For once? No opening authors note. Just enjoy.

One of the Angels

John trudged through the door of the - his flat. His flat, he repeated in his mind. This was his flat now, not - not the other place.

He kicked the door shut, absently throwing the chain lock into position. Five steps, he was in the kitchen. 7 steps more, he was flopping onto the bed.

It had been a long day. Again. Truth be told, every day felt like an eternity now, stretching on and oozing on like molasses. It was the same routine every single day, waking up to an unfamiliar room on an unfamiliar bed, feeling lost and empty and not knowing why, until it rushed up to slam into his brain and send waves of shock and grief crashing over him.

Sherlock had jumped. Sherlock had jumped off a roof and ended his life. Sherlock was dead.

Then John would do his best to shake it off, to quell the squall that tore through him, and get on with his day.

He could not remain in 221B. Not without Sherlock. Every inch of the place sparked memories of the tall, skinny detective - Sherlock stood in front of the window, creating beauty and life itself on his violin - and John simply couldn't take it. He couldn't handle the reminder of what he had had. Of what he had lost.

The best man he had ever known was dead. An spider masquerading as a man had waltzed into their lives, jerked them around like puppets on strings, and pushed Sherlock off the roof. Maybe not physically, but It had orchestrated the entire thing, gave Sherlock no choice but to plummet to his death.

Scotland Yard had found Sherlock's phone, discarded on the rooftop. On it was a recording. A recording of the entire exchange between Sherlock and Moriarty.

Lestrade had brought him in to listen. Listen to the cryptic banter of the two geniuses, and listen as Moriarty gave Sherlock an ultimatum. Jump, or watch as the three people he cared about in the world were gunned down in cold blood. Lestrade. Mrs. Hudson. And him, John Watson.

Sherlock had tried to get himself out of the situation, to pick option 3 like he was so fond of doing. But just when it seemed like he had gotten the upper hand on Moriarty, a gunshot blasted through the speakers. From the sound of things . . . . Moriarty had killed himself. Then came the sounds of leather shoes against gravel roof. The familiar sounds of Sherlock pacing. Twin scuffs could then be heard, and then the recording ended, so Sherlock could make a call.

Call John.

He was both grateful and distraught - devastated - that Sherlock had not managed to record their last conversation. His note, as he called it in an attempt to try to act more like a normal human. On the one hand, he wanted to hear Sherlock's voice again, to replay his final words over again and again, have something semi-tangible to cling to. On the other, he never wanted to have to hear Sherlock's voice tremble in fear, and become choked with tears. To him, Sherlock Holmes was brave, confidant, fearless. To hear him so broken, so desperate . . . .

He had moved out, away from Baker Street. All the happy, emotional, and bittersweet memories that haunted the flat - Sherlock stepped out of the kitchen, two beakers clutched in his hands, his face and shirt front absolutely covered in soot, his hair sticking straight up in wild tangles, his expression one of total shock as John laughed - taunted John, and he simply couldn't bare to live there without Sherlock. It wasn't the home of John. It was the home of John-and-Sherlock.

He took up his old job at the clinic. Sarah was happy to have him back, and kind enough to start him on full-pay. He knew it was pity money, and he would not have taken it if he hadn't needed it. Sherlock, while not getting paid by Scotland Yard for his services, had received enough money from the high-profile cases and Mycroft to pay the bills for the both of them. Without Sherlock, John had needed to find his own source of income, so the clinic it was.

So started his life PS - Post-Sherlock. And God, it was bloody awful.

He was back in the small flat he had been living in when he had first returned from Afghanistan. There were not 4:30 wake-up calls by an enthusiastic Sherlock. No crime scenes to investigate alongside the raven-haired man. No chases by car or foot through the back alleys of London. No deductions, no severed body parts in the fridge (John would have never imagined missing looking for milk only to find frozen hands sans their fingers). Just day after day at the clinic and in the miserable little closet that was his flat. If someone had stopped him on the street and asked him the date, John honestly would not have been able to tell them. The days blended together, the boundaries of time blurring into a mess of digits and the monotone routine of simply existing.

