I'm really hoping you're liking this. I can't stress how scary this is. It's something I haven't quite been embarrassed to admit I write, because it is a bit far fetched. It sometimes doesn't make sense, I don't think, and I'm working on that!

Enjoy :)

*Yes, if you've noticed, I have made Sherlock taller. Benedict's only 6 feet tall, but in here he's


The next day.

Bang.

'Oh, for fuck's sake.' John muttered to himself, before jogging calmly down the stairs from his bedroom to the living room. Glass covered the floor from the explosion that shattered the windows a few hours before. He found Sherlock where he thought he would – on his arm chair, in his navy blue dressing gown, faced towards the ceiling with a gun in hand, like he had done the day before. 'Tell me you're not bored. They just found your girlfriend, or whatever she was-'

'Not my girlfriend.' Sherlock replied, a little too defensive for John to believe it.

'Okay, not your girlfriend, but they just found her, alive, and you're bored?'

'I never said I was bored.' He let his hand droop over the side of the arm chair, dropping the gun, before leaping up and skipping towards the wall. John noticed he was dressed underneath his gown.

'She said that she woke up, not feeling any of the excruciating pain that she had felt before.'

'Where is this going?'

'Lestrade also said that she had overdosed on something, and when they found her her heart wasn't beating.'

'What are you implying?' John tried again, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

'Of course I'm going to have to check all of this with her later.' he said, practically running to the hall to put on his coat.

'Sherlock?'

'Drugs, John!' and with that, he was gone.


January 5th, 1999

'So,' Florence said, a nervous laugh breaking her word into two sounds. 'The last day of being a teenager, Sherlock. Adulthood stares you in the face. How do you feel?'

'Very much the same.' Sherlock replied, quirking his eyebrow and tilting his head to one side. Florence laughed again.

They were walking down Carnaby Street, their arms inches from each other. It was just getting dark, and their faces were illuminated by the neon signs in each shop window. There weren't many people around, but still enough to make them both uncomfortable.

'And you're off to university in September.' she answered, her voice taking a sad turn. She had turned her face away, looking in the window of a particularly interesting clothes shop. She gazed wistfully at the dresses.

'You mustn't worry, Flo. I won't be far.'

'But it will still make a difference.'

'Only an hours' difference. London isn't a very big place.'

'It is if you're small.'

'You're fourteen and five foot nine, Florence.'

'I consider that small, I'm not going to lie. Compared with your six foot four.'

Sherlock laughed, his eyes growing softer.

'I'm going to miss you.' she said quietly, stopping to face him.

'I'll miss you too. But we've still got eight months. Let's make it count.'

Her smile turned into a laugh, and she started walking again.

'What were your New Years' resolutions?' Sherlock said, in an effort to break the somewhat awkward silence.

'To spend more time with my mother. And to dye my hair. And to go out more, I feel like I'm missing out on literally fucking everything.' she giggled. 'What's yours?'

'To live another year.' Sherlock said, no hint of sarcasm in his voice. Florence's face fell as she took that in.

'That's fair.'


John Watson was not much of a thinker. He enjoyed the odd thought, if it was a good thought, but most of the time it was not a good thought, so he refrained from thinking.

However, when Sherlock didn't come home that night, it got him thinking.

'Drugs, John!' he had yelled, indicating he had come to a conclusion, to do with the mysterious Florence that he had talked about so often.

If John was being honest, he didn't like the sound of this 'Florence' bird. She sounded like a nasty piece of work. She literally went missing for eight years, and she had just been wandering around London, whilst drunk and incredibly high, and didn't contact him to tell him she was okay. It pissed John off. Sherlock didn't tell him much else, only that she was okay and suffering from withdrawal, but from the looks of it he was pissed too.

When Sherlock spoke about her before, he spoke of their friendship. They seemed close, almost too close – yet not together close, which struck John as odd. There wasn't that big an age gap between them, just three years – once Florence was eighteen or when Sherlock was younger than eighteen, they could easily have dated, but they didn't.

Maybe Sherlock was waiting until she was eighteen to ask her out, but she had gone missing beforehand. That thought made John feel slightly upset, so he stopped thinking altogether, and fell asleep.


Sherlock left the room at Scotland Yard with a flourish, and hailed the first cab that came his way. His mind was reeling. Five pips. Four short and one long. Warning.

Saint Bartholemew's was a big place. However, Sherlock knew his way around it like the back of his hand, and was easily able to navigate his way to Florence's room.

He slowed his pace as he neared it. He didn't know what state she was in, and although she would have let him see her in any state eight years ago, she felt like a stranger to him, so he didn't know how she would react if she was having a breakdown.

And a breakdown she was having – her knees were brought up to her chest, and her head was laid on top of them. She was gently rocking back and forth, her eyes closed. She was singing softly to herself, a tune that Sherlock didn't recognise.

'Florence.' he said softly, and she stopped singing immediately. She raised her head slowly, her eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. 'Are you okay? Do you want me to get someone...?'

'No, thank you.' she said hastily, bringing her legs down to sit on the edge of the bed and wiping her eyes. 'I'm fine.'

'Are you sure? Because I can come back another day-'

'Honestly, Sherlock, I'm okay. Did you want to ask me something?'

