Disclaimer: I rather unfortunately do not own any variant of Sherlock, and that includes Moffat and Gatiss' (fucking brilliant) version of him. If you recognise a character or setting, it is not mine.
Story Title: A Lightning Bolt that Splits Your Bones
Summary: "Don't get me wrong, it's lovely seeing her more often, but she's just past the age where she can live at home peacefully." In which Lestrade's daughter needs a place to live after finishing university, and John suggests 221C. Sherlock/OC.
Rated: M, because there will likely be language, there may possibly be violence, and there will definitely be lemons.
Timeline: This story picks up between series 1 and 2. I always find it unrealistic when Sherlock meets his love interest and John within days of each other- or even on the same day.
AN: I am aware that the OC is feared as a possible Mary-Sue, especially in instances where she is related to main characters on the show. So really, this story is a challenge to myself- write a believable, likeable character from a much overused corner of fanfiction.
If you like it, I will be encouraged by reviews, follows and favs!
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I
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And now we're apart and you're just some stranger who knows all my secrets and all my family members and all my quirks and flaws and it doesn't make sense- Gaby Dunn
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2005
Ivy Lestrade was sixteen the first time she heard the name Sherlock Holmes, and it snaked around her mind, as real and untouchable as the fog when the clouds come creeping down to earth.
She was a week away from finishing up secondary school, but her mind was already looking forward to bigger and better things, the excitement of college and getting to choose her own classes. She'd applied for all art subjects, a decision that made her parents weary- but honey, don't you know how much artists struggle to make ends meet- but Ivy had never felt so confident of anything in her life. She just didn't ever seem to feel right unless she was splashing her creativity out.
It had been like any other night, the three of them sat around the dining room table and exchanging stories about their day. Her mother had just been finishing up talking about some new friend she'd made at the gym- Rob or Roy or Ron or something- and Ivy had been scooting her broccoli around on her plate, sending covert glances to Wrigley, their eight-year-old golden retriever, wondering how easy it might be to sneak him some of the green awfulness-
The sound of her father's deeper register called her attention. His job as a Detective Inspector meant that he often had interesting stories to tell- far more entertaining than her mother's reviews of ever-dull housewifery. It was a lifestyle that Ivy most certainly did not aspire to.
"I met the most-" he cut himself off, looking lost for words, before shaking his head with a laugh. "Well, I don't even know how to describe him, but he was a piece of work, I'll tell you that much."
"How to describe who?" Ivy prompted, now well and truly interested.
"Said his name's Sherlock Holmes. Funny name, isn't it?" But despite his ending statement Ivy heard a strange sort of awe in her father's voice when he said Sherlock Holmes, laced with a contradictory irritation, and Ivy was quite suddenly overtaken by a dreadful curiosity.
"Found him almost catatonic at 6 in the morning, in some dirty back alleyway, high as a bloody kite. So I cuff him and start taking him to the squad car, drug possession, you know, when he takes one look at me and tells me that I've been married for at least eighteen years and have a teenage daughter, who's either sixteen and going into her first year of college, or eighteen and off to uni, because I'm obviously stressed about her subject choices!"
Ivy's dark eyes widened. "How'd he know all that?" she asked in astonishment.
"Well, I asked him the same thing, and he just rolled his bloody eyes and muttered about how it was obvious and ridiculously easy to deduce. But that's not even the best part."
"There's more?" Ivy asked eagerly.
"Oh, yeah. After he tells me my own personal life story, he tells me that he's been following the case I've been working on in the papers, and that the killer is obviously the gardener! Oh, he was a bloody arrogant sod, but he was right. He made so much sense I went and checked it out and he was bloody right!"
Her mother looked as astonished as Ivy felt. "He must be some sort of genius then?" she intoned, looking quite fascinated indeed.
"Well he must be, mustn't he?" he replied. "Diana, you should've seen him- his mind works like nothing I've ever seen before. He was a young chap, only twenty-six, and he's wasting all that potential on drugs!"
Her mother tutted. "What a shame."
"Exactly," her father agreed, nodding sharply. "Exactly. That's why I let him go."
"Really!?" Ivy exclaimed, quite delighted by her father's spontaneous rule-breaking, even as her mother suddenly appeared quite alarmed.
"You did what?" her mother squawked.
"Well, I didn't unleash him on the streets! I told him that I could really use a mind like his for future cases, maybe a consultant of some sort, and he seemed excited by the idea. Told him he needed to be clean to help though- I figured it was a long-shot but he agreed straight off. So I went and dropped him off at a rehab facility, before he could change his mind, you see."