He was lost without Sherlock, spiraling into the depression that had gripped him upon returning from the war, and sinking even further past that. He had returned to seeing a therapist - though not the same one he had seen before, Mycroft had proven just how untrustworthy she really was. This one was new, recommended by Britain's Big Brother himself. She was good at her job, he supposed. She had kept him from simply pitching himself off the roof after Sherlock, anyway. She didn't bother with the psycho-analysis that most therapist seemed so bloody fond of. She listened, and talked sometimes. She was always there for him to call or visit, a sound rock in the raging storm of Sherlock's death. Not bad, for a therapist.

But there was only so much a therapist could accomplish. She may be able to coax him out of complete oblivion, but she would never be able to get rid of the gaping void that had settled in John's life. That's what it was, a void. An absence felt so keenly that it was a thing in and of itself. A black hole that had grown inside him, slowly collapsing in on itself. An aching hole carved in his chest, making him feel empty, hollow, and numb.

It was only a matter of time, John often thought. It was only a matter of time until the gnawing grief and loneliness consumed him completely. And then it would all end, one way or another.

It wasn't that John wasn't trying to deal with it. He really was. He was seeing a bloody therapist for God's sake. But nothing helped. When Sherlock died, John died too. He just wasn't in the ground yet.

There had been a funeral. A public gathering, and the sheer lack of people there had made John want to scream. He had attended, of course, with Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft, and an aging couple that had introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Holmes. A baker's dozen of mismatched folks from Sherlock's homeless network (including a young boy that John recognized as the graffiti artist that had assisted with the Blind Banker case) had shown up, wearing hole-ridden clothes that were obviously the best they had. Angelo from the restaurant had come, along with a small group of strangers who all had stories of Sherlock helping them in some way or another through his work with the police.

That was it. 20 mourners in all, when Sherlock had saved countless lives in his 35 years. London itself should have been paying their respects, but not even the police force Sherlock had assisted could be bothered to show up, sans the wonderful DI Lestrade. The unfairness of it all had boiled his blood. Sherlock had sacrificed himself, and no one knew, no one believed. Moriarty had destroyed Sherlock in both life and death.

Sitting up from his sprawl across the tiny bed, John moved to the beat-up desk stashed in the corner. He had been meaning to write Harry an e-mail for days now as to reassure her that he was alive and kicking. Booting up his laptop and selecting the Internet icon, he patiently stared at his Union Jack background as he waited for the Wi-Fi to connect.

The browser opened, and John froze. He hadn't used his laptop in weeks, and it had slipped his mind that he still hadn't remembered to change his homepage (This was not the first time he had gotten this rude awakening). Spread out before him in all its glory was his blog.

His last update was still pulled up, a write-up of their last case before the fall. John had not been able to add any new posts to his blog since, even after6 months. The blog had truly began when Sherlock had entered his life. Before that was just the odd comment on how useless the site was. Now after Sherlock, there would only be more of the same. To continue on without updates about Sherlock's latest escapades . . . . It seemed wrong, like it would somehow taint the previous entries in the blog.

John's grip on the mouse tightened, and he urged his hand to click out of the page, to open a new tab to hid the records of the past. He couldn't get himself to do it, though, as his traitorous eyes drank in the words and pictures glowing in front of him.

One picture in particular caught his eye. Sherlock had steadfastly ordered John not to post it, but John had ignored him, uploading it with a smile. Sherlock had just solved a case involving the murder of a single mother and the theft of a priceless diamond inside a locked room. The daughter of the dead woman, a wisp of a thing only 5, turned out to already be a big fan of theirs. When Sherlock had returned the diamond to her and her guardian, the little girl, wearing a deerstalker cap like Sherlock's, had latched herself onto Sherlock's legs in a tight hug. Sherlock had been uncomfortable, but had hugged the little girl back, and a small smile was visible on the cold detective's lips.

