Warnings: Implied and imagined violence, language, angst, grief/mourning.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Notes: Inspired by a prompt on the kinkmeme, which asked for Lestrade bringing Sherlock bad news. Portions of the dialogue were taken directly from all three S2 episodes. Victor Trevor is a character from ACD canon, and appears in "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott."

Many thanks to canonisrelative, was kind enough to read over the first draft of this for me.

It's two days before Christmas, and John has been banned from the kitchen.

"We are having a party, you know!" he bellows at Sherlock through the closed door. "It was your idea, remember? For Mrs Hudson, you said, what with her ill sister and all. Your words, and I have them on tape to prove it, because God knows no one's ever going to believe me!"

"Your point?" Sherlock says calmly through the door.

"My poi -" John sputters. "My point is that the guests will be expecting food, Sherlock, and I know you can't be bothered to make anything. But someone has to, so let me the hell in!"

"Do it tomorrow."

"I work tomorrow, and anyway, some of the food will require a good deal of preparation."

"Get Sarah to help you."

"Jeannette!"

"Who?"

John opens his mouth to say something, and then promptly thinks better of it. He turns on his heel and strides over to their shared desk, opting to work on his blog in favour of fighting with Sherlock. He knows the latter will result in him saying things he will come to regret, and nothing short of the world ending will give him access to the kitchen right now.

Or maybe something not quite so dire, he thinks later when he hears a car park just beneath the window and someone open the front door. It's a bit late for a case, but John can't bring himself to mind. Late-night cases are the interesting ones, and interesting cases are what get Sherlock out of the kitchen.

Two distinct sets of footsteps make their way up the seventeen steps, though John can't say that they sound familiar. He surmises that they are male, going by the heavy tread of the shoes, though that is merely guesswork.

But when a key scrapes in the lock, John knows immediately who one of their late-night visitors is.

"Greg," he says as Lestrade lets himself into the flat. He is surprised, because although Lestrade has had a key from the first-even before John himself had one-he has never, before tonight, used it.

Lestrade looks grey this evening, and his lips are drawn into a thin line. Weary lines are etched deep in his face, but his eyes are determined.

Mycroft Holmes follows him, looking as alert and purposeful as ever, and John frowns. They are men both dressed for the office, even at this late hour, and John can't imagine a case that would involve Mycroft as well.

"John," Lestrade greets with a sharp nod. "Sherlock?"

"In the kitchen," John says, nodding to the partially-closed door. "Experiment; might not want to risk it. He was blowing up things not all that long ago. I got banned."

He says this with a weak smile, but his attempt at mirth is lost on Lestrade, who simply nods and reaches for the door. Mycroft Holmes doesn't even spare John a glance, and both of the men disappear before John can say anything further. Lestrade closes the door behind them.

For some minutes it is only Lestrade who speaks; the man's gravelly voice is distinctive, though his words are too muffled to make out. Trepidation sits, cold and heavy, in John's chest at the solemn tone that Lestrade adopts. In the silence that follows, it slides into his stomach. Sherlock has nothing to say to Lestrade's words, it would seem, and John can't remember the last time Sherlock was rendered speechless.

Then Mycroft speaks, his voice silver-smooth and assured. It grates immediately on John's nerves, and apparently doesn't sit well with Sherlock, because it's then that he says something.

"Out."

His voice is clear, and cuts through the door, which slides open. Mycroft emerges, and finally nods to John.

"I apologise for interrupting your evening, Doctor Watson."

He says nothing further, because then Sherlock storms through, shoving open the door fully and making for Mycroft, the expression on his face torn between murderous and horrified. Both look alien on him.

Lestrade is too quick for Sherlock, and grabs his arm when he's centimeters from Mycroft. He hauls Sherlock back and presses him against the wall, holding him there with a hand on his chest and a warning look. Sherlock is breathing heavily, almost gasping, and his wild eyes search Lestrade's face.

"Greg," he whispers, almost pleading, but Lestrade shakes his head solemnly.

"Mr Holmes," Lestrade says to Mycroft, in a voice that is low and tightly controlled. His eyes don't leave Sherlock's face. "I think you had better leave."

"That is hardly polite, Inspector," Mycroft says, infuriatingly level-headed even as his brother is falling apart in front of him.

"Bugger off," Lestrade snaps, and finally looks at him. "You will leave. Whether it's under your own power or by my hand is up to you. Your choice, and make it fast."

Mycroft goes.

Lestrade takes his hand off Sherlock's chest only after the downstairs door opens and closes with a sharp click.

