Faye's phone rang only a couple of footsteps away from the front door of Baker Street. She rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh and answered it, tucking it in the crook of her shoulder as she fished in her pocket for her keys.
"Yes, John?" She drawled.
"Where are you?" Was his immediate answer and she rattled the keys near her head pointedly.
"Literally just about to open the door." She replied as calmly as she could, "Shouldn't you be at work?" She unlocked the front door, hauling in the shopping bags she had with one hand, pocketing the keys with the other.
"Where did you go?" He asked as she headed up the stairs, glancing almost longingly at the door to 221C. Why did she agree to move in with him again?
"Just out, John." She shook her head, "I'm right outside the flat, why are we still on the phone?" She hung up on him, growling gently to herself as she tried to calm down before entering the flat.
"Faye? Faye?" John was asking into his phone.
"I'm right here, John." She told him, putting her bags onto the sofa, "I went out this morning. Why aren't you at work?"
"Why didn't you tell me where you were going?" He asked in reply.
"Because you were at work." She explained slowly, "Where you should be, now." She sighed, "Did you quit another job?" He nodded at the bags.
"You went shopping?" He asked her, practically admitting his guilt and she pinched the bridge of her nose.
"You can't just keep quitting every job just because you want the freedom we had before." She said quietly, "We can't have that anymore. And you can't keep following me around everywhere."
"I'm not following you anywhere." He scoffed and she raised an eyebrow.
"How long after you got home did you ring me?" She asked, and he looked down, "John? How long?"
"You weren't here." He protested, "Do you blame me? You were on top of the bloody building."
"I know." She interrupted, but he wasn't done.
"On the roof of St Bart's, dangling your legs over. Jesus Christ, Faye, I thought you were going to jump too."
"I know!" She exclaimed before taking another breath, "I know." She repeated, calmer this time, "But I'm not, am I? I've tried the topping myself thing, and it never worked. I never died, and I never felt any better." She walked over, taking his hands and forcing him to look at her. He was taking this harder than she was, in some respects. He was so paranoid everyone was going to leave him behind as well.
"But Sherlock..."
"Sherlock was bloody stubborn." She interrupted, "And even if we'd made it onto the roof, if it was what he wanted he still would have jumped. He still would have..." She trailed off, forcing herself not to cry again. She'd been doing well, she woke up every morning already weeping softly to herself, but during the day it had lessened somewhat, "He still would have died. And I understand, I really do. It makes me not want to wake up again when I go to sleep, but I do. Every morning."
"I don't want to lose you too." He almost whimpered and she pulled her friend into a tight hug.
"I need some space, though." She told him, "Maybe I should go stay at Mycroft's for a bit." He shook his head, pulling back.
"No, there's no need for that." He exclaimed quickly, "I suppose I have been a bit overbearing." He admitted and she smirked triumphantly, having had no plans to go to Mycroft's at all, "I'll stop, I promise. Just, maybe, you know, leave a note or something." She nodded, giving him the 'Scouts Honour' sign.
"Will do." She walked over, picking up the bags, "Right, I'm gonna put this away then I think I'll have a lie down." He frowned, concerned.
"Are you still feeling ill?" She'd been kept up at night for the last week or so, being sick or feeling sickly generally. She shot him a pointed look.
"John..." She trailed off in warning, having not wanted to talk about it. Just another reaction to being alone at night, she had told him time and time again. She was just getting used to falling asleep with Sherlock being there. It was hard, and she was always going to hit some kind of barrier. This one just happened to be... messier than it could have been.
"Sorry." He held his hands up in defence, "I'm a doctor, I can't help it." She rolled her eyes, more in amusement than before and headed towards Sher... her bedroom.
"Of course, John, you could always join me." She called over her shoulder saucily.
"Piss off." He replied and she giggled, heading into the room. She immediately dropped a couple of the bags onto the bed, opening the wardrobe and chucking on bag in, ready to be looked through at a late date. Shutting the door she moved over to the bed, sitting down cross-legged in the middle. She tipped the first bag up, a load of newspapers falling out and onto the covers. She picked the first one up and flicked through it quickly, mostly stuff on the recession and which celebrity was shagging which other celebrity. Mundane and uninteresting, she ignored everything she saw. Until, on page 7, in the bottom corner, was a tiny piece about a sex ring in Riga being broken down. She opened the top drawer on the bedside table, pulling out a pair of scissors and cutting the article out. Another paper, this time of page 21. Out the article came and it was placed into a small pile that built up as she read through every paper she could find that morning.
She then pulled out a small notebook and sellotape, flipping to the first plain page and sticking the articles in it. She then closed it, running her fingers over the cover of it. The book had been Sherlock's, the front half full of his notes on romantic comedies, having watched them just to see if he could find anything he could use to make her smile. The back was starting to fill with up small newspaper articles she'd noticed, small little proses with the smallest spark of hope in them.
She bent sideways and reached under the bed, pulling it out. The item that had started her little campaign, her first and only case. She unfolded the long, dark grey coat with one red buttonhole at the top. Sherlock's coat. Her Sherlock's coat. Her Sherlock's favourite coat. She'd found it draped around her whilst visiting Sherlock's grave a couple of weeks ago. She'd, rather embarrassingly, fallen asleep on top of his grave and when she'd finally woken up the coat had been covering her from the impending rainfall. It was Sherlock's, she knew it was, and he'd been buried in it.
Faye had absolutely no idea what it meant, but she had kept it a secret from everyone. John wouldn't understand, he'd just tell her in was a fake and she should stop thinking of it as anything other than a cruel joke someone had played on her. She knew he'd be able to convince her it wasn't the original, and she didn't want that. She needed it to be Sherlock's, so she kept it hidden under their... her bed until the time she could give it back to him.
Sherlock Holmes was out there somewhere, she could feel it. She stood up, heading over to a world map that she'd bought and placing a tiny cross in Latvia with a ballpoint. A week or so after Sherlock had died she'd been shaken gently by a concerned store assistant, who told her she'd been staring at the map for around 20 minutes and he was worried she wasn't okay. She hadn't been, she still was far from okay but she didn't tell him that. Hadn't even mentioned the excruciating despair she had been, and still was, feeling. She'd just smiled and bought the map for no real reason at all and brought it home, hung it up on the wall where Sherlock's mirror had been and didn't pay it much attention. Now, it had small black crosses over it, detailing places where there could have been any criminal activity and subsequent stopping of it. Anything that sounded intriguing enough to be just up Sherlock's street.
She then hid the leftover newspaper under the bed with the coat and stripped down to her underwear, wrapped herself up in the duvet and she fell to sleep, clutching the notepad close.
