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Notes: We finally start to see the light!

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Chapter 10

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Lestrade hadn't believed his eyes when he had seen the CCTV video. Donovan had knocked on his office door before entering. He had immediately noticed her extremely pale face and livid lips. She had announced in a toneless voice that they had a video capture of two intruders caught by the caretaker in a flat in Peckham and he should absolutely see this. Worried by her attitude, all the more since home invasion wasn't really their division, he had slipped the DVD into the player, seeing on the screen a section of a street. Then the shock had cut his legs and he had fallen back in his chair, struck by emotion. The screen had suddenly been crossed at a run by two hilarious men he had identified in the second. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Initially, he had believed in a hoax. An obscure editing or very good lookalikes. But Donovan's reaction already excluded those first hypotheses. He had played the sequence once, twice, a hundred times. Each time, the same faces appeared on the screen. He had buried his face in his hands, unable to believe what he was seeing. Haggard, he had rushed to the Diogenes Club to show the video to Mycroft. And despite all his composure, he had been unable to hide the pallor that had come over his face. He had sat in his chair, nervously turning the handle of his umbrella in his feverish fingers. Lestrade hadn't added anything, except that he would investigate this mystery and he would inform him in case of further news. He later had gone to the cemetery, but the two gravestones were still there. A ball had grabbed his womb, like a punch. He hadn't understood. How? And why? He hadn't slept that night, alternating between coffees and glasses of whiskey. Then, the next day, after hours without answer, he had finally gotten up from his armchair and put on his jacket. He already knew where to go. So he had gone to Baker Street, and had waited.

Standing next to the gravestones, he looked at John and Sherlock who looked at the stones with indecipherable expressions.

"Now I'll repeat my question: why are you here?"

They turned their heads towards him. Lestrade felt them on the defensive. Sherlock and John exchanged a glance.

The DI watched them interact, not sure how to interpret it. The presence of these graves seemed to be familiar to them as well as make them uncomfortable. Then Sherlock turned to him, his neck a bit stiff.

"What do you want?" He asked.

The question took Lestrade by surprise.

"Me? Nothing. Just, I mean…"

He watched them, silently standing before him.

"Just… Why are you here?"

"Is our presence a problem?"

The DI shook his hands in defence.

"No! Not at all. It's just that…"

Sherlock turned away from him to look at the black marble stone bearing his name.

Lestrade scratched the back of his head.

"Listen, I don't know how it must be said in these circumstances, but… You're dead."

"It seems obvious," Sherlock replied coldly.

"No, it's not!" Then Lestrade became enraged. "Sherlock, I saw your body in pieces in the morgue of St Barts. It's me who identified you because neither John nor Mycroft were capable of it. And you, John, it's me who rushed to Baker Street because we had heard a shot, and found you with the skull smashed in the living room. It's this poor Molly who had to do your autopsies. You are dead, the two of you, so now you tell me why you're here."

John's shoulders slumped.

"It's exactly as I said, Greg. Refusing Sherlock cases is like refusing a bone to a dog. You know him, he can't live without his little adrenaline rush."

"Adrenaline is rather your area, John," Sherlock corrected him.

But John silenced him with a gesture. He felt by Lestrade's trembling shoulders that it wasn't the right time for jokes. He put his hands in his pockets.

"What do you want to know, Greg?" he asked softly.

The DI's face was dug by tiredness and emotion.

"How…?" He began. "Why…"

"It's because of me," Sherlock replied then.

Lestrade looked up at him, but Sherlock didn't bat an eyelash.

"The incident at St Barts wasn't supposed to end like that," he explained. "The plan was to fake my suicide. This way, I would have had free reign. But it didn't happen as planned."

He moved his shoulders, as if to untie them.

"Moriarty had warned me before committing suicide himself that if I didn't die, killers would kill you, Lestrade, and John and Mrs. Hudson. But I was ahead on him. I knew he would have this requirement, and I had prepared everything, even the rubber ball under my armpit to stop the pulse in my wrist, because I knew that John would try to take my pulse. An old doctor's reflex."

