I looked at the familiar door of the flat. My heart beat was quickened. Same colour, same doorknob, nothing had changed. Except for the fact that the person who made this flat livable was no longer in this world. Even if I couldn't see through the door I knew the house would be dull as anything. I remembered the times when we got back to home after running on the streets of London in the middle of the night chasing lunatic murderers. It was my home after all, the place where I went back to no matter at the end of the day.

"Sir?" cabbie knocked the glass to pull me out of reverie. I paid him, told him to keep the change and got out of the cab. Opening the door with the key I had never given back to Mrs. Hudson, I entered the house. It was dimly lit. I could hear distant chatter upstairs. It should have felt odd to be back here, but I felt fine. I wondered if it had something to do with the advertisement.

Climbing up the stairs I reached the door to the living room. Lestrade was shouting in his phone. Mrs. Hudson had been masked and was throwing the contents from the smelly fridge in a trash bag. Disgust evident on her face. I hesitated at the door, waiting for them to detect my presence. Donovan came from the kitchen, some bloody specimen in her hand and looked at the door to find me deliberating at the step. The sight of her made my insides boil.

"Oh, Dr. Watson. Didn't expect you'd come." Lestrade turned to look where I stood. Donovan was certainly not pleased by my presence. She looked at me as if I was even more disgusting that the specimen she was holding away from her as much as her body allowed. The feeling was mutual. I conveyed my loathing for her through expressions and then addressed Lestrade.

" Nice to see you, Greg"

"You too, John. Come in, come in. The movers will be here in an hour. Keep whatever you want to. There's whole bunch of hazardous waste in the fridge. How did you live here?" He frowned as he led me to the kitchen.

"Oh, dear John. How are you doing?" Mrs Hudson said throwing her arms around my shoulder and pulling me in a bone crashing hug. I hugged her back as I replied pleasantries. When she pulled back she had tears in her eyes.

"It was terrible living here alone, with you and him gone." She said mopping her cheeks. I took her hand in my hands and smoothed wrinkled fingers of hers.

"It's okay, Mrs. Hudson, I will be taking the room upstairs if that's not a problem"

"Oh no, no problem at all! I would really like to have you back. What would this old lady do all alone in this house…" She trailed off. I turned to Lestrade.

"What is she doing here? Donovan?" I said with a voice that was filled with disgust, hatred and frustration on their epics.

"She volunteered. Look John, what happened is happened and I don't think there is any point going through that again" He said with concern. He got the idea that I was about to hit her head with whatever object my hand could reach to.

"She is the reason why we're here, Lestrade. She is the reason why he is not here. Get her out of here before I do something really unpleasant." I pinched my nose bridge to keep my temper in control.

"I can't. She's no longer my subordinate." I opened my mouth to argue but failed.

"You do believe in him, don't you?"I said quietly after a moment. He took some time to answer.

"I don't think I'm allowed to say this but I do. It just doesn't feel right to think he was pretending all this time." He attempted to smile but failed. The idea of Lestrade being on my side was encouraging enough.

"Let's get started, shall we?" He turned away before I could say anything more. I followed his lead and once again we were back again in the living room. Donovan was busy with something in the corner and I tried to avoid seeing what she was up to.

I looked around the room to find many objects that I wanted to keep. I started with the skull. A cigarette carton was still hidden in its mouth. Sherlock knew where I used to hide it. I wondered if this was one of his tricks to deceive me. I smiled as I moved forward to the shelf. Pocketing smaller objects and putting the bigger ones in a corner. I slid my hand behind the mirror and found a pocket notepad. I turned its pages and found Sherlock's handwritten notes of the cases in every little space the notepad allowed. Why didn't he just use his laptop? While I gathered things around the room I thought about the advertisement in the paper. 'A flatmate needed. Shouldn't be bothered by violin. I'm lost without my blogger. URGENT'. If it was really Sherlock writing (even the idea sounded ridiculous in my head now) how was I supposed to contact him? He had left no other clue. Why would he write 'a flatmate needed'? If we assume for a second that he was underground then why on this earth would he need to write for a flatmate? Nobody except me knew about getting-lost-without-blogger dialogue of his. It was addressed to me; I was getting more and more confident when I thought about all these possibilities.

But I still had no idea how I was to contact a supposedly dead man. I scratched my head hoping it would spill out any idea.

