I decided to add a second chapter! This will be the last one though. Please, please, please tell me what you think! Like it? Hate it? Too fast, too slow? Ok, thank you! Enjoy!

It had been nearly three years to the day when it happened.

It was bitterly cold out. The wind was biting and sharp, blowing up coats and blustering through doorways. There had been a dull gray fog hanging low in the London sky for weeks. Given the miserable weather, Lestrade wanted nothing more than to burrow down in his bed and forget about everything he had to do. Unfortunately, such dreams are nearly impossible to achieve in this harsh world, which is why Lestrade found himself slouching bleary-eyed at his desk and three-thirty in the morning on a particularly nasty February day.

Just hours before, they had caught a killer who had been giving them trouble for over eighteen months, and DI Lestrade had been given the honor of filling out the appropriate paperwork. It couldn't have waited until morning – they needed it done, and they needed it done yesterday, and so it seemed that a nice warm cup of tea and a good twelve-hour sleep were not in Lestrade's immediate future.

Bleeding idiots, the lot of them, he thought with a grumble. Can't even decently catch one criminal, and then when they do, they shove all the real work on me. Of course, he was not exempt from this band of incompetent blunderers, but he really wasn't in the mood to acknowledge that. As their superior, he had the right to insult them as much as he liked. At least they got sleep. His best substitute for that was coffee, and it was a bloody awful one. Grimacing, he downed the last dregs of his hour-old roast, pulling a face at the cold slosh. He sighed, bringing his hand up and rubbing his eyes. He hadn't slept in what felt like years, and it had begun to take its toll.

It was at times like these – with terribly clever criminals, too much paperwork, and too little sleep – that he missed him the most. That he missed Sherlock the most. He would've cut Lestrade's work in half, if not even more, and been cheekily annoying while doing so. With but a quick swish of that bloody coat that made him look like some stupid vampire, he would have solved the case, mouthed off to Anderson, and skipped away to play with some poor dead fellow's liver or something. Lestrade missed the speed by which everything used to be sorted, and he missed that idiot's snide remarks and ugly insults. He missed John Watson, whom he hadn't spoken to in months. He missed having that brilliant man working with him – he missed having his boy to keep an eye on. He could always rely on the kid – on his kid, really. He could call him that. Had always considered him that (not that he'd have ever admitted it to Sherlock when he was still alive). He'd practically raised Sherlock into what he is – was. He had helped him find detective work, the one thing he had flourished in. He'd sort of managed to almost train him to behave semi-acceptably in public at times. He'd taken the kid in before he had made enough money to live on his own. So, yeah, Lestrade missed working with Sherlock.

But he missed just seeing him even more.

With his head still in his hands, Lestrade groaned. He only let himself think about Sherlock when he was alone and it was late and he was too tired to fight it. He tried distracting himself with his job and with other people, and he managed, mostly. But at night, when he had no one to keep him company, his mind turned to the deceased detective. Being lonely did that to you, he supposed. It made you think of the people you've lost, of all you've lost, and all you could have done to keep it with you.

Thank you, Sherlock had said.

Most nights, it was all Lestrade could do to keep from sobbing back, No, Sherlock. No. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Sherlock should have put his thanks elsewhere, Lestrade knew. And he probably had. He had thanked Lestrade years ago – he had most likely retracted that trust and that thanks from Lestrade and hidden it away again. Or maybe he had given it to John.

Oh well. It didn't matter now. He was dead, and nothing could change that now.

Maybe Lestrade could've changed it then. But not now.

Shaking his head and sniffing, Lestrade lifted his head again. He had a lot of work to do, and sitting here mooning about the past wasn't going to get anything done.

Lestrade reached his hands above his head and stretched, wincing as his back cracked and popped. It was now five in the morning, and he had just finished his paperwork. He slumped, sighing. The rest of his team wouldn't be to the station until six, or maybe six-thirty. The lazy ones wouldn't wander in until seven. He supposed he could pop over to the coffee shop down the road – he had a long day ahead of him with very little rest to power himself through it. He could use all the caffeinated help he could get.

He readied himself to get out of his chair (which, after sitting in it for so long, would take much effort – he did not want to think of how old his bones were getting) – and paused.

There was someone in the station.