Sherlock put his hands in his coat pockets.

"Unfortunately, I miscalculated my move. And the medical team that was in on it, and was instructed to make my body disappear in the hospital, ended up trying to revive me. They couldn't save me. What was meant to be a simple staging turned into a monstrous reality. A simple miscalculation and everything has fallen in the water."

Lestrade listened silently, his mouth open.

"So…," he stammered, "The suicide shouldn't have been one?"

"Ironic, isn't it? The worst thing is that I didn't realize it right away."

The shadow of a smile seemed to drift on his lips.

"This is Molly's reaction that put a bug in my ear. She was in on it. Her role was to ensure the cooperation of the hospital services, as well as falsify the autopsy reports. But when I saw her, she was devastated. I didn't understand why until I realised she couldn't see me. I went through all St Barts without anyone noticing my presence, until I found myself facing my own body at the morgue. I must admit that it was a shock. I attended my own funeral."

Lestrade interrupted his narrative with a hand gesture.

"But… There is something I don't understand. Sherlock, you say that your death was necessary to save us. But wouldn't it have seemed strange that you just reappeared then?"

"The reason why it wasn't expected to reappear soon after."

Sherlock looked Lestrade gently.

"Moriarty's network was vast, it had offshoots in the whole world. The idea was to take advantage of my death to track down this network, and reappear once all danger would have been averted. But my death has disrupted the plan. I found myself facing an unexpected situation for which I had no solution."

"Then he looked after me," John intervened.

"John was the only person to whom I could go to, but it took me a lot of time and energy to finally make him notice my presence."

John smiled at the memory.

"Initially, it was banging doors, objects that moved on their own," he told Lestrade. "I thought my mind was playing tricks on me and I was going crazy."

"And then one day," Sherlock continued, "By interacting, I had the strength to start to appear to him."

The two men laughed at the memory.

"I thought I was hallucinating," John laughed. "But I didn't drink anything before."

"This is the reason why I chose this time, John. It's precisely to avoid that you have this kind of thinking."

The euphoria seemed to fade suddenly, their faces leaving place to a sweet nostalgia.

"Again," Sherlock said, "It still took me some time to contact him. But when I finally came to be seen and heard, I told him the events at St. Barts. That it was to save him, but it wasn't supposed to take this shape."

"I admit it had been difficult to believe him," John revealed. "But Sherlock has applied himself to list my recent activities to prove that he was indeed there. He told me he was going on a crusade against Moriarty's network. That things weren't planned like that, but he could take advantage of his state to do them well. He was dead, so he couldn't die, and he had gained enough… sturdiness, let's say, to be able to physically intervene."

"This is where John took me by surprise," Sherlock grumbled bitterly.

"What?" John protested. "You're not going to say that you regret it?"

Lestrade realized.

"This is why…?" He guessed.

John nodded.

"I told Sherlock to wait for me, that I came with him. I took my gun on the mantelpiece and I didn't hesitate a second."

A silence fell. A breeze of wind blew, carrying an armful of dead leaves.

"I didn't see it coming," Sherlock admitted. "I must say that I was far from suspecting that John could keep his weapon close in case he wanted to be done with it. So when he acted, I didn't immediately understand. Then I saw the gun, and time to react, it was too late."

Lestrade nodded. He knew the rest. Mrs. Hudson's frantic call, muttering incomprehensible sentences, just managing to string two words together: "John! He…"

"However," Sherlock continued again, "It took him a little time to come back."

"Ah, you're funny!" John defended himself. "It was the first time I died."

"Me too, what do you think?"

"Yes, but your own death took you by surprise. So much you're not even gone. Me, the process has gone a bit more normally, so naturally, it took me time to recover."

"And you never regretted doing it?" Lestrade wanted to know.

John shook his head.

