Chapter One

Breaking up a family feud isn't exactly the easiest of enterprises, specifically if the intermediate suffers from chronic depression at the notion that all of the female race has decided to deny him the simplest pleasures. More importantly, if said family includes Sherlock Holmes.

"UNBELIEVABLE."

John Watson let loose an exasperated huff, his skull pulsing and pealing from the previous night's drinks. He seized his head with his hands in a futile attempt to repress the monstrous spinning. "Please, Sherlock, couldn't we deal with this another time?"

"That insolent child thinks the world revolves around its foolish head."

Again, his endeavors were neglected. "Sherlock, if you're going to keep complaining, could you at least fix me a glass of water?"

"Honestly, this family would have worked just fine with just myself and Mycroft, but then mother had to go and have Spencer."

Apparently not. John staggered into the kitchen, the combination of sudden light and the rumbling of Sherlock's shouts swirling a deadly brew. The surge of iced water dribbling down his scorched throat served as an oasis of sanity in a desert of Sherlock.

"What am I to do with that imp? I leave it alone for one moment and it somehow winds up arrested. I've bailed it out time and time again. I refuse to give any assistance for now on. Spencer is Mycroft's dilemma now..."

When Watson had his fill, he popped two aspirins and turned to address Sherlock looming by the window and muttering incoherent obscenities. "Must you address your sibling as an 'it'? He is your own flesh and blood, after all."

Sherlock snorted, a most derisive and vain of sounds. "Flesh and blood, please. We are no more related than fire to ice and I refuse to acknowledge any more than the fact that we were raised under the same roof; I still maintain Spencer was adopted."

"Sherlock!" Watson's expression slipped into a frown, his forehead crinkled, and his brow pulled together in a disappointed furrow. With all the reluctance and sheepishness of a young boy caught in the caught, Sherlock turned to regard him. "They are still family, and in the future I expect you to treat them as such. Are you so inhumane that you can't even—"

Sherlock suspended his probable lecture with a flat growl. "John." His sharp eyes narrowed behind John at something in the door-someone in the door. Immediately, the doctor's gaze was on his gun sitting prettily on the coffee table, glittering with wicked menace in the afternoon sun. Then steadily, the doctor turned with eyes prepared to recognize anyone from Mrs. Hudson to Irene Adler or Jim Moriarty. His weight shifted to his left foot in the event his gun was required to join the conversation.

"Stranger danger," announced Sherlock, tinted by sarcasm.

To Watson, a stranger had never looked more attractive. At first glance there was nothing unusual about the woman, but he did not stand within several feet of her. When she glanced up at a noise from Sherlock and her smoldering gaze swept the room... In that moment he could see more of her. The foreigner's ebony-black hair was short and fell in glorious rings about her shoulders and chest; her bangs whispered against her brows, crooked provocatively at the detective across the room. They arched delicately over beautiful feline eyes rimmed with lashes so soft, so utterly black as to appear soot. The deep forest of her eyes, cool and impersonal, gave no hint as to her thoughts.

Her body was a string of delicately wired muscles molded to an ethereal bone structure. High cheekbones, Watson noticed. Just like Sherlock.

Her nose was quite small, a little snubbed to be honest, but a tiny bump on the bridge attested to a previous injury. He wondered what had become of the person who had done it. Nothing good, that was for sure. Her mouth was turned down and she appeared to be deep in thought. Her lips were full and sensuous. Shifting in her spot, she lifted her smooth chin and delicately licked her lips - a movement that did not go unnoticed by the doctor.

She appeared to reach a decision and, straightening, she fastened an unearthly grip on her luggage and huffed. Slender as a willow, she reached for her cloak and threw it about her narrow shoulders, bringing her surprisingly generous breasts into sharp relief.

Seeing the interest she engendered brought a derisory sneer to her lips and, instantly, transformed her into something intensely frightening - her eyes seemed to shine with a blood red light before she fixed her iced orbs on Sherlock and made her way to the center of the room.

