Guardian Chapter Three

John finished unpacking the last box. His new flat was small and cramped. It was just what he could afford on an army pension. A feeling of emptiness washed over him as the realisation of how lonely

he was hit him. His knees gave way and he fell back on his bed. He lay on the uncomfortable mattress as tears fell from his eyes and the smell of baker street rose from the white sheets.

The next morning John went shopping. Into his basket he placed a small bag of apples, an economy pack of teabags, two pints of milk and a microwavable meal for one. He avoided the self service machines and headed for a check-out. A young blond girl served him with a smile. She was very pretty. If John had been feeling himself he would have tried to chat her up. As she scanned the milk, John opened his wallet and pulled out his card. He was about to slide it into the chip and pin machine when he saw the name on it. He welled up.

"Would you like a bag?"

John ignored her.

"I, I'm sorry." he stammered. "I can't do this."

He picked up his wallet and walked out of the supermarket. The young girl called after him. "Excuse me? You left your card!"

John had already exited the shop. The girl picked up the card. At the bottom was the name Mr S. Holmes.


John Watson was hungry. He regretted not buying the food, but regretted leaving the card even more. He didn't want to use the money, but it was a part of Sherlock's life that hadn't been taken by the police. He had a small fridge in his new flat, and in it was some turning milk and what looked like half an iceberg lettuce. John made himself a black coffee and logged into his laptop. He didn't really need much food nowadays anyway. Sherlock never ate much and the habit had rubbed off onto the shorter man.

John signed into his blog, remembered that he had stopped writing it and signed out again. He put the laptop back into his draw. His old army gun sat there as if in wait. He stared at it for a few seconds, then shut the draw again.

John sat at his desk. What did he do before he met Sherlock? He had his blog. Now what was he supposed to do? John checked his phone. There was one text from Greg asking how he was. He deleted it. He looked through his texts from Sherlock. There were hundreds of them. They weren't about anything in particular, but he didn't want to delete them. He checked his call history, and

scrolled down until he found the last call from Sherlock. He remembered nearly every word from it. As he felt a lump in his throat he went back to the home screen of his phone. The background photo was the cat falling off the shelf from the video he'd shown Sherlock all that time ago. It didn't seem fitting to have that as his phone background when he was feeling so empty. He went into his photo album on his phone. That wasn't a good idea. There was reminders everywhere about his time with Sherlock. There were many pictures of crime scenes and possible clues, but there were some pictures of Sherlock too. There was a picture of them both at Christmas. John was wearing a

ridiculous jumper that Mrs Hudson had made for him, and Sherlock was

wearing a pair of reindeer antlers. John appeared to be slightly drunk and they were arguing over a game of cludo that Greg had bought for them. He and Mrs Hudson were sitting behind the arguing pair laughing. The picture was taken by John's girlfriend at the time. It was before Molly had arrived. There were other pictures too. There was one of Sherlock wearing the deer-stalker and John beside him openly laughing. There was a video too. Lestrade had sent John the video of Sherlock

after he had been drugged out of his mind by Irene. The ex-army doctor laughed. He really missed his friend. He had lied to many people when he had said that they weren't in love. He did love Sherlock. He was his best friend and he had never wanted to lose him. Irene had said that they

were a couple. She was right, there was no denying it. Even if it wasn't sexual, he had had more of a relationship with Sherlock than he had had with any of his previous girlfriends. John set a picture of him and Sherlock as his phone background. In the picture the sandy haired man was grinning and pointing to a sign. Sherlock stood next to him looking completely unamused. The sign John was pointing to read 'Solar system exhibition this way.'