Chapter One: Someone New

Sherlock sighed as he peered down the microscope at the slide he was examining. He was bored out of his brains. No murders had happened, and nothing else that had happened really warranted his attention. He hadn't heard from Lestrade for weeks, and even Mycroft seemed to have decided to have a break from irritating him. It was a sign of the degree of his boredom that he was almost half wishing that Mycroft would appear, smugly irksome as usual, to attempt to bully him into taking a case (not that Sherlock would ever have admitted this to his brother). He didn't even need to be at Barts for any case – it was just a distraction, and a very poor one at that.
It had been three and a half years since the Moriarty affair; six months since he had revealed himself to John. Three years! The exhilaration and fear that it had generated had been enough to keep him going for several months, but then he had needed to get back into the business of testing his intellect. However, despite his own readiness to begin solving crimes once more there was his decimated reputation to deal with, and the fact that John had not been ready to know that he was still alive barely months after his supposed suicide. His patience had been severely tested, but it was for John. As to the matter of his recovered reputation, he preferred not to think about it, for he was sure that he owed Mycroft a favour regarding it – only Mycroft could have organised for the editing of both public and private data bases across not only the United Kingdom, but also the world.
Recently however, just when he was getting into the swing of things (and even John's blog had begun to re-establish itself back to its former prominence), cases fell flat. Of course some people still came to him with their irritatingly mundane tales of woe, but he would never stoop so low as to taking one of them. He didn't leave the house for anything less than a seven, and most of the cases he had been approached with barely even warranted a rank. Sherlock sighed and considered returning to the flat and blackmailing John into Cluedo, or even the more desperate possibility of texting Lestrade a demand for involvement in a case. He shook his head; that was one level he was not willing to stoop to, but soon it would be at least a month since he'd had a decent case.
"We need more milk." He said to Raiserra absently, his eyes flicking momentarily towards his mobile where it lay on the table. The black European otter dæmon rolled its eyes, picking up instantaneously on her human's unspoken question.
"Of course he will." It was true, John never forgot things like that, and if he did, Histali would always remind him. Sherlock removed the slide with unnecessary venom, nearly cutting his finger on a chipped corner, hissing slightly as Raiserra whipped her tail about, her whiskers quivering. He unbuttoned and pulled up his sleeve and examined the quilt of nicotine patches along his forearm, wondering whether he was imagining that they weren't working or whether they really weren't. He'd been through two entire boxes already that week and it wasn't even Wednesday. He made a mental note to remind John to get some more, along with the milk. Patches, or not, however, he was on the verge of shooting up the wall of their flat again from sheer boredom he knew, and although John had become increasingly inventive with hiding his gun since the last dozen incidents – aided no doubt by Histali – Sherlock always managed to find it in the end, albeit with the help of Raiserra's sensitive nose.
Sherlock rubbed a crease between his brows angrily. If he couldn't find the gun this time, then he would just have to –
"No!" Raiserra's voice was irate, having followed the train of Sherlock's thoughts in the way that only she could. "The drugs make me act like a loon. No." Sherlock glared at his dæmon for a moment, then huffed, picking up the nearest slide and clipping it in with a sharp clack. He pressed his fingers together momentarily, steepling them against his chin. If he couldn't use the morphine or cocaine, then it would have to be the– "And no cigarettes." Raiserra interjected adamantly. "We're not that bad yet." Sherlock glared at Raiserra.
"I need stimulus, Raiserra!" Sherlock spat, his face contorted with a mixture of fury at his dæmon's obstinacy, and desperation.
"Wear more patches." The dæmon fired back, expression seemingly unperturbed, although, she too was feeling the effects of the mind numbing boredom that inhabited her human, as well as the keen desire for action and intellectual challenge. Sherlock glared at the otter for a moment.
"Fine." He stormed sullenly. "But one more week, and I'm getting the cigarettes; I don't care what you say."
"Not when you've paid off all the dealers in a two mile radius around Baker Street to refuse you." Raiserra muttered.

Sherlock had been studying the new slide for only a few minutes, conversation between him and Raiserra having subsided into a testy deadlock, when an awed looking Molly pushed open the doors and led in a young woman that Sherlock was unfamiliar with.
He spared her the most fleeting of categorising glances; Sherlock had never had much time for people, especially not for females, and most of all not for ordinary people. Had he been in a better mood, he may have dredged up an ounce of common cordiality, but he was still furious and battling the boredom that was slowly liquefying his brain.
She was pretty enough, he supposed, but pretty wasn't interesting. To be sure there was an innate roll in her hips as she entered that he knew would have attracted most men like bees to honey (contrary to John and Histali's beliefs he was possessed of awareness and knowledge of the chemical and physical attraction between people, although he chose not to indulge in such messy and unnecessary interaction himself), not to mention the generous curves of her figure, but other than that, she was quite ordinary. Sherlock sighed rudely.
Raiserra, who had flowed along the bench and up Sherlock's arm to settle like a heavy sleek black stole about his shoulders, was staring at the visitor intently, sniffing hard, their fuss temporarily forgotten.
"Where's her dæmon?" She whispered softly into Sherlock's ear, her whiskers brushing against his cheek. Sherlock glanced around, his interest piqued very slightly; if Raiserra couldn't see or smell the woman's dæmon then he certainly wouldn't spot it in the room.
