By necessity, the brownstone was relegated to use as an office of sorts during the day but coming into the empty house every morning hurt. She missed Sherlock; she missed his exuberance in attacking a new case, the bombastic pronouncement of his conclusions, his voice trumpeting her name, but most of all she missed their quiet times together, sitting in each others company, just knowing he was there.
At Dr. Reed's insistence, she had moved out of the brownstone into a month to month rental. This gave Joan her own space where she could find solace and sanctuary, where she was not living with the memories that hid behind every plaster crack and scuff mark on the floor. She knew, of course, the trauma of the abduction and murders she witnessed would be with her for a long time but in the few weeks since Sherlock's departure and her starting therapy, the nightmares and sudden anxiety attacks had lessened. Joan started taking control of her life.
As Sherlock had predicted, work was easy to find. More of a challenge for her was explaining to Gregson and Bell what had occurred in the past month and the disappearance of Sherlock. She skirted the personal issues and flat out avoided anything about her abduction, the NSA, MI6 and Mycroft. Joan did not out and out lie to them but she was guilty of many a sin of omission. The detectives knew there was more to the story and chose to let it be for now, happy to have her deductive skills available to them. Joan by necessity also took on private work. The cases were small but her success in both the private and public consulting work boosted her self confidence and helped ease her way through the personal trauma. Dr. Reed was quite pleased at her progress.
In the quiet moments though, between cases, her thoughts would turn to him. The partnership was never meant to end; she just needed some space and time to breathe and reacquaint herself with what she wanted, who she was. He had not understood. Frankly, Joan was angry with Sherlock for his disappearance. She surmised he was out there somewhere working for MI6 as a sort of penance or perhaps a vain attempt to right the wrong. But he made the decision without her, a decision that affected her life as well as his. For all her trying to understand his motivation, it just felt like he had run away, abandoned her when things became difficult.
Her anger was tempered with concern. Who knew what harebrained situation he had gotten himself involved in. He was a genius on some levels and on others he was no better than a ten year old boy. Sherlock had requested no contact but she needed to know he was safe.
Randomly at first and then more methodically, she checked his on line haunts. No one knew Sherlock better than she did and it was a simple matter to pull site history from his computers; she worked out his aliases and passwords easily. Surprisingly, the password that she could not crack was at The Hive, a beekeepers' board - a hundred variations of euglassia watsonia failed to gain her access.
For days, Joan surveilled his most frequented sites, but never saw a trace of him. He never logged in, not even for emails. He had truly disappeared. In frustration, Joan ended up logging in as Sherlock at the one site so full of paranoid and odd threads that she felt comfortable not arousing suspicion because everything on this forum aroused suspicion. The conspiracy boards were rife with so many confusing messages that her message: "u ok miss u" just blended in with the rest.
Joan's message brought no response from him but it did bring several way out interpretations of her message that left her expecting Homeland Security to breakdown her door at any moment. She kept checking though, stake outs whether physical or virtual required a lot sitting and waiting. The following week her patience was rewarded. A new thread appeared and immediately caught her eye. "Tortoises are always home." She opened the thread started by Justheretowatch and found an interesting little post:
"The tortoise is quite self sufficient, carrying his home wherever he goes, he is safe if not necessarily happy. He is a slow creature but is sure to make his way back to where he commenced."
The smile started small and broadened across her face. This was all she needed for now: he was alive and safe and planned to somehow make his way back home.