Author's note: So, I got a review telling me I don't have to end every chapter with a cliff hanger. And that's why I need reviews (and that's not a sarcastic comment, for once), because I honestly didn't notice until then I was doing that. So I though "Wait, I don't do that", looked over the last chapters and thought "Well, I guess I do". I'll try to be better, but it's not easy. I'm way too dramatic for my own good, sometimes. Also, thanks for reminding me of the hypothermia – we in Austria don't get that cold that quickly, thankfully.
Warning: all you Lestrade lovers out there, this is probably going to be a bit hard for you. And I'm one of the myself...

I don't own anything, and please review.

Sherlock is still staring at the door, it could be hours, it could be minutes, later, thoughts swirling through his mind even too quick for him to follow, when another violent shiver reminds him that he needs to get out of the cold very soon.

Before long, hypothermia is going to set in. As well as frostbite; he doesn't trust the pockets of this flimsy sort-of-green jacket to protect his fingers for much longer; he can barely feel them. At least the warm cab gave him a few extra-minutes, if nothing else.

And, if the high continues to disappear this quickly, he's going to need – he shudders again, but this time, it has nothing to do with the cold – another fix.

So, all of this considered, he'd going to try and save himself before dealing with whatever just happened. If he has learned something from being dead, it's that you make sure you can deal with things at a later date when your life is in danger, rather than dealing with them immediately.

He curses as he tries to stop the blood flow from his shoulder. But, all in all, it could be worse. At least no major artery seems to be injured, and he can still move his arm. Though he could certainly do without the sniper that was waiting for him to leave his hideout and who can actually shoot quite well, going by his shoulder.

But where can he go? His home – well, his home isn't his home, that much is clear.

Mycroft? But Mycroft is not going to let him investigate, he knows it. Mycroft is going to lock him up and force him into detox and probably send a few of his men out looking for John, when it's clear that only Sherlock can find him.

So no John, no Mrs. Hudson, no Mycroft, no Yard.

That leaves him with one option.

Lestrade.

Well, he can get another cab – he still has enough of Mycroft's money. Lestrade might be at the Yard now, but he's always been good at picking locks, so that shouldn't be a problem. And he knows the DI won't say anything against it, most likely; he's done this so often in the past ten years he's known him, at every address the DI happened to live, once he even gave his now ex-wife the shock of her life, that Lestrade eventually gave him a key, which, sadly, is in the flat. The flat how he remembers it, at least. But he doesn't think it would be of much use to knock again and ask politely if he could take a look around for a few minutes. And he's in no condition to fight.

But he's still really cold, so he sets out to look for a cab.

And then he realizes something else.

It's irrational, he knows, but considering what just happened –

What if Lestrade isn't living where he's supposed to be living?

Well, better safe than sorry, at any rate. That's what the internet is for.

Luckily, the internet café in Baker Street is still where it's supposed to be – he wouldn't be surprised if it turned out a Bistro, after the last few hours – and the French student who's clearly trying to work his way through university and whose girlfriend is cheating on him, though he doesn't know, doesn't care much about the café and lets him use one of the computers without a second glance. Which can't really be said for the other customers, but he has more important things to concentrate on.

He sees the date on the computer screen.

So it was just yesterday afternoon when he left the flat with John. How could all this happen in the space of less than twenty-four hours? He shakes himself. First of all, find Lestrade. Or rather check that he's where he is supposed to be.

He quickly opens the phone book and types in Lestrade's name, though he knows it's a long shot – the DI has had his address protected for years, so it's not likely to show up through a simple –

DI Gregory Lestrade's name and address appear and Sherlock frowns.

That's not the same address the DI moved to when he and his wife separated; that's not even the same neighbourhood.

It's a rather run-down neighbourhood, in fact. Not as bad as the neighbourhood Sherlock woke up in, this morning, but still. Why would Lestrade move? And why move there? There are certainly nicer places he could go, if he wanted to. But he was rather happy in the flat, as far as Sherlock could gather.

But the DI is in London, at least. He's still here and he's alive and not kidnapped and, at the moment, that's more than Sherlock hoped for. So he just shrugs his shoulders, remembers the address – and really, it could be a nice apartment block in a rather not so nice neighbourhood, who knows? – and, because the other customers keep giving him strange glances and he got what he came for, he leaves.

