A/N: Just a warning. This is going to be pretty angsty. Look away now if you want what's left of your heart to stay in one piece.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of these characters. I merely like to put them through pain and sorrow.

The world was grieving for Sherlock Holmes.

It was a duller and far more mundane place to live in without his existence.

Even the sky of London was a constant shade of heavy grey, like a gravestone hovering over the great city, a constant reminder that something or rather someone is missing and that someone isn't coming back.

No one had expected Sherlock to die. No one could have possibly predicted it.

Not John.

Sherlock had been unbeatable in his eyes, an angel, a being so brilliant that he could overcome anything and anyone.

Except angels can fly and Sherlock didn't fly. He fell to the ground, his wings dispersed mid-flight and when he hit the ground his skull spilt open with a sickening crack. His blood had seeped out around his ice cold corpse and his long limbs that had been used to run on dash sprints after criminals so often had been strewn out, bent into awkward angles. The detective wouldn't be running any more. Sherlock had crossed the finishing line but he wasn't a winner. He'd lost the battle. The final battle. The final problem.

That had been the moment that John realized that his friend was more human than he could have ever possibly imagined.

Sherlock was beaten. Sherlock was dead. He was bleeding. He'd committed suicide to cope with the pain of being known to the world as a 'fraud.'

John constantly wishes that he could rewrite time so that he could have reached Sherlock before he'd jumped. He would have screamed his belief in the man out loud if that would have stopped him from taking the fall.

But John can't rewrite time and Sherlock remains dead, and John remains breathing but barely alive. Inside he's dead and broken beyond any form of repair.

Whenever he looked down at his tanned skin he can still see the crimson red marking his fingertips. Because at the end of the day he killed Sherlock. It was his fault.

As he stands in front of his friends grave one thought flits through his mind.

I believe in Sherlock Holmes.

He never doubted him, not before his death, not during that heart breaking phone call, and especially not now that death had taken his friend from him.

He dreams of the day Sherlock can come home to him, the day that the pompous detective walks through the door like nothing has happened.

He knows that that day shall never come.

The dead remain dead.

That doesn't stop him dreaming.

Lestrade had been sitting behind his desk completing the dull task of filing paperwork when he received the phone call that would change his life forever. Oh if Sherlock could have seen him. He would have probably commented with his usual dead pan of "Boring." Ironically the paper work that he had had that night had been the result of the curly haired man.

Except Sherlock hadn't been there to comment on the mundane task. He had been far too busy ending his life.

Lestrade had cried for hours after the phone call, his hands still clutched the phone, his knuckles a deadly white, the heavy burden of the consulting detectives death crushing him.

The guilt that he felt in that moment still remains, just as strong as it ever was. It was his fault. He'd listened to Anderson and Donovan and he had been the one to try to arrest Sherlock, twice.

Sherlock was a good man, not a fake. The accusations were and had always been wrong. Lestrade supposed that's why Sherlock's death had hit him so hard. His death had been an awful waste. He was so young, too young to die, and Greg Lestrade had helped push him to the edge because of what? Because his job had been on the line, because he had a slight amount of doubt placed in his mind, because it was easier to blame Sherlock, because he was once again seeing and not observing.

He was an idiot.

Somewhere out there he can hear Sherlock's baritone laugh agreeing with his conclusion.

The truth was out now.

Sherlock's innocence was proven when the little girl that had screamed her lungs out upon the sight of him went through therapy and the whole story came tumbling out. She had been told that her brother and she would be killed upon sight if she didn't scream when the funny detective came to see her.

Of course the girl had screamed.

Whenever a particularly hard case come about now the D.I tilts his head up to the sky, heavy with rain. He waits till the rain drops spill from the clouds like a waterfall of tears, tears that he can't or won't shed himself, at least not in front of his team.

He thinks of Sherlock in those moments and clings onto a tiny shimmer of hope and thinks one foolish thing to himself.

I believe in Sherlock Holmes.

Mycroft Holmes should have seen this coming, his baby brother's death.

In fact part of him always had. Sherlock was well known for his destructive behaviour when he couldn't deal with certain emotions.

Mycroft had always assumed that it would be drugs, or alcohol, or even a bullet to end his brother. He hadn't thought that in the end it would be himself that would bring around Sherlock's death, but it had been him.

The government official knows that betraying his brother was wrong, that he handed Moriarty the perfect ammunition to destroy Sherlock. And destroy Moriarty did.

It is anybody's guess to why Sherlock chose to end his life in such a way but Mycroft Holmes knows that once the world believed Sherlock was a fake his brother's pride would take a detrimental hit. Perhaps it had been too much for his brother to handle alone.

Alone.

Sherlock shouldn't have had to deal with any of this alone. He shouldn't have had to deal with anything.

Mycroft should have protected him, should have chosen his blood over his nation.

Mycroft Holmes had failed his baby brother and all for a computer code that he had been reliably informed didn't and hadn't existed.

He had not cried over his Sherlock's death. Mycroft Holmes despised crying and knew that Sherlock would have mocked him for acting on such ridiculous and sentimental feelings.

Instead he threw himself deeper into his work, spiralling down into a deep hole that he neither wanted or could climb out of, forgetting the diet, forgetting everything in fact.

Because if for one moment he remembered he just might do something awful and reckless, and Mycroft Holmes couldn't afford to be reckless, not with his job on the line.

Again his job came before his brother and he felt an emotion that he supposed was self- hatred and self-blame.

He glared out of his office window and hoped that this was one of his little brother's games, that he wasn't dead, that he was very much alive, that he had missed something and Sherlock wasn't truly dead, that maybe now that his innocence had been proven he would return. He'd give anything to bicker childishly with his brother once more.

"I believe in you, Sherlock. " He found himself muttering to himself idly one day. "I believe in Sherlock Holmes."

Mrs Hudson had been beside herself when she had been told of Sherlock's death. It had been like losing a beloved son.

She still makes two cups of tea in the morning to bring up to 221B.

She misses the experiments, the vile smells that would constantly linger in the flat. She sometimes looks stays up at night, waiting for the sound of bullets hitting the wall in 221B, or the sound of sorrowful music floating through the air. Like a mother she waits for her son to return to her safe and sound.

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