Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Betas: Sidney Sussex, Archea, Gentlest_Sin

Warnings: Drug Use, Mild Sexuality, Language

Originally written and posted (on LJ and AO3): September-October 2011

Notes: This operates in the same universe as "They're Gonna Be All Right," but can stand alone. The title comes from "For the Fallen," by Laurence Binyon.

Prologue

Greg Lestrade meets Sherlock Holmes on a Tuesday afternoon in January but Sherlock, discovered unconscious and face-down in a pool of his own blood, doesn't meet Lestrade until the weekend, when he finally wakes from his drug-induced coma at the hospital and fixes bleary eyes on the man who saved his life.

Lestrade's forty-three, too old to be taking care of a drug-addicted genius - and it's apparent, even when he's delirious and strung out on painkillers, that that's exactly what Sherlock is - and too young to consider doing anything else. He's retained his good humor through the years, despite all that he's seen, and is still self-sacrificing enough that he actually offers to take the shuddering hull of a human being into his home. Most people would call it naiveté, but then, Lestrade hasn't ever cared about what most people think.

Sherlock is twenty-five, old enough to know better and wise enough in the ways of the world to know that he'll be locked in a cell as soon as he's out of hospital - he's been down this road before, and multiple times, if his record is anything to go by. It's a heartbreaking, never-ending cycle that Lestrade has seen too many times. And then, when the system has run its course, he'll be thrown back to the streets.

But Lestrade doesn't do what's expected of him, and Sherlock - though he's not Sherlock yet, not quite, it's still Holmes this and Holmes that - spends the next few weeks on the sofa in the other man's flat, suffering through first the pains of withdrawal and then the inevitable depression that follows. He's confused and furious and more than a little indignant (along with arrogant and irritating and a whole host of other unfavorable adjectives), but Lestrade gets the impression that this is the first time in his life that Sherlock's been surprised by someone.

xxxx

Sherlock breaks into his office one day while Lestrade is away for lunch and solves two of his cold cases while waiting for him to return.

Lestrade is furious first and impressed second.

xxxx

It isn't long before Sherlock starts showing up at crime scenes, unannounced and most certainly uninvited. He's a vibrant and intriguing skeleton, all angles and sharp lines, who analyzes the scene with pupils blown wide and the occasional bare arm that bears the angry red marks of a recent slide. Lestrade's superiors catch on very quickly, and though they put on disapproving airs they soon realize that this is a resource they cannot afford to turn away.

Rules are bent and exceptions are made, but Sherlock will only ever work with Lestrade.

xxxx

Sherlock is twenty-six, twenty-seven, a mad genius who at times can't sit still and at others enters the blackest of moods, where he cannot be roused to talk, eat, or sleep. He boosts Lestrade's cases-closed rate to a whole new level and keeps it there, relapses twice, breaks into Lestrade's flat when he's bored.

Lestrade is forty-four, forty-five, moving up the ranks at the Yard. He makes Detective Inspector, keeps his cases-closed rate up, still looks like the Greg Lestrade in photographs eight years old.

He gets Sherlock off the drugs (mostly), calls on the detective when he needs him, and doesn't waste any time trying to delude himself by thinking that Sherlock does what he does for the greater good of the public.