"John, have you seen this?" Lestrade called out from Sherlock's bedroom. I almost tripped on a pile of books as I ran to the bedroom.

"What?" I peeked over Lestrade's shoulder to see what he was looking at, evidently smiling.

It was a withered photo of a boy of five or six years old. He was wearing weirdest clothes imagined. A long pointed hat was sitting on the curly jungle of the kid's hair. The boy in the photo was not smiling, he had some serious expression as if he was about to attack every person in the vicinity. The eyes quite familiar and the cheekbones not yet so pronounced as I remembered.

"Is it some costume party?" Lestrade laughed.

"I don't think so. Sherlock wanted to be a pirate when little. There. There is the eye patch." I pointed to a black strip in Sherlock's defensive hands.

"He's well into character, isn't he?" I nodded in agreement.

"I'm surprised he still kept the photograph." I smiled looking at the tiny figure of Sherlock. He had those same, penetrating blue eyes. And I must admit he did have a sense for fashion.

"I sense you'd want to keep it" I took the photo from his hands and smoothed its corners. So many things I wanted to keep and this I cannot just give away. I pocketed the photo with utmost care. I will have it framed one day.

I returned back to the living room. I had not even covered one fourth of the room and yet the corner was full of things. In fact I had not thrown away a single thing.

"Lestrade, I was thinking" I reached the bedroom door again "I don't want to give up any of his things"

He looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Not even the microscope and stuff?"

"No I don't. I just can't. He loved his experiments and equipment more than he loved anyone in this universe. I'd like to keep it all. And after all I'll be moving back here. I might as well keep things as they were before he left. I'm ready to pay the rent for this floor too. I'll go talk to Mrs Hudson" I left the room immediately before Lestrade could reply.

Mrs Hudson happily agreed to keep his things as long as the cockroaches, lizards, thumbs, bees and every other hazardous specimen were thrown out. She didn't even ask me for rent of this floor. "This is where he belonged. I can't charge for it" She said before breaking into unrecoverable sobs.

I insisted Lestrade to stay for a couple of drinks. Donovan, who expected an invitation too, received a bang of the living door on her face as soon as she was out of the door's range. I grabbed a couple of drinks and glasses and put it on the dining table.

"I found his diary on the upper shelf" Lestrade said taking a gulp of beer. I froze. I looked up to his face with wide alarmed eyes.

"No, no, I didn't read it-God- I don't want to know what he wrote in his personal diary. He had written quite a threatening note on the front page." He chuckled. I relaxed my tensed shoulder and took a sip from the bottle.

"He was quite a good lad, wasn't he, apart from being a git 99.99% of the time" He said smiling to his bottle, not meeting my eyes.

"Yes, he was"

"Why do you think he did all that? Jumping off the rooftop? There must be something that made him do that, don't you think? I was pretty sure there was. Moriarty shot himself on the rooftop too. I just don't get it." He shook his head.

"It's Sherlock we are talking about. I wish he left a note or something"

"He did, didn't he? I don't believe a single thing he said on the phone though"

"Of course, I don't. He didn't deserve this, any of this. I wish I could talk to him now. Ask him what why he did it" I said with head lolling from shoulders.

Something dawned on me as I spoke the words. If I had to contact Sherlock, what would I do? I grabbed the paper from the next chair and read the advert again till I knew what was needed to be done.

"What's up?" Lestrade asked, eyebrows raised. He tried to peek in the newspaper but I yanked it away from his reach.

"It's nothing, nothing" I got up from the table to hide the paper where nobody will look. Lestrade finished his drink and got up to leave.

"It was nice seeing you, John. If you need anything just give me a call, alright?" He said shaking my hand and other patting my shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah, sure" I said returning the handshake.

As soon as Lestrade left, I found my way up in my room. Dumping my rucksack in a corner, I walked upto the bed. Surprisingly it had newly washed, crisp sheet and nicely puffed up pillows. I thanked Mrs Hudson in my mind and launched the sluggish body on smelling oh-so-nice bed.

After a minute or two I heard a light knock on the door. I groaned.

"Come in"

"Oh sorry dear. I came by to ask if you were staying for lunch. You can join me downstairs if you'd like" Mrs Hudson said first apologetically then with concern. My bowels grumbled at the mention of food.

