The tall, lean man with dark curls strode towards the crime scene, confident in his belief that he should be there. He shouldn't, Sally knew – even if he had been invited. He was a civilian, and it was a gross breach of protocol that Greg let him come. If they didn't need Sherlock as badly as they did….

Sally turned towards the building the body had been found in, heading to alert DI Lestrade that Sherlock was here.

"Freak's here," would be what she said. And what everyone in the room knew was that Sherlock had arrived. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson.

She hadn't actually seen John, but she knew he'd be following Sherlock like the dutiful dog he was. At first, when he showed up to the crime scene, she'd pitied him. Pitied, because he had the misfortune of meeting Sherlock. Pitied, because he'd probably had his entire life history laid out in front of his eyes within the first five minutes of meeting the detective.

Pitied, because Sargent Sally Donovan honestly expected his body to be the next corpse they found.

But the doctor had come back. That had taken her by surprise; she'd expected him to be dead, or to have fled in fear like any sane person would. But at the next case, he was trailing after Sherlock once more, his limp a little less pronounced and his eyes bright with the excitement of the case.

She hated that look because it was the same look Sherlock got. It was the look that made her call him a psychopath; it was the look that told her one day she'd be looking at a body and he'd have been the one to put it there.

But, on John, the glint in his eye looked normal. It reminded her of how her father, who'd been a chef, used to look when he'd been teaching her and her sister how to bake.

So she hadn't condemned him like she had Sherlock. Instead she bantered with him playfully; suggesting hobbies he could do instead of following the freak. All the time she was begging him silently, 'Please leave. Pack your things. Run away to Spain. Just leave Holmes to his deducing and be safe.'

It was when he came to the third crime scene, after having been blown up at the pool and stuck in hospital for three weeks and having armed guards at his door (courtesy of the British Government). He wasn't limping at all when she first saw him, although he forgot at one point of the crime scene when they were searching the flower beds for the killer's knife. But then Greg found it, and Sherlock snatched it from his hands and was off again, and John was running behind him – limpless.

Now she'd lost track of the crime scenes he'd come to. They began to blur together. Only a few stuck out in her mind, and he was always there, standing next to Sherlock and running after him when he took off.

"Why do you hate him so much?" John asked her one day. They were standing off to the side – Sherlock and Lestrade were arguing again, something neither of them wanted to be involved in. Sherlock had breached protocol – it had been a necessity, the genius insisted.

"You don't want to know," Sally told him. And she didn't want to tell him. Not really.

"I do," John said. "Because it seems to me that you attack him unnecessarily, calling him all sorts of names and insulting him and basically bullying him just because he's different and can do something no one else can do."

Sally bristled. "You wouldn't like him either if you'd met him like I had." She glared at John, who simply stared straight back at her, his gaze level. "You wouldn't understand."

"Explain it, then," he challenged. "I might understand more than you think."

And so she did.

It had been cold and wet, the night Sally Donovan met Sherlock Holmes. The wind was bitter and the blood staining the pavement seeped into the puddles, turning everything it touched into a watery, red mess. Usually you could step around the scarlet liquid, but not that night. No, every officer who had to get close to the body was forced to step in blood.

If Lestrade hadn't been rushed off his feet, he never would have let her on this case. It was the first one she'd been allowed to do since the miscarriage; until then she'd been confined to paperwork. But Greg was busier than ever, and he hadn't made a connection between the triple-murder and the fragile state of mind of one of his junior officers.

She couldn't tear her eyes away from the bodies. One adult female, a knife in her chest. In her arms, a toddler and a new born baby. She was clutching at them, the arms of her corpse wrapped tightly around their small forms, trying to protect them even in death.

She shivered in the cold but she didn't feel the icy knives, that were falling raindrops, battering her body. All she could see was the mother, the children, torn from this world like her son had been.

"Sherlock!" Lestrade called out. A tall man was striding over the crime scene. Instinct told Sally to order him out; he was a civilian and this was roped off, but Greg seemed to know him and so she simply observed.

"What have we got?" Sherlock asked.

While Lestrade was filling in the mysterious man, Sally turned to Anderson, who was watching the pair with a sneer on his face. "Who's that man?" she asked. He seemed very familiar with Lestrade; were they friends or had he started working for them while she was on leave?