"So are you going to be working with him, Dad?"
"Looks like it."
Six weeks later, Sherlock Holmes emerged from rehabilitation clean and with all the force of a hurricane. Suddenly, Ivy's father was continually regaling the dinner table with stories of how a brilliantly infuriating genius apprehended London's most bizarre and dangerous criminals. While her mother tired of these stories, Ivy soaked them in like a wide-eyed child. Over the next two years that she lived at home, Ivy took to asking her father if she could meet the Consulting Detective, but it soon became clear that he was weary of introducing his teenage daughter to a drug addict that had a propensity for deeply insulting others. Then she left to study art and illustration in Lancaster, and didn't pay any mind to Sherlock Holmes for another three years.
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June, 2010
The slamming of a door from outside along with raised voices alerted John to the fact that the New Scotland Yard had arrived. This is what his life had become, ever since meeting Sherlock Holmes five months ago- running around London with a stunningly brilliant lunatic, facing near-death situations on a startlingly regular basis, apprehending criminals and then calling DI Lestrade to come round them up.
It was fucking brilliant.
The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs made the tied up criminal on their couch wriggle harder, trying futilely to escape.
The door burst open and Greg and Sally came storming in, Greg reading the man his rights as Sally cuffed him, untying him and nudging him towards the door. John looked over at Sherlock, sat in his usual chair, to see his reaction to Sally Donovan in his home, but rolled his eyes when he realised that the bugger wasn't even interested enough to stay out of his mind palace.
As Greg headed towards the door to follow after Sally and their new charge, John heard the older man heave a heavy sigh. John liked Greg Lestrade, he felt a camaraderie with the other man. Where the military had instilled a sense of responsibility to those around him in John, Greg's position of leadership had done the same for him. Greg Lestrade was somebody that John felt like he could relate to.
He clapped a hand on Greg's shoulder just as he was about to leave.
"You alright, mate? You sound a bit stressed."
John felt his shoulders slump, and then Greg emitted another sigh.
"My daughter just graduated uni."
John waited a moment for any sort of follow-up statement, but when nothing happened he was left feeling confused.
"Um… congratulations?" John had been under the impression that a child completing the highest level of schooling was a happy occasion.
"She wants to live in London, she'd been in Lancaster, you see, so she moved back home while she tries to find a place to stay. Uh, you know that my wife… well… when we found out a couple years ago about all the other blokes, Ivy wasn't best pleased with her mum. Me and Diana have been-"
"Diana and I." Sherlock's deep baritone interrupted. John jumped, surprised. Usually Sherlock stayed submerged in his mind for hours at a time.
"What?" Greg asked, just as startled.
"It's not 'me and Diana', it's 'Diana and I.'"
There was a moment in which John and Greg just stared at Sherlock. Sherlock, of course, ignored this, going back to his pastime of staring intently at the wall.
"Right…" Greg finally said. "Well… Diana and I have been trying to work things out, but Ivy's just… really bloody unforgiving, to be honest. Besides, she's gotten used to having her independence. Don't get me wrong, it's lovely seeing her more often, but she's just past the age where she can live at home peacefully."
John winced in sympathy for his friend's troubles, even if he privately agreed with Ivy- Greg Lestrade deserved better than his wife.
"Well, you know that 221C is free," he found himself suggesting, before he even realised that he was about to say it.
Greg's eyebrows rose. "Is it?" he asked.
"Yeah, after Moriarty bombed that place across the street, Mrs Hudson took advantage of the fact that there were going to be builders here anyway and got the basement flat renovated. She's been trying to find someone to take it, but apparently no one wants to live in a basement."
"Betcha that's not the only difficulty," Greg muttered, glancing discreetly at Sherlock. John glanced at his flatmate too and nearly sighed in exasperation when he saw that Sherlock had retreated back into his mind palace.
"He's not really so bad to live with as you're probably thinking," John assured, sensing that perhaps Lestrade himself had some reservations about letting his daughter live in close proximity with Sherlock. "Bit frustrating, yeah, but never boring."
Lestrade shook his head with a wry smirk. "No, I don't suppose it would be. I guess I'll tell Ivy about it, see what she thinks. She'll probably be ecstatic- she's wanted to meet Sherlock for years."
John laughed at that, thinking this girl was in for a rude awakening. Sherlock was far from being the nicest of people.