Sherlock sags, the fight leaving with his brother. Under John's eyes, he appears to age ten years. His eyes take on a bruised quality and his cheeks are hollow in the dim living room light, making him appear almost emaciated. He tries to take a step, and staggers.

"Easy, lad," Lestrade says gently. He grasps Sherlock by the upper arm and steers him back into the kitchen. Sherlock allows himself to be pushed without protest. "C'mon. Sit down. There..."

The rest of his sentence is lost, as he slides the door closed once more.

Half an hour passes, and the only sound in the flat comes from Lestrade's occasional murmurs. John tries to focus on his blog, and is able to get half a post written before there comes the scraping of chairs and muffled footsteps. Someone turns on the sink; someone else starts to run the shower. The door opens, and Lestrade emerges, carrying two cups of tea.

"Hullo, John," he greets again, weary. He sets one cup next to John's hand and takes a seat on the other side of the desk, nursing his own mug.

John has known Lestrade long enough to know that he won't volunteer any information about what just happened. He had learned that months ago, back on their first pub night, when he had tried to probe into Sherlock's drug history. Lestrade firmly believes that any personal information needs to come from Sherlock, and though he respects that, John still feels as though he knows even less about his flatmate now than he did the day he moved in.

But he also is not an idiot, nor nearly as unobservant as Sherlock likes to believe, and so he ventures, "It's always hard when it's a parent. Losing them, I mean."

Lestrade's face remains impassive, but he says, "Sherlock's parents are both living."

He takes a sip from his mug and adds, "How's the blog?"

They make meaningless conversation for a little while after that, Lestrade sipping his tea and John staring senselessly at his blog. Lestrade stays until the shower shuts off and a dull snick tells them both that Sherlock has retreated to his room.

There is a message from a dead man on Sherlock's mobile.

He sits on his bed, naked save for the towel around his waist, water dripping from his hair and snaking in rivulets down his spine. He holds his phone in one hand, thumb brushing back and forth across the screen.

The door to the flat opens and closes, signaling Lestrade's departure. It's only then that Sherlock calls up the message. Date-stamped five days ago, he had been too busy to listen to it up until now.

With stiff fingers, Sherlock types in his password and begins the playback.

"Sherlock Holmes, answer your phone." The voice is light and teasing, barely audible over the blowing wind. Sherlock imagines the speaker standing around the side of a building for shelter from the scorching breeze, sand blowing about his head as his voice is transported over thousands of miles. "It's eight o'clock in London; I know you're still awake."

Sherlock shuts the playback off abruptly, and sees that he has missed a text from Mycroft.

My condolences for your loss, but do try to put things into perspective. It is hardly as though you lost a lover .

He grabs the nearest thing in reach-a picture-and whips it at the wall in anger, where it crashes and then slides in pieces to the floor. If John hears, he's ignoring the noise.

"Sex doesn't alarm me," Sherlock had told Mycroft all those months ago, because why should it? It's a feature of their biology, a function, a drive. Stimulus and release. It's simple, predictable. Desired by some, but not by all. Surely Mycroft would understand.

But Mycroft had sneered, "And how would you know?" and Sherlock had sat back, wounded and showing it.

It turned to anger later that day, when he tried to walk Irene Adler through the case of the dead hiker.

"Because you cater to the whims of the pathetic and take your clothes off to make an impression. Stop boring me and think," he snapped finally, because everyone is wrong, so wrong, and so pedestrian that it hurts. They are all so caught up on the physical act that they forget that anything else exists. Sherlock finds his satisfaction in the mind; his stimulation, in the game. His pleasure comes from the case that takes over his brain, stimulating it, bringing him to completion as synapses fire and connections are made. The puzzle seizes him, takes him to dizzying highs, and he finds his release in the process of the solution. And when it is over, he is spent, drained, completed.

It is all he ever has needed; all he's ever desired.

And what the others fail to grasp-or refuse to acknowledge-is that he has always had a lover.

No. Not all the others.

John is, for all his benefits, still an idiot, like the rest of society. Likely he hasn't yet figured out why, when all of Sherlock's acquaintances met him, they assumed the two were dating.

And then there is Lestrade.

"How's your fellow?" he'd ask now and again, discreet to the last, waiting until John was safely out of earshot before voicing the question. He was not about to reveal anything pertaining to Sherlock's life without Sherlock's express permission-not even to his best friend.

"Well enough," Sherlock would reply most days, when he wasn't saying, "Enough, Lestrade! I haven't time for your mindless chatter when there's a murder to solve!" instead.

"Good. Now tell him to get his arse back to London, yeah? He's missed."

