As of several weeks ago (the second-to-last weekend of summer, to be more specific), I've been sucked into the swirling vortex of the BBC Sherlock universe, and I have no regrets.
Disclaimer: I do not own BBC Sherlock. I do own the OC mentioned here (whose name, coincidentally, translates, rather suitably, as both "work" and "defender").
Warning: Johnlock, Parentlock, mention of body parts, and a six-year-old armed and at the ready with a scalpel. Implied to take place post-Reichenbach Falls, non-BBC Sherlock canon compliant after series 2.
In retrospect, they should have seen this coming a while back. Despite having the top marks in all her classes, which was no small feat considering her age, there was little real work to be done for a child so young if you've already done everything there was to be offered. It was only natural, then, that she'd eventually become bored enough to resort to more drastic methods. Primary school only offered to much to a child like her, after all. Six-year-olds, from what he remembered from his own childhood, were the kind of people who knew just enough about the world around them to get by on almost nothing but cuteness, but also had the annoying habit of remembering and repeating everything potentially strange, gross, or embarrassing when it suited them. And they also got easily bored. In this family, he'd learned long ago that being "bored" was a dangerous thing to everything and everyone within shooting distance.
But in spite of her rather...odd self, the staff had never really thought she'd become bored enough to resort to this. John sighed, wondering how he was going to explain the issue fully to the worried, somewhat traumatized professor in the corner, who was staring at the tiny, pale figure up front in a sort of morbid fascination. The rest of the class, he noticed with a tinge of hysteria, was not in any way frightened like their professor, and instead were, rather alarmingly, observing their classmate with varying degrees of respect, awe, and, to his horror, the same determined willingness-to-serve that he commonly associated with Mycroft's "underlings".
I knew I shouldn't have gotten up this morning. This...this is a lot to take in.
Getting a call while at the hospital wasn't unusual for him; Sherlock would call or text frequently, though he usually claimed it was from boredom without John around, a case to work on, or experiments to carry out that didn't violate enough of their building's health and safety codes to require an evacuation of the entire block while a hazardous waste removal team moved in. Occasionally a call from Lestrade or, even more rarely, Harry, would be received. But he'd never gotten a call quite like this.
After all, how was he supposed to take a call that told him that his daughter -his tiny, eccentric, too-smart-for-her-own-good daughter- had decided to teach? About something like this, for God's sakes?
Molly probably shouldn't have helped Sherlock give her all those anatomy lessons. Or let her into the morgue to watch her go over the newest body.
John Watson stood in the entryway door to his daughter's physiology classroom, rubbing his fingers repeatedly across the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to stave off the familiar sensation of an oncoming headache, as he tried to fully take in the situation. Sherlock merely looked bored, at least at first glance, though when John turned to look at him out of the corner of his eye, he recognized, with a sinking feeling, that familiar slight upward twitch of the lips, as if trying to make sure he didn't do a full-on grin because he knew it would annoy John even more, and there was also that pleased, somewhat proud look in his eyes that normally would have the Yard wondering what the latest strange, morbid experiment had resulted in.
I'll have to talk to him about that later. Really, I think he actually encouraged this to happen, he knows she's like him when it comes to this sort of thing.
He could take many strange. morbid, and unusual things in his life. After living for years in a shared flat with a somewhat mental, constantly-analytical, rather childish best friend who also happened to do weird and creepy experiments on a regular basis, having a landlady who'd been married to a serial killer, and dealing with strange, gruesome murders as part of his daily life, things really shouldn't surprise him anymore. He'd been shot at, strapped to a vest of Semtex explosives, dragged all over London on a regular basis, almost drugged by his flatmate, targeted by snipers associated with said flatmate's crazy obsessed "fan", and subjected to so many inquiries by the Yard as to his sexuality and mental state concerning who he was living with, that this honestly shouldn't have surprised him.
But it did, because he'd been stupid enough to hope that she wouldn't inherit the family dose of "unusual". Perhaps I should've known when I came home to find her reciting Hamlet with the skull for Mrs. Hudson during Halloween when she was three...or the time when she ferreted out all of Mycroft's secret cameras and sent them back to him in a garbage bag for Christmas.
"Amelia, sweetie...", he began, somewhat unsteadily, "Why are you sitting in the teacher's seat, dissecting the demonstration specimen?"
