A/N: Hello all, and welcome to chapter two of our domestic little mystery! Thankyou all for your wonderful reviews - and allow me to spare a moment for a few responses!

Z-SBS: Thankyou (blushes). Hopefully this chapter will live up to expectations!

amalcolm1: Hmm, I see we have a shrewd one among us. I'm not sure if I will manage to convince you entirely in this chapter - Holmes is being tight-lipped - but, later... but for now, enjoy!

Procyon Marie: Here - have a glass. Baker Street finest brew, don't you know! Enjoy - the fic that is, rather than the drink!

igbogal: Thankyou for writing the review which got me out of the doldrums and eventually inspired me to update! I hope you enjoy this chapter.

And to dottid, Susicar, snicketfan4ever and RL, many thanks and keep on reading!

I hope this chapter isn't too bad - I suddenly get the sense that I'm being a bit traitorous to Conan Doyle's canon and style - I suppose its what comes from reading the Mary Russell series back to back over the holidays! Anyway, enough of my chat - read on!

Disclaimer: I own very little to do with Sherlock Holmes, save a somewhat dog-eared copy of the canon (I dropped it in the bath...), so suffice to say I definitely do not own the copyright!

The Adventure of the Detective's Son

Chapter Two

It was some time before I regained the power of speech. When I did, I glanced at my now-empty brandy glass and asked, in not the calmest of tones,

"We appear to have finished the brandy. Have you any more anywhere?"

Holmes' lips quirked at this, and before I knew it we were both laughing – Holmes with the unused, half-hysterical laugh of a man who rarely did so, and I with a sudden relief.

"You were pulling my leg, weren't you, Holmes?"

Holmes' laughter vanished instantly. His expression, and tone, both became unbearably sober.

"I am afraid not, Watson. That woman – O'Doherty – was the sister of a... young woman I once... knew."

Silence filled the room at this pronouncement, and Holmes smiled a little helplessly at my bewilderment.

"I fear this has come as something of a shock to both of us, Watson, and I fear also that I am doing little to ease your shock by explaining in any way even approaching understandably. Perhaps I should start from the beginning – the very beginning.

"Well, Watson, do you recall once penning the words that I would 'place myself in a false position as a lover'?"

I nodded, reluctantly. This was a conversation I didn't particularly want to have, and certainly not with Holmes. I think Holmes picked up on this, for his lips quirked in amusement.

"But what you didn't realise, Watson, was that I already knew this." I had been staring determinedly at the bottom of my empty brandy glass until this point, but at the sound of Holmes leaning forward I glanced up, and met his eyes. They were surprisingly gentle, and I realised that Holmes was telling me the very thing that the woman O'Doherty had doubted he could trust me with – his secret. So I swallowed my protests, and Holmes continued. "I knew this, Watson, from experience." He frowned. "Unfortunately, I did not realise at the time that this... experience was to have far longer-reaching consequences."

I frowned. I have encountered many strange and mysterious things in my association with Sherlock Holmes, but this I was not prepared for: talk of lovers and illegitimate sons. But I had promised to help Holmes. All the same, I could not help but feel a slight twinge of jealousy that he, who had never shown any desire for a family, should discover a son when I had had all my hopes taken from me with Mary's death. And yet, beneath that, I felt the familiar and yet quite inappropriate rush of curiosity; who was this woman, I wished to ask, who had somehow aroused in Holmes his romantic desire – and then borne him, unawares, a son?

"You mean the boy." I said, firmly quelling my desire to question Holmes further on the subject of the child's mother. Holmes, however – perhaps from a desire to avoid speaking of something he did not yet know how to deal with, perhaps not – seemed to pick up on my curiosity. He rose and turned so that he was facing the mantelpiece, and with surprisingly steady hands filled his pipe with tobacco.

"Yes, Watson... and yet, I suppose, you are more intrigued by the cause, and not the consequence. Am I right?" He turned and surveyed me with a knowing eye.

I flushed. I suppose that is what comes from living with another person for far too long, be they a detective or not; no thought is entirely private. I nodded, reluctantly.

"I can't deny it." I said, wondering briefly how this curiosity on my part would lessen me in the eyes of the reserved and undeniably secretive Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes paused for a moment before replying, his gaze thoughtful and, I mused, fixed on some point long in the past.

"It was before you knew me, Watson; not long after I had come to London. The first case – the first client – which came to my door was both intriguing and fascinating." He eyed me carefully. "The woman who came to me impressed me in much the same way that your Mary did you, at the start of the Morstan case." He stopped, his expression unreadable. "Of course, I did not marry 'my' young woman, but then again, Watson, you have always been more suited to domesticity than I."