But this isn't quite the way Sherlock pictured that particular homecoming.

Lestrade had looked resigned when he stepped into the kitchen that night, his features taut with strain. In retrospect, Sherlock realises now that it's the same face Lestrade wears when he delivers grim news to grieving family members. Mycroft, on his heels, had been as aloof and impeccable as ever.

And Sherlock had been unable to deduce anything from their stance and demeanor. He was too close to this, so close that he was blind to what should have been obvious immediately.

Sherlock, it's Victor.

He knew then, knew before Lestrade managed to push the rest of the words past his throat; knew before Mycroft could offer his scripted condolences.

Lestrade answered the questions Sherlock couldn't ask.

He was captured, looks like. They wanted information. His body... It's evidence right now.

He stayed long after Mycroft left, sat Sherlock in a chair and pushed hot mugs of tea at him while he spoke of the wife he'd buried all those years ago, long before Sherlock came along.

And then he had shoved Sherlock in the direction of the shower; told him to try to get some sleep after. He didn't try to soften the news with useless platitudes. He was frank and blunt, rational because Sherlock couldn't be.

"It's not going to be all right," he'd said before departing. "It's going to hurt, and then it's going to be different. But all right doesn't happen. It just doesn't. And I'm so sorry, lad."

Sherlock drifts into a dreamless sleep, interrupted hours or minutes later by the vibrating of his phone. He grabs it before his mind becomes fully aware, and he is momentarily disappointed when it's Lestrade's name that appears on the screen, and not Victor's.

Then he remembers why it can't possibly be Victor's.

Nonononono

Lestrade's text is to the point.

How are things?

Sherlock fumbles with leaden fingers to type out a reply.

No

He sends the text because it is the only response he can think of; the only one that even remotely makes sense right now.

Nononononono.

For a while he floats, somewhere between the planes of awareness and unconsciousness, and in both states he is plagued with the knowledge that Victor no longer exists. But to face the waking world would be to acknowledge such a fact, and he will not-he will not-give them that.

A while later, he wakes to two texts from Lestrade and one missed call-Mycroft. He tosses his mobile across the room and tries to slip away again. But this is where his body finally betrays him, and he is forced to leave his bed.

The flat is dark and, unable to even make out shadows of furniture in the persistent blackness, he makes his way to the toilet by memory alone. His bare feet sting as they touch the cold floor, the first thing he's truly felt since Lestrade delivered the news.

Nothing feels different, and he doesn't understand why.

He pisses, and then rummages around in the cabinet, emerging with a handful of paracetamol. He takes them, and swims back to bed.

When he wakes again, it is Christmas.

Lestrade comes over under the pretense of helping them set up for that evening's Christmas party. John knows he really means to check on Sherlock, and feels a surge of gratitude. Sherlock has barely left his room since Lestrade's initial visit two days ago; if John had to hazard a guess, he would say that Sherlock hadn't really left his bed, even, going from the lack of noise.

But this morning John had woken to find Sherlock already up, and tending an experiment in the kitchen. His usual acerbic silence and waspish replies to John's attempts at conversation were a relief, though John remained slightly wary.

And so when Lestrade enters the flat with a perfunctory knock around lunchtime, John is relieved, because for a few moments it will be someone else worrying over Sherlock. Lestrade greets John and Mrs Hudson, who are decorating the living room, and then moves into the kitchen. He deposits a bag of takeaway on the table and puts the liquor for the party under the sink.

"I'm not hungry." Sherlock doesn't even glance at the food, preoccupied as he is with his microscope. Lestrade snorts.

"Well, I am. No one said this was for you, lad," he says. He sets out the containers of takeaway and begins to pick at the food. Minutes pass in silence, save for the clink of Lestrade's fork on the plate and Sherlock's occasional muttering.

But then, Sherlock abruptly snatches the fork from Lestrade's hand, stabs at a piece of meat, and shoves it in his mouth before carrying on. A few minutes later, he does the same thing. When Sherlock isn't looking, Lestrade smiles quietly to himself. And John does too, because what Lestrade has picked up on-or perhaps what John himself has learned from Lestrade-is that Sherlock can't resist anything once it is denied him.

Sherlock plays the violin at the Christmas party that evening, the first time he's touched the instrument in days.

John says, "Marvelous!" and means it, because Sherlock truly is a talented player when he's not abusing the instrument. Everyone else repeats his sentiments-everyone except Lestrade, who claps his hand lightly against his glass but whose face remains slightly grim as he watches Sherlock bow.