He knew, rationally, that the sound of the door down the hall opening could have been anyone – an early arrival, a janitor, one of his superiors who needed a file – but after being in an empty, half dark office by himself since two-thirty, he had become jittery. The god-awful fluorescents that provided light in his glass cubicle were the only lights on his floor of the building at the moment, and, as a result, everything had taken on a creepy pallor, the shadows stretching out farther than usual and the slight green of the walls slightly luminescent. He felt ridiculous being wary of there being someone he couldn't see in the dark somewhere, but bloody hell, he had been chasing a murderer earlier that evening and was therefore completely justified in being shaken.

At least, that was his excuse for his tentative call of, "Hello? Anyone there?"

He sounded pathetic, but as Detective Inspector, he could play off pathetic as tired, or cautious, if need be. One of the perks of the job.

"Hello?" he called again. "It's just me here at the moment. D'you need any help finding anything?"

There was no reply, but he heard a swish of fabric and a few footsteps.

"Damn it, just let me know who's down here so I don't have to call security," he called.

A few more footsteps sounded, and a figure stepped into the glow of his office lighting.

"I can assure you, Detective Inspector, that that will not be necessary."

Well, Lestrade panicked.

Of course he did.

When your deceased friend and colleague comes to you in your office and five in the bloody morning, what the hell else are you supposed to do but panic?

Granted, the poor little Sherlock ghost-zombie probably didn't deserve to have a stapler thrown at its head, but when you panic, you panic, and sometimes blunt, heavy objects end up getting thrown at apparitions.

Actually, if the Sherlock ghost-zombie was anything like the live Sherlock, it had probably said so many nasty things in the past hour alone that pelting office supplies at it was probably well-justified.

The Sherlock-thing ducked out of the way and stood back up, straight as an arrow, ignoring Lestrade's curses and shouts and general panicking.

Which, in retrospect, was actually quite generous of him, really.

Lestrade gripped the back of his chair, which he had leapt behind with a start almost as soon as he's seen the figure emerge from the shadows. He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself, which was a very difficult thing to do, as he was being faced with a man who had been declared dead three years ago. There was just no easy way to explain what he was seeing.

Once Lestrade's curses had died down, Sherlock's lips quirked into a small smile. "Hello, Lestrade."

His voice. It was as deep as Lestrade had remembered it, and it seemed to solidify the man standing in front of him. Somehow, he doubted the ability of a ghost's voice to reverberate through his mind like that, or to bring up so many memories. Hundreds of them, all coming together to create a deep nostalgia, rose within him, simply at hearing Sherlock utter those two words.

"Hello, Sherlock," he managed.

There was a moment of silence.

"I'm assuming you are Sherlock," Lestrade said. "I haven't been drinking tonight, I don't put much belief in ghosts, and it seems rather late in the game for me to start hallucinating now. Unless," he said, frowning, "unless this is a dream. That seems rather believable, actually."

Sherlock smiled a small smile again, and this time it seemed a little sad. "An excellent deduction, Lestrade," he said.

"Ah," Lestrade said. Well, that explained it then. A dream. A great part of him was very relieved, but another great part of him was also rather sad. The thought of Sherlock being alive…Well, it had been a nice idea while it had lasted. "I'm glad then, becau – "

"An excellent deduction," Sherlock interrupted, "but a wrong one, I'm afraid. It was a nice try, though."

The silence that followed was oppressive. It was ringing. It was deafening.

"So that's it then," Lestrade finally said.

Sherlock frowned. "That's what, then?"

Lestrade gave a small chuckle. There was no mirth in it. "I've finally gone round the bend. Oh, god." He raked his hands through his hair. "I thought it was possible at the beginning – I mean, I just kept thinking, and just laying into myself, and my wife said it was unhealthy, but I couldn't stop, and I thought, maybe, yeah, I'll crack, but I didn't, and I thought I'd gotten so much better – "

"Lestrade –" Sherlock tried, but the Detective Inspector just plowed on.

"And I had Sherlock, I'd finally stopped blaming myself – well, for the most part – and I had started doing well in work again and I had stopped thinking about you all the time, so why now? Why on earth did I break now? I mean," here he looked up at Sherlock, who was observing him in a stony silence, "hallucinating? Have I really gone so far?" His eyes widened. "Oh. Oh god. If you're not here, then am I just talking to thin air? Damn it!"