"Strangely, no. I mean… Nothing was keeping me there anymore. Yes, there were Mrs. Hudson and Harry, and I admit I thought about the pain it had caused them, but… Sherlock needed me. Oh, he'll gladly tell you otherwise. But it seemed so obvious to me that I didn't even think about it. Sometimes, it's true, I found myself thinking about my old life. The cases, the blog, and all that. But saying that I regret… No."

"So, finally, you both have tracked down Moriarty's network?

"Absolutely," Sherlock stated. "It took us two years. The advantage when you are in our situation is that we can stow away anywhere. It has greatly facilitated our transport."

"And nobody has ever seen you? I see you, though."

"Let's say we had acquired the ability to make us a little less visible if necessary. For example, one of Moriarty's men was close to a top African leader, we sat with them in the jet and we eliminated him during the flight. Nobody will ever understand what could happen to him."

Lestrade stifled a giggle.

"Yeah, let me tell you that it's an ability that really should be reworked."

John made a face.

"That was our big problem after a moment," he admitted. "Let's say that our willingness to resume our lives has had the effect of making us a little too visible. Now disappearing is almost impossible."

"And you complain?" Lestrade wondered.

"For crime scenes, yes, it's crippling."

"What sold us?" Sherlock wanted to know.

"A CCTV camera in Peckham. That was a little more than a week ago."

"The Peckham case? Yet we took care to go through streets we knew without supervision."

"In this case, Sherlock, your knowledge was outdated. The camera that filmed you was relatively recent."

Sherlock turned his head sharply gritting his teeth, holding a curse.

"That explains the state of your clothes," he understood. "This must have been quite a shock."

"You have no idea."

"Who else saw it?"

"Besides the officer who found the sequence, there were Donovan, me, and I showed it to Mycroft. It gave the poor sod one hell of a shock."

"I would have wanted to see that."

"It's not funny, Sherlock. Seeing the ghost of his own brother on a video is not fun."

"Did he say anything?"

"No. I don't think he has had neither the strength nor the courage."

Another silence fell. The moon gently floated over some fluffy clouds. A new breeze blew on the branches of the tree under which they were. Lestrade turned his head toward the gravestones. Despite the time, they were still well maintained. The DI guessed that Mycroft had to be for something. Sherlock's black marble stone was carefully polished, so does John's light brown one. Only the flowers needed to be changed, dried and shrivelled by time.

"I didn't come here as often as I wanted," he confessed. "I must say that I struggled to face myself for a long time. And meanwhile, you were wandering around to save my arse. Who would have thought?"

He pulled his hands out of his pockets.

"Have you succeeded, at least? Your vendetta."

"Yes."

"And now?"

"Now consider our work as a homecoming. We solve crimes, I blog about it, and it happens he forgets his pants. Sherlock hacks your files, makes his deductions and sends his conclusions. I admit that it's not very legal, but what else do you want us to do?"

Lestrade had had a split second of surprise at the pants anecdote, but finally frowned. Something was wrong with what John had said.

I blog about it. John's blog, his famous blog read by thousands of fans, in which he published their cases. It no longer existed. Flooded by a wave of hateful comments after his suicide, his sister Harriet had felt it was better to close it down. So she had deleted it permanently, burying the last living trace of his brother.

And the conclusions Sherlock sent him. Lestrade was perhaps stupid according to sherlockians standards, but not enough not to notice emails from a sender like Sherlock. Never, ever, did he remember having received the conclusions John was talking about.

The DI then understood everything.

Consider our business as a homecoming. John and Sherlock didn't return to restart a new life. They returned to take back their life as they left it, that is to say surrounded by bric-a-brac, experiments, discoursing on cases. As if the last three years had never happened.

He vaguely thought back about this film he had seen in a fit of blues. A kid who saw ghosts and everyone thought crazy. A quote, in particular, had made a deep impression on him.

They only see what they want to see.

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Notes: As the epilogue is really tiny, it will be published in the wake of the next chapter. So you'll have two publications for the price of one!

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