The air was sharp and crisp as Sherlock walked out into the quiet streets, the cold biting after the warmth of the hostel. He pulled his scarf up round his face to protect his burning lungs as another spasm of coughing hit him. It was as if London had been somehow both washed clean by the snow and muffled by it, the eery quietness broken only by the intermittent sound of wheels breaking through the grey slush that filled the streets. It was still early, the city not yet fully awake and many people seemed to have decided that the few centimetres of snow that had fallen were a good excuse to stay in bed that morning. Sherlock walked carefully, sticking to the parts of the pavement where the sun had hit, grateful for his rubber-soled boots, not wanting to skid and fall on the ice between the intermittent patches of salt and grit. Despite the eleven hours of sleep the night before, his arms, his legs, even his fingers ached and he felt distinctly unsteady, lurching into a wall at one point, knowing despite his attempt at justification that the slippery pavement had had nothing to do with his loss of balance. He was withdrawing from the benzos and he knew it. Still, that was easily enough remedied if you knew the right people - and Sherlock knew both the people and where to find them.

Despite the come-down from the drugs, he had more energy than he had had for days. It was amazing how much more clearly you could think with a full stomach and after a good night's sleep. He had been literally starving, he realised that now, the cold numbing his already reduced appetite. Moving to find food had felt like too much of an effort, so he had rarely bothered. Some days all he had eaten were the soup and the sandwiches that the shelter outreach workers brought round late in the evening.

He coughed again and pulled his scarf further up round his mouth to muffle it, trying to keep his pace purposeful, trying to look as if he belonged.

The few people on the streets were no longer crossing the road to avoid him. He looked, and smelt, like a normal member of society again, and he wasn't going to miss the opportunity to climb out of the cracks.

He headed for the nearest tube station, fed his last few pounds into the ticket machine and pulled out a zones 1-4 return ticket before heading for the closest barrier. There was CCTV in the tube station he knew, but he wanted to be recognised at this point, so he kept his hood down and helpfully pointed his face towards the cameras. Time to get lost in the crowd later.

He headed south on the Northern Line towards Charing Cross, knowing that the stops at the main rail stations were always the busiest. Sure enough, more people piled on at Tottenham Court Road, and more still at Leicester Square. Sherlock had elected to stay standing, his rucksack wedged between his legs, and he allowed himself to sway a little with the movement of the train carriage as he held onto the strap above his head. He allowed the sway to push him into a Japanese tourist standing next to him as the train jolted to a stop at Charing Cross, and murmured an apology as he relieved the man of the wallet helpfully sticking out of his back pocket, and allowed the tide of people to take him off the train and up the escalator, long before the man had realised that it was missing.

He felt little guilt about the theft. The man was a student but a rich one, judging by his clothing and the quality of the stitching on the wallet which even now was concealed in Sherlock's sleeve. Tourists usually meant cash, and cash was exactly what Sherlock needed.

At the top of the escalator, he headed towards the exit, avoided cameras as he turned round again just short of the barriers, and pulled up his hood before heading for the escalators to the Bakerloo line. One stop Northbound and a repeat of the wallet trick as he got off at Piccadilly Circus availed him of another wallet. Tube trains rarely had cameras in the carriages he knew that and thankfully the guard was nowhere to be found - the carriages too full at the tail end of rush hour to allow him free passage through the carriage to check tickets. This time he headed straight for the Piccadilly Line towards Leicester Square.

Crowds were good; crowds were his friend. Londoners who knew always got off the tube at Leicester Square rather than face the queue for lifts at Covent Garden, but queues suited Sherlock just fine. The crush of people outside the lift doors was disappointingly small, however, and he briefly considered taking the steps instead, but another spasm of coughing made him change his mind. Even his customary habit of walking up the stairs in the tube station two at a time was leaving him breathless today and the thought of the hundred plus steps was too much to contemplate.

