221b Baker Street was quiet and still in the early hours of the morning. Months ago, it was as Sherlock liked it. The quiet of the early hours gave him the time to think through his cases undisturbed, without interruption from Mrs Hudson or others. Now, however, he felt restless. It felt too quiet in the flat, and for one major reason.

John wasn't there. He hadn't been there for a month now, since the pool incident.

Sherlock had awoken in hospital, just remembering squeezing the trigger of his gun, loud noise and a pain to the back of his head. He had been knocked out by debris, as well as some cuts and bruises. One of his first questions had been whether anyone had come in with him, if John was there, but the nurse had told him simply to take it easy. This continued over the next day whilst he was kept in for monitoring.

By the time Inspector Lestrade arrived to talk to him, Sherlock was getting seriously annoyed. He sat up and told Lestrade pointblank that if he wasn't answered, he was going to go looking himself. Lestrade had been the one to tell him. There was no sign of John amid the rubble, apart from blood. There had been no-one there except Sherlock.

In Sherlock's mind, this meant that Moriarty had escaped. That possibly he had taken John with him, or else John had escaped by himself. That John would turn up at some hospital (with blood on the floor, he'd need to) or else be back at Baker Street. But he wasn't at Baker Street. The days turned to a week. Then two. No news. No word from Moriarty.

Sherlock had always dealt in cold facts, not in emotional hopes or fears. Attempting to sugar-coat the truth had always seemed pointless to him; it got in the way of moving things on. But this truth... the fact that after weeks of no news, John could be dead... was painful. A pain that surprised him with it's intensity.

Another option – and one that was perhaps more painful still – was that John was still alive. Perhaps injured, or else in Moriarty's hands. The thought of what could be happening in that context was one Sherlock tended to avoid.

He cared for John. A lot, more perhaps then he had for any other person, but he had tried to suppress such thoughts. Personal feelings, emotional attachments got in the way of the work, so he had pushed them back. The pool night, however, had opened them all up. He had been afraid for John that night, and had seen similar fears in John's eyes. He had never got a chance to explore these feelings.

He tried to bring his thoughts back to the case he was currently on. A murder/suicide, or so it had seemed at the scene. A man killing his girlfriend, jealous over an affair it was rumoured she had had, and then killing himself in a fit of remorse. Sherlock had established now that it was, in fact, the sister of the rumoured sister who had committed the crime. All he had to do now was get the proof from the sister and everything would be sorted.

Normally, the solving of a case, even if small, caused a satisfaction, but right now Sherlock felt numb. Again, troubling.

He let out a soft exhaling sigh, then closed his eyes, making a decision inside his mind. He would start again from now. He couldn't allow John's disappearance to cloud his judgement.