John chalks it up to Lestrade being preoccupied with the recent rough patch he's hit with his wife, and it is promptly forgotten with the news of Irene Adler's death.

Sherlock doesn't need to see Irene Adler's body in order to identify her remains. He could do it by her face alone, even in the state it is in, but it's the blow to the side of her head that forces his hand. Her parietal is shattered, and her dark hair mingles with brain matter and dried blood. The sight of it stops his brain, his thoughts stuttering to a painful halt. The back of his throat burns, and he tastes bile.

Sherlock has Molly pull back the sheet, and with a glance at the woman's hips and chest he is able to say that it's Adler. He then strides from the room and pauses in the corridor outside, staring through the frosty glass at the falling snow. He takes one breath, and then another, trying to steady himself. His mouth tastes vile and his legs are trembling, and he doesn't understand.

Mycroft comes up behind him and misinterprets his silence, which is just as well, as he gets a cigarette out of it. When Mycroft lights it, Sherlock hopes he doesn't notice the tremor in his hand.

"Did you ever wonder if there was something wrong with us?" Sherlock asks.

He actually means What is wrong with me? because oblivion is as commonplace as the weather, and just as inevitable. And yet, the sight of the dead woman's dark head set against the crisp white of the pillow nauseates him; the casually falling snow outside infuriates him.

The world goes on, and it is maddening.

Sherlock goes home, and dreams that night of an ebony head resting on the pillow next to him. He sleeps with his head tucked just under Victor's chin, and wakes to a cold bed and the fading sensation of a phantom kiss.

Days later, John catches Sherlock composing sad music, and he hasn't eaten a full meal since that Christmas lunch with Lestrade.

He thinks it's the closest he's ever come to seeing Sherlock heartbroken, and says as much in a warehouse on New Year's Eve.

Irene Adler smiles at him, a slow twisting of her lips into a sly snake's grin, as though he hasn't quite grasped what is ailing his friend. And John hates her then, because no one knows Sherlock like he does, and no one before Adler has ever presumed as much. No,he has this all figured out.

Sherlock is grieving. Irene Adler is the cause.

He will fix this.

"Tell him you're alive."

The Woman lives, while Victor's charred remains are lying tagged and catalogued in a morgue, evidence in an ongoing investigation.

Mrs Hudson is injured and Baker Street violated, the second assault on Sherlock's world in as many weeks.

His hand tightens around the mobile, channeling his anger there in order to keep his finger from setting off the trigger of the gun he holds in his other hand.

"No, it's the burglar," he tells Lestrade with grim satisfaction. "He fell out of a window."

"So. She's alive," John says later, when things have been set right-or as right as they are ever going to be. Sherlock pauses in playing the violin long enough to spare John a withering glance.

Obvious.

"And how are we feeling about that?" John continues.

Sherlock turns away, tucking the violin back under his chin and abusing the strings until they scream Victor, Victor! and everything else fades away.

Happy New Year, he texts Irene Adler, because she's not Victor but she's the closest Sherlock's ever going to come to speaking to him again.

Victor had been brilliant; dazzling in the way that complex mathematical theorems were dazzling. He had been beautiful, in the way that the physical laws that bound their universe were beautiful.

Sherlock had wanted to slip inside Victor's mind and feel his thoughts; watch his brain as it pulsed and processed. He had wanted to consume Victor; know everything there was to know about him. There had been so many questions at the beginning, and so many that remained here at the end.

He had been clever, matching Sherlock wit-for-wit and word-for-word. And Sherlock needs that challenge; needs that stimulation. Without it, he is nothing, and his mind rots.

And so when Irene Adler appears in their flat with a fragment of an email, Sherlock leaps on it; solves it in eight seconds flat because it has been so very long since he's had a puzzle. More than that, it's been so long since he's had someone to impress; someone who is so close to being on his level that the experience of impressing is meaningful. But his solution falls flat, and he is left bereft; empty instead of sated.

"I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice," is her pathetic response to his display, and he sneers at her.

"I've never begged for mercy in my life," he lies.

He has-exactly once-and has nothing to show for it.

Let him live.

"Twice," she says, smirking, and he has to ball his hands into fists to keep from striking her. He wants nothing more than to make her bleed, make her cry out under blows the way Victor must have.

Clever, clever. You were clever like he was and look where it got you.

"Have dinner with me."

It is her refrain, and Sherlock is disappointed, because he thought that she was better than that. He has only met a handful of people on this sorry planet who can even begin to match his intellect, who can send him to new highs and provide more forms of stimulus. But the only stimulation she is interested in providing him, it would seem, involves a whip and an erection.

