A/N: I don't own the Sherlock Holmes stuff, and this is obviously an AU so apologies for any major OOC-ness. Enjoy!

When Sherlock Holmes was born, a new angel joined the 500th Earthly Protectors Regiment, in the service of the Heavenly Father. The new angel took the name given to him by the Father, John. John was like every other new angel in his regiment, tall, pale, with radiant wings of elegant white feathers, long white hair and golden eyes. His first assignment was to ascertain his charge's health; a glance through his second sight told him that Sherlock Holmes was a healthy baby, a little undersized, but properly formed. What made him interesting was his already increased brain activity that showed he would develop much more quickly than the other thousands of babies that had been in the same moment as he had.

Assignment complete, John logged it into his new pocket book. Angels don't write, they look at a page and push memory segments onto the page to record them accurately. Now that he had established himself as a guardian, John looked into the mirror he had thought of. Every new angel first thinks of a mirror – they want an identity. Looking around at other new recruits, John blanched a little. Pink floor length hair, shimmering golden robes, red tipped wings, blue patterns swirled onto skin… It was painful to his unassuming silver eyes. John looked into the mirror and cut several feet of his hair off so that it brushed against his calves when he walked, rather than dragging behind him. He visualised a neutral sandy colour, and watched as it spread from his roots to the tips of his hair. He did not want to look special, so he decided that his eyes would change to whatever colour most comforted whoever was looking into them. Rather than a gown, which tickled his feet, he looked into his second sight at what the people currently surrounding Sherlock were wearing. The shirts would irritate his wings, and those shoes were unsightly, but the dark casual trousers of a man who had just walked past Sherlock's room caught John's eye. He resumed first sight, and looked down at the dark blue formal slim jeans he was now wearing, the cold did not affect him, and they were pleasantly normal against his skin. Now all he could do was try and get along with the other angels in his regiment, and keep an eye on Sherlock's development.

The first time he interferes in Sherlock's life is when he is three, and has discovered how to climb onto the roof of the manor. John finds himself wishing that young Sherlock was still preoccupied with rolling around on the grass and pretending to be a bee, but the development does not surprise him, having learnt to use fluent sentences by the time he was two, and walking by his first birthday. He shakes himself from the recollections, and glides over to where Sherlock is now sat on the edge of the roof swinging his legs and reciting his times tables out loud. He does not get to seven times eight. He falls.

John jumps into action, turning off Sherlock's consciousness, catching him and lowering him gently to the floor. When Sherlock wakes up, he will remember being on the roof, but he will not remember how he came to be in his bed. John makes a mental memo to Mycroft's angel to ask him to plant an image of Sherlock falling off a low branch of the tree outside his bedroom window in order for the minor injuries to make sense to the young boys. It would be too suspicious for Sherlock to wake up unscathed; John needs him to associate the roof with Not Good and Danger.

The next time John is required to intervene, Sherlock is five, and John really doesn't understand just how he was allowed a sword in the first place. Who has swords these days anyway? Shaking his head in disbelief, he manages to change the gash on Sherlock's leg to a minor cut, but of course the noise ensuing from the small boy increase to the point that nanny number 6 carries him from the garden to the play room and settles him with a cup of tea and a murder mystery Mycroft had written for him.