The Fall Of Sherlock

Back where we Started.

"You should tell him. He deserves to know. He's... he's heartbroken."
"I can't tell him. You know that. He'll understand."
"They're all crushed."
Sherlock bowed his head as Molly spoke to him. He knew that his friends would be suffering, and that their suffering wouldn't end until he came home to them. If he ever did, mind.
"Do you still have the camera?"
Molly nodded and her fingers fumbled about her lapel, collecting the camera that Sherlock had readily attached earlier and handed it back to him.
"Thank you, Molly."
A small smile came to her lips, but it was more sad than it was happy.
"Are you going to watch it?"
"That's the plan."
"Today?"
"Well, yes... there's little point in delaying the inevitable. Moriarty's criminal web is just going to grow so long as I'm in London. The sooner I go, the better. But... there are a handful of things I want to do first," he said, almost proudly, tucking the small camera in his pocket and then tapping it with his hand. A silence followed, and Sherlock wasn't sure if he should say anything.
"You'll come back, though, won't you?"
He smiled softly, glad that somebody was showing concern for his return already.
"I hope so."
Molly looked down at the floor, unsure herself of what to do. So Sherlock opened his mouth again.
"Will you... miss me, whilst I'm away?"
She nodded.
"You know I will. We all will."
He laughed a little. "Good... good," he smiled, genuinely. "Well then, Molly Hooper - I suppose this is goodbye. For now."
He leaned in and kissed her cheek, knowing how much it would mean to her. Flustered, she struggled to say anything at all in response, words just falling off of her tongue as he walked away from her.

Sherlock had sat alone in Mycroft's office for a good couple of hours. Of course, Mycroft didn't know he was there. Don't be silly. But that might be amongst the top guesses his older brother may have had if he knew Sherlock wasn't where he was 'supposed' to be that evening.
Not even security knew he was in there. It was remarkable how easy it had been to slip through them, but hardly surprising. This was Sherlock's 42nd successful attempt of 42.
There was something so comforting in being under his brother's security, yet being nowhere near his brother. He could get away with anything and not be berated for it, if he played his cards correctly.

Sherlock was frantically tapping away at the desk with the tips of his fingers, not that he'd know. His eyes had been fixated, unblinking, at the camera and recording device for six minutes. Including the time he had occasionally blinked, Sherlock had been staring for the full two hours.
"Damn it, this is ridiculous."
His hand shot up and grabbed them both, downloading the content onto his laptop, when he began to pace, tapping his fingers together.
It took a couple of minutes, but then the laptop made a distinct chime to let him know the content had been downloaded.
Sitting down and pressing play, he saw first the scene in the funeral. Molly's quiet breaths accompanied the footage of the service. There was something uniquely daunting about seeing his own coffin at the front, and something dampening about the fact that there were not even enough people at the service to act as pallbearers, so the coffin was already set up there.
He was completely still until he saw John move up to the lectern, and he adjusted his seating but could not, no matter how he moved, find a comfortable position. And when he saw the usually-composed doctor reduced to a shaking, apologetic mess in front of a handful of his closest confidantes, the detective looked down at his hands in shame. He had remembered the distraught shock on John's face while he laid on the pavement at the bottom of St Bart's, who his hands had trembled as he attempted to find any trace of a pulse.
Sherlock was quickly yanked back into reality when he heard the voice of his friend, Graham.
Graham? George? Gary?
He really wished he remembered for sure now.
Whatever his name was, he was flattered by what he was saying. But he could hear the guilty undertones lacing through his voice, and a similar regret hit Sherlock like a freight train. He could tell Lestrade had started smoking again. Funnily enough, so had he.
He watched his coffin be lowered into the ground and covered by the earth, overcome by the eeriness of it. Despite his fascination with the macabre, this was surreal even to his standards.
Having heard John's doubts and regrets and the rest of his friends' reassurances towards him, he was thankful that he had such caring people to surround him in his own absence.

Just the recording now. Sherlock knew this would contain everything John wanted to say. What he had no time to say over the phone before his fall. What he wouldn't say in fear of his own insanity in private. And what he couldn't finish during the funeral service.
And that is exactly what he heard. Every word.
He just wanted to lay a hand on his friend's shoulder.
Of course John would always believe in him. Of course he would think him so irrevocably human. When nobody else did.
And now he had left the doctor alone. Again. As alone as he was after the war.
But the doctor didn't owe him anything. Because Sherlock Holmes owed the doctor his life. He just didn't know he still lived.
And he knew that for the years he would be absent, Sherlock Holmes would owe him a massive apology.

And just as he was about to shut down the laptop and work out a way out of the dark office and into the world again, the laptop chimed once more.
Dr John Watson had made a late-night post on his blog.