I am not sure how many chapters I will be writing for this. I will be posting regularly though. Any advice and criticisms are warmly welcomed.
Chapter 1
John stood at the head of his best friends grave, frozen with the sorrow of knowing he would never see Sherlock again. He didn't speak at first, not knowing what to say and debating in his mind if a dead man could actually hear his words or not. He finally spoke, though it was mostly just to hear his own thoughts spoken out loud.
"You were my best friend, and no one can make me believe that you would ever lie to me, not even yourself."
John barely noticed the breaking of a branch behind a thick tree four meters away from him, but he chose to ignore it. It was likely some small creature anyway. He fell into silence again, having a hard time breathing while suppressing the unconscious urge to weep. John stepped closer to the head stone gently placing his hand on the top where the smooth granite was cut and much coarser. He thought of all the things he had never said to friend, previously thinking he was more machine then man to understand him. He realized now how wrong he was though, Sherlock was very human indeed.
"Just do one last thing for me Sherlock. Don't be dead. Please. Please, just don't be dead." He knew his words were futile and that the corpse six feet below in an elaborate thick slab of wood can't hear him and never will again. He was wrong about this as well.
Sherlock Holmes was also frozen, but he was being weighed down from different guilt, not of the things he could have said and no longer can but of all that he could say now in this moment and must force him self to keep in. Sherlock would do near anything to simply walk out from behind the tree and smile at his only friend. It was breaking his soul to hear John talk about him like that, saying how he had always known that Sherlock really was the genius detective he claimed to be. The doubt that had seeped into the minds of everyone he had known destroying his life, had miraculously missed Watson entirely. Watson was the only man that might have understood a fraction of who Sherlock Holmes was and he certainly didn't want to lose him. Listening to the muffled words of his friend, Sherlock contemplated what he could do to get out of his situation. Moriarty is dead, but what of the hit men? He had said his men would John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade if he was not dead. There was no way to reveal the truth without putting them in harms way, so first, he had to make sure they were safe.
John had originally planned on staying elsewhere after the funeral, the flat he had resided in along side his friend on 221B Bakers Street held too many memories for him now. But he had failed to make any arrangements for the time being and with the little amount he had left, he likely did not have the funds to find a new residence any time soon. Sherlock was in luck as John decided to avoid going to their flat as he left the graveyard, instead he paid a visit to the first restaurant that he and Sherlock had eaten in together. John fondly remembered how he had left his cane there while in pursuit of a criminal.
After making sure John was not in fact going to their old flat, Sherlock headed straight home with his collar up and a hat he found on a park bench covering his eyes. No one expects to see a dead man walking after all. Mrs. Hudson was in the pastry shop next door, clearly visible by the large glass window in front. She seemed to be crying into a cup of tea as an elder man dressed in his Sunday best sat slightly too close to her with his lips curled slightly too high for a man supposedly comforting a grieving woman. Sherlock made a mental note of this before discreetly entering his flat.
"Thank god she hasn't boxed the lab yet." Sherlock murmured to himself when he saw all his experiments were still set up as if nothing had happened.
He was sure that he had already found every camera in the apartment that Moriarty had set up, so now it was time to place a few of his own. It was imperative to keep a close eye on the people he needed to protect after all.