I thought it was a sound which woke me. It was in fact that absent of sound. I lay there, eyes still closed, trying to determine what sound was missing. My stomach fell a second before my mind realized what the missing element was. Breathing, my daughter's breathing. I sit bolt upright in bed, and focus my eyes on the cot. The empty cot. Better empty than full of a silent baby.

Empty I can fix.

"Sherlock! Someone kidnapped Rosie!" I shout leaping out of my bed, and running down the stairs into the sitting room of our flat.

Just then the sound of my daughter's laughter reaches my ears, and returns my heart to it's proper place instead of in my shoes. Well, perhaps a bit higher than it's proper place. There is nothing quite so good in all the world as the sound of a baby laughing, and that sound had been rare ever since her mother died. Not that I think she really understood the loss, but she did understand that everyone around her was sad, always sad.

Sherlock could always wring a laugh out of her though, not that I approved of his methods. He tossed her in the air, her head only a few millimeters always from the ceiling, and then waited until she was below his waist before he caught her again.

"And apparently the kidnapper looks just like you," I reply.

"That has been known to happen," he says throwing her once again.

I catch her before he can, "Not exactly safe, this game."

"Mmmm," he agrees, "And that's why she loves it. She is your daughter after all."

It's then the kitchen catches my eyes. On a normal day is something of a chaotic chemistry lab with a sink full of used tea cups. Today though.

"Is that banana on the ceiling?" I ask.

"Mostly. Rosie wanted breakfast, and you were still asleep."

"How did that result in an explosion?"

"Your daughter's grasp on basic chemistry is no better than her grasp of basic physics," he says proving his point by handing her a toy which she immediately throws to the ground.

"Well, she is eleven months old," I say dangling her down upside down so that she can pick it up herself. I'm delighted by her giggles, and I look up just in time to see that Sherlock is too. He's looking at Rosie, upside down and full of glee. That look that he is wearing, when I first met Sherlock years ago, I thought he would never be capable of wearing a face so full of love for anyone. I didn't think he was even capable of that level of connection for anyone, let alone someone who wasn't even verbal yet.

I get so distracted by the look on his face, I almost drop my daughter. I scoop her up, and hold her close to me, giving her a little kiss on the forehead.

"So, she's eaten?" I ask Sherlock.

"Mostly she painted with food. I think she might have some talent. I think there is a duck in the middle there."

"I see, what say we get some breakfast, Rosie?" I ask her.

She reaches out her hands to Sherlock. Who has clearly become her favorite breakfast maker.

Since moving back into Baker street Holmes has systematically taken over part after part of her routine.

It was playing her to sleep, first. He wrote her a song before she was born, and she liked that well enough, but ever since we moved in he's started doing variations on a theme. I don't know enough about music to really decode it, but I do know that they are saying something about her day. It mesmerizes her, the mix of novel and familiar, and certainly does more to keep her awake than put her to sleep.

Then he overtook the afternoon walks. How could a trip in a pushchair compare with ridding on top of someone's shoulders while he run down the sidewalk all catching a criminal pace and you clutch his wild curls with your chubby baby fists.

Then he took over bath time, because of course a chemist would be able to construct the largest and strongest bubbles known to man.

And now, apparently my own daughter would not eat without him. I hand her over, "Can you try to get some into her stomach this time?"

At least he'll leave me the nappies.

-0-

I'd meant to put Rosie in day care when I returned to work. Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock both took personal offense to the suggestion. I couldn't trust Sherlock by himself of course. He rarely remembered who was in the room, and couldn't be trusted to feed himself, let alone others. But Mrs. Hudson promised to check in on them regularly, and she'd never been known to forget to offer food to someone.

She hasn't had to step in very often. Apparently, my daughter works even better than Sherlock's skull, or the balloon, or just the idea that I am there all the times he didn't even know I'd left the room.

"Ah! But the face is purposely distorted! That is part of the disguise! Quite right Rosie!"

"You know she's getting to the age that she can probably understand you."

"Yes, and the more words that they hear at this age the better," he responds pointing to the parenting book. The one he read when Rosie moved in. The one that causes him to think he's an expert of childrearing and can now trump all of the decisions of her actual father.

"My point is maybe we should not talk to her about murder," I say scooping her up, and giving her a kiss on the cheek which she returns with significantly more moisture than mine had.

"This one wasn't a murder. The 'victim' was not really dead."

"Taking tips from you huh?" I ask.

He makes that smile where he knows you are funny, but he doesn't want to admit it. The one that only quirks one-eighth of his mouth.

"I'm going to polish off this case, and then dinner?" he asks with nervousness that I don't understand.

"What would you like me to make?" he asks.

"No, out," he says with bulging eyes.

"Okay," I agree wishing now for the deductive powers of my friend.

"I'll pick you up in an hour," he says putting his collar up, and swishing out of the room with his long coat.

"Something fishy is going on," I say to my daughter, "No doubt the dinner is part of a case." I know as I say it that it's not quite right, but I don't know how to revise my guess.

"Well, let's get you some dinner before Daddy's mad flat mate returns," I say cheerfully carrying her into the dining room.

-0-

"How was your day?" he asks. I just stare at him open mouthed unable to formulate a response.

"What are you doing?" I ask suspiciously.

"I'm showing concern. Am I doing it wrong?" he asks. He begins to poke the ice in his water glass with a fork, and accidently flicks it into the air, and onto the table.

"Why exactly are you showing concern?" I ask him.

"If you don't want to answer the question you don't have to," he says slipping the runaway ice cube onto his plate.

"I dunno, it was work. Patients had problems, I was able to solve most of them."

"Most?" he asks.

I lean back in my chair, "Can you just skip the part where you're clever and I'm confused, and just explain to me what you're doing."

He starts to play with another piece of ice, this one lands in my glass and splashes water across my plate.

He opens his mouth to answer me, but before he can the owner arrives at our table. It's only then that I realize where we are, the restaurant we went to back when we first met. With the grateful housebreaker not murder.

"Candles, Sherlock?" the owner asks.

"We're still not a couple," I say, but just like always, I'm not heard. He's already gone to fetch the candles.

"So, you were going to tell me what was going on, Sherlock?" I ask as the owner disappears.

He has a far away look on his face, and doesn't seem to hear me.

"Sherlock?"

"Sorry," he says snapping out of it. I find myself longing for that facial expression to return, "It was a bet."

"A bet?"

"With Mycoft. He didn't think I was capable of small talk."

"Well he was right."

His eyes twinkle, "Maybe you could teach me."

I never thought I'd see the day where the great Sherlock Holmes asked me for torturing, but there it is.