Stimulation, arousal, ejaculation

Dull, tedious, boring

She is persistent.

"If this was the end of the world-if it was the very last night-would you have dinner with me?"

She takes his hand, and all he wants to do is scream.

Fool. The world's already ended.

He is saved from answering by Mrs Hudson, and his brother's lackeys.

She has played him.

No. He has allowed himself to be played.

The cold realisation sinks in as he takes in his brother's solution to the Coventry Conundrum; as he gazes out at the grey, lifeless faces of the plane's dead passengers.

Love is a dangerous disadvantage , he's always believed, but he had bought Victor a ring all the same. A dangerous disadvantage indeed, because Victor's death has made him vulnerable in ways he didn't know existed. He is broken, cracked, Victor's absence leaving a gaping hole in his thought processes that Irene Adler saw, and manipulated spectacularly.

He should feel admiration.

He feels nothing at all.

"The damsel in distress," Mycroft says humorlessly. "In the end, are you really so obvious?"

"Don't be absurd," Sherlock hisses, because there is only Victor.

There has only ever been Victor.

He sits in front of the fireplace, his mind numb, only half-listening to Mycroft's conversation with Adler. And in the end, he almost lets her get away with it, almost. He nearly lets her walk away with everything, carrying off half the nation's wealth, but his brother is in despair and it is his fault. He had been too eager for the puzzle; too desperate for the distraction.

And though Victor is dead because of Mycroft, Sherlock isn't ready for his brother to be undone quite yet.

No. Mycroft is destined for a much bigger fall. It will come.

But not tonight.

He took her pulse, and he breaks her password. She looks at him through tear-filled eyes, and he squeezes the mobile in his hand to keep from striking her.

Victor didn't cry.

"Are you expecting me to beg?"

"Yes," Sherlock snarls.

Yes, beg like he did. As I did. Beg, and see what little good it will do you.

Instead, he hisses, "Sorry about dinner," and isn't sorry at all.

Two weeks later, he's on a plane to Karachi. He lands in a country awash in sand and stained with Victor's blood, and comes the closest he ever will to saving his lover.

The pain of loss, the joy of redemption. In the end, are you really so obvious?

John finds Sherlock on the roof.

He's sitting cross-legged, glass in hand, an open bottle of alcohol sitting next to him. John hasn't seen him for days, not since Sherlock returned from a last-minute trip to meet with a client, or so he'd claimed. He returned to Baker Street five days ago and, until tonight, hadn't left his room while John was in the flat.

John isn't sure whether it's the weak light from the streetlamp that makes Sherlock look so ill, or something else entirely. His skin is paper-thin and he appears to have dropped a good deal of weight in too short a time.

"Lestrade's been 'round a couple of times," John says by way of greeting. "You were asleep."

"I'm aware."

John doesn't leave, though he recognises the warning tone in Sherlock's voice. Instead, he sits down next to Sherlock and picks up the liquor. He takes a long drink directly from the bottle, and then hands it back to Sherlock, who makes a disapproving noise but doesn't shun the alcohol. He tops off his drink and then sets the bottle aside.

"You don't drink."

"Incorrect," Sherlock says. He takes a swallow, as though for emphasis. "You know very well that I do."

"Not at home."

"No. Not at home." Sherlock turns his face to the sky. "I went to Cambridge."

"Like Sebastian Wilkes?" John doesn't even blink at the odd segue, and Sherlock gives a humorless laugh.

"Indeed." Sherlock takes another drink from his glass. "But he was an idiot, as was nearly everyone else."

"I'm sure," John says. He takes a drink from the bottle, and for a long time neither of them speak. Traffic crawls along below them, and the setting sun has cast the entirety of Baker Street into shadow.

"Gravity's a law," Sherlock muses.

"Yeah..."

"Law, not theory," Sherlock goes on. "Interesting, yes?"

John doesn't think so, not really, but he nods anyway and wonders how much Sherlock's had to drink.

"Laws are statements based on repeated observations, and they describe some aspect of our world. They tell us what will happen, but not why it happens. That's what theories are for."

"Look, Sherlock, much as I appreciate the science lesson..."

"You don't understand me," Sherlock says abruptly.

John blinks. "Er... cheers, mate."

Sherlock waves away his indignation. "You know perfectly well what I mean. You like me well enough, I think. So does Lestrade. But you don't... you can't comprehend me."

"S'pose that's a point," John admits grudgingly, if this nonsense conversation is anything to go by, and Sherlock nods to himself. They descend into silence once more, and John begins to contemplate going to bed. Sherlock is quite obviously a bit intoxicated, and his thoughts are more sporadic than usual. John has a hard enough time keeping up with Sherlock when he's sober. Uninhibited, his brain is traveling in directions John can't even begin to follow.