The not-really-there Sherlock frowned. "Is that really the best explanation you can come up with? You said it yourself, Detective Inspector – it's rather late after my death for you to begin hallucinating now."

"Well, I don't know how these things work, do I? For God's sake, Sherlock, and I can't be an expert in everything like you – " And he stopped himself. Because he had been going to say like you are. Not were – are. Like Sherlock could actually be alive.

He suddenly felt very, very tired. He sank back into his desk chair and ran a hand down his face. He could feel the uneven stubble and newly-formed lines on his face that signaled his exhaustion. "Look, I'm tired, so…be gone, Sherlock, or however this works." It had better work. He didn't know if he could deal with some piss-poor rendition of the detective walking around in his head ranting about how stupid his police force was.

"I'm not leaving, Lestrade."

Oh, for the – "Why the hell not? It's my head – get out!"

"I'm not in your head." Sherlock leaned forward over Lestrade's desk. "I swear to you, Lestrade – I am really here. I am alive."

There was another silence, but this one was different. It rang with Sherlock's words; it magnified their significance, it sang them in the quiet. Lestrade wasn't quite sure what to do with this new information, but it felt uncomfortable. Because it couldn't be true, no matter how much the words echoed truth. It just meant that his subconscious was trying to convince him he wasn't insane…he assumed.

"No," he finally said.

Sherlock started away from the desk. "Excuse me?"

"No, I don't believe you," Lestrade said. It sounded a bit too much like a pout, but he was going to ignore that.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "And why not? Any evidence would point towards –"

"Because I can't afford to, Sherlock!" Lestrade exploded. "Because I just can't. I have hoped and prayed for so long – and I have destroyed myself for so many years, Sherlock – for so long – and I just can't. Say I believe you – you're alive, hurrah, how wonderful – and then it turns out you're not. Do you know what that would do to me, Sherlock? Do you understand? You would die all over again, and I would have to go through all of that again. I don't know if I would survive it a second time. Best to just keep a cap on my insanity now and not let it convince me that I'm anything but…well, what I am, I suppose." He had to stop. He was getting choked up, and it wasn't terribly comfortable. He didn't look at Sherlock. He couldn't.

It was quiet again. Too many silences for one night, Lestrade thought. Isn't insanity supposed to be louder than this?

He didn't know. These silences were rather loud and chaotic in their stillness.

He risked looking up. Maybe the silence meant he was gone.

No. No, he wasn't. His mouth was set in a straight line and his eyes were blazing. He leaned forward as soon as he caught Lestrade's eye, slamming his hands down onto the desk that separated them. The corner of his mouth twitched. "Lestrade. Let me prove to you I exist."

Lestrade looked back at him, gaping like some unseemly fish. "Um. Okay?" What? No. That wasn't what he meant to say. But…what could he do, anyway?

Sherlock looked jubilant. He straightened sharply and swept quickly out of Lestrade's office, leaving the Detective Inspector to gaze after him, his jaw still refusing to close all the way. God. It had been a bad day.

Sherlock returned almost immediately, dragging someone with him. What the hell…? As the two got closer to the light of his office, he could see that it was –

"Jimmy?" he said, perplexed. Jimmy was the janitor for Lestrade's floor.

"Mornin', Detective Inspector!" Jimmy said cheerfully, grinning with a mouth that boasted far too few teeth. "How are ya, sir?"

"I – I'm fine, Jimmy…I'm sorry, did you need anything?"

Jimmy shook his head. "This fella here you was working with said you two was having an argument and needed me to settle somefin'. Now, go on."

Lestrade was still gaping. "I'm sorry…Go on with wha –"

"Yes, lovely!" Sherlock declared with an entirely too-wide grin on his face. "Look, Lestrade, I told you I'm taller than you. Stand at the wall with me so that this fine man here can tell you I'm right."

Lestrade didn't argue, and didn't pay one lick of attention to anything after that – it all became a blur, really.

Jimmy could see Sherlock.

Jimmy could tell that Sherlock was taller than Lestrade.

Sherlock was alive.

The whole thing later that day was Sherlock's plan.