He pushed his way into a lift whose doors were just closing. The wallet of the man in front was sticking temptingly out of his jacket pocket - why did people do that? Didn't they know that London was one of the pick-pocketing capitals of the world? As the lift bumped to a stop the man jolted against the wall of the lift and his wallet fell out, straight at Sherlock's feet. He was tempted for just a moment, but the lift was too enclosed, there was too much chance that somebody would notice, and while he couldn't see a camera, he knew they were starting to put them into lifts in light of the IRA threat. There were some risk that it just wasn't worth taking.

'Excuse me,' he said, touching the man's arm and handing his wallet back to him.

'Thanks,' the man said, with a soft Scottish accent. He smiled at Sherlock who swore at himself for allowing himself to become memorable.

He wasn't swearing though when he got outside the station and allowed himself to look at the train ticket he had extricated from the man's wallet before handing it back. An open return to Edinburgh. Now there was an opportunity if there ever was one.

He headed towards the covered market at the back of the more touristy arcades, dodging in and out through the thickening crowds od Christmas Shoppers, hesitating next to an unattended money box on a stall selling screen-printed scarves, as the stall holder chatted to the attendant on the jewellery store next door. She was turned entirely away from Sherlock and it would have been easy - so easy - to avail himself of the contents of the box and yet something told him to resist. Walking on a little further, two community support officers turned into the row from the adjacent arcade and he was glad that he had trusted his instincts. If the woman had shouted out he would have been caught within minutes, and he knew that he was in no state to run either very far or very fast.

He headed towards the back of the market, past the rows of high-end shops and across the cobbled street that led to the 'other' Covent Garden market. The cheap end one, the one that had more traditional markets stalls selling fruit, cheap clothing and if you knew where to look something a little more interesting.

A quiet word with the stall-holder of the watch stand led Sherlock to a man standing drinking coffee in a parking area at the back of the market; white vans jammed in next to each other with barely enough room to open the driver's door between them.

Sherlock nodded to him, recognising him from the market behind his usual pitch. He had bought from him a couple of times before. He called himself Steve, although that almost certainly wasn't his real name.

'Alright?' the man asked. He was white, maybe mid-thirties dressed to blend in with the market traders in a hoodie, parka style jacket and jeans, but the bling was there if you chose to look for it; the designer trainers, the flashy watch. This was a man who was doing well from his chosen trade. Traders at lunchtime and the early evening, clubbers at night. The passing trade in Covent Garden was just how he made up the hours between calls from his more discerning clients.

Sherlock explained what he need, coughing into his scarf as he did so.

'Blueys are in short supply at the moment,' Steve told him. 'I can get you something that will sort out that cough of yours, though - and do the job of the blueys.'

Sherlock was about to shake his head when he was racked by another bout of coughing, this one so severe that it made his head spin and he had to lean against the wall for support. He coughed up a lump of phlegm with a foul taste. When he turned away to spit it into a dark corner, he saw streaks of red and closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass. No, no, no, this couldn't happen. He didn't have time to get ill. He had a plan. He was going to get out of this place, get away from Mycroft, he was going to stay away until his eighteenth birthday when Mycroft would no longer have any control over his life and he would, he hoped, be able to access at least some of the money that his parents had left him. Two weeks; fourteen days to stay hidden and off the grid, and after that Mycroft wouldn't be able to touch him.

Steve was holding out a small bottle of clear liquid. 'Try this, he said. 'On the house. You don't like, you don't pay.

Sherlock took it, registering that the bottle was unlabeled. Of course it was. It had probably held shampoo in a former life, poached from a posh hotel room. The contents, however, were unlikely to be shampoo. At least he hoped not. He upended it into his mouth. The contents slid down his throat like silk and tasted oddly sweet with a bitter aftertaste.

Within minutes, a buzz spread through his body that made him feel as if his feet had left the ground and he was at risk of floating up to the ceiling like a helium balloon. The aching in his body was gone, and there was a pleasant buzz in his head which made him feel as if he could do anything. He blinked and staggered a little. Steve reached out a hand to steady him. 'Watch it,' he said, looking amused. 'Good stuff, innit?'