"I was bitten by a dog once," Sherlock says suddenly. John doesn't know whether to laugh or mutter in sympathy, and so settles for taking another drink. "In the ankle. Minor inconvenience, little more than an irritation, but the dog's owner was particularly apologetic. He was almost more of an annoyance than the dog, in all honesty, so I allowed him to tend to the wound in an effort to silence him."

Sherlock takes another drink, and then pulls out a packet of cigarettes. He lights one and smokes for a few minutes before continuing, his words stumbling as his mind wanders.

"We got to talking. He... I underestimated him. He proved to be intriguing. Victor Trevor. His name. He was reading economics-hardly an interesting subject, but he was quite brilliant at it."

"High praise," John says dryly, but Sherlock shakes his head.

"No. It's simply a truth. Victor was brilliant." The last sentence is said in a reverent near-whisper. "His mind was astounding, John. He even caught Mycroft's eye."

"Caught yours as well," John ventures, and Sherlock does not contradict him.

"Mycroft offered him a position directly out of university. It was fine, for a time." Sherlock is staring blankly at the building across from them. He blinks several times, and says, softer, "Good. It was good. We... got a flat. Tiny thing. The bed folded up into the wall. But it was... pleasant. We made things more permanent. I started consulting for Lestrade. Victor started traveling for Mycroft. He had to spend more and more time abroad. Eventually the flat became impractical, and we sold it. It... this... Baker Street, this was only supposed to be temporary. Until he could come home."

"You never said," John says softly.

"It didn't seem relevant."

"Not rele - Sherlock, how is your... your husband irrelevant?"

"He's not," Sherlock says harshly. And then his voice softens. "He wasn't. Not to me. It just never came up. He wasn't going to be home for the foreseeable future, and his few visits happened to coincide with weekends you were visiting your sister."

"When Lestrade came over... just before Christmas..." John trails off, pieces starting to click into place. Sherlock gives a jerky nod.

"Victor was working in Pakistan. Classified job, couldn't talk much about it." Sherlock stubs out his cigarette, which has burned itself out. When he speaks again, his voice is continents away. "He was captured. Tortured for information-which, I'm told, he never gave. Then they killed him, and destroyed his body."

Sherlock comes back to himself with a small shake of his head. "I was a widower for two days before Lestrade brought the news. It took them that long to identify his remains. I don't even know why he died, and there's nothing left to bury."

"I -" John stops; swallows. How could we not know?he'd asked Mrs Hudson. "God, Sherlock, I don't even know what to say. I'm... I'm sorry."

Sherlock nods absently. "Lestrade's first wife died. Nearly twenty years ago, not long after they were married. He says the pain doesn't get better; it just becomes different." Sherlock pauses. "I don't know how I'm supposed to feel."

"Sod all that," John says vehemently. "Forget what you're supposed to feel. How do you feel?"

"I don't feel anything." Sherlock lights another cigarette. He smokes half of it before slowly shaking his head. "No. I feel like the world ended, only no one's bothered to notice. You all just... go on." Sherlock takes another drag. "I don't understand."

John doesn't say anything to that. They drink until the bottle is finished, and then Sherlock offers the cigarette packet to John, and he accepts on a whim. It's been years since he last smoked, but he can set that aside for a moment of solidarity with his grieving friend.

"I knew a man once," John says. "Fellow soldier. He finished out his contract; got discharged. Made it all the way back to England, only to die in a car crash on his way home to see his wife.

"So, if it helps... I don't understand, either."

Sherlock nods.

John reaches for the empty bottle, and holds it up in silent question.

"Victor was a recovering alcoholic," Sherlock says in explanation. He gives a small shrug. "I became accustomed to not having alcohol in the flat. When he left, the habit remained."

"Ah." John puts the bottle aside. He muses, "I saw, but I didn't observe."

He passes a hand over his face. Glancing out at the lights across from them and the cars that frequent the street below, he finds his vision blurred. He doesn't know whether this is from exhaustion or the drink, but either way, he needs to go to bed.

"Go," Sherlock says, reading his mind. "I'm going to stay."

"Er... if you're sure..." John trails off.

"I have no intention of throwing myself off this building, if that's what concerns you." Sherlock waves a hand. "Go."