He and Lestrade had stayed in the office, talking, until it was time for the first person to arrive that morning. Sherlock didn't say one rude thing. Lestrade may have even cried a bit.

He was alive. He was alive, and Lestrade wasn't crazy, and it felt so unbelievably good.

Did John know?

Yes, John knew. He had punched the daylights out of Sherlock. The detective could feel a bruise coming on.

How long had he been back?

Oh, just today. He had gone to John that morning.

Had Mycroft known that he was alive?

Of course. Really, Lestrade, he's the entirety of the British government. You expected him to not know?

…What the hell happened?

So Sherlock told him what happened on the rooftop that day. He told Lestrade everything Moriarty did to get him there. He told him the threat Moriarty had made to get him to jump.

When Sherlock said that Lestrade was one of the three, he hugged Sherlock. In a very manly way. The normal way a man would hug his other male friend when he found out that said friend sacrificed himself for his life.

He felt solid and real. He was definitely alive.

And then Sherlock began scheming. He had been waiting, he had said with a gleam in his eye, for this moment for a very long time.

There were a few more people who needed to know that Sherlock was alive.

All too soon, seven-thirty a.m. hit. Officers began filing in, and Sherlock had to disappear before they got in.

Before he stepped into the closet right outside Lestrade's office, he stopped and looked back.

Thank you, he said.

Thank you.

Damn it, Lestrade was going to cry again.

But he didn't. He held it in like the professional, grown man that he told himself he was. He walked over to his desk and sat down, shuffling papers and trying to look decidedly non-teary. It worked, for a while, and he began to read a report that had been put onto his desk the day before. He was only fifteen minutes into it when there was a knock at his door frame.

Sally.

"So," she said with a smile, walking in. "How was all that paperwork last night?"

He drew a blank. Paperwork?

Oh. The stuff he was doing before his world was shattered. Right. He forced a grin.

"Oh, you know, it was hell. As usual." He glared at her mockingly. Well, sort of mockingly. Halfway mocking, halfway real. "And whose idea was it to leave me here all alone to struggle with that?"

Sally didn't pick up on the only half-mocking. She thought he was jesting in full. Pity for her. Now he felt slightly less bad about what he was about to do (he really wasn't feeling any guilt anyway, but her easy attitude towards his suffering was making it even easier). "Oh, come on, Lestrade," she said. "It builds character."

"Hm," he said. "Mmm. Yes. Go get Keith. I want to talk to both of you." Because unfortunately both of them were still working with him. He hadn't been allowed to fire them those three years ago. Pity.

Sally looked at him curiously but did as she was told. Good.

She returned only a moment later, Keith Anderson in tow. Lestrade stretched and stood up. It was show time.

"I wanted to talk to you two about a rather serious matter that I'm sure you both remember quite well."

"Sir?"

"Sherlock's death, Sergeant Donovan."

She seemed to shrink in size as soon as he said that. "Oh."

He knew Sally hadn't taken the death lightly. She still hated Sherlock with a fierce passion, but she did feel some guilt over her supposed role in his death. At least, Lestrade thought she did. He knew that she also just didn't like being in the wrong.

"Yes," he continued. "Now, I don't know if you knew this, but I was angry enough at you all to see about sacking the two of you. Unfortunately, I was not permitted to by my superiors." Unless I sacked myself as well.

"Um, sir, we are so –" Anderson began.

"Save it!" Lestrade said. Good lord, Anderson's voice was even more nasally when he was nervous. "Now, I've been thinking about a good way to ensure that you don't accuse anyone of a serious crime just because you didn't get along with him again, and I never thought of anything. But I don't trust you two to use good judgment on cases any longer, and I need a good…let's call it learning tool."

"Sir," Anderson said. "We are so, so sorry for what we did. It was an accident, and –"

"Lives are not accidents, Anderson!" Lestrade snapped. He tried to compose himself. It's not worth it. It's not. "Anyway," he continued, "the solution came to me last night, and I think it will be very educational for you both."

The two standing in front of him just looked at each other. "Sir –"

"Hello, Donovan. Anderson."

Sherlock's deep voice reverberated through the small room. He had come up behind them, slipping out of the closet and into Lestrade's office with a practiced ease and silence. Lestrade doubted that any of the officers outside his office even saw Sherlock come in.

