A/N: Hey guys! Sorry it took so long to post another chapter, but I was going through my senior year of high school and it got kinda busy :/. Then my family ended up moving, so that took up some of my summer too. I also had a small case of writers block halfway through writing this chapter... Anyway I haven't given up on this story, and I have actually started another story. I am probably not going to post as often as I should, and I apologize for that in advance, but I will try to post more often than I have been! Thanks for reading and liking my story! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!
Chapter 7
They had been sitting in silence for hours, neither feeling obligated to speak, and both not wanting to break the silence. Sherlock had been thinking about the last three years, and all of the calls and messages that Mycroft had Anthea send him, telling him what John had been doing. He had been curious to see how John would react. And after a year or two of mopping, he had seemed to become something like his old self again; which relieved Sherlock to no end, so he had stopped checking in. Then he got the message that sent him running back to London 'John has gotten into some trouble.' He had been doing so well, but apparently he had just put on a brave face to make it seem like he was doing well. And he had fooled everyone. But, why?
John had told him about Anamnesis for a case they were working on. A soldier home on leave had killed his wife , and told the police that he killed her because his brother admitted to having an affair with her; plausible enough, however the man's brother had been dead for twelve years. Sherlock had written the guy off as delusional, but John knew him and had insisted that was not the case. At first John had not wanted to elaborate on how exactly he knew the man wasn't delusional, but eventually Sherlock convinced him that he could not help the man without all the facts. He never told Sherlock that he used it but, then again, he didn't have to either. The look in John's eyes and the quick sure way he answered his questions left no doubt in Sherlock's mind that John had done more than notice a few soldiers using a hallucinatory drug.
Knowledge of Anamnesis was enough for Sherlock to get the man admitted into a rehab facility instead of prison. John had been grateful at the time, but when Sherlock had tried to ask about his own use of the drug, he would shut down and leave the flat. Eventually, Sherlock managed to guilt him into talking about using Anamnesis by bringing up his own drug addiction problems. John assured him that he was clean, once he realized the difference between the fake Harry and the real one he swore off the stuff. He didn't appreciate the false hope it had given him. Sherlock had been relieved to hear that John had stopped . If it had driven a seemingly normal man to murder his wife, who knows what effect it might have on John, who had willingly killed a man to save Sherlock's life. Besides one drug addict was more than enough for their dynamic duo relationship.
"Well I don't know what the hell your going to do, but I'm going to bed." John stood up, shocking Sherlock out of his reverie. He turned and walked out the door heading upstairs to his room. Sherlock sighed and pulled out his phone.
'He still thinks he's taking Anamnesis. I thought you took care of that. SH'
'They let him out of the police department sooner than expected, my men were not in position at the time. MH'
'Getting slow in your old age? That's not like you Mycroft. SH'
'Those men have been dealt with. They will not be a problem any more. MH'
Sherlock smirked and put the phone away, this was only a minor set back, he could fix it tomorrow. Until then he might as well get some sleep. During his three years he was forced to learn the value of a good night's sleep, or any sleep at all for that matter. For the first year he would often go weeks without any sleep. Tirelessly going after all of the known criminals working for Moriarty. It was only after a group of criminals that Sherlock had been following had gotten the better of him and left him beaten and bloodied in an alleyway that he realized the lack of sleep had diminished his observational abilities. He learned the meaning of the saying 'You will repeat the lesson until it is learned' during that first year. He often found himself waking up in nondescript alleys after a night of chasing down nameless thugs.
Sherlock glanced around to check the time, then remembered that he never bothered with clocks before so there were none in the flat. Except in John's room, he needed one because of that job he used to have at the clinic. So instead he checked his phone: 11:30, they had wasted a whole afternoon and evening just sitting in silence. Of course that was a normal occurrence for him, but the only time John ever sat still for a long period of time was when he was typing up a blog post after a case. The problem might be more severe than Sherlock had anticipated. He'll have to assess the situation more tomorrow and devise a plan on how he was going to deal with John.
Sherlock stopped when he opened the door to his room. In the spot where his bed had been there was only a bare mattress, and on top of the mattress there were several stacks of boxes filled with his his old case files. His furniture was covered with plastic. The rest of the room was filled with more boxes that, upon closer inspection, Sherlock found held all of his personal belongings and clothes that he left behind three years ago. The entire room was filled with an accumulated three years of dust and reaked of old mothballs. No one had been in here since John had packed up everything that was left of Sherlock Holmes for good.
Sherlock sighed, he wasn't exactly sure what to expect when he saw his old room again. But he didn't exactly prepare himself to find everything that would remind John of him, the real him not a hallucination made up of old memories, packed away and forgotten behind the door of an out of the way room in their flat. Sherlock maneuvered his way over to the mattress and began moving the case boxes to another location. After that was done, he searched through the boxes of his belongings to find some sort of blanket that he could use. His search came up empty. Sherlock sighed again and carefully sat down on the mattress, stifling a cough when he disturbed the dust. He had slept in worse conditions than a dusty mattress with no blanket or pillow, but again his expectations of returning home after all that time had been too high. Sherlock laid down on the mattress, again stifling a series of coughs, and stared at the ceiling trying to forget that he had come back at all; and imagining instead that he was just laying on an old mattress in a forgotten run down house that no one had lived in for years. It didn't work, the paint wasn't peeling and there wasn't the sound of bugs or rats scampering around in the shadows, but it helped a little and he eventually drifted off into a restless sleep.