When John's footsteps finally fade up the stairs, Sherlock reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

"Sherlock Holmes, answer your phone. It's eight o'clock in London; I know you're still awake." Victor's voice holds a barely-concealed smile. "You're probably in the kitchen right now, working on an experiment that requires your undivided attention -"

Sherlock pulls the phone away from his ear and contemplates erasing the message. Just one press of the button, and Victor's worn voice-not enough sleep; overworked; on the brink of the flu-will be gone forever. It will no longer haunt him.

Instead, he ends the call and slips the phone back into his pocket.

Victor's voice plays on in his head, anyway.

Sherlock keeps Irene Adler's phone as a reminder, because he cannot have Victor's ring.

I've always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.

Victor's cremated remains come home on a rainy Saturday in February.

Sherlock refuses to have anything to do with them.

Mycroft takes John to meet the plane, because John believes Victor deserved at least that much. They stand in solemn silence, John's eyes tracking the small box of ashes as it changes hands, from one official to another. He wishes he could take Victor back to Baker Street, but he doesn't have that authorization.

No. He wishes he could take Victor back to Sherlock, whole and well, but he doesn't have that power.

The remains go to Molly Hooper's morgue, where they sit, unclaimed.

Only one of Victor's personal effects survives the interrogation; the murder; the burning. It is found weeks after his death, in another sweep of the abandoned building where he died.

It is transported across thousands of miles; exchanges half a dozen hands before it crosses Greg Lestrade's desk.

He takes it to Baker Street on an afternoon when John is out, and puts it into Sherlock's unwilling hand.

"Take it," he says, curling Sherlock's stiff fingers around the cool metal. "He'd want you to have it."

"How dare you presume to know what he would have wanted," Sherlock snarls, used to Lestrade allowing him leeway these past few months, even more so than is normal.

But this time, Lestrade's face hardens, and he says, "Stop acting like a child. You weren't his only friend, Sherlock."

When he leaves, Sherlock slowly unfolds his hand, and plucks the ring from his palm. The gold band is dirty, stained with Victor's blood, but Sherlock slips it onto his hand anyway.

Weeks pass.

Sherlock starts taking on cases again. He puts on weight and stops wearing Victor's ring. John knows that he's held onto it, though, from his many sweeps of Sherlock's bedroom on danger nights. It sits on his bedside table, next to a cracked picture frame that is now devoid of a photograph.

Victor's name is never mentioned under Baker Street's roof, and John can't tell whether that's unhealthy or part of Sherlock's very particular grieving process, so he doesn't say anything.

With the spring comes a flurry of new cases, and in March they are in Dartmoor, tracking down a demon hound.

"I don't have friends," Sherlock hisses to John at one point during the investigation, and that stings, because though he's lost Victor, he will always have John.

And when he says, later, "I just have one," that hurts even more, because John can never make this right for Sherlock.

The hound is put to rest that night, but Sherlock's demons don't die nearly as easily.

John and Lestrade retreat to the cold fireplace, where they sit and drink, exchanging few words. Sherlock paces the inn, restless, because every time he stands still his hands start to shake; every time he closes his eyes, Moriarty grins back at him out of the fog.

Every time there is a silence, he hears Victor's screams.

He pauses finally in one of the rooms, leaning against the cold stone wall and pulling out his mobile. He calls up the voicemail, and tries to play it.

"Sherlock Holmes, answer your phone. It's eight o'clock in London; I know you're still awake."

With a roar, Sherlock hurls the phone at the opposite wall. The world grows white, and then he is falling.

Lestrade is out of his chair first at the sound of the crash, and bolts into the next room while John scrambles after him.

Sherlock's face is a mixture of agony and fury, his mouth twisted in a cry and his eyes blazing. When his legs give out, Lestrade is closest, and he manages to catch Sherlock just before he hits the floor. Sherlock latches onto him, fingers digging into Lestrade's back, face smacking the other man's shoulder as they both collapse on the ground.

The wail that tears itself from Sherlock's throat is inhuman, even muffled against Lestrade's fabric-clad shoulder. He trembles, entire body quaking, but there are no tears. A terrible silence follows, and then Sherlock bellows again, screaming his agony into the void.

John and Lestrade linger in the corridor upstairs after Sherlock stumbles off to bed. John leans against the wall just next to their door; Lestrade stands across from him, fiddling with his lighter to keep from reaching for a cigarette. Sentries at the gate, John supposes, though little good they are against Sherlock's grief.

"Did you know him?" John asks finally.

"Yeah," Lestrade says quietly. His voice carries in a way that John's doesn't, and so he's careful to keep his words hushed. It is an illusion; they both know that Sherlock likely isn't sleeping. "Knew him for about four years before Mycroft shipped him off to God-knows-where. Good bloke. Bloody brilliant. It was like he and Sherlock had their own language when they spoke. Left everyone else in the dust. Think you'd've liked him."