This time, he gets a cab almost instantly. The driver seems to take pity on him, doesn't even react to the fact he offers him twice the usual fare; he just tells him "It's alright, I'll take you anyway" and doesn't seem surprised when he tells him the address.

Which is a rather not good sign for Lestrade's new neighbourhood, all things considered.

But the cab is warm, and that's good, because by now the withdrawal symptoms start to set in – again – and he can feel the coke bugs making their way all across his skin and his head starts to hurt and the craving, which he hates more than everything else, really, he could easily handle the other withdrawal symptoms, but please, stop the craving, comes back and –

Wait. Wait. The cab stops at a light and he knows the building he's currently looking at.

It's right across from Northumberland Terrace.

It's where Angelo's restaurant is.

Or should be.

Because where he and John had countless dinners for free (despite John's efforts now and then to pay just the half of their bill, Angelo refused him every time – after bringing a candle for the table), there appears to be a –laundrette?

In his renewed confusion, he asks the driver. "Sorry, do you know what happened to the Italian restaurant that used to be here?"

"Italian restaurant?" The driver shoots him a like through the rear view window, but doesn't seem scared or worried, and that's something today. "Sorry, but I don't think there ever was one here. I mean, there have been several businesses at that address in the course of the last few years – none of them made it, sadly. I don't believe one of them was an Italian restaurant, though."

Sherlock could throw a tantrum or try to explain, but the cabbie is the first person who was nice or even polite to him today, so he simply thanks him and adds quietly "I must have been mistaken".

Only he wasn't. He could tell him all about Angelo, if he wanted to, how he cleared his name – a bit, but still, he cleared it of a murder charge – and how good the ex-convict's lasagne tastes. If he decides to eat.

He's hungry too, he decides there and then, because his stomach decides to use this moment to remind him it's still there and growls. When was the last time he ate? That last evening with John, at the flat – takeaway Chinese. Was that really yesterday?

Time to get to Lestrade. The DI has never let him down, he made him the offer to work for the police, he gave him cases, he made sure he stayed of drugs before John came along, and once that army doctor had, he still dropped in occasionally and never said anything when he found Sherlock in his flat, once again, he came to Baskerville just to look after him, even tried to warn him when he had to arrest him. And, if his memory serves correctly, he wasn't particularly keen on finding him and his flatmate once they'd escaped.

Even Moriarty knew Sherlock considers Lestrade once of his few friends, even though he doubts that he knows himself that he means something to Sherlock.

"Everyone".
"Lestrade".

"That's his name".

All of a sudden, Sherlock's rather glad he decided to store the DI's first name in his mind palace after the Baskerville case. Yes, Lestarde will help him: he always does.

"You never bothered to find out".

The rest of the ride is spend in silence, and it's a rather long and expensive ride, even without the special fare, but at least the danger of hypothermia is sinking by the minute. He's almost stopped shivering by the time the cab stops.

He thanks the cabbie after he pays him – really, John would be proud. He doesn't think he's been this polite in the space of a few short hours in a very long time. Then again, he also hasn't been suffering from withdrawal symptoms in a very long time.

The cabbie only takes the money he's supposed to take, declines the rest, gives Sherlock a sympathetic look and wishes him "Good morning". It's not much, but it's something.

"Though I seriously doubt his wish is going to come true" Sherlock mutters to himself as he looks up at Lestrade's new apartment building.

Or, rather, Lestrade's old, run-down, suspicious-shade-lurking-around-the-corner-that-is-sure-to-be-a-drug-dealer building.

It's not a place he can picture his DI, to be honest. But the phone book told him so, and he's starting to feel cold again, so there's no time to lose.

But first, although he really doesn't want to, he goes to the suspicious shade lurking around the corner and buys enough cocaine to last a few hours, in his current condition, he thinks. The suspicious shade even has needles, packed in plastic. Which is a great relief to Sherlock, who really doesn't want to use the dirty one he found in the kitchen this morning. He nods, leaves the suspicious shade and searches a nearby bin until he finds a small piece of wire, perfect for his purposes. He checks to make sure the shade isn't looking what he's doing, but it has disappeared around the corner. One thing less to worry about.

