Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Warnings: mentions of suicide and language.

Spoilers: through "Reichenbach"

"Do you mind?" Lestrade asks as he tugs a packet from his pocket, fully intending to smoke anyway, but John shakes his head.

"Go ahead."

They're sitting on the roof of Lestrade's building, gravel digging into their trousers and shirt-sleeves rolled up. Their suit jackets are discarded on the ground next to them, and a light mist is coming down around their heads. John is looking for noise, because Sherlock has been in the ground less than six hours and Baker Street is too quiet; too empty; too big. Lestrade is looking for a distraction, because he no longer has the work to fill his days nor Sherlock to fill the empty nooks and crannies in the rest of his life. They're making the best they can of a bad situation, and Lestrade hopes it will be enough. For John's sake, if not for his own.

"Your kids are sweet," John says, his voice rough. He clears his throat and adds softly, "I didn't know they were close to him."

Lestrade nods, not quite sure what he is supposed to say to that. He hadn't intended to bring them to the funeral today, but a concerned phone call from his wife - no, ex-wife, he corrects sharply - the night after Sherlock's death had revealed the true depth of his children's pain. She felt they needed closure; he was inclined, for once, to agree. "Yeah, they - uh - well, they found him incredible, just like everyone else does -"

"Did," John corrects bitterly, and Lestrade swallows hard.

"Yeah," he whispers. "Anyway, the problem with Sherlock is that his insults are - were - too subtle for the kids. They didn't realize he was being, well, Sherlock. Absolutely adored him. And he them, eventually, though he'd never admit it."

"They cried," John murmurs. "He had people fucking crying for him, Greg. He'll never know. He doesn't - didn't - have any idea how much he meant to some people."

Lestrade hums in agreement, positive now that they're no longer talking about his children, and takes another drag from his cigarette. The misting rain is beading on the bare flesh of his arms and gathering at the base of his hair, dripping off to trail in tiny rivulets down his neck. He feels oddly empty; blank, now that everything is over. There is no more planning to be done. The brief investigation has been closed, all the relevant questions answered (though those answers are lacking for some); Sherlock has been buried, his name forever in disgrace.

It's all over, and Lestrade never even got the chance to say goodbye.

"The last time I saw him," Lestrade whispers, "I was arresting him."

"You were doing what you needed in order to keep your job," John points out.

"Yeah," Lestrade mutters, and the words they're both thinking - Lost the job anyway - hang heavily between them.

"Last thing I said to his face," John says after a moment, "was Friends protect people. I thought - God, I regretted it the moment I walked out that door, even though I truly thought Mrs. Hudson was dying. I should've -"

"Don't," Lestrade says. "You couldn't have known."

"Neither could you."

That's fair enough, Lestrade supposes, but in the end John at least got to say goodbye. Lestrade will always know that his last words to Sherlock were a recitation of his rights, and he wishes now more than ever that he had had the sense to stay in bed that morning. His career would still be shot, that he knows, but at least then he'd have the peace of mind that his last words to Sherlock hadn't been said while one of his officers slapped handcuffs on the detective and John stood angrily by.

It shouldn't have ended like this.

"I didn't sit at his bedside," Lestrade says quietly, "night after night, for weeks while he threw up every meal he ate, for it to end like this."

He feels John shift in surprise, and realizes that Sherlock must not have shared this bit of his past. But now that the words have started, Lestrade finds that he can't stop them.

"I didn't get him through two relapses, and the nightmares, and the boredom, for it to end like this." Lestrade squeezes his free hand into a fist, fighting to get his words past a tight throat and stinging eyes. "I saw him become a good man, and make a - make a friend, and become happy, and it doesn't end like this."

"Greg -"

"Fucking shit," Lestrade snaps, and in a burst of anger he throws the only thing he has, whipping the cigarette pack across the roof. It skids across the gravel and slams into the far barrier around the perimeter. Lestrade rubs a hand wearily across his brow, his anger dissolving instantly to be replaced only by empty silence. There's a warm pressure between his shoulder blades as John rests his hand on his back, and Lestrade sucks a deep breath through his nose. "He wasn't a fraud."

"I know."

"He wasn't a fraud, John! Why would he want us to believe that?"

"God, Greg," John says through a huff of breath, "if I knew the answer to that, I'd be sleeping better at night."

"Have you been sleeping at all?" Lestrade asks dryly.

"Have you?" John counters, knowing the answer already. John saw Sherlock die before his eyes; Lestrade saw it happen on a grainy video taken by a quick-thinking passerby on her mobile. It doesn't show much, and a truck blocks the actual impact, but the man tumbling from the top of the building is unmistakably Sherlock. Lestrade sees the small figure with the billowing coat every time he closes his eyes, and he's imagined the impact more times than he cares to count.

"I'd've helped him," Lestrade says fiercely. "Did he really not think that I - that we - wouldn't have done everything we could to clear his name? Six years, John. Not once did I turn my back on him. Why didn't he trust - "

Lestrade breaks off abruptly as a whimper tears itself from his throat, and returns to his neglected cigarette, hand trembling as he lifts it to his mouth.

"Where did we go wrong?" John says softly. "Must have, somewhere, for him to think that we would turn him away."

Lestrade doesn't let on that he's been thinking that very same thing since the awful news reached him, because John doesn't deserve that.

"s'not your fault," he says gruffly. "You made…fuck. You made him happy. I've never seen -" He breaks off again, clears his throat, and resists voicing the thought that has been nagging at the back of his mind for days.

He wouldn't have left you, John, not unless he had to.

Instead, Lestrade says, "He shouldn't have left," when really he means He had no reason to leave, and leaves it at that. There's a tense silence for several long moments, time enough for Lestrade to finish his cigarette and debate retrieving the discarded pack for another. Exhaustion wins out, and he remains where he's sitting.

"But he did."

"Yeah," Lestrade mutters, because there's no arguing with that. "He did. C'mon, you're staying here tonight. Let's go inside."

xxxx

Hours later, with John asleep against his shoulder and the muted television flashing images that Lestrade's exhausted brain can't process, he pulls out his mobile and calls up the last text he received from Sherlock, sent not long after he and John had escaped arrest.

Look after John.

Lestrade hadn't thought anything of it at the time, apart from raising an eyebrow at Sherlock's apparent compassion. He was too busy being bloody furious at the man for grabbing a gun and running, because he can't - couldn't - help Sherlock if he was going to pull stunts like that, and all Lestrade had ever wanted to do was help him. He hadn't known those were the last words Sherlock would ever say to him.

And now, days after the fact, he finally moves his numb fingers and taps out a response.

Just until you come back.

There is, of course, no reply.