Hello, all. Apologies for the long quiet; life has essentially consisted of sleep, teaching, and writing lesson plans as of late.
This is posted under "All but the Things that Cannot Be Torn" on Archive Of Our Own. It'll be posted under Behind Every Great Fortune here on fanfiction dot net. The title comes from the following:
"Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be." - Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
So, without further ado: All but the Things that Cannot Be Torn.
John is on the couch again when Sherlock ascends the steps to 221B. He doesn't respond to Sherlock's noise or the baby crying in Sherlock's armchair; heaving a quiet sigh, Sherlock leaves the bags on the sitting room floor and collects Baby Watson from the chair.
He's halfway through a feed when Mycroft appears in the kitchen doorway. "Brother," he growls.
Mycroft stares at the baby in Sherlock's arms. She's eating heartily, apparently unperturbed by her father's distress. "Sherlock, what have you done?" Mycroft breathes.
After a long, frigid moment of insulted silence, Sherlock hisses, "Get out."
Predictably, Mycroft does exactly the opposite of what Sherlock wants—he sets his umbrella aside and strides around the table, looming over Sherlock like he thinks it'll make Sherlock more inclined to obey. "Sherlock Holmes, whatever you've done, you need to return that child to her mother right this instant."
Sherlock stands carefully but decisively and brushes past Mycroft, going to his Belstaff where it hangs by the front door. He jerks his head to indicate the coat. "You have a bug in my mobile; the last call made will explain. Get it and then get. out."
He can see it when Mycroft notices John motionless on the couch and the bags of baby equipment on the floor. He can see the recalculations happening, followed shortly by the conclusion that yes, Mycroft has squarely put his foot in it. Wordlessly, the elder Holmes collects Sherlock's mobile, tucks it away into a pocket, and departs.
Readjusting the baby, Sherlock tips the bottle up a bit; she's still eating, if slowly. For a moment, he considers the empty space by John's feet on the couch. For another moment, he considers the tense line of John's back and the way his toes are tightly curled. He returns to the kitchen.
Hours come and go. The baby eats, cries, defecates, and drowses; Sherlock feeds, soothes, changes, and settles her. When he realises that the cadence she's established is similar to his own natural rhythms (a fortunate thing for her, really), he begins to wonder what else about her he might quantify. Shortly thereafter, he sacrifices a blank notebook to science, retrieves his personal stethoscope from his closet, and commences baseline measurements.
She is forty-eight point five three centimetres from the top of her head to the tips of her toes; this, according to the Internet, is within average bounds. Her heart and breathing sound normal, though he has to consult the Internet again to ensure that a heart rate of one hundred and thirty four beats per minute is normal (it is). As she did not protest being uncurled a bit to obtain the length measurement, Sherlock gently lifts her and sets her on the kitchen scale. She does not fuss about this, either—she merely watches with her peculiar, unfocussed gaze as he notes that she has a mass of three point two six kilograms.
The Internet informs him that the baby's eye colour is not permanent, but he notes it nonetheless, even going so far as to fetch his paint swatches to match it as precisely as possible. Delving into the genetics of eye colour reveals that the phenotype is infuriatingly difficult to predict with precision, so he makes do with what he can and gives a general prediction of 'dark blue'. He does not note his bias toward a particular denim-and-hazel.
Slow footsteps on the stair draw Sherlock out of his typing and notating. Sighing, he tucks the baby into the wicker 'Moses basket' and goes back to note-taking. Guilt is such a boring emotion.
Mycroft appears in the kitchen doorway. Rather than announce himself verbally, he presents Sherlock with the baby's birth certificate and her chart from the hospital.
It's as much of a peace offering as Sherlock suspects he'll get, and Sherlock is not above taking advantage of a guilty conscience (however underdeveloped that conscience may be). He accepts the papers and his brother's presence with a sneer and little else. Mycroft, though meddlesome, will invariably prove a valuable resource in the long run, particularly if Mary becomes involved in any of his cases. "What do you intend to do?" he asks quietly, glancing up from his laptop screen long enough to see that Mycroft has seated himself at the kitchen table as well.
"For the time being, she is merely being watched. Interference is too risky," Mycroft replies. His eyes go from the wicker basket to the open notebook by Sherlock's elbow. Sherlock's script is messy, but Mycroft has years of experience reading it from all angles—the table of feeding times and volumes under the baby's heart rate, length, and weight may as well be in bold, plain print. "You really do intend to go through with this, brother?"