"Oh yes, I was thinking to order chinese anyway. Sure"

"Come down in an hour" She said smiling and left the room. I sat on the bed for some time thinking about the first time Sherlock had come here to sleep. What a lame excuse he had given. He stayed through the night and many more to come. I wondered why I had objected it in the first place. I felt remorse for not telling him how much he meant to me. After Moriarty's return we had hardly spoken. The night before his death he was acting different, I had sensed it. If I had just put more energy to make him tell me, he would have and we wouldn't have been in this mess. Oh how much I hated this.

Suddenly I remembered Lestrade talking about Sherlock's diary. I rushed down the stairs to Sherlock's room, skipping two or three steps. Pushing open the door I ran straight to the messy bookshelf and found the diary which I had seen many a times him using it.

I turned withering cover of the diary. God, it looked ancient. Then there was a folded paper bearing impressions of something written in neon coloured pen inside. I unfolded and straightened it on my palm.

'PROPERTY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.

DON'T EVEN DARE TO PROCEED IF NOT HAVING PERMISSION TO.

I HAVE MY WAYS TO IDENTIFY INTRUDERS.

KEEP IT BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.'

I broke into laughter. Only Sherlock could do this. No wonder Lestrade hadn't dared to open it. I, too, hesitated for a second but did anyway. The opening page had no date at all. It was a case of some serial murderer which I assumed, must have been from when we hadn't met. He had rambled on how the murderer must have a French beard and explained in detail the reasons behind the deduction. I rushed through the pages to see if he had mentioned my name. It was not until only last three pages had left.

Dr John Watson dreams usually (93% of the nights, that is, when he gets to sleep at least 7 hour) about ice creams, jams, girls/women in long gowns or sometimes about ongoing case. Otherwise the dreams are about getting shot in the shoulder or in the chest while trying to save some unknown people from unknown bunch of persons. In those dreams, after 16 nights of nightmares I deduce, he runs in a lonely alley with no one following but paranoia. He feels secured when he has arm round his shoulder and another rubbing on his chest. After waking up, he struggles to catch his breath but fails to understand he needs to drink water. During the nightmares he says inaudible things and while dreaming normal, happier dreams he talks about jams, sweaters, ice-creams and things mentioned above. Obviously he doesn't remember any part of dreams next morning.

I frowned. I do not dream about jams or women in long gowns. How on earth can he deduce that? On the same page right after his deductions of my sleeping habits, he had written a paragraph about, well, sex. He had gone well deep into the details ranging from what time his adrenaline level started increasing to where I liked to be touched. It was all raw. When I read it from his perspective I feel it had no emotional depth as I had felt it. I turned the page.

The first thing I noticed on the two adjacent pages was the scribbled writing in some sign language. I looked carefully but couldn't make out what was written. Then I noticed different quotes, names or signs whatever may be, were joined by thin, fading lines. All those were concentrated on one thing in the middle. As looked closely, almost touching nose to the paper, I saw written in cursive handwriting of Sherlock's 'MORIARTY'. I backed away from the journal to have a better look and then I realized it was everything about Moriarty's various businesses. Believe me, I never imagined so many names, places, businesses were dancing one Moriarty's order.

"John dear?" Mrs Hudson called from her kitchen.

"In a minute" I called back, keeping the journal on the shelf. As I turned I noticed Sherlock's bed covered in visible layer of dust. I wondered why Mrs Hudson hadn't cleaned his bed.

"Food is delicious, Mrs Hudson. Thanks for having me over." I smiled rubbing her hand.

"No matter, dear. It's the least I could do." She said smiling apologetically. "You two made a dashing couple." She tried keeping sobs away from her voice. I didn't disagree.

As I turned to leave I wished her a good night.

"Thanks for setting up my bed, Mrs Hudson" I pecked her on cheek.

"Oh I didn't make your bed" She said alarmed "If I had known you were staying I would have"
I froze

"You didn't make my bed?"

"No I didn't"

"Has anybody been in my room?"
"No, I don't think so. What's the matter?"

Sherlock's bed was covered in dust but not mine. It was as if somebody had been sleeping there everynight. Was he here? I gulped.

"Nothing, nothing. I must get going, er, goodnight"

I have to contact Sherlock Holmes anyhow.