The golden pool of light from the streetlamp didn't do much to conceal the man in the upturned trench coat, walking purposely through the sheets of normal English rain that were coming down upon him in torrents. He was going back to a special place, a place that meant so much to him in another life. The life that once was his and John's. But that life could be no more. It wasn't like the life couldn't be caught again in glimpses, like when Sherlock saw a blonde man on the street and had to fight the festering urge to run up and prove he was alive. Or when the consulting detective sat up at night, wherever he was, and wondered if John went back to having the war nightmares that kept him up the first few months they lived together. Maybe the blonde man had moved onto another nightmare, and Sherlock might never know.
Climbing the steps to his home, the black haired man entered and noticed right away that it felt different. Mrs. Hudson's suite on the first floor usually smelled of the perfume John had gotten her for Christmas. The perfume She doused on herself every day. The perfume that Sherlock continuously mentioned was too strong for so many sprays. However, tonight, the enticing and somewhat overwhelming smell of Lavender was not present. The suite smelled old, and stale. Like no one had lived there in months. An urgency tickled the pale man's stomach, and he shook his coat to get the rain out before running up the wooden steps, wanting to check on his companion. The heart of the operation. The Army Doctor. The one he deceived.
While the main living quarters usually smelled of tea or gunpowder, depending on who was doing what activity, this too seemed alarmingly bare of any scents. Alarm growing into an ever gnawing pit in his stomach, the tall man entered, looking around for any sign of... anything. A television left on, a magazine slightly out of place, a piece of food left on a plate from where John hadn't eaten it all. But there was nothing. The quarters were barren of any sign of John, as if he had never stepped food in this place. Even Sherlock's things were gone, something the brown eyed man noted quickly as an action Dr. Watson would certainly take.
Seeing no sense of the blue eyed man anywhere, the consulting detective ran further through the house, seeing nothing of the slightest importance in the bathroom or his own place of rest. That left one room to investigate. The genius's heart was pounding through his chest as he went towards the staircase, thinking of all the times he traveled up here to wake his companion up for a case, or a terrified war dream that sent him yelling for all of England to hear. He raced up the stairs, the familiar name itching at his throat. If he could call it once, just once, maybe it would make it all okay. But the brains wouldn't have gotten a reply anyway.
In front of the door to John's room were white flowers, old ones by the looks of it. The fallen petals were scattered around the top stair, some having fell further down, making a macabre pathway to the lost man's room. Trying not to allow himself to worry, Sherlock pushed open the door and entered.
The place was a mess, with poster boards hung haphazardly all around the room like a tacky wallpaper, or a map of some sort. A map of John's mind, perhaps? The words "I believe in Sherlock Holmes" were scrawled on them multiple times and each board was marked with increasing desperation. The boards overlapped each other, the first ones having been written right after the fall, up many months to one that looked like it was written eight weeks ago. This was a sign. An awful sign. An obsessive sign. No food, the line having been scrawled everywhere, no John or Mrs. Hudson. His breath caught in his throat as the realization hit him like a ton of bricks. It couldn't be. John wouldn't do this. John couldn't have done it. John was John, Sherlock's way, the man he learned so much from. He couldn't be gone.
The taller man went crashing throughout the room, allowing the good doctor's name to cross his lips several times in a row in case this was a lie. Though the man was sensible and knew he couldn't yell, his whispered mentions were enough commemoration. The word had to be repeated on his pink lips. If the detective stopped saying his friend's name, the man would vanish from this earth forever. All John had left in this world was a name, something no one could take away from him. And the pale man wasn't going to take that away from him. Now if only Sherlock could just find the note….
It was an accident that the detective found it at all, to be honest. As he opened the closet and thought about all of the arguments centered around this stupid thing, the top poster fell from the crash of the door against the wall. On the back was something quickly scrawled in John's handwriting.
To whomever it may concern,
Baker Street is no longer my home. While I still dwell in this residence, I notice the surprising lack of warmth this place harbors without ….. him. It feels like I have no home anywhere anymore. He's gone, and I'm back to the man I was before, an old war veteran who couldn't stay close to anybody for too long.
I'm sorry to whoever reads this, sorry that you must find the note that carries me out. As for why, this is my only reason. They say that when two special people find each other, they must never let go. Never be apart. Never allow one to sit and stare at the wall day after damned day. And Sherlock flew to heaven on the winds atop Bart's hospital. I'm missing my pair. My closing message is this: since Sherlock flew, I shall fly also. I will meet him again in heaven, because I know damned well hell wouldn't take the both of us.
Tears prickled at the brown eyed man's eyes as he finished the note and continued looking around. There had to be some sense of how he did it. Some evidence that showed how he went. Sherlock wouldn't leave until he found it. It and the letter was the last remaining signs that his blonde haired friend was ever here at all. And so, in another flurry of movement, Sherlock destroyed the crystal blue eyed man's room again to look for such an item.
Under the bed was where he finally found it. Surprisingly, it wasn't the gun he kept in his drawer, or the rope Sherlock kept in the kitchen for experiments. It was found in a tiny, peach colored bottle under John's bed. An empty bottle, both of these contents apart, as if thrown after consumption. Turning it over, the man looked at the label. It was his pain medication, taken for his hurt leg. The fact that he started taking this at all hurt, but the fact that he overdosed on it hurt even more. For a second, Sherlock was angry, angry that John continued with the psychosomatic symptoms, but it was obvious that without his taller friend, the leg had not only hurt from pain, but John's whole body was hit by loneliness. And the man in hiding knew exactly what that felt like.
Again, it hit him like several bricks. The case was solved, normally this would bring him joy. But the wrong blood was shed here today, the kind Sherlock never meant to spill. The walls were closing in on him. The ones that he sat in when John was having a war nightmare and needed to be careful. The one where he had made his own. The one where he learned to be a man, the walls where the two of them quarreled and Sherlock shot the wall once because he was bored. The home they came back to when Moriarty threatened them the first time. The walls only John came back to after they were threatened the second time.
His brown eyes traveled to the cold metal in the drawer. All at once, he remembered quietly taking the gun from its usual spot when John seemed low, only returning it when he no longer showed any tell tale signs. He remembered John shooting that thing to save him, after only knowing the other man for a short amount of time. He remembered the way his friend carried it on his holster, how he expertly knew what to do with such a weapon seemingly right away. It was now Sherlock's turn to call that man amazing, for everything he did and everything he ever would've done. Had he not gone flying. But it was too late now.