Authors Note: Okay, this is the second chapter of 'The Calm After The Cataclysmic Storm' so please read and review if you enjoyed the first one, all reviews will undoubtedly be read and taken into account!
After 5 months, 2 weeks and 4 days, Sherlock could stand it no longer. The endless void of self-pity and longing for John would not swallow him up. He wouldn't allow it. Of course, he hadn't exactly been careful before now; using various different disguises and hair-dyes, he had ventured out onto the moon-lit streets of London more than once, just to relish in the comfort of black taxis, red buses, Tower Bridge and even the Eye, lit up in all its splendour. Everything he had called home. Except for, of course, the direct meaning of the word. He hadn't dared set foot in Baker Street, or anywhere that coincided with his previous life. For fear of being recognised, fear of seeing his own face, wearing that ridiculous deerstalker, slapped on six different tabloids, with the caption 'Fake Genius Commits Suicide'. Until now.
So it was with a sub-conscious spring in his step that Sherlock headed towards 221B. He breathed in deeply through his nose, allowing his lungs to be filled with the nostalgic, smoky taste of Baker Street, beckoning him forwards. The pattern of the uneven cobbles beneath him, smoothed and weathered, would have conveyed to him that he was within spitting distance of 221B even if his eyes weren't wide open, scanning the empty street for signs of anyone who might spot him. He was now standing directly beneath Speedy's, gazing up at his former home, where he knew Mrs. Hudson to be sleeping. Somewhat fond memories struck him of unceremoniously throwing her attacker out of the second story of the flat before him.
It was Lestrade's apartment that he visited next, sandwiched between the other flats situated in the same block. Sherlock knew it to be the right one from one of the numerous wallets he had stolen from his back pocket, if Greg ever exceeded the correct level of tediousness. This particular block of flats was only a convenient five minute walk away from Scotland Yard, and stood towering over a couple of smaller, meeker terrace houses beneath it. Sherlock smirked to himself at the re-enactment of a typical scenario at Scotland Yard, letting his imagination take flight as the Anderson-and-Donovan terrace houses crumbled under the Lestrade-block-of-flats' authority. He stopped suddenly. As much as he enjoyed fantasising about how stupidly pathetic Anderson was, that was not the point of his expedition. He continued along the streets of London, not taking a second glance at Lestrade's home.
His last stop was on the outskirts of London and took the longest to reach. John's flat was grey, dull and lifeless. The concrete-grey building was surrounded by a slate-grey sky (for it was reaching the early hours of the morning), and Sherlock knew John to be sleeping inside this unoriginal, unimaginative prison. Cut off from the rest of the world. The thought unnerved Sherlock. John did not know (or even, Sherlock wrongly presumed, cared) that his apparently dead friend was below him, keeping his silent vigil and watching John fall into the blissful oblivion of sleep.
oOo
But little did Sherlock know that John's slumber was hardly blissful, and was plagued by graphic nightmares. Within John's mind stood a marble-white figure, forever frozen with a scream eternally etched on his blood-spattered face.