So I cheated a little and instead of continuing on and meeting John in the first chapter, I just stopped it here. I'll post the next chapter if this gets any interest. But I've got Knowing Sherlock Holmes and Elysium and The games we play all of which I am working on at the moment, and I really have to pack for school, so it may take a while.
Oh, and I don't own Sherlock.
The woods are quiet at this time of day, the sun arching high above the branches, leaving the shadows of the trees to pool around the base of the trunks. A small child, aged seven brandishes a stick at the air, waving it over his unruly mop of hair while his feet dart back and forth, almost choreographed.
"Ha! You think your swordplay is a worthy rival to mine? Wrong!" Sherlock's voice echoes off the boughs of the clearing and the branch trails satisfying swishes through the air. His smile tightens in concentration at the corners as his mind invites imaginary foes over the sides of his ship, that is now rocking amid the waves of the rippling grass. Sherlock begins to make his way across the expanse of green, doing away with the rival pirates that cross his path.
He lets out a victorious laugh when he reaches the bow of the ship, feet steady even as the intangible wooden boards beneath them buck and dip with the heaving waves. He reaches the captain of the crew that has boarded his vessel and he stands proud, Mycroft's borrowed overcoat flapping in the non-existent wind. He is careful not to catch it on his sharpened sword, because what his older brother doesn't know won't hurt him. Sherlock tugs the sleeves back over his forearms and assumes his fighting stance, feet planted, cutlass leveled. Ready to dart into unprotected flesh at any moment.
"Captain Mycroft!" He addresses the air, voice carrying in the silence of metal on metal and the shouts of men dying. And Sherlock is about to engage his opponent in combat, but just as his muscles tighten to spring, a cry, a real cry, pierces his fantasy and his mind snaps back to reality.
His raised arm slumps to his side, stick half obscured by the drooping sleeves of Mycroft's dark overcoat. Sherlock scans the trees, he hopes that there is not someone else in his woods. There's another cry, and Sherlock briefly considers Mycroft's warnings about strange men in the woods over the wall, but he decides to go and investigate anyway. Besides -it could just as easily be the cry of a large animal. It could be an interesting way to try out some of the evasion tactics he'd read about in the library.