In order to be sure that Mrs. Donavan never had to come into his life again, Sherlock decided that it was time to leave. Well this came as a decision that was long in the making, as it would seem that he had exhausted his life's potentials here in this dingy old apartment, surrounded by the same drab and boring faces at the bar. He had made too many enemies in this small little town, and in trying to avoid each and every person he had wronged at one point or another it would seem as though his bubble of isolation was growing to an enormous extent. All of the sudden Sherlock dared not look anyone in the eyes, lest he recognize their gaze from his evenings, or their scowling faces from the other side of a wedding ring he hadn't realized was there. Life was beginning to get complicated, not only for the poor father but for the daughter as well. The daughter who began to wonder why the morning doves never sang, and why the bird cage had been emptied in the night. And so it was time to move, back to their beginnings, back to where they might find the only sustenance available for them. Every lost chick needed its mother, and if Sherlock could not efficiently be the mother then he had to at least find the true one, he needed to find the woman who might teach him how to be a proper parent. Sherlock was unwilling to sacrifice Annie to her proper guardian; well of course he would maintain all levels of precaution necessary. Annie would still be presented as his own flesh and blood, and he would present himself as the mournful widow of a wife long gone. Though he needed guidance, and no such guidance could come from anyone but the true heiress, the true mother of this poor child who had fallen into his hands. And that woman, wherever she may be, would have to make up for her negligence in the past with wisdom that might coach her child into her future, without ever realizing the severity and meaning of her good intentions. Sherlock would be...well he would be the puppet that the woman commanded, he would be the hands and heart while she would be the guiding force, the spirit that inhabited his limp and incapable limbs. Together they would work together to make sure Annie got the upbringing she needed, together they would make sure that she didn't end up just like their lost little dove, twisted into oblivion and buried in the unproductive garden. Annie wasn't overly enthusiastic about moving houses so quickly into the start of her first year, though Sherlock figured that this environment would not have the means to satisfy her for much longer. There was something wrong with where they were living, with this apartment, this town, this school. Annie wasn't meant for a life on this side of the country, she wasn't meant to have been relocated so soon. A flee from punishment was hardly a reason to deny the girl the surroundings she was born into, and the fear of facing his own guilt head on was a terrible excuse for Sherlock to deny her proper parenting. And so they had to go back, go back to that station and to that town. They had to readapt themselves into the culture they were born to be in and slowly but surely locate the true parents of this lost child. The trip began on the road, with a great big moving truck Sherlock had sent along before them to carry off the bigger and necessary pieces of furniture. Off went their beds and dressers, TV's and couches, until at last the two were left in an empty apartment filled with clothes and other things, things which would come as no use when the night fell. And so they had to be on their way as well, and their form of transportation would ultimately have to be the train. And so, with suitcases in hand, Sherlock and Annie retreated to the underground. It was a terrible place for the both of them, as Annie was afraid of what lingered down the stairs (Sherlock may have told her scary stories, to keep her from wandering back to her starting point) and Sherlock was afraid of what lingered at that one particular station, their ultimate destination. There were memories down here, memories associated with the smell of mildew and dirty tiles. Memories associated with the yelling of people, the screeching of breaks, the crying of children... Sherlock held tight to Annie's hand, just as a small reassurance that he had done one thing better than did her previous parents. He would be sure not to let her get lost in this crowd, he would be sure not to submit her to the same sort of loneliness she must have been born into. God forbid there was a man here, a man waiting for a family just as he had been all those years ago. Sherlock didn't feel comfortable until at last they had taken their seats on the train, a large passenger train made for longer trips across the country. Thankfully they had a compartment to themselves, and were therefore allowed to spread out their suitcases and carry-ons onto the extra seats and busy themselves with entertainment of their own nature. The countryside was only entertaining enough for about ten minutes for Sherlock, and perhaps twenty seconds for little Annie. She could not stand scenery, for her eyes of aesthetics had yet to develop out of its childish faze. She could not see the beauty in the rolling hills, nor in the clouds as they puffed in great billows about the tops of the trees. She could not understand the entertainment of day dreaming, and instead resorted to pulling out her dolls once more; deciding to make her own stories rather than live in the one she had found herself in. Sherlock was much too distracted to play along, and while he had been offered a doll he had to refuse for the time being. Even though their compartment was private he could not stand to think what would happen if his attention wavered. In such a public place the possibilities were endless, and just as he had committed his own crimes in the presence of trains he could be offered the same injustice by another wandering man. If anything happened to Annie as they were traveling, homeless for the time being and terribly exposed, well he could never forgive himself. This moment in time was when they were at their most vulnerable, and Sherlock would not allow simple negligence to come in the way of himself and the safety of his daughter. They were birds who had left the nest, learning to fly.
