Baker Street was empty. He could tell that with little more than a glance at the darkened windows: he hadn't actually needed to break in. He did it anyway, of course, taking the stairs two, three at a time until he reached that familiar old door. His fist poised in the air, ready to knock, but he knew there would be no answer. Instead, he picked the lock and allowed the door to swing open.
The rooms were dark, haunted by emptiness and a few carefully-stacked cardboard boxes here and there. He didn't need to open any of them to know what they contained, but he did anyway. They were his things—coats, scarves, old files, books—folded and packed neatly away into these boxes, and then left to sit in the dust. Sherlock frowned in the late-afternoon light. John could have thrown it all away. He should have thrown it all away. Why would he bother keeping any of these things?
Except he didn't. None of John's things were in the flat. They'd all been moved. That made a bit of sense, then. John couldn't bring himself to take any of Sherlock's things with him to his new place, but, sentimental man that he was, he also couldn't throw any of them away. So he'd left them for the new tenants, to let them sort through and salvage or toss at their own discretion. Reasonable plan, except it was clear that there had been no new tenants in quite a long time.
Sherlock bounded down the stairs now, to Mrs. Hudson's flat. He wasn't sure he was ready to see her, but something told him that he wouldn't have to worry about that. He couldn't hear her telly going, didn't hear any soft noises that told him she was fiddling about behind the door. He made quick work of that lock as well and stepped into the room.
It wasn't empty, or at least it wouldn't appear empty to a casual observer. Then again, Sherlock had never been a casual observer. Her furniture was still there, her dishes and appliances and the pointless little knick-knacks that she used to decorate, but the important things—the book her brother gave her when she was a teenager just before he went off and got killed in a war, her favorite blouses and best pairs of shoes, the hand-knitted afghan that covered the back of her sofa—those were gone. She'd gone too, likely moved in with her sister or (Sherlock made a face at the thought) a home. He ran his bony fingers along the thick layer of dust that has built up on one of her end tables and left as silently as he had entered.
A cup of coffee at Speedy's revealed the secret of the empty building. Sherlock flagged down the owner, old Chatterjee, as he sipped, and made an ever-so-casual inquiry as to the state of the flat next door. His disguise would hold up, he knew—the beard camouflaged the angles of his jaw and the hat he wore against the rain hid the rest of his face quite nicely. Few people had ever seen him at the shop before, anyway: he preferred the Chinese place down the street. The old man, lonely since his divorce, was open for conversation, and revealed that after that fake detective nutter had gone and offed himself (Sherlock's hand didn't even twitch as he wrapped it around the cup), the doctor had been the first to move out, and then the landlady. She still owned the building, he told him, but he shouldn't bother trying to rent any of the rooms, she wouldn't hear of it.
Sherlock thanked the man (he'd begun to learn that following the social expectations of pointless small talk and meaningless niceties made it easier to blend into the crowds: you stood out more if you were curt and rude, after all) and left, thinking about the information he'd just gathered. Mrs. Hudson couldn't easily afford to keep making payments on the building and on renting another flat, which backed up his deduction that she was with her sister. He indulged in a brief moment of sentimentality, imagining her sitting in her chair in front of the telly with a cup of tea, the only remaining inhabitant of the building. She was strong and resilient, Sherlock knew, but she would also have been haunted by their non-presence. He wondered if she'd ever heard phantom footsteps on the stairs, but then pushed the thought away. He would find her later and determine whether he should reveal himself to her. Moriarty's web had finally been dismantled—he'd choked the breath out of the confirmed final assassin himself only hours before—but he was in London for John. He'd just have to find him first.
The task proved to be a difficult one. John was no longer employed at the surgery, and he'd left no forwarding address when he left Baker Street. There were simply no records of any new rental contracts anywhere. Girlfriends were out of the question: John hadn't had any luck holding down any relationships long enough to propose cohabitating, and, unless Sherlock's death had effected a rather serious change in his personality, that tendency would undoubtedly remain. Sherlock found himself consumed with the search—deadly, highly-trained assassins hadn't stood a chance against his sources and watchful eye, so how could John Hamish Watson, wounded army doctor, evade him? He put word out along the Homeless Network, but didn't receive any news for weeks.
Finally, an unwashed little urchin skipped past him on the street one day, and thrust a scrap of paper into his pocket under the guise of relieving him of his wallet. He allowed her fist to close around the scrap of bills he kept there for that exact purpose and continued as though he had been unaware of the pickpocket. After several blocks, he turned into an alley and pressed his back against the crumbling brick of a building, then fished the scrap back out of his pocket. It was just an address, rather far outside of London. Strange: John loved the city, had been willing to flatshare with a complete stranger in order to stick around. Why had he gone out so far?
Nevertheless, Sherlock made his way out there immediately. For once in his life, he had no plan, not even an inkling of an idea. The only thing he knew for certain was that he'd have to observe for a while, make sure that his return would not disrupt John's life more than he already had. Long ago he'd promised himself that if, upon his return, John had married some nice-if-not-wholly-insipid young woman and had a brood of rosy-cheeked blonde children, Sherlock would remain dead. He would leave London and find somewhere else to live, some other name. It was this promise that got him through the nights when John's final wails at the foot of St. Bart's haunted him. He would not hurt his friend again.
John's new building was...nice, if one went for such a thing. Because it was so far out of the city, there was enough space around it for a bit of a yard. A low wrought-iron gate circled the patch of grass, the "charming" little garden-figures and the scraggly tree that seemed more dead than alive. Sherlock found himself standing in front of the building for too long, pale hands contrasting sharply against the dark metal of the gate. This was John's new home. There were at least two floors, possibly a third like in Baker Street, though he couldn't see any basement windows peeking up from the plants around the base. Like many buildings in the area, it was in that place between well-maintained and a state of disrepair: the landlady (a man would not bother with garden gnomes, he decided) was probably an older woman who didn't care much about the building but hired maintenance crews when it was absolutely necessary.
A threatening bark disrupted Sherlock's observations, and he jumped a bit, remembering the German Shepherd on one assassin's estate. The puncture wounds of the beast's teeth had healed over by now, but the scar was still a pinkish color against the white of his thigh. He turned to see a young woman following a large mutt directly toward the gate. She was preoccupied with some sort of electronic reader device and didn't notice the tall figure staring at her home. Sherlock found himself hoping desperately that John was not involved with this woman. She would get him killed for certain, ignoring strange and vaguely-threatening characters standing outside of their home. He watched the lights in the bottom flat come on and faded back a bit, concealing himself behind some bushes not far from the flat. He should get home, he knew, but the desire to find out which flat was John's was much stronger than his desire to get out of the darkness.
Presently, a smaller figure appeared on the walk. He was familiar, down to that old aluminum cane he leaned on. It would make sense, Sherlock mused, for that limp to return: he had noticed that John's leg would sometimes ache even before his death: mostly when the other man was stressed or upset. John paused for breath at the gate, and Sherlock felt his eyes raking over the bushes. Well done, John, he wanted to say. It was clear that he had begun to learn how to Observe. Not well enough, apparently, because after another moment or two, he was pushing his way through the gate and up the stairs to the building.
Sherlock allowed himself to stay only long enough to watch the lights in the upstairs flat to turn on. The rush of glee that he felt was, he decided, wholly inappropriate. That meant only that John was not involved with the woman with the dog. But then again, it was a small building, hardly a place to start a family. John was very likely unmarried, which meant that he'd been alone this whole time. Sherlock stalked home, after trying unsuccessfully several times to summon a taxi.
