It was four months after Sherlock faked his suicide off the roof of Saint Bart's. Four months since he laid on the pavement with blood from the donor bank pooled under his head as he stared ahead blankly with unblinking eyes as John fell to his knees and turned grayer than the London sky on a rainy day.

Sherlock had his first big breakthrough in the pursuit of Moriarty's crime network. He infiltrated a close knit group, mostly all related to one another, who frequently did the dirty work for a lieutenant about two tiers down from the top of the pyramid. It was genius really. Sherlock set up a scenario in which he gained their trust by saving the life of a beloved niece of the patriarch of the family. He collected useful though fairly low level information for weeks. Then his opportunity came when he was trusted to run an errand that involved making the cash drop for payment to a contract killer. The assassin never knew what hit him. Sherlock extracted names and contacts from the man over fifty-six sleepless hours of intense coercion and interrogation in a damp basement. The man's email access and laptop yielded even more. Sherlock walked away with the money that he was originally supposed to deliver and drove straight through to Paris. He rewarded himself with a stay in a fine hotel where he holed up with the best laptop money could buy and hi speed wifi. He tracked down url signatures and mapped out his next steps, pinning pictures, maps, and bits of info to the lovely baroque wallpaper.

He should have been happy. This was significant progress. Sure, it also brought about the realization that the task was going to be a bit more extensive than he originally thought, but he had a plan of how to do it. Sherlock optimistically projected completing the majority of it within six months, eight at the latest. He could be home to London before the first anniversary of his "death" rolled around. But Sherlock paced a track in the posh carpeting and found no solace in the view of the Eifel Tower. It felt empty. Sherlock rambled out the details to himself in the room. There was never a reply. He thought about buying a violin to play to help him think, but he knew it was impractical. No use drawing any attention to himself by waking the neighbors at 4am.

Instead Sherlock took up smoking again. He hung off the balcony and stared at the stars. "Doesn't mean I can't appreciate it" he whispered to the sky as he blew smoke rings at the metal monstrosity whose lights detracted from the starlight. He thought about his violin, back at Baker Street. What would he play if he had it? The answer came immediately to mind. Bach. Why Bach? Because it was John's favorite…

Sherlock gripped the rails with white knuckles and took a steadying breath. He took a few more. By the time he opened his eyes, his cigarette had burned all the way down and extinguished itself against the filter. He went back in and started running over the plan again, double-checking for any cracks. He knew what was really missing. He was talking to a man that wasn't there. A man who was in a different country, who thought he was dead, and was maybe sitting in his [their] living room staring at a dusty violin case and longed to hear Bach.

Sherlock shook his head and ran his fingers though his short auburn curls. He sat down at the desk to scrawl down a few extra notes. He was aware of fatigue seeping in but he didn't want to lose the train of thought before he succumbed to slumber. He filled about two more pages with smaller leads he wanted to remember to chase down in case he had the time or he hit any dead ends. Then turned to the next page of blank hotel stationary paper and started to write out the events of the last few days as if he were telling it as a story. As if he were telling the story to…

Sherlock blinked his bleary eyes and looked at his script on the page. Even without the cliche greeting line at the top, he recognized his writing for what it was. He was writing a letter. He took another sip of strong french coffee, long since cold, and wiped his the back of his hand against his lips. Sherlock then took what he had been writing out to the balcony and set it on fire with his lighter.

He couldn't take any chances like that. The stakes were to high.

But it had felt good. When he was writing he had been picturing John's face lighting up about the clever parts and lowering his brows when Sherlock took too many risks.

Sherlock sat back down at the desk. He grabbed a few nondescript blank pages from the hotel-furnished printer. He started to write again, but without touching the page. He wrote out every word with his pen hovering a hair's breath above the paper. When he came to the bottom of the page he flipped to the next, and the next. His tale filled eight clean, blank pages by the time he was through. By then his head weighed heavy in his left hand and every blink took longer. His hand was hanging over where the parting valediction should go. There are a chastising voice somewhere at the back of Sherlock's brain telling him that it didn't matter what he put. John wasn't actually going to read it anyway.

But it did matter to Sherlock. In the end it wasn't eloquent, but it was the truth.

His hand shaped the words in the air "I'll work as fast as I can, John. Your friend, always, Sherlock".

When Sherlock awoke an alarming ten hours later, he did not clearly recall dragging himself from the desk chair to the bed at some point in the night. But as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ran his fingers over the soft beard on his jaw (and thought about growing it further for his next stop in Istanbul) Sherlock saw the blank pages on the desk and recalled with prefect clarity every word that he wrote as if it were there in black ink. He rose quickly and snatched them up. He gave no thought to his disheveled appearance. He strode down to the concierge desk and obtained an envelope with no hotel return address on it as well as ample postage. He politely asked the young man to write an address out on the envelope for him and even resorted to flirting to distract him from asking why Sherlock couldn't address it himself. Sherlock folded the pages slowly. He rubbed his fingers over the edges where they would be held by their recipient. That voice in his head again faintly hissed "sentiment", but Sherlock ignored it. He ripped the strip off the self-sealing envelope like ripping a plaster off a wound, closed it, and dropped it in the nearest mailbox.

Author's note:
I should be working on the next chapter of the crossover I have been pecking out since late summer. I should be working on my book. But there were just so many feels from the trailer released today and this fic wouldn't wait any longer. I do plan to churn out the installments on this one quickly. Thanks for reading. Reviews make me feel lovely, if you are so moved.