Staring at the picture, John felt his own lips curl into a weak smile as a strangled giggle escaped his throat, tears bubbling up in his eyes. Seeing Sherlock alive, even motionless on an upload . . . it hurt. It shouldn't be this way. Sherlock should have been sitting in his chair at Baker Street, or lying on the couch lost in his Mind Palace, with John loyally at his side. Not lying dead and cold, rotting in a grave.

"Oh, Sherlock." He choked. "Can - can you stop being dead? Just for me, please? One - one more miracle, that's all I'll ever ask of you." He pleaded with the photo.

Predictably, nothing happened. John sniffled, and wiped the few tears that had escaped on the sleeve of his jumper. He breathed a shaky sigh, and stood, slouching into his shoebox of a bathroom to take a shower.

Hours later, the sun was skimming the horizon. John rose from his chair and paperback copy of The Hobbit. He had work tomorrow; time to go to bed and attempt to sleep.

Thud, thud, thud. A knocking on his door stopped his progress across the room. Who on earth would call upon him at this time of day? With a sigh, John turned around and marched to the door.

He rubbed his palm across his face, and tried to wake up. It was probably Mike or Lestrade, wondering if he wanted to join them for a quick pint. He was half-tempted to take them up on that offer, and so opened the door.

It was not Lestrade that stood waiting in the hall, nor Mike. The man who stood in front of him was tall and almost painfully thin. His skin was flawless, the shade of white porcelain. Thin pink lips were curled into a smile, and blue-grey eyes set above high sharp cheekbones sparkled with unbridled glee. A mess of inky curls complemented the navy blue wool trench coat he wore, which fell to his knees. A blue scarf was wrapped around his neck, and his collar was pulled up.

"John." Sherlock Holmes greeted, more relief and happiness expressed in that one word than in a thousand speeches.

John gaped at the man in front of him. No, no it couldn't be. Sherlock was dead. John had watched him fall and hit the ground, watched his broken body bleed out on the sidewalk in front of St. Barts. Sherlock was dead. Yet, here he was, standing in front of him like he had just popped out to get some milk, and had returned.

Sherlock noticed his struggle with what his brain and what his eyes were telling him. "Long story short," Sherlock held out his arms as if to present himself for inspection, "not dead."

A balled fist shot out, almost before John could even process what he was doing, and slammed into the side of Sherlock's face. He went down like a bag of cement, collapsing on the floor. He wasn't unconscious, of course, just down to the floor.

"Okay," he groaned as he rubbed his cheek, "bad choice of words."

"You complete, utter, absolute *^# &%$!" John shouted.

"John, I -"

"Six months! 6 frickin' months of complete silence! I thought you were dead, we buried you! 6 months, Sherlock Holmes and you just now pop up and say 'not dead'?!"

"I wanted -"

"Wanted to what?! Watch me fall apart?! Was it an experiment?! What the *%#$, Sherlock?!"

"I wanted to come back sooner!" Sherlock yelled, eyes narrowing in frustration.

"Then why didn't you?! Or better yet, why didn't you tell me you didn't die at the very beginning?! A text would have been nice, or a letter, or freaking smoke signals!"

"I - I -" And suddenly, Sherlock looked defeated. "I couldn't." His voice cracked, and the anger that had been fueling John's rant began to slip away. He tried to grab it back - Sherlock had let him grieve for 6 months - but desperate relief was taking over. In one minute, his entire world had been turned upside-down, or right-side-up, depending on how you looked at it. Sherlock was alive, John thought with a flood of fantastic disbelief.

"Get in here, you git." He sighed, moving out of the doorway to open up his home.

Sherlock smiled, and he picked himself up off the floor. "Thank you, John."

"Thank me when I haven't killed you." He muttered as Sherlock passed. He shut the door as Sherlock took a look around John's new residence. John watched the detectives keen eyes absorb details from everything in the flat, and he felt the strangest mixture of excitement and bitterness. The thought How dare he just waltz in here and start deducing like nothing's happened warred with the joy of seeing Sherlock deduce when he had thought he would never see Sherlock do anything ever again.

"Don't judge, I can't afford Baker Street without you." He growled as he moved to sit on his bed.

"I was not going to say anything." A beat. "But you should really get rid of the mold." A gesture to a slightly darker corner of his flat.