"Daddy, is our new house going to be big?" Annie wondered, at last setting down her dolls for their 'bedtime' and sitting with her head fallen into her supportive fists.
"Big? Well, it depends of course on your definition." Sherlock said with a little chuckle, keeping his eyes on the door for just a moment longer so as to make sure the lock was securely fastened. The countryside was moving at a steady rate aside of them, fast enough that the colors came not in a great pop but instead in a slow blur, and lines of trees instead became a thick green stripe, and rows of corn were instead massed into one whole unit.
"Big as in...as in our own house. Mr. Turner doesn't live there and...and we have our own movie theater." Annie decided at last, after a moment's contemplation.
"Well darling, we don't have our own movie theater. But it will be our own house, in a neighborhood big enough to have plenty of children your age. We'll each get our own room, and we'll have another room as well, for when friends come to visit. And we'll have a great big backyard, all to our own!" Sherlock exclaimed, trying to make this house seem a bit more desirable to the girl. Of course it would be a major improvement from where they had been living before, entirely because Sherlock was trying to call attention to himself, rather than hide in the shadows of poverty and monthly rent. The apartment had been a perfect place to hide, a perfect hole in society that was just big enough to secure the two of them against the rest of the world. This house they were traveling towards, well it was large and obnoxious, set right in the middle of suburbia in an attempt to call the necessary parties to his door. Sherlock planned to be, well if he could stomach it for long...sociable.
"How have we got the house? You don't have a job." Annie pointed out, to which Sherlock could only chuckle in agreement. Well if he had done one thing correctly as a parent, it was raising a child who was able to think logically.
"I'll teach you a word today, Annie, called inheritance." Sherlock muttered. "It's a very fancy word, describing a large sum of money passed on from a dead parent to their child."
"Your parents are dead?" Annie clarified with a frown.
"Yes, they died a long while back. Before you got the chance to know them." Sherlock agreed quietly, remembering back to his own upbringing with a very sour expression. He knew of negligence not only from an audiences' perspective but from a personal perspective as well. Perhaps he might know something more on parenting if he had ever been offered the luxury of experiencing it.
"And they gave you a lot of money?" Annie clarified.
"A boat load." Sherlock agreed, forcing a smile onto his face that was surprisingly easy to conjure. His parents, however terrible they had been, had at least been rich enough to promise their son a future that was far more preferable than his past. At least he could make good use of the inheritance that had fallen upon him, better use than what had been wasted as he was growing up.
"That's a lot." Annie decided with a small nod, and with that she went back to playing with her dolls, waking them up from their sleep and making them go on more little adventures throughout the luggage racks and cubby holes that surrounded this detailed compartment. The train ride lasted a whole four hours, a long enough commute to tire even Sherlock's fight or flight instincts long enough for him to relax against the seat, watching as his daughter curled up along her own row of seats to take a nap. Occasionally the train would jolt them both into consciousness, and Sherlock would first check the lock on the door before having to answer (for the millionth time now) that they were not there yet. Annie was becoming increasingly impatient, and so when at last the now very bland countryside changed to the upcropping of the sprawl, well that's when Sherlock could at least tell Annie that they were getting closer to their destination. The moving truck must have been here by now, as the thing had been sent nearly a day in advance, and now it was time for the owners to meet their things on the other side of the country, far enough away to be sure that their oppressors were left far behind in their dust. Though as they left their new enemies behind their old ones were resurfacing to haunt them, and Sherlock had to regain a new sense of security when displaying himself and his daughter to his newly made friends. There would be people in this town that remembered the tragedy, perhaps just as a fleeting memory of their past, perhaps merely the scrap of a missing poster hidden behind a bunch of concert flyers. Though there was a memory, thick like a film in the station they approached, and remembered amongst the people who were there to witness it and the police who knew to look out for any suspicious activity. Sherlock was taking Annie back to the place she had begun, back to the start of it all. The question, in the end, would be if anyone else knew what to look for. If anyone else knew that there was something wrong in this father-daughter relationship, something that wasn't entirely biological. As the train approached the station, Sherlock decided that it would be best for the two of them to funnel out of the train in the middle of the pack. That way they didn't stick out immediately to whoever might be waiting at the station, but they also wouldn't be looking very suspicious as they brought up the rear of the departures. This new life that lay before them was already riddled with complications, so much so that Sherlock felt he was preparing a very elaborate dance in between land mines. He needed to remember were to place his feet each and every time, with the terrifying off chance that a toe might catch and his life would be blown to pieces around him. He had to adapt to suburbia and find his enemies before they found him; he had to befriend them before they realized that anything was amiss.