Sherlock rolls his eyes. The answer to that question is obvious enough. Instead, he looks over the certificate of birth. "She is unnamed," he remarks. The blank space on the page is irrationally troubling.
Mycroft nods. "An infant must be registered within forty-two days of birth," he replies, running one fingertip over the embossed border of the certificate. "John has forty days to do so, if security footage of the hospital is accurate."
There's a period of quiet.
"I have granted you access to your fund," Mycroft says at length.
Sherlock looks up sharply.
Rolling his eyes, Mycroft sighs. "Don't look so shocked. You have been... ogling that stem cell extraction adaptor for weeks, yet you spent more than half of the money you'd saved for it on equipment for the infant?" He shakes his head. "I never thought I would witness such a thing, not after you tried to—"
"Yes, yes, fine, thank you, is that what you want to hear?" Sherlock interjects, glancing into the sitting room. Learning of Sherlock's attempts to sell superfluous organs to black market dealers for drugs money would be deleterious to John's already-compromised stability (nevermind that the incident took place nearly seven years ago), so Sherlock cannot have that. "If you're not going to be of any further help, leave. You'll wake the baby." He goes back to his research and notation despite the lack of anything new to record.
Thankfully, Mycroft obeys. Until the baby wakes an hour later, the quiet in the flat goes uninterrupted.
The baby is asleep when the clock in the corner of Sherlock's laptop screen ticks over into zeroes. He sighs and stretches in his armchair, toes flexing and curling—of all the things he expected to find online, an evidence-based parenting and feeding website was not one of them, but the surprise is a happy one. He's been engrossed for hours, only pausing in his reading to feed and check the baby (21:55, 15.5 mL, unsoiled diaper) or move her from his chest to the basket and vice versa.
John doesn't appear to have moved during any of this time. He isn't asleep, judging by his breathing, but he's in exactly the same position as he had been.
As the baby is asleep, Sherlock stands from the armchair and tucks her basket into it in his place. He approaches John without bothering to walk quietly and sits down in the space at the end of the sofa where John's toes don't quite reach.
John kicks him with force. When Sherlock does not budge, John makes an animal sound and kicks him again.
Well, tries to kick him again. Sherlock seizes his ankle and pins it to the sofa, which John apparently takes as his cue to lunge for Sherlock (how he does that from his side and with his upper leg pinned, Sherlock does not know) with his teeth bared and his eyes flashing. Three years earlier, Sherlock might not have reacted in time to defend himself, but his reflexes have been honed with two long, tense years of frequent use. He releases John's ankle and goes instead for his wrists, drawing John into a grapple that sends them tumbling to the floor. Penned by the couch and the coffee table, Sherlock's guile and flexibility win out—he's able to maintain his position on top and flip John over, pinning him in place.
"What do you want?" John snarls, thrashing.
Sherlock keeps John pinned. "You have not moved for over eight hours."
John goes still. He's breathing with heavy, growling huffs, much the way he had when Sherlock had first revealed himself at the restaurant. Between Sherlock's knees, John's hands clench and unclench. Sherlock harbours no delusions of safety; if he lets go, John will do him grievous injury.
That or do himself grievous injury. The former is undesirable; the latter is unacceptable.
"Why do you—" John starts, clenching jaw and fists briefly, "—why do you care?"
Sherlock bows his head over John's back. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," John replies, voice flat and cold.
There are a number of possible answers. None of them are untrue, but some are denser truths than others.
Sherlock is a coward. "Your shoulder is already causing you pain, and staying on the couch will only worsen the problem."
"You sitting on me is worsening the problem," snaps John, and though his tone is combative, Sherlock feels the tension drain out of his back and arms.
Releasing his grip on John's wrists, Sherlock gets up and out of John's reach as quickly as possible without appearing fearful. He retreats to his armchair and the baby in her basket. "You may take my bed for the night," he says as he watches the baby sleep and listens to John stiffly, slowly getting back to his feet. "She will awaken shortly, and then two to three hours after that; it is likely that I will only nap."
Sherlock listens as slightly distressed breathing and the soft hush of wool on wool move across the room from the sofa to the kitchen. The sounds pause there suddenly, and the air in the room seems strangely charged as