He picks the lock of the building and looks at the post box in the room that would probably be called an "entrance hall" if it was in a nicer building and if it wasn't that cold and dirty and wet and smelling of urine, to find Lestrade's door.

He lives on the fourth floor, and there is no lift. Of course.

He climbs the stairs slowly, holding on to the railing, slowly getting dizzy, the craving getting stronger by the minute. At last, he stands in front of a door. And there is a name tag that says "Lestrade", definitely in the scrawl of the detective, though his hand must have shaken when he wrote it.

Doesn't matter. He picks the lock and lets himself in.

The flat doesn't look much better than the building. It's warm, and that's something, but the place is a mess. There are quite a lot of beer and whiskey bottles – Good God, he mustn't have cleaned the flat in ages. The sofa isn't the comfortable one Sherlock remembers; instead, it looks like it was picked right out of a rubbish dump. Aside from this grey atrocity, there's not much to look at, except for a TV set and a desk that's cluttered with papers and empty cigarette packages – the DI quit, didn't he, years ago? – even the walls are bare, apart from a rather ugly clock, and that's weird, considering Lestrade loves his photographs – the last time Sherlock was in his... other flat, one wall of his living room was full of photos, there were even some of Sherlock and John. Well, actually most of them were pictures of their "family" as Mrs. Hudson – his Mrs. Hudson – likes to call it.

But then he feels the dizziness and the pain again and, much as he hates shooting up in Lestrade's flat, he fears he doesn't have much of a choice.

He hears the tingling he knows so well when he inserts the needle and presses the plunger, and bits his lip when he feels the euphoria coming on. He doesn't want it, doesn't want this, but he needs to keep his head as clear as he can.

By the time he has finished with the drug, at least, he can take off the jacket and has stopped shivering.

He actually meant to spend the time until Lestrade's return thinking the situation over, but the exhaustion finally catches up with him and his eyes close against his will.

He wakes up when a key is inserted in the lock of the flat, and heaves a relieved sigh. Thank God. But, then, he frowns.

According to the clock it's half past eleven, and it's still daylight that's coming through the window, so why would Lestrade already be home?

He gets the answer when the DI enters, or rather stumbles, in his apartment, and for the first time since –

The man has a family, Sherlock can tell immediately, but he needs to be annihilated if Sherlock wants to return home. He shoots. The man falls. Sherlock runs and refuses to look back. He checks later in the local newspapers and tries to ignore the line "leaves a wife and two small children behind". He can't allow himself to care about that.

Well, for the first time in a long time, he curses his deduction skills as he looks at his friend who's staring dumbly and without recognition at him while he's trying to hold himself up.

Still a DI, but spends more time in the pub than at work, where he's clearly been the last couple of hours. Didn't end things with his wife – she kicked him out, a very long time ago. Has been on a steady downward spiral for years. This must be at least his fifth apartment in the last decade.

Lestrade than attempts to say something, which Sherlock interprets as being close to "What are you doing in my apartment?", though he slides down the wall after slurring it, and starts snoring.

Great. But he is Lestrade, and he's his friend, so Sherlock – maybe it was a good idea to shoot up, after all, at least he has the strength to do it – puts him on the sofa and gets a blanket from the bedroom that doesn't look much better than the living room and covers him up. He also finds a chair in the bedroom, so at least he has something to sit on.

He gets himself another blanket – it's warm, but he wants to make sure no risk whatsoever of hypothermia remains – and decides to look in the kitchen while he waits for his friend to wake up.

He has eggs, and toast, and jam, so Sherlock can make them both breakfast, at least. That and... about twenty bottles of beer. Sherlock's heart contracts.

"Oh, Greg" he sighs, then he starts preparing breakfast. Might as well do something productive for the DI while he tries to make sense of the situation.

He's so busy, he doesn't even realize he just called the DI by his first name for the very first time.

Author's note: So that wasn't a cliff hanger, right? I'm not sure.

Even if it was, I hope you liked the chapter and please review.