This story wouldn't get out of my head. It's going to be difficult balancing the new releases with it but that's okay. Basically, it's Princess Tutu in Sherlock's world as a supernatural criminal organization colliding head on with Sherlock and John. A dark urban fantasy.

Pairings: John/Rue, Sherlock/John, Mytho/Rue, Fakir/Ahiru

Warnings: Violence, swearing, non-explicit sex, extreme horror elements later on. I'm not entirely finished or entirely sure where we're going, so I'll update the warnings as I see fit. For now, it's a HARD T.

The title, the song Sherlock is humming, and a lot of sneaky references are about Tom Lehrer, an American satiric musician from the 60s. (He's the one who put the chemical elements to the Modern Major General song.) His work can get very morbid and mean, and I think Sherlock would love it. A lot of names not drawn from Princess Tutu are from Tom Lehrer lyrics.

Prologue: My joy would be complete (I hold your hand in mine)

Four years previous

Sherlock Holmes sits in his flat, staring at a skull—his skull!—and trying to determine why he's smiling. He is hideously bored, the kind of bored that prickles and travels places on his body, the kind of bored that's like a rash. He's a slight eye infection from one of his experiments and it stings to blink, there haven't been any cases in a week, and he'd smoke if the landlord wouldn't throw things at him for it. The landlord is the sort that tolerates rotting parts and chemicals in his flat, but not smoking. This is possibly because his father died of lung cancer, which is why the landlord chews cinnamon gum, but it's also because the man is a prat.

"Why cinnamon, though?" he asks the skull. "Who could ever take that much cinnamon all the time? It must feel like his mouth's on fire, surely, or maybe that's a sensation he's cultivated due to self-punishment…"

He smiles again.

His skull.

Mycroft says he hasn't any friends and the officer Lestrade has appointed his assistant is about ready to quit, judging by his body language and the state of his hair, but he's got this fellow now, what luck. This fellow is loads smarter than his landlord and just as good of a conversationalist.

That's when Lestrade comes in.

Or, to be more precise, Lestrade knocks, which means he's upset. Normally knocking instead of simply intruding as Sherlock lets him would be no sign of urgency, but whenever Lestrade is faced with a particularly upsetting case his brain shuts down to the police procedurals.

"Come in and try not to step on the spill," Sherlock says, even though there is no spill, since he's got a cocooned bubble with his skull in his hand that, if burst, will keep him from thinking as clearly.

"It's not in the papers yet," Lestrade says.

"Then it's unusually interesting from the start?"

"Old man dead, blood loss. His hands, they're gone."

Sherlock smiles, again, this time for a suitable reason. "I'll be down in a minute."

Lestrade leaves.

Sherlock presses a kiss to the forehead of his skull, places it on the mantelpiece, tries to remember how the song goes, and begins to hum.

I hold your hand in mine, dear, I press it to my lips. I take a healthy bite from your dainty fingertips. My joy would be complete, dear, if you were only here. But still I keep your hand as a precious souvenir…

The old man has long white hair and a beard, is wearing a shabby suit, and appears to possess no other injuries than the two gory stumps. There are blunt slashes on the wood where the flesh was cleaved.

Mr. Drosselmeyer, a German immigrant, was a well-known literary author and scholar in his home country, and a few days ago suddenly threw money around to get his way into Britain as quickly as possible.

"Professional jealousy?" Anderson asks.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "The popularity of his books was mostly confined to Germany, so what reason would the culprit have to execute him now? Check his case file, he's been in an out-of-the-way cottage sort of setup. Number of bags packed," he says before Lestrade can ask. "No, this murder has to do with London, happened because he was in London. Besides, there's no sign of a struggle."

Lestrade swallows. "Eerie, that. Anything about the room?"

The room is a dark wood, designed to be comforting. An array of half-unpacked suitcases stand at the wall. The wallpaper is hideous, a sand-and-mud floral ugly enough that its designer ought to be the one with his hands chopped off. The floor is carpet. A vaguely ethnic rug is propped up against one of the suitcases. New. He liked the dark wood, then, but not the carpet. And there's a blood stain on the tag of one of the suitcases.

Sloppy killer. Doesn't think he can be caught. Doesn't know who he's dealing with. Or does? This seems far too personal to be a serial affair, and the ax marks in the wood are very intentional. He squints and studies for footprints.

Oh.

"He took whatever's in that travel bag along with the hands," Sherlock says. "Or, to be precise, whoever was carrying his hands popped in and took what was in the travel bag. There's more than one. You can't carry hands and something large and flat—look at the shape of the bag—and an ax."

"Two murderers?" Lestrade asks. Sometimes he thinks he's surrounded by deficient parrots. He'd just said more than one. Not two.

"One murderer, higher up, likely short, with several helpers. The helpers carried and the murderer swung. Now as to the motive, I haven't the foggiest. The planning of the thing says 'organized crime', but the execution has 'vendetta' written all over it. No killer worth his salt who has the resources for this sort of thing would do it in such a convoluted way. At first guess I would say cult activity, but I'll need to know more about his life to make sure. Whatever the motive, this is a statement."

He cuts the crime scene short for an appointment with his tailor, just to annoy Lestrade. It's a case absolutely sparkling with potential, but he won't be pushed about. He ripped his best pants on a chase earlier this month and has grown to miss them.

Later that day, in the middle of researching where exactly you find an ax in London, Lestrade sends along the information about the move.

Drosselmeyer has one relative in London, a seventeen-year-old great-grandson currently at university for a degree in creative writing. Although prime suspect material, he was at uni for a final during the murder.

