The next day he took a cab. Mrs. Hudson had called him up, in need of his help with packing up the rest of the science equipment that took over the kitchen. He didn't think he'd be able to take a cab, let alone go back to his old flat twice in the same week. But he did. And as soon as he stepped inside again he felt the rush of all of those smells come back to him, filling his nose with all of the sweet scents that he'd grown to love in the past eight months.
"Mrs. Hudson?" he called, beckoning his landlady down the stairs to join him. But the response he heard was not from her room, but from behind the door he was afraid of opening. Well, not afraid. John Watson is a soldier. He wasn't afraid of opening a bloody door. He wasn't.
So he pushed it open with his fingertips and listened to it creak, and behind it he saw Mrs. Hudson. He swung the door open all the way and watched as the woman stared fondly at the very thing she'd been so cross about only months prior. The yellow smiley face spray-painted across the intricate wallpaper, and all the bullet holes that riddled it. His mouth curled into a smile before he could stop himself.
She went on to tell him that she was most definitely going to donate all of the science equipment to a school, but when he offered to help her move it she only shook her head.
"We're not in any sort of rush," she'd claimed. But he knew the real reason. It was the same reason that John hadn't bothered to pack up his mug from the cabinet, or that his laptop still sat next to his favourite chair. It was the same reason that Mrs. Hudson hadn't removed the knife from the mantle, or bothered to patch up the bullet-ridden face on the wall.
And he couldn't argue with her.
She left the room only minutes later claiming to be fixing them some tea, but John heard a bit of a crack in her voice. He let her walk out without questioning it. But soon he felt a shift in the room; a sort of silence that took him over. All the smells he loved were replaced with a putrid stench of loneliness. Cold, suffocating loneliness. He couldn't hear the sound of the kettle exploding from some sort of chemical reaction or smell the thumbs in jars of formaldehyde in the microwave; he couldn't hear the furniture being scraped up by swords or smell the wallpaper singeing from some spontaneous fire. He couldn't hear the sound of beautiful music being played expertly over the violin, bow weaving over the strings and drifting John's favourites through the flat at night.
And he never will, he realised. He felt his leg start to pain and he maneuvered himself into the nearest chair, catching himself before he fell to the floor from nausea.
He never will.
Not again. Not now. He could not hear or smell or see or feel any of those things ever again, because he's gone. Sherlock is gone.
He's gone.
His head start to hurt, and his leg hurt even more. But his heart hurt the most. He let his head drop into his heads as he tried to contain himself. His breathing became erratic, but he suppressed the tears threatening to escape. He had to. He had to be strong.
Looking up from his hands he inhaled deeply, letting his eyes drift shut one more time before breathing out at last. He swallowed. Swallowed his sorrows, his doubt; anything that wouldn't help him right now. And that's when he saw it.
Among stacks of books and scattered papers beside the couch, he saw it. He gripped the side of the chair tight and raised himself out of it, bounding, limpless, to the space under the graffitied wallpaper and picked up the can of yellow spraypaint. It was the same colour as the face on the wall. Looking at it, he remembered where Sherlock must've gotten it. From the case with the spray-painted cipher, or "The Blind Banker" as he'd titled it on his blog. He gripped it tight in his hand as his mind raced through all of the possibilities, until he focused only on one.
He found himself racing out the door and plowing down the stairs, passing right by Mrs. Hudson once again as she called out to him fruitlessly about how she'd just made a fresh brew and a batch of biscuits.
"Not right now Mrs. Hudson, I haven't got any time," he spoke as quickly and frantically as him nearly sprinting out the front door of 221B.