As the Detective Inspector left, John turned to face his friend, wondering what he thought of living above Lestrade's daughter, only to roll his eyes at the intensity with which Sherlock was staring at thin air.
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Ivy had all of her things packed by the end of the month.
Mrs Hudson was a lovely, warm, wonderful woman and Ivy didn't think that she could have found a better landlady if she'd tried. She'd also briefly met Dr John Watson as Mrs Hudson was ushering her inside. He'd helped her with carrying her stuff down the stairs and into her new basement flat. It was surprisingly bright for being underground. Mrs Hudson had gone with good lighting and bright neutral tones for the walls and furniture.
She was just opening her second to last box, having been unpacking for several hours, when she heard muffled voices outside her door.
"Just say 'hi' to her, then you're free to go." John's voice.
A deeper voice replied, one that was smooth as silk. "I don't understand why greeting her as she moves in is customary. Not only is such a first meeting likely to be stilted and awkward due to the artificial nature of it, but it is probably also interrupting her as she unpacks."
Ivy felt a smile creep onto her lips. Such a logical explanation for attempting to get out of something he clearly didn't want to do. She'd never met him, but Ivy felt that this could only be Sherlock Holmes.
"Sherlock," John sighed, confirming her suspicions. "Just do it. Please?"
"Oh, fine," Sherlock said, sounding so put upon that she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
Moments later, there was a sharp knock on her door. Smothering her smile, she opened it.
He was tall. Much taller than her. At 5'2 she'd always been described as petite (when people were being polite, that was) but he had to be a foot taller than her. She'd seen a picture of him once, so she wasn't startled by the distinctive qualities of his face. What she was startled by was how attractive she suddenly found it. At seventeen, seeing a photo of him, she'd thought he looked rather odd. His mind had seemed a saving grace from his rather awkward looks at the time, but now, in person, in motion, the more unique aspects of his face merged into something startlingly, ethereally beautiful.
She quickly blinked, plastering a smile on her face and holding out her hand for him to shake as she tried to behave normally. The last thing she wanted was for him to mistake her surprise for vapidity.
"Hi. I'm Ivy Lestrade. You must be Sherlock Holmes."
He stared at her outstretched hand for a moment as though it were a foreign object, before quickly shaking it, a tight little insincere smile on his lips. "Yes, you are correct."
There was a moment of awkward silence in which Sherlock bounced on his heels, obviously itching to leave.
"So, uh, all moved in, then?" John asked cordially.
Ivy, relieved, answered quickly. "Yes, yes. Didn't take me nearly as long as I thought it would, but between your help and the amount of time that me and Dad-"
"Dad and I," Sherlock interrupted, and Ivy was thoroughly amused to see John hang his head in a clear sign of exasperation.
"Uh, sorry?" she asked Sherlock, her train of thought derailed.
He suddenly fixed his cat-like eyes on her, fully focused on her for the first time, and his mind was so intent behind the blue that she felt as though she could actually feel him analysing her.
"You said 'me and Dad'. It should have been 'Dad and I', or better yet, 'my father and I'. Don't worry, I don't blame you, your father has the same trouble with proper grammar, it's likely a bad habit you got from him, the same way that you've picked up his accent. You also have his eyes, but other than that you don't look very like him at all, I'd say you look more like your mother- oh, you don't like that comparison, you've just tensed. You're not close to your mother, are you? No, likely because of all the lovers she's had running around, you feel a very strong bond with your father, it's obvious in the number of photos you have of the two of you on display. You also have a large dog, or at least your parents do, golden retriever, I'd say. Either it's very fond of you, or your very fond of it, perhaps both, you are absolutely covered in dog hair. Going by the level of attachment, I'd say it was a childhood pet, you would have brought it here with you, but Mrs Hudson doesn't allow pets."
He cocked his head at her, as though trying to squeeze out a last few deductions, despite how thoroughly impressed she knew she looked. Her father had told her stories of Sherlock Holmes, but nothing could have prepared her for his rapid-fire intelligence, or the way that his whole body seemed to just vibrate with pent-up energy.
He nodded sharply to himself, as though deciding that he was pleased with his deduction, before spinning on his heel to leave. As he climbed the stairs, he threw over his shoulder, "Do try not to get paint on Mrs Hudson's walls and furniture. Art is a very messy business, as I understand it."
And then the door clicked shut behind him.
Ivy let out an incredulous little laugh.
"So that was Sherlock Holmes."
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AN 2: So if you could review and let me know what you thought, if this is worth continuing, then that would be great.