"I don't have to talk to you, and you're not even a copper," Fakir says when Sherlock nabs him outside a coffee shop. He's a handsome young man, multi-racial, very defensive in a way that's going to land him in trouble if he keeps coming up in cases. He has a feather on his pants that indicates he keeps some sort of bird, and his clothes are slightly ripped, but in a way that means he ripped them. He does not match the strength and smaller stature of the murderer, but he might be one of the accomplices. After all, an airtight alibi can be bought for the right amount of money or made with the right amount of brains, and while surly, Fakir is defiantly intelligent.

"I didn't know the old man and my mom hated him, apparently. I knew he was moving to London but I didn't want him to find me."

"And did he find you?" Sherlock asks.

"You're not a copper. Stop stalking me."

"This may be the work of a cult."

Fakir sits down at one of the tables outside the cafe. "You've read too many of his papers."

Sherlock has read none of his papers, but he might consider it now. If Drosselmeyer was exposing something, what better way to warn others who might pry than taking away the hands that wrote out a betrayal of the society?

"This had to do with his writing, the hands were symbolic. Are you afraid that someone might come after you next?"

"No," Fakir says. He bites the inside of his lip. He is afraid of something, not that, but something he can't tell. "I want to be left alone. I'd prefer if you kept my name out of the papers."

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Of course. I don't know if you are aware of this, but there were no signs that he struggled."

"So he was passed out drunk—"

"He wasn't."

"I don't have anything to tell you. My great-grandfather was a sick shit and it might look like I'm trying to be like him, but you don't know anything about me."

He's extraordinarily angry now, almost to a tipping point. For a less intelligent source, Sherlock would push it, watch him spill what he's hiding in anger and bitterness. But Fakir is moments away from closing down entirely.

"Alright," Sherlock says. "Thank you for your time. One last question."

Fakir takes a long drink of coffee, and doesn't meet his eyes.

"There was a case, with an object in it, and one of the murderers took the object. It was long and thin and square-like. What was it?"

He doesn't expect an answer, but Fakir nods. "A clock."

"Why?"

"He kept them, aren't you all supposed to know stuff like this? He was a clockmaker before he was a writer. Didn't he have a lot of them?"

There were no clocks in the suitcases, and no clock parts. But Sherlock doesn't let on.

"Is that all it could be?"

"Yes! There are clocks in his books, too. I remember him saying in some interview that it was all about the sense of order, method and order. The writing and the clocks."

Method and order, the man said, the man whose papers or his fiction were dangerous enough to have someone take his hands away and keep them away. A way of exerting control. But what did he have in his life that was so traumatizing that he needed a false sense of power to live?

Consequently, if someone took this away, would it be enough of a blow that he'd let himself die?

"You called him sick."

"I've told you what you need to know. You said 'one last question' five minutes ago. I have another final tomorrow, just let me out of this."

Sherlock can't take him out of this, but Fakir knows that. He wasn't asking. It's a sort of demand to the heavens. Very dramatic, underneath all that defensiveness. Of course he's a writer.

"My pleasure," Sherlock says.

Fakir gets up roughly, turns without saying goodbye. He's a few steps away when he turns back. "Wait, Mister…?"

"Holmes."

"Holmes. If you find anything, tell me."

If you find anything, tell me. If you find anything, tell me!

It's organized crime, has to be. Fakir read his great-grandfather's papers, he knew Drosselmeyer was coming for him. His mother died before he got a chance to know her, as indicated by his "apparently" when speaking of her views. He is not telling the police that this linked together because he does not want to become a target, but he will do the same research and come to his own conclusions, so that he can be safe.

No, wait, that's not right. Sherlock told him he might be a target and he was worried about something else.

Later that night, with tea in one hand and his laptop in the other, the skull resting against his thigh like a caress, Sherlock pours over Drosselmeyer's papers, mostly about Germanic fairytales with some druidic practices mixed in, over-analytical ideas about mythology. They're supposed to sing in their native tongue, but the English translations seem over-wordy and tenuous.

There are no codes, as far as he can see. There is nothing that indicates a disturbed mindset.

They never find the clock. They find one man, who'd left a fingerprint and lived near. A normal-looking, average bloke who'd just divorced his wife of ten years and left her with custody, then moved into a rotting apartment with a cat and worked as a librarian. The library doesn't have any of Drosselmeyer's books in it, and neither does his flat, but he has a cloak in his closet.

Once they nab him he doesn't speak at all, just glares and glares. The police are afraid that he'll cut out his tongue and so they put him in jail and close the case.

Lestrade adopts the cat.

Sherlock is furious. It's the third case he's never solved so far. Of course the Yard is going to make it seem like the librarian was a psychopath, acting alone, and the threat's gone now. But there are so many layers, and no way to peel the surface.

Then there is a proper serial killer, and his nights, previously spent pouring over books, become much more interesting. He puts the files for the case aside and almost forgets about it.

But someone bested him. Someone is short, cruel, and has an ax in his closet with a clock, has peons all around the city, and the information that made Drosselmeyer lie down and stay perfectly still.

And now he will never know.

In a small dormitory, Fakir arrives home to find a weary, middle-aged man who looks nothing like him waiting. They hold each other and don't even pretend not to be afraid.

In an expensive, tasteful flat, a young woman with dark hair and pale skin, wearing a leotard and tights, throws up in the sink. On the glass table behind her lies an open present, with bright green wrapping and dark green tissue paper, and nestled in the tissue paper are two veined hands.