"She may be a witch or simply a separated human," he murmured, his brain automatically supplying the facts that verified the rarity of either such occurrences. As the words left his mouth a slow muted thudding came to them. Sherlock glanced up, his eyes widening momentarily as they took in all the rattling glass and metal instruments arrayed about the room. An earth tremor? In London?
The young woman looked entirely unperturbed by the apparent seismic activity, and instead turned to the doors, holding one open, a now positively stricken looking Molly holding open the other, her rock ptarmigan dæmon Nalkin huddling inside her labcoat, his feathers already whitening for the coming winter.
Sherlock and Raiserra's eyes were trained on the door, narrowed in identical expressions of speculation. What came through the door shocked both of them enough that their eyes widened.
An enormous white bear, its head dipped low to allow it under the lintel of the doors, padded majestically in, its enormous slightly serrated black claws clacking against the floor. Its shaggy white pelt was thick, and its small black eyes swept the room, alighting on the pair and scrutinising them with an intensity that dwarfed even their own inspections. It was a panserbjørne; an armoured bear.
"Thank you, Molly." The young woman said, her tone rang with authority for all her youth, and it was an evident dismissal – albeit a kindly one. Molly seemed all too eager to flee, and practically ran from the room, not even pausing to pull the doors to. The young woman smiled towards the bear, both amused and apologetic at once to Sherlock's curiosity, then closed the doors. Sherlock frowned at the odd expression, then whipped back to the microscope, studiously disinterested.
It was not until all this was done that the young woman turned to face Sherlock for the first time. She moved forwards, gliding gracefully and effortlessly, the great bear at her side. Both man and dæmon's curiosity was piqued, although only Sherlock was concealing it. Raiserra had stretched to her fullest extent towards the woman and bear, her nose wrinkling as she sniffed deeply at the air, claws dug into her human's suit, her entire body coiled tense. The woman and her strange companion remained at the opposite end of the bench, as if aware that their presence was unwelcome, for all the interest they generated. Raiserra froze rigid after a few more moments, and was urgently kneading Sherlock's shoulder through his suit. The woman was too close now however for them to whisper unheard, so Sherlock ignored his increasingly agitated dæmon; besides which, the woman had begun to speak.
"Mr Sherlock Holmes, I believe." The woman said, her eyes resting upon Sherlock, who was still resolutely staring down the microscope, the hint of a smile in her slightly aristocratically accented voice.
"As you see." Sherlock replied tersely. He glanced up and perfunctorily swept her up and down, taking in her well-groomed appearance, the ink stains on her right hand, the disciplined posture with which she held herself, and yet the relaxed stance. "Where is your dæmon?"
The woman did not seem at all put off by his total lack of conventionality or manners, or even that it was he asking after her dæmon and not Raiserra. She surprised him by laughing – a very John-like thing to do; Sherlock's eyes narrowed.
"Well, as you see, he is right here." Her eyes flickered towards the panserbjørne, and Sherlock noticed a slight shift in her stance so that she was leaning towards her dæmon.
"That's what I wanted to tell you," Raiserra muttered sullenly into her human's collar. Sherlock barely registered his dæmon's sulky irritation, but instead turned his wide eyes on the woman's dæmon. At first he had intended only to inquire where and what her dæmon was, and why she had an armoured bear for company, then get rid of her. Now that he knew the panserbjørne to be a dæmon, however, the dying embers of his interest had been rekindled to a blaze, and the sheer size of the beast stunned him. It had to be the largest dæmon he had ever seen, for its head nearly brushed the ceiling, though it was standing on all fours, its great shoulders level with its human's head. Even in children playing games, it was uncommon for any of their dæmons to even attempt such a monstrous size. He wasn't even aware that it was possible for dæmons to take the form of a panserbjørne once settled.
Raiserra, apparently taking offence at being ignored by Sherlock, slithered down his arm, and crept swiftly along the table towards the bear dæmon, her nose working once more. Sherlock frowned slightly; Raiserra never showed such marked interest in other people or their dæmons – regardless of how interesting they were – preferring to be as aloof and distant as her human; John was the one exception to this. The woman had to be special.
The two humans said nothing, both of them watching their dæmons intently.
Raiserra stopped at the very edge of the tabletop, her forepaws wrapped around the edge of the table in a fierce grip, her neck stretched to its utmost towards the woman's dæmon. The woman and her dæmon exchanged a single glance, the giant bear blinking one black eye slowly before it turned to regard Raiserra once more, dipping its head so low that it was practically sitting, the end of its wet black nose rippling, a warm breath blowing out across Raiserra and ruffling her short dry fur.
Then, the great bulk of the armoured bear dæmon shifted slightly, compacting and tensing, the movement somehow threatening. Sherlock was barely allowed a moment of confusion in which his mind worked furiously to uncover why the moment was so unsettling, before everything was blotted out in a wave of terror as the bear leapt towards Raiserra. Just one paw would be enough to crush the now incredibly tiny and fragile looking otter, let alone an entire panserbjørne. Raiserra let out a terrified whistling and scrabbled back along the bench as if she could actually escape the heavy heaving bulk that was flying towards her, moving towards Sherlock, who hand automatically reached out to shield his dæmon.