"Sherlock Holmes," Anderson informed her. "He thinks he's a genius. Lestrade keeps letting him onto the scene."

"So he doesn't work for the police?" Sally asked, surprised. "Why's he here?"

Anderson turned to her. "Because he likes it," he said, disgusted. His tone made it clear that the subject was closed.

She glanced back over at the detective inspector, just in time to hear the stranger say in a haughty voice, "It's obvious. Even you, Lestrade, should have been able to work this one out. It was the husband. She was being abused, shown by the bruising on various places beneath her clothes – places that would be very easy to hit and equally easy to hide. Furthermore, she was neglecting her appearance, not wearing makeup, despite maintaining the habit of carrying foundation and eyeliner in her handbag. These facts, combined with the pamphlet for family protection in her pocket, tell us that she was seeking to escape from her husband.

"Then there's the knife. It's a craft knife; not your typical murder weapon, but something that the murderer was perhaps carrying on them at the time. You'll find her husband is likely a handyman or in a profession that would mean carrying around such a weapon was commonplace. When he realised what she was doing, he got angry, and hit her like he usually did. Then he pulled out the knife to scare her, but in his rage he took it too far."

"And why the children?"

"Witnesses. The older one isn't his anyway – she remarried, and brought her daughter into the marriage with her."

"How do you- never mind. What about the younger one?"

"That one wasn't murder. He was crushed as his mother fell. A post-mortem examination will confirm it."

Sally felt sick. There was silence for a while, and finally Lestrade said, "Thank you, Sherlock."

"Don't thank me," Sherlock snapped in reply. "Next time don't call me for such boring and obvious cases. It's a waste of my time."

It was then that Sally realised he was a psychopath. Who else could learn about a death like that and call it "boring"?

As Sherlock strode past her, she pressed her arms tightly against her abdomen. She could still feel the bump in her stomach that, until very recently, had held her precious child. Her eyes fell on the dead victim and she found she couldn't look away.

"I'm sorry," John had said, once she finished with her tale. She cleared her throat; it felt a bit hoarse, as though she was struggling not to sob. She wasn't going to cry; not after all this time, and not in front of John. Certainly not while Sherlock was still in the room. "For Sherlock, and for your loss."

Sally sniffed. "It was a long time ago." They both knew she wasn't talking about the case.

"Does that make it any easier?"

"No."

"John!" Sherlock interrupted. "Come along. We've done all we can here. I need to monitor second-hand dealer websites; we're looking for an opal ring going at a very low price."

"Okay, I'll be right with you, Sherlock," John said, grabbing his coat from where he'd set it on a chair. Then he turned to Sally. "You know, he didn't mean to be… insensitive," he told her apologetically. "He just doesn't see the world like everyone else."

"You say that like it makes it okay," Sally replied. "Doesn't it just prove that he's a psychopath?"

"No," John said. "Believe me, I've met psychopaths. Sherlock doesn't come anywhere close."

John didn't show up to the next crime scene; Sherlock came alone. He looked lost without his faithful doctor standing beside him.

Which was ridiculous, Sally told herself, because Sherlock was never lost. And besides, Sherlock had been coming to crime scenes since before he met John.

Greg had been concerned, but John's absence was soon explained. "He's gone and got himself sick," Sherlock said, sounding pettily annoyed. "Fever, vomiting, hallucinations… he's no help here."

"And you just left him at the flat alone?" Lestrade asked.

"He kicked me out after I blew up the fridge," Sherlock said. "Apparently stress isn't good for sick people."

Lestrade turned away in time to hide a smile. Sally shook her head, relieved that John was alright. And, if she were honest with herself, relieved that he hadn't followed her advice and abandoned Sherlock. Because Sherlock really did look lonely without the John's shorter figure standing beside him.

It was hard to remember Sherlock coming to crime scenes without John. It hadn't even been a year since the doctor showed up out of the blue, but it was as though he'd always been there. Always exclaiming how brilliant Sherlock's deductions were. Always nudging Sherlock – his way of telling him to be less insensitive to the grieving widows. She could picture him now, even when he wasn't here, doing what he usually did.

And, when she remembered that rainy night, John was there too, scolding Sherlock for saying the case was boring, telling Lestrade to send Donovan home, and apologising for Sherlock's rude behaviour.

And Sally smiled.