeezed her hand. "And I'm sorry that this is something I have to ask you to do, but I don't trust anyone else to help. Will you do this for me, please?"

Changi Airport was an interesting place in broad daylight, but at four in the morning it was spectacular.

Sherlock hadn't been able to sleep on the flight from Sydney—too watchful—and he wasn't able to sleep now. But there were other travelers around him who weren't in his situation; mostly Australians en route to London. Some Brits going home, or visiting family for the holidays.

From his earliest days, Sherlock had felt that the problem wasn't that he saw too much of the world, it was that he couldn't turn it off when he wanted to. He was a child of the city at heart; but crowds often overwhelmed him with the sheer amount of information coming off them.

The stopover in Singapore was only three hours, so most of those from the Sydney leg of the flight were still milling around in the airport lounge. They huddled in the uncomfortable plastic chairs, or on the carpet—some trying to sleep, some trying to stay awake. Sherlock, draped in his tweed coat and with his knees drawn up onto his chair, glanced them over.

A bunch of rather ordinary people, so far as it all went. A middle-aged British couple who were flying home, not for Christmas, but because their adult daughter was dying of some lingering disease- probably cancer. A younger couple, Australian; the woman had a sleeping toddler in her arms and a black eye. The husband was beside her, knowing that all eyes were on him as the author of the black eye. Only Sherlock could see that she'd actually been hit by a male blood-relative—possibly a brother, more likely her father.

And then, he thought, scanning the crowd, beyond domestic abuse and dying people, there were the hundreds of other little things to notice about those who were crowded into the lounge. The elderly lady across from him was wearing a silk scarf that had been hand-made in India. Her husband, a musician of some kind, had bought her something very expensive for Christmas, and was worried about how she'd react to it. The young woman sitting at the end of the row was a francophone who had a heavy interest in musical theatre. There was a shabbily-dressed young man wandering around; he was travelling alone, and wondering what was going to happen if border security found the baggie in his carry-on luggage. Troubled youth, that one- religious fundamentalism in his past somewhere, probably the mother. The older woman in the silk scarf went to the vending machine and bought a Coke, despite the fact that she was a Type-2 Diabetic…

"Mister Holmes?"

Sherlock turned. The boy who had spoken was young—eleven, maybe twelve, and small for his age—and didn't seem much like a threat. Malay-speaking. Poor enough to be running errands at Changi at four in the morning, but he was clean and wearing shoes. He was polite, almost timid, hiding behind a fringe of thick, sleek dark hair. He held in his hands what seemed to be a cream-coloured envelope. Sherlock frowned at him.

"Mister... Sherlock... Holmes?" he tried again, embarrassed, as if aware that his English may well sound dreadful to a native speaker.

"Apa yang anda mahu?" Sherlock asked him warily.

"Ini adalah untuk anda." The boy gave Sherlock an envelope with his name neatly printed on the front.

"Terima kasih."* Sherlock took the envelope, inspecting it as if it might bite him. Chinese-made envelope. Purchased here in Singapore. Not booby-trapped or poisoned. Male handwriting…

The boy was still hovering. He looked longingly at Sherlock, and at the pocket he clearly hoped contained the posh Englishman's wallet.

"Tiada wang Singapura," Sherlock explained coldly, and the boy went away, without a tip and disappointed.

Sherlock stared at the envelope for a few minutes in silence. When he was finally assured that the note within could not, in itself, cause him harm, he opened it. Inside was a twice-folded, Chinese-made paper.

Psalm 139:7-8.

Jet-coloured, Staeffler ink. Male handwriting. Sherlock retrieved his phone and keyed in the reference.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.