A/N: Another Ficlet Friday Prompt Fill. I try to answer a few every Friday, so please feel free to msg me here or on Tumblr if you have a prompt (my user is MissMollyBloom on Tumblr, too).
This one's from pentaltywaltz - Baby Watson is four years old, and Sherlock is their favorite person. But Baby Watson does not like the fact that Sherlock cannot tell a good bedtime story, so Baby Watson asks their second favorite person, Molly, to gives Sherlock lessons. Baby Watson and Molly tuck Sherlock into bed, and Molly tells Sherlock a story with Baby Watson's help. Molly gets so into the story she doesn't realize both Sherlock and Baby Watson are sound asleep.
I changed the ending a little. I hope it's ok.
He swore to her that it was nothing he couldn't handle. After all, he did take down a Serbian crime syndicate single-handedly. Well, it would have been single-handedly if Mycroft hadn't butted in. He'd also defeated Moriarty – twice - so, of course he'd be able to handle babysitting four-year-old Charlotte Watson – or so he protested.
Molly didn't believe him.
And so, the three of them spent an evening in the company of Peppa Pig toys, Charlie and Lola books, and the cheerful, Australian faces of brightly-dressed "Wiggles" singing at them from the television. How anyone could be so happy singing about hot potatoes and mashed bananas was beyond him.
By 8pm, Charlotte was starting to tire. Instead of dancing along, she was quietly sitting on Molly's lap, staring blankly at the television. The DVD soon ended and Molly suggested that Sherlock carry Charlotte into bed.
"Can't you do it?" he protested.
"What are you so afraid of?" Molly baited him. She always knew how to push his buttons.
"Afraid?" He said, defensive, "there is little on earth that scares me, Molly, least of all putting a four-year old to bed."
"Good," Molly said, handing Charlotte - who was almost asleep – into Sherlock's arms. "Just pop her into bed, tell her a story, and turn out the light."
Sherlock froze. "A story?"
"Yes. You know, like a nursery rhyme or a fairytale."
"I like fairytales," Charlotte added, her voice weak and sleepy.
"Me too," Molly said, patting her gently on the head.
"There's only one problem," Sherlock said, his eyes full of dismay.
"What?"
"I don't know any."
"You don't know any what?" Molly asked, unable to grasp his meaning.
"Nursery rhymes, fairy tales. I deleted them."
Molly shouldn't have been surprised at Sherlock's admission. But she knew that deleting them meant that Sherlock had at one point decided that he would never need to entertain a child, that children would never be part of his life, and her heart broke for this broken man.
"It's ok," Molly said, "I'll help you." And she led them down the hallway to Charlotte's room.
Once Charlotte was in bed, Molly sat and gestured to Sherlock to join her. "Ok. You start," she said.
Taking a deep breath, he began.
"Well, um… Once, there was a… person. And, his name was," Sherlock paused, he had no idea what the person's name should be, "… well, it doesn't really matter what his name was as he's a fictional construct which allows the plot of this story to unfold. And, um… there is a happy beginning, and a complication to his existence, but then he overcomes it. The end."
Sherlock stood, smiling at himself in congratulations of a job well done. Molly shook her head.
"Sherlock?" Charlotte asked.
"Yes?"
"I didn't like your story," she said, with all the tactlessness of a small child.
Ever the peacemaker, Molly intervened.
"Sherlock hasn't had to tell many stories, Charlotte, how about I show him how it's done?"
"Yes please," Charlotte said, punctuating it with a large open-mouthed yawn.
"Ok, Sherlock, in you get." Molly pulled back the sheet. Sherlock looked at her, about to protest, but was silenced by the "Don't mess with me" look she had on her face.
Once Sherlock was settled next to Charlotte, Molly began.
"Once, there was a young prince named William," Sherlock looked at her with wide questioning eyes. Molly ignored him. "And even though William is a perfectly nice name, no one ever called him that."
"What did they call him?" Charlotte asked.
"Um…" Molly thought for a second, "We'll just call him the prince."
"Ok," Charlotte said.
Molly continued, "This prince wasn't like all the other princes. He could see things they couldn't."
"Like what?" Charlotte asked.
"Well, he could look at a man and see what they'd had for breakfast – because he could recognise the type of crumbs on their clothes. Or, he could glance at a lady and see that she'd recently changed her lipstick, or hairstyle, or that she was wearing a special dress to impress him."
"I don't think he could tell who she was wearing the dress for," Sherlock butted in, "he could just tell she was trying to get a man's attention. He didn't expect it to be him."
"Well," Molly continued, unfazed, "You would think this gift would be a blessing to the young prince, but it actually made him sad. He could see all the lies and all the hurt and all the secrets people didn't want told. And the prince didn't know when to keep quiet."
"Why not?" Charlotte asked.
"Um…" Molly didn't know the child-appropriate term for smart-arse, so she settled on another explanation, "he was cursed with always telling the truth, no matter how hurtful it would be." Molly looked at Sherlock when she said the word hurtful. He looked away, shame in his eyes.
A moment passed in silence. "Then what happened?" Charlotte prompted.
"Well, the prince decided he would hide himself away. So he built a big castle with no windows and no doors and locked himself inside where no one could hurt him for being different."