'What is it?' Sherlock asked, shaking his head to clear the mist from it.

'Liquid gold,' Steve told him with a grin. 'Liquid morphine, at least. Stops you a cough and gives you a buzz like you won't believe.'

Sherlock took a deep breath, then another, despite the cold air his cough was peculiarly absent. Apparently instantly cured.

'How does it work?' he asked, squinting at the few drops left in the bottle, shaking it from side to side, as if he could somehow ascertain the chemical formula by doing so. 'How does it stop you coughing, I mean.'

'No fucking idea,' Steve said with a shrug. 'Good stuff, though. Innit. You want some more?'

'Why not, ' Sherlock said, trying to sound nonchalant.'How much?'

'Tenner for fifty mils.'

'I'll take a hundred.'

'Good call - go slow on it, though, yeah? It's strong stuff if you're not used to it.'

Sherlock gave a slight nod, head still spinning. But despite the buzz, there was still an annoying whispering that wouldn't go away. Those voices, his constant companion for so many months were getting louder by the day, and he knew there was only one way to get rid of them.

'But I need some benzos too. If you haven't got any blueys, I'll take whatever you've got.'

'Roofies any good to you?'

'No.'

'I've got a few of these,' Steve reached unto his inside jacket pocket and looking round to make sure they weren't being watched, pulled out a small baggie of circular white tablets.'

'What are they?' Sherlock asked.

'K-pin,' Steve told him.

'Clonazepam?' Sherlock asked.

'Yeah.'

Sherlock nodded, 'Go on then. How much?'

'Tenner for that bag.'

Sherlock dug into his rucksack and pulled out one of the wallets he had acquired on the tube, pulled out a twenty-pound note and then had to rifle through a sheaf of Japanese notes before he found a tenner.

'You got a way of passing that on?' Steve asked as he handed Ives the baggies and the bottles. 'Only I know a bloke gives good money for credit cards.'

'So do I,' Sherlock lied and he tucked the bottles into his rucksack, baggie into his pocket and walked off whistling.

He felt good, he felt great as he walked away whistling, heading for the piazza itself. The morphine was buzzing in his head, making him feel like invincible.

The contents of the wallets made him feel rich and he stopped at one of the cafes and ordered a coffee and a bacon roll, which he sat and ate at one of the outside tables, warmed by the patio heater. A month ago he would have mocked people who sat outside in December, but now it felt like an immensely civilised thing to be doing. Despite the breakfast he had eaten only a couple of hours ago, he devoured the roll in a matter of minutes and then turned his attention to more pressing matters.

The morphine has dulled the voices in his head for a while, and he had hoped that that would be enough but he could hear them - whispering, commenting on him, making their continuous micro-attacks until he wanted to reach inside his head and pull them out through his ears. As if it could possibly be that simple. But in his pocket was a small bag of solutions. At least, that what was what he hoped.

He resisted the temptation to pull out the baggies of pills and count them. Instead, he manipulated one out of the bag while keeping it safely out of sight in his pocket, and washed it down with a slug of coffee. Black with four sugars. He sat and savoured the rest of the cup, enjoying its sweetness while the buzz of the caffeine combined beautifully with the residual high from the morphine, and the creeping calm of the clonazepam started to creep in. The voices became more and more distant until finally, they became silent.

Draining the last few dregs of coffee, he stood up, pushed his hat back onto his head, swung his rucksack onto his back and headed back towards the tube station. There was a big brave world out there, a world without Mycroft in it, and today he was going to take his first steps towards discovering it.

Thank you to everyone who has kept reading and reviewing this story despite the prolonged time-line. It hasn't turned out to be quite as seasonal as I'd hoped! The good news is there will be more chapters over the next few days if all goes to plan, so thank you for sticking with it. And small hint - I write faster with reveiws!

This story comes with the obligatory drug warning - they're not big, they're not clever, they trash your life etc, etc. But then I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that...