Sally spun around, giving a slight scream that she quickly covered up with a shaking hand when she saw Sherlock. Anderson was slower on the uptake, but screamed just as Sally had (Sherlock would later argue with Lestrade that it had even been higher-pitched than Sally's, an assertion to which Lestrade would just snort).

Their faces were priceless, and Lestrade, conveniently forgetting that just hours before he had been accusing Sherlock of being a hallucination and throwing office supplies at his head, couldn't contain the laugh that escaped him then.

"Hello, Sherlock," he said, grinning. "Come on in."

Sherlock moved forward into the office. Donovan let out a sound like a mouse and quickly shuffled out of his way. Anderson staggered more like a drunk. Sherlock, once he reached Lestrade's desk, turned to face them. He had a small smile on his face. It wasn't a nice smile; it was a bit too smug for Sally or Keith to be comfortable with.

"Miss me?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

Sally's answer was a broken sob. Lestrade was fairly certain that Anderson had been struck dumb.

"Yes, yes," Sherlock said brusquely. "I'm not dead – never was, if you're both still too stupid to figure that out. And no, don't ask any dull questions on how or why I did it – I already got enough of those from Lestrade."

"Wait, what?"

"Oh, did I say dull? I meant incredibly probing and insightful."

"Sherlock…"

"Wait," Sally cut in. "Did you," she said, pointing at Lestrade with a still-shaking hand, "know about him being alive this whole time?"

He glanced at Sherlock, whose smile was still intact. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I did."

"But," Anderson spluttered, "but it can't be. It just can't. People saw him jump, he was declared dead –"

"Oh, didn't I tell you, Anderson?" Sherlock said. "I'm not really a fake genius. I'm still cleverer than all of Scotland Yard combined. Both you and Sergeant Donovan got that wrong, I'm afraid. I'm sure I could fool as many of you as I wanted to."

Lestrade snorted.

"Alright, you two," he said. "You can leave now. This was just meant to be a quick lesson on not accusing people wrongly of crimes – think before you act! Alright, good chat. Please clean yourselves up in the washroom or something – you both look awful. And don't go blabbing this to everyone. Sherlock and I still have to have our fun with the rest of the team."

"But – but –" Sally stuttered. There were tear tracks on her face. She really did look like a mess. "You can't just drop this on us, sir! I don't even know what to think, let alone do –"

"Well, too bad," said Lestrade. "We 'just dropped' something rather heavy on Sherlock three years ago, giving him very little time to prepare for it as well. I think that being in a similar situation might benefit you both."

"Sir," Anderson hissed. "Can we be sure that he – well, that it's really – I mean, I know it sounds…unprofessional, but – I mean –"

Lestrade rolled his eyes. God, it really did sound ridiculous coming from someone else's mouth. "Can we be sure that it's really him, Anderson? Can we be sure that it isn't a ghost or a hallucination? Is that what you mean?" He chuckled mirthlessly at Anderson's hesitant nod. "Good lord, get out of my office before I start questioning why I actually pay you, Keith."

Anderson nodded and quickly scuttled out of the room. After a moment, Sally followed, her legs shaking as they struggled to support her weight. Sherlock watched them leave with a smirk on his face.

"Well," Lestrade said after a moment, "that was fun."

"Hm," Sherlock replied. "Yes. Yes, I suppose." He took his phone out and began to fiddle with it. Lestrade resisted the urge to shake his head. Sherlock, moving on as quickly as ever.

"Look, I'm sure you've got to go, get back to John and all that," Lestrade said, "but I'd really like it if you stopped by again. We could still use you on these cases, Sherlock. It's miserable how long they take to get done without you."

"Yes," Sherlock said, looking up at Lestrade. "I think I will. I could certainly use the distraction. John has become almost unbearably dull – he needs to get back to all of this as well."

Lestrade grinned. "Well, go on. Go off gallivanting around London again. I'm sure you'll be back soon."

Sherlock nodded and moved to the door. Lestrade stopped him before he left, saying, "Oh, and Sherlock…it's really good to see you again."

Sherlock smiled, and this time, it was soft. "Thank you, Lestrade."

Thank you.

Lestrade nodded at him with a small smile of his own, his throat tight. "You're welcome, Sherlock."