Her heels pressed into the plush rug smoothly, lithely, never straying from the safety of the shadows. She circumvented the room, alert and prowling. She moved with the dexterity of a fox, the poise of a jaguar, and all the while her hips swung a harmonious symphony. What she possessed, you had to be born with it; you could practice for eternity with a hired professional and still not be capable of walking like she did. Either you had it or you didn't; and this woman, she had it. And she was headed straight for Sherlock.

Watson felt a twinge of jealousy. Sherlock was acquainted with an actual woman? Other than Irene Adler, he had known no such connection. Well, there was Molly but he doubted Sherlock counted her as a lady more than a common work tool with breasts and mouth far too small.

"It's been a while..." She finally spoke, her voice much more deep and hauntingly musical than expected.

Sherlock replied with a curt nod, jaws clenched in thick, evident tension. "Indeed it has...Spencer..."

Watson was flung from his dream like a rag doll. He stared oddly between the two, his mind bustling to connect the clues as he had so often seen Sherlock.

"How was France?"

"Crowded. And dreadfully cold. So nothing new."

The lull in the conversation sent a ringing in everyone's ears.

"You look like you have something to say, John." Sherlock's statement seemed more like a plea to dissipate the silence than an innocent observation.

It took him a minute to fathom his thoughts into coherent sentences. "I-er-what I mean to say is...This entire time, I was under the impression that you and 'Spencer' were related."

"We are," he responded with an eloquent quirk of his brow.

"But...well for some reason I imagined Spencer to be your brother." He glanced at the ravenous beauty from the corner of his eye, but she seemed unaffected.

"What an asinine assumption. Clearly, Spencer is a unisex name."

"I just assumed-"

"Yes, that she was my brother, I gathered as much. You should never assume, John, terrible habit; terrible, terrible habit. Only makes you seem thick." He tapped his head to clarify the shot at Watson's intelligence.

"If we could change topics to the current issue..." interrupted Spencer, eyes ablaze with impatience. "I need a place to lie low for a few months."

Suddenly it was as if Watson hadn't existed as the arguments ensued between brother and sister.

"And I was your first choice? How lovely, I didn't think I came across as hospitable."

"You're not."

"And what of Mycroft?"

"Wouldn't take me."

"You could've boarded up at a hotel."

"Do you really think them that stupid? They'd sniff it out in an instant."

"I doubt staying with family is a much smarter prospect."

"They don't know that we share blood."

"No, but when a crucial parolee goes missing, who do you think they will turn to, to find her?"

"I didn't have a choice!"

"Oh, posh, everyone has a choice. Yours were simply restricted, obviously."

"Would you stop acting so senile?"

"Senile? Senile? Spencer, I can tell everything about you from just one look. What you ate for breakfast, when and who you spoke to on your way here, what you said, how you got here, how long it took you, how many lovers you've had..."

"THAT'S ENOUGH."

"Do not raise your voice at me, young lady, don't even dare. If you feel compelled to tell me that I am senile-that all of that is a spark of insanity rather than ingenious work-then get out of my house and find reception elsewhere because you will not be welcomed in this flat. You are hardly welcomed as it is, and it is only the fact that we share DNA that is keeping me from sending you out that door. Do I make myself clear?"

She blinked rapidly, her eyes bristling with what looked like tears. Watson caught his breath in his throat as a feeling of uneasiness washed over him. She swallowed, attempting to regain what straggling dignity she had. "Yes, brother."

He seemed to growl before turning away, glaring heatedly at the busy streets of London.

"Excuse me then..." She began to lean away when John sprang forward to catch her shoulder, which rested a solid three to four inches below his. Short, he noted.

"H-hang on!" John would admit; his reluctance was partly from his confusion at the matter, partly from his desire seeping from the wrong organs in his body that probably should not have been acting up in the situation. He immediately withdrew his hand from direct contact. "Sherlock...she's your sister."

He rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Now your just getting redundant, boring! I'm going for a smoke."

The door slammed behind him, causing Watson to wince at the unanticipated swiftness of his actions. On the other hand, he found himself suddenly alone with the mysterious and tearful Spencer Holmes...