A/N: hey there, me again! this is going to be a fairly short fic to get back into the groove of things, but if you like it tell me :) i'll be posting more often more and i have tons of story ideas tucked away in little crannies of my brain so if do enjoy this, hopefully there will be more like it coming

thanks for continuing on to chapter 2 (there will be a chapter 3 too, if you are interested of course)

Dakota xx

Fairly soon after Sherlock landed at Heathrow, he answered a call from Mycroft, welcoming him home. He realised that he was once again under surveillance that moment that he left the airport and hailed a taxi. The men that Mycroft sent after Sherlock were never the most inconspicuous men. He supposed his brother though it funny or something like that. Unimportant.

He had to find somewhere new to live in London. He chose a simple flat. Fairly cheap, although money was never really an issue for Sherlock. Miles away from Baker St. He wasn't risking it. There was a park near the new rooms and he had developed a habit of walking out into the park, choosing a bench and sitting behind a paper, deducing about the people walking past.

Today was another fairly dull day. Not many people chose today to head out into this particular park. Sherlock was practically forced into this after he discovered that John still worked alongside Scotland Yard. He couldn't go back and he discovered that his old Doctor was competent enough to handle the cases. Sure, he missed things but he definitely saw much more than Lestrade or any of the other so called 'detectives' that are employed by the Yard.

With no cases to solve, Sherlock just sat and remembered and deduced.

Walking amongst the trees and bushes today were two members of his surveillance – two overly large men, with sunglasses and hidden devices in their sleeves and ear wigs (that were not as hidden as the men thought they were). They were both armed, one packed a pistol on a ridiculously visible holster at his waist and the other, who was clearly the more intelligent of the two and the other's superior, had a gun at both his ankle and at his waist. The men themselves – relatively uninteresting. The superior was married, nagging wife who doesn't want children. He had a medium sized dog which Sherlock was fairly sure was a Labrador – a gentle and kind enough dog for the wife (who had turned the dog into the only child that she ever wanted) while at the same time being a manly enough dog to not embarrass the tough husband (who imagined the dog was the son he wished for). The other man – gay, still in the closet, – and extremely happy that he was put on the team to follow Sherlock around. He would be disappointed though, not really Sherlock's area.

Only three other people were in Sherlock's eye shot. A man – mid to late 40s, three children, married, didn't live near this park which was reaffirmed in Sherlock's mind when he deduced that the woman he was with was not married and was, in fact, his mistress. She was divorced, he was soon to be.

And then there was a teenager – a girl, daughter of a single parent (Sherlock suspected a widower but he couldn't be completely sure at this distance), she was skipping school and just as uninteresting as the rest of the subjects available for observation.

He returned to 'reading the paper' – in actuality he couldn't care less, but he would run his eyes back and forward across the page while withdrawing into himself and running through past cases and boxing techniques for tonight when he would go to the gym and beat some man who favoured their own chances of succeeding against this sharp-edged, thin man.

Though behind his thoughts, Sherlock was vaguely aware of something at his feet, playing with his shoes. He raised the paper off his thighs so he could see his feet and only then realised that there was a child playing with his shoelaces. One shoe had completely lost the lace, the boy – no older than two and a half – was busily working away at the other lace, though not very efficiently, his frustration rising with each failed attempt to undo the double knot tying the lace in the neat bow.

And now that he was actually aware of what was going on around him, he heard it. And it terrified him more than anything else he had ever experienced.

'Sherlock!'