I was not entirely sure how to respond to this pronouncement, but I did my best.

"So if you did not marry her, Holmes... what did you do?" I did not ask the lady's maiden name: it seemed unnecessary, somehow.

Holmes smiled humourlessly.

"Watson, surely that is obvious, even to you? I would have thought that a doctor would understand the cause to the consequence with which I am faced." His tone was faintly teasing, but even that pale spark faded from his eyes as his tone became suddenly businesslike. "I courted her; I even convinced myself that I had wooed her. Do not ask me what attracted me to her, or to such a thought; I was young and admittedly foolish. We parted ways shortly before her twenty-fifth birthday." His tone quietened. "And she is dead now."

We sat in silence for some time, but as the clattering of carriages outside slowly lessened, and the sky paled to a cloudy, morose blue, Holmes rose and faced the window.

"The O'Doherty woman, Anna-Marie's sister – the boy's aunt and now his legal guardian – came to inform me of this, and her – my – child's existence today." He paused, then turned to me. "She will be coming again tomorrow, and she will bring the boy with her."

I nodded; I knew without being asked that my presence was, at that meeting at least, required. I recall thinking, then; poor child. To lose his mother, and then to be thrust upon a man he had never met – a man who, for all his genius in the art of detection and for all his many and varied talents, was possibly the last man to carry well the burden of fatherhood.

I also thought that Holmes had uttered the name "Anna-Marie" with an extraordinary gentleness, for him, and that his claim of not being able to say what had caused their brief and ill-fated courtship was, in fact, the fault of his own reluctance to examine and share such memories.

We spent a quiet evening, and neither of us spoke overmuch, and it was a relief to me to be able to retire and leave Holmes to his pipe and thoughts in front of the cold and empty fire.

I awoke the next morning to find Holmes gone, and he still had not returned when a sharp rap at the door preceded the entrance of the awful O'Doherty woman and Holmes' own nameless son.

I sighed. Apparently, this ordeal was to be mine.

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"Mr. Watson." Miss – or Mrs – O'Doherty said, her expression sour, as she entered the room. Usually, I would have bridled somewhat at her impolite manner and deliberate use of the wrong title, but in that moment my attention was fixed completely on the child at her side. Holmes, damn the man, where was he? I wondered if, perhaps, he had contrived to be absent when the pair arrived, but put the thought from my mind as the child stepped forward, his expression nervous and his hand outstretched.

"Dr. Watson?" He asked, quizzically. His eyes, grey as a storm at sea, seemed to examine every feature of my appearance and of the room around him. As I noted the hawk-like hook of his nose, and his long, yet unfamiliarly still fingers, I realised with a sinking of my heart that the child's parentage could bear no questions. He was undoubtedly Holmes' son; down even to the way his young, all-knowing eyes swept the room. But there was something else in him as well, something he did not inherit from his father; a steadfastness, a youth and a quiet, ever-present energy that I had never observed in Holmes. True, when on a case Holmes would barely sleep for the energy in his veins – but somehow I could not envisage the young man before me falling into a hopeless stupor once a case was done, or of complaining loudly at a lack of work or inspiration. He did not seem the sort to welcome the stimulation of a drug, either.

"Yes," I said, eventually, "good morning to you." I felt hopelessly foolish – my only consolation was that perhaps Holmes would feel even more foolish at his own late entrance as I did at this awkward meeting.

"Good morning." He said politely, but still his eyes raked me up and down. I felt – as I often had in Holmes' presence – hopelessly inferior, like some microcosm placed under a microscope. Know that were this a published account, I would never admit to such things – but since I doubt this will ever leave my notebook, I can loosen my tongue, for once.

"Where is he?" The boy's aunt spoke up, her expression severe. "Is Mr. Holmes away?"

I winced – as, I noticed, did the boy – at the woman's icy tone. Her grip on his shoulder tightened. Poor child, I thought, to have such a woman as his guardian.

"It doesn't matter." The boy spoke up quickly, taking from me the necessity of doing so. "I think – you can go now, Aunt."

The woman stiffened at this, but the boy shot her such a disarming smile – definitely not a thing inherited from his father – that even her stormy countenance eased a little. She glanced at me.

"Are you content, Dr. Watson, with the arrangement of John waiting here until Mr. Holmes returns?"

I nodded, distracted by her use of my Christian name – which, after a moment's confusion, I realised was the child's name as well.

John Holmes. What an irony.

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