Charlotte's eyes widened in wonder. "How long did he stay there?" She asked.
"A long time," Molly said, playing along with Charlotte's interest, "a very, very, long time."
"Was he bored? I'd be soooo bored!"
"No, he had visitors. A puzzle-master named Gerald, Grant, Graham or Gus – he wasn't sure which - would bring him puzzles to solve, and the prince would solve them from the safety of his castle, but he'd never let him in."
"Did anyone else visit?"
"The farmer's daughter would being him supplies, and help him with his puzzles, but he barely acknowledged her. But she would still visit him, almost every day, because she liked helping him, and despite everything, she thought he was worth her time, and her concern, and her love."
Molly was telling the story to Charlotte, but the words were for Sherlock who nodded, graciously accepting them.
"Did he have any friends?" Charlotte asked.
"Well, one day, a wounded soldier knocked on the door and the strangest thing happened."
"What?"
"The prince let him in."
"Just like that?"
Molly nodded, "Just like that. I think he sensed a kindred spirit in the soldier, they both had battle-scars."
"When was the prince in a battle?" Charlotte asked, confused.
"Every day was a battle," Sherlock explained. Molly looked at him, nodding slightly in understanding.
"But what the prince didn't realise, was that by letting the soldier into his castle, the door was left open. Soon, other people came in, too. The man whose name he could never remember - Gus, Grant, Graham – became more important as the prince and the soldier worked with him to solve puzzles. Then there was the housekeeper, who was like a mother to the prince. She cooked and cleaned and cared for the prince and the soldier as well. Even the prince's older brother was allowed in once in a while. Soon the prince was surrounded by people he loved and cared for – and who loved and cared for him, too."
"What about the girl? The farmer's daughter? Did he let her in, too?"
Molly looked at Sherlock, trying to read his face, but he was giving nothing away.
"Not for the longest time," Molly continued, "In fact, it seemed like the door he held open to everyone else was somehow being blocked up for her. But she would still visit, and she was always willing to help him, even when he didn't even notice her."
Sherlock sat up. "You're wrong," he said, sternly.
"Wrong about what?" Molly asked.
"He wasn't keeping her out. In fact, from the moment he met her, she made a home in his-" Sherlock paused, struggling for the right word, before settling on, "castle."
He paused, before continuing.
"Every time he was rude to her, or short with her, or treated her like she didn't exist – those were his attempts to set her free, to let her escape. He didn't want her trapped with him. He wanted better for her."
"But what if she was happy?" Molly challenged, "What if there with him was the only place in the world she wanted to be?"
"She was wrong."
"Was she?" Molly asked.
"He thought so. Until he was sent away to a far-off land. He was cut off from the soldier and the housekeeper and the puzzle-master and his brother. And her. Even though he missed his friends, she was the one he dreamed of returning to, she was the face he saw in his dreams every night."
They'd never really spoken about the two years he was away. Molly didn't know he'd missed her at all, too busy chasing down leads and eliminating Moriarty's network. She honestly thought he'd deleted her, or at least left his memories of her back in London with everyone else.
Sherlock continued, "Then, after two years, he returned home, the conquering hero. He had planned to tell her. He had the words memorised and practiced perfectly."
"But she was with someone else," Molly added, guilt flushing her face red.
"Yes."
Molly felt the need to defend herself. "But she ended it when the prince returned. She knew the other man was just a poor copy," she explained.
"But then the prince made a terrible mistake – two of them, in fact. He broke the girl's trust by taking-" he and Molly shared a knowing look, and Sherlock decided on the euphemism "candy."
"And the prince almost died," Molly added.
"Well, then, three mistakes. The prince did something terrible, something he should have been punished for, and he would have been, he was on a plane, never to return when…" Sherlock stopped, not knowing what to call Moriarty.
"The bad man?" Molly suggested.
"Yes. The bad man," Sherlock said with all the subtly of a pantomime actor, "the bad man came back."
"Why did the," Molly paused, "bad man want to hurt the girl?" She asked, she'd never thought of asking before.
"Because he knew. The bad man knew how much the girl meant to the prince. He'd known it all along."
"So that's why the prince's brother's-" Molly paused, searching for the right word, "solders were there to protect her?"
Sherlock nodded. "They'd been there since she helped him fake his, um…"
"Disappearance?" Molly suggested.
"Yes."
"And so that's why the prince moved her in to his – flat?"
"Yes. She was always in his castle – his heart, but he needed her close, needed to know she was safe."
"And now the threat has passed?" Molly asked.
"The prince can't imagine life without her."
Molly leant over and kissed her husband. "I can't either," she said.
"Did you like the story, Charlotte?" Sherlock asked.
Charlotte answered with the slow, deep breathing of a small sleeping child.
Quietly, the two of them left Charlotte to sleep.
"See?" Molly said as the two of them flopped down on the couch, "It's not so hard, is it?"
"No, not really." Sherlock grinned at her.
"I'm glad," Molly said.
"Why?" Sherlock asked.
"Because soon you'll have someone you'll have to tell bedtime stories to every night," Molly smiled, absently stroking her still-flat stomach.
And when the time came to tell bedtime stories to their son, Sherlock was more than ready for the challenge.