The little girl, clad in the class-issue protective white lab coat and a pair of safety glasses, her oatmeal-coloured jumper and coat sleeves rolled up to her elbows, stood on the professor's chair up at the front desk, elbow-deep in the chest cavity of a preserved human cadaver specimen. The row of class-issued surgical tools glinted in deep flashes of silver against the bottom of the metal tool container; John could just barely make out the end of the scalpel handle, the little grey handle end poking out over the rim of the opened ribcage. The smell of formaldehyde percolated in the air.
Large, dark blue eyes looked up from beneath a fringe of thick, tangled ebony curls, the protective safety glasses (a size too large, he noted) dwarfing the bridge of a tiny, aristocratically-sculpted nose. A look of mild, childish puzzlement flitted across her face as she replied, "The professor wasn't explaining the dissection procedure properly, and over half the class didn't have enough understanding of the human body structure before today's lesson to do the dissection themselves. They only knew about the textbook information, and from working on cat and skunk specimens, nothing so big. So, I decided to do the demonstration myself, and let them watch. This way, they can look and take notes, and the professor can take a break and sleep a bit, she didn't get more than three hours last night and her eyes keep closing. It's safer if I do it."
John fought down the urge to sigh in frustrated resignation; he could already feel Sherlock's smug expression burning into his back. Dammit, why does she have to take after him in this so much? Why couldn't it be ponies and princesses like other little girls, and not a request for a Venus flytrap or a powdered bag of deadly nightshade?
There was a moment of silence as he tried to figure out how best to explain to their six-year-old that taking charge of the class in place of the professor and demonstrating the proper way to dissect a dead body was not allowed at school. No such epiphany came forth in his mind; over his shoulder, he could feel the familiar woolen presence of the old blue scarf as Sherlock looked over his shoulder, pale, ever-observant eyes staring with quiet, amused interest as Amelia turned to the class and began calling them forth in a commmanding, no-nonsense tone that John knew for a fact that she just had to have learned from observing Mycroft.
Instantly, the front desk was swarmed by a mob of forty-two eager classmates, all within the range of seventeen to twenty years old, rapidly bombarding questions about the cadaver specimen's dissection to Amelia, who answered with the sort of amused, indulgent tone that would likely remind someone of a doting parent. John resisted the urge to laugh hysterically.
Six years old, only six years old, and the University across the road thought that it was a good idea to let her into their Physiology class, the class meant only for upperclassmen at the University, not little girls. Her, of all people. Now she's got an entire army of teenage minions to help her take apart as many bodies as the school can supply. Oh God, what have we done?
There was a faint rustling of paper behind him; he detangled himself from Sherlock's hold and turned around, looking about expectantly to find Ms. Hinselman, the professor of the class in question, holding out a packet of several pieces of somewhat crinkled paper out to them. She looked torn between amazement, worry, fear, and confusion. Scanning it, John felt his insides sink in worry; Sherlock seemed to have an air of amusement about the whole thing, but given the contents of the paper, it wasn't very surprising.
Class petition requesting the permission to visit the location of Scotland Yard, as well as the location of the morgue wing of St. Bart's Hospital, on the 12th of November.
Reason for petition: Educational class trip to morgue to better grasp the full scope of the process of decomposition on the human body, before and after traumatic events. Medical personnel with experience in trauma patient cases and ER service requested for additional information.
Persons attending are as follows:
Amelia Watson
Agatha Penderson
Melvin Gunther
Jeremy Ridders
Julia Miggs
Arthur McNeill
Samuel Kirgens
John stopped reading, already being able to see that the list of people requesting permission to go was well over three-quarters of the entire page, as well as completely covering the rest of the page from front to back each time.
He turned to look at the class of chattering students, at the professor who seemed like she might have some sort of mental breakdown soon, at the six-year-old cutting with a terrifyingly calm surgical precision into the neck and throat to expose the thyroid cartilage, the vocal cords behind it, then the esophagus and the laryngopharynx after that. He watched as the scalpel glistened with congealed blood, the pins holding the body down and the chest cavity open as she hummed a bar of Mozart's Piano Concert No. 24 under her breath, dark curls bouncing slightly as she nodded along to the rythmn of the overture.
He watched, and then he turned to the tall, dark-haired, quietly proud man standing beside him. A sharp finger jab to the front of Sherlock's coat, as he let out a breath, half-annoyed, half-amused.
"She gets it from your side of the family."
John struggled not to let a smile form on his own face as Amelia and Sherlock both gave him a proud, slightly offended look, as if to say And that's a problem, how?