"I don't have mold."

"Yet." Sherlock shrugged. "Conditions are perfect here, and that corner has all the tell tale signs. I did an experiment once on the growth of mold -"

"I know, Sherlock. You stored it in our fridge and it wasn't safe to eat anything in it for weeks." John rolled his eyes. Unbelievable. He had just returned from being dead, and all he could talk about was mold.

"Er, yes." Sherlock coughed. "Not the time."

"Not the time." John agreed.

Sherlock pulled over the seat from John's desk, stripping his coat and draping it over the back before sitting down himself. Underneath he wore a suit just like the ones he had worn before. Nothing had changed about him. He could have stepped out of a photograph.

"Now explain." John said coldly.

Sherlock sighed. "It's a long story, and I doubt you'll believe me when I do tell you."

"You just returned from the dead. I'll believe just about anything, and I'll make all the time in the world." John said firmly.

A quick smile twitched at the corners of Sherlock's mouth, but his serious look dropped back into place in an instant. "Very well, then." He clasped his hands, just like before. "John, I'm - I'm sorry I did not tell you where I was planning on going. I thought I could talk my way out of it, checkmate Moriarty. But I failed, and I -"

"I don't care about Moriarty, Sherlock." John interrupted. "I want to know how you survived, and why you didn't tell me before now."

Sherlock hesitated. "The thing is, John, I didn't." He finally said.

"Didn't? Didn't what?" John repeated, confusion creeping over him.

"I didn't survive that fall. I died." Sherlock solemnly said.

John's first instinct was that Sherlock was lying, or joking, and anger flowed hot in his veins. Why on earth would Sherlock make fun of this? John almost got up to hit him again, and strangle him for good measure. But one good look at Sherlock's face, and John knew he wasn't joking.

"What do you mean, you died?" John's voice shook with all the emotions battling inside him. "You're sitting right in front of me! I punched you, you're solid! Not a hallucination, or a ghost!" He barked a laugh at the thought of a ghostly Sherlock. Come back to haunt him. Actually, that did sound like something Sherlock would do.

"I'm not a hallucination, and I am not a ghost." Sherlock nodded. He stood, and took the spot next to John. A pale hand took his tan one and squeezed, reassuring him that he was in fact solid.

"Then what the heck do you mean by 'you died'?" John's nerves were growing frayed. Why did Sherlock have to be so bloody cryptic?

"I mean that I died. I stepped off the roof and killed myself. The next thing I knew, I was -" Sherlock swallowed. "The next thing I knew, I was standing in a city of pure white light."

"You - you went to Heaven?" John asked in wide-eyed disbelief. Maybe he had hit his head. Maybe he was dreaming. There was no way Sherlock was sitting here and telling him -

"I went to Heaven." Sherlock smiled wryly. "It's actually rather ironic. One of the last things I said to Moriarty on the roof was that while I may have been on the side of the angels, I certainly wasn't one of them. And not ten minutes later, I became one." Sherlock gave a small chuckle.

"You're - you're an - an angel?" John asked faintly.

"Yes, John, do keep up." His words lacked their usual bite, though, spoken as they were through a soft grin.

"You? An angel?" John repeated numbly.

"Yes, we've established this." Sherlock rolled his eyes impatiently.

"An -"

"Oh, for God's sake!" Sherlock snapped. He unbuttoned his suit jacket, and pulled off the dress shirt he wore underneath to reveal a bare chest. Sprouting out of his back and quickly filling the room with their enormous length was a pair of feathery wings.

"Angel wings." John breathed.

"Yes, quite a few angels expressed the same disbelief at seeing them on me." Sherlock commented.

"Can - can you fly?"

"Of course I can fly!" Sherlock said indignantly. "What's the point of having wings if you can't fly?"

"Of course. What was I thinking?" John responded sarcastically.

The two men locked eyes, and suddenly, they busted out laughing. The situation, for John, was simply so unreal. His dead best friend had come back to life as an angel, when he was self-proclaimed to not be one of them.

"May I touch them?" John asked breathlessly once their laughter had tapered off.