"Come along then, Annie. Grab your things." Sherlock insisted now as the train came to a halt within the darkness of the station. From their window Sherlock could only see a bleak cement wall, covered in the dripping of erosion and the graffiti of a rebellious teenager. This view was not familiar to him, though he knew that as soon as he stepped off of the train he would be faced with the scene that haunted his dreams. He knew that as soon as he was faced with the station it would all come back to him once more, the guilt that had been riddling his hide like bullet holes ever since he had taken that screaming child up into his arms. And yet here they were again, the two of them now as a proper family, wandering through the maze of benches that had once played host to their original meeting. The walls which had once felt Annie's screams, now happy to see that her little mouth was silenced in her own satisfaction with her living situations. Today she would not be abandoned, today Sherlock would hold tight to her little hand and steer her through this ghastly place, hopefully with the goal of never returning. At last the crowd began to move, fast enough now that Sherlock decided the middle of the pack was approaching steadily. At last he threw open the door, holding his daughter's hand so tightly that she almost gave a noise of protest, and hustled her along towards the doors. He tried not to look suspicious, though the first thing he noticed about the stations were the guards. There were a questionable amount of security guards standing around the place, as if they were still armed to the teeth and looking for the kidnapper who had walked among them more than five years ago. Well he was back now, back to this station in which the trains chorused with the same familiar sounds, in which the roar of the crowd was unmistakably familiar. He was nearly kicked in the teeth with nostalgia, and as they walked through to the benches on which he had once sat, well Sherlock had to cast a passing look. And just as expected, there he was again. As Sherlock walked past the bench he saw not a band of tourists but instead he saw himself, an exhausted and broken looking figure as he slouched over himself in his own despair. Sherlock nearly stopped in surprise, though the figure never looked back up at him, he instead kept his head down towards the ground, as if mourning for something he had lost without realizing what he was very soon about to gain. That had been the last time Sherlock had felt completely hopeless, and those emotions were coming back as the ghost of defeat. Those emotions, well they were so gloriously set aside by something more akin to accomplishment. They were left there, in the embodiment of such despair, as Sherlock walked on past the benches and towards the stairs leading him back up to the over world, back up to the light. There was hope up above those stairs, there was a world left waiting for him to return to once more. And here he was, the designated caretaker of his most vulnerable child. Perhaps she too saw something as they were walking by, something she didn't quite recognize. Perhaps she saw the embodiment of her own despair, in the form of a double stroller sat on the other side of the benches; perhaps she too heard the screaming. Though Annie didn't seem to know that she had been here before, Annie didn't seem to realize that the stroller she may have seen had once contained her wiggling little form; she never realized that this station had once been filled with her cries. Thankfully the security guards didn't give them a problem, undoubtedly as they didn't know what exactly they were looking at. A father and his daughter did not seem to be suspicious enough to get stopped, and as Sherlock finally mounted the stairs towards the sunlight he met no opposition from the sinister parties of police. He was instead allowed to pass back into the real world, setting his feet on solid ground and easing his grip upon Annie's hand just the slightest, so as to allow her to wiggle her fingers and allow blood to begin flowing within them once more. The world above the ground was just as Sherlock remembered it as well, though he had only ever spent a brief time here. These streets had never been a home to him, in fact he had merely passed over them for a brief moment once he stumbled out of a cab, a cab that he had paid to take him anywhere in the world. That day had been a blur, and through a fit of crying and a fit of drinking Sherlock couldn't entirely recite the last days of his loneliness to a tee. Victor had left him...oh perhaps a day before? Perhaps two. Sherlock didn't quite remember the timeline; he didn't quite remember when the darkness in his vision matched the darkness of the sky. All he remembered was waking up in an empty bed, and ending up at last in the station of this terrible little town. All else seemed to have been choreographed on his own version of autopilot, in which he had left grief take the reins all the while he suffered the consequences.