'Yes.' he said, pulling a chair from a small table in the corner of the room. 'You told me that when you woke up after arriving at the warehouse, you felt no pain. Can you tell me how long it was after you arrived that you woke up?'

Florence was slightly taken aback by the peculiarity of the question, but she thought all the same, rubbing her temples and grimacing in pain. 'It was definitely the same day. I remember lifting my broken arm and feeling nothing.'

Strange, Sherlock thought, that's impossible. 'And what about the day you were found? Were your... friends... with you that day?'

'Arthur was. We were separated when I went looking for something and he went looking for something else. He had given me something before we split up, a 'last resort' pill of sorts – it was supposed to stimulate death, in case we were attacked. I don't remember being attacked, but I must have taken the pill.'

'So you did overdose.'

'Not necessarily. You only needed the single pill for it to take affect.'

'Okay. That means that you were found dead because you were dead, but only for a certain amount of time?'

'Arthur said that the affect lasted three hours.'

'What affect?'

'Well, it made it look like my heart wasn't beating, but it was, really.'

'Okay. Is that a drug they made themselves?'

'I don't know. They got them from other places, but I'm not sure where. I think they might have made them themselves, or organised their creation.' She kicked her dangled legs thoughtfully. 'I want them back.'

'I thought you didn't take them?'

'I didn't take them obsessively. I had them for little depressive bursts, and if I got hurt. They would calm me down and stop the pain. I was not addicted, but I want them now, at this moment in time.'

Sherlock nodded in understanding. 'I've just quit smoking, would you believe it.' Sherlock rolled his eyes. 'John's 'encouraging' me, but all he's doing is trying not to kill me as I tear the flat apart.'

'John?'

'Oh!' Sherlock exclaimed, his eyes brightening as he found something else to talk about. 'John. He's my flatmate.'

'Oh. Is he nice?' Florence's head was tilted towards the floor, and her legs were still kicking.

'I think so. I don't look for that sort of things.'

She laughed quietly. 'I know.'

They sat in silence for a while, which made both of them feel uncomfortable. 'I don't feel like we know each other anymore.' he said gently, unsure of what her reaction should be.

She looked up at him, her large, green eyes sad. 'Me neither.'

'And that's strange, because you were the only friend I had. You were there, and then you were gone.'

'I'm so sorry,' she said, but Sherlock looked away. 'I really am.'

'Are you, though? Are you sorry enough to take back the eight years where you knew we were looking for you?'

Florence didn't reply. Her eyes closed and she stopped kicking.

'Are you fucking sorry enough to be okay?'

'That makes no sense.'

'I know!' he was yelling now, and had stood up. He was leaning over her, and looked as if he was going to strike. They both knew he never would, but it looked like it all the same. Florence didn't move, her lips in a hard line, her eyes suddenly dangerous. Sherlock suddenly noticed what he was doing. 'Shit.' he said, bringing his hands up to his face and rubbing it gently. 'Look at me. I'm fucking emotional.' he growled. He realised with some horror that the withdrawal was making him upset.

'I don't think I need to remind you that we're in a hospital room.' Florence spat, her voice warning him to stay put.

Sherlock suddenly clapped his hands and put them to his forehead. 'I've got it! I know how to get you out.'

'Really?'

'Yes. I've just got a case. Literally this morning. I can ask Lestrade if you can help with it. They want to give you therapy sessions, but this is far more interesting. And, you've got a mind almost similar to mine, without the...'

'Without everything that makes you you?' Florence offered, her voice hopeful.

'Yes.'

'Really?'

'Yes. What you and I both need desperately right now is a distraction. This is the distraction!'

'What's the case? And since when did you do cases?' Sherlock glanced at her wearily.

'I've got a website. Now. The case looks to be dangerous, but I'm not one to judge. Yesterday, the flat across from mine blew up. Broke my windows. Bit annoying. Apparently a gas leak. Mycroft later set us with a case that is of "national importance".' his voice was dripping with sarcasm as he said it. 'a man jumped in front of a train, and the top secret plans for a missile defense system went missing. Then, Lestrade called me to Scotland Yard and told me that the gas leak was in fact not a gas leak, and was made to look like one.' Florence raised her eyebrows in disbelief. 'inside the ruins of the place was a strong box, and in that was a letter adressed to me. Inside that was a phone similar to one from a previous case. Basically, I was sent a threat through the Greenwich pips. Warned us that whoever blew up the building opposite ours is going to do it again. I was just in that meeting before I came to see you.'

'Sounds intriguing.'

'So, if the wonderful Inspector Lestrade allows it, would you care to join me?'

Florence sighed, glancing up to the ceiling, then tugging weakly on her gown. 'Anything to get out of this.'


Okayyyyyyyyyyy then

Bit of a perspective as to where we are. If you're not on the same page (ha, literature joke.. kill me now) we're at the Great Game right now. At the beginning.

Really hope you're enjoying this, and at the moment I've got all the chapters pre-written so it won't take long at all for me to upload more content.

Thank you for reading, and please comment and/or follow if you really want to, it would mean so so much :)

*Also, if you hadn't noticed, I am English, hencewhy the spelling for 'realise' is with an 's' rather than a 'z'.