"Of course you can." Sherlock extended a wing, and as lightly as he could, John ran a hand across the top row of feathers.

Sherlock's wings were incredibly soft, almost like fluffy down. At the very beginning, where they began to stick out of his back, they were a pure, almost blinding white. As they grew out, though, they turned into a dusty light grey, growing darker and darker until the very tips were midnight black. They were full wings, strong with plenty of feathers, but you could see the bones in them outlined in the flesh, giving them a slightly skeletal look. They were not the angel wings so often depicted, but they were beautiful in John's eyes, contradictions that suited the man they belonged to.

"Amazing." John whispered.

"They are not made of glass, John, you don't have to be so careful." Sherlock brushed off the compliment, but John still saw the slight grin on his face.

"So, for the last 6 months, you've been in Heaven." John summarized.

"I told you I would have come back immediately if I could have and told you, but I couldn't."

"How are you back now?"

"A lot of red tape." Sherlock rolled his eyes. "It's ridiculous. It's Heaven. Pests like red tape should be things of the past that my immortal soul should no longer have to deal with, but no. Paperwork galore and begging and bargaining and pleading like there is no tomorrow. I could have been back the day after, but all the red tape made it take 6 months."

John giggled. "You serious?"

"Very." Sherlock sighed in exasperation. "It was so boring!"

"Red tape or Heaven?"

"Whichever. Both." Sherlock waves a hand.

John shakes his head, a fond grin ruining the image. "Only you could find Heaven boring."

"Well, there were no cases! And almost everyone there was an idiot."

"So you filled out paperwork and badgered God to let you come back to Earth?"

"Basically, yes." Sherlock smirked, and John laughed.

"Only you." He repeated.

"I convinced Him that I would do far more good down here than I would ever do up there. After 6 months, He finally agreed, and here I am." Sherlock spread his arms as if to say "Ta-da!"

Seeing an opening, John leaned in and wrapped his arms around Sherlock. The angel stiffened, but then relaxed into the hug. His wings curled around the two of them as well, resulting in both of them being wrapped in a feathery embrace.

"It's good to have you back, Sherlock." John sighed.

"Happy to be back, John. I missed you." Sherlock whispered.

"I missed you too."

Minutes, maybe hours passed. It was hard to tell when John's mind was singly focused on the man in his arms. It truly was a miracle. His best friend had returned, abandoning the wonders and paradise of Heaven just so he could be in London. He had thought that he would never see Sherlock alive again, but here he was in his embrace, breathing in his scent.

"Baker Street?" Sherlock's voice broke the silence.

"Hmm?" John mumbled as he pulled away from the angel.

"Shall we return to Baker Street? Honestly, John, this place is a dump, and I refuse to live here."

John chuckled. "You're staying, then? For good?"

"Obviously, John."

"Then absolutely. I hate this place." John declared to Sherlock's amusement. "But how are you going to explain how you're alive?"

"You think I would spend 6 months trying to get down here and not think of a cover story?"

"Of course not." John reassured. "Put your shirt back on and let's go."

Sherlock flattened his wings against his back and dressed with record speed. He held the door open for John, and with a chuckle John walked out, quickly overtaken in his steps by Sherlock.

As they exited the building, Sherlock breathed in the polluted air. "Never thought I could miss a place this much." He admitted.

"Surely London doesn't compare."

Sherlock gave a sad grin. "It's paradise up there, John, truly it is. But London is where the people I care about are. There's no contest."

John didn't know what to say to that, but he sensed that it was rhetorical anyway. So he just held out his hand to hail a cab.

One cab ride later, and the duo emerged at the end of Baker Street. Both of the men wore huge grins as they approached 221B.

They were coming home.

Hello again. This fic was inspired by all the beautiful Winglock art on the internet, and the quote "I may be on the side of the angels, but I am certainly not one of them."

I apologize for the random symbols, but I don't cuss, even though I felt like the scene needed it to sound in character. So that was my compromise, going comic style.

I hope you enjoyed my little story. Please review!

Have a great day/night!

-Blue