"Sherlock did," John murmurs, because he doesn't know what to say to that.

"Yeah." Lestrade's voice sounds far away. "God, did he ever."

Jim Moriarty puts on a show for Sherlock; breaks into the three most secure places in England and then walks away with the entire country watching him.

It is delightful, for a time.

But then come the kidnapped children, and the doubt, and Sherlock walking around London with literal blood on his hands as two men are gunned down in front of his eyes.

Moriarty is destroying him, piece by piece; chipping away at his life's work, undermining his skills and making him seem ordinary.

It's all a game. A game that Sherlock's no longer willing to play.

And so, on a cold morning in June, Sherlock sits in the morgue.

John has left to sit at Mrs Hudson's non-existent bedside, and in a few minutes Sherlock will be meeting Moriarty on the roof of Barts.

But first, he has retreated here, because Victor's remains reside in one of Molly's meticulously-labeled refrigerated cabinets. Sherlock doesn't know which one, and doesn't want to find out. All that matters is that, for the first time in nearly a year-and for the last time ever-he's in the same room as his lover.

He sits on the floor with his back against the refrigerated tombs and pulls out his phone.

He keys in his password and then slides the phone away, out of arm's reach. When the message starts to play, he places his hands over his eyes and rests his elbows on his knees, blocking out all light.

"Sherlock Holmes, answer your phone..."

Victor manages to break away from the group once they've finished off a late dinner. They have been working together since dawn, slaving away over computers and ledgers in a stifling building, which protected them from the sand outside but not from the heat. After the sun goes down, he ducks outside for a hint of breeze, even if it is a warm one. Anything that will stir the lifeless, damp hair on the back of his neck and the clothing that is clinging uncomfortably to his body.

He digs out his mobile and, on a whim, presses 1, for the man who has always been first and foremost in his life.

"Sherlock Holmes, answer your phone," Victor says in exasperation when the call rings through. The wind picks up, and he hopes his words aren't being drowned out. "It's eight o'clock in London; I know you're still awake."

Victor sits on a low, stone wall, looking out into the darkness of the desert. Behind him, the lights of the small town provide the only illumination around for miles. When he speaks again, his voice is fond. "You're probably in the kitchen right now, working on an experiment that requires your undivided attention, and so you can't possibly answer your phone. Or... no, don't tell me. You're dashing about London on a case. I hope John's with you, at least, keeping you from mortal peril."

He slips the top two buttons on his sand-tinged beige shirt out of their holes, exposing his neck and collarbone to the thick desert air.

"I got an email from Greg the other day. Sent me the deerstalker picture. You're looking well, kid. Living with John must be doing you some good. You've put on, what-three pounds? Five? Good, regardless.

"Speaking of which, I've been keeping up with his blog. The Speckled Blonde? Fantastic, as always. Though, really, did you have to leave a decomposing mouse out on the counter?" Victor snorts. "It's good to know you haven't changed much, I guess.

"And don't worry; I've been keeping up with your site as well. Showed the rest of the boys your two hundred and forty-three types of tobacco ash. We had a good time trying to figure out what it was we had here. None, as it turned out. Makes you wonder what they make these cigarettes with. Might be interesting to study. You could make an excuse; come out here for scientific purposes. Make it two hundred and forty-four types of tobacco ash."

Victor scrubs a hand across his face.

"Yes, that was my way of telling you that you're missed."

He pauses, sucking in a fiery-hot breath, and then says, "You're brilliant," which means, "You're beautiful," because they are one and the same.

He adds, "And I love you," because it is a truth, and Sherlock has always appreciated true things.

It is a truth, in the way that the sun is a truth; in the way that oblivion is a truth.

It is a law, in the way that gravity is a law. No one has ever dropped something and had it fall up instead of down; Victor has never not loved Sherlock.

"I might be coming home soon," Victor goes on. He twists the ring on his left hand, rubbing the gold band between sweaty fingers. He smiles to himself. "Might even make it back for Christmas, in fact. Nothing's set yet, so don't get your hopes up, but you might be seeing me very soon. Be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Victor!"

Victor sighs.

"I'm being summoned, it would seem," he says. He turns his face to the clear sky; knows that, miles up, it is frigid. Knows that, wherever Sherlock is, they are seeing the same stars. It is a small comfort, but a comfort all the same. "Give Mrs Hudson my love. Try not to be too hard on Greg. Be well."

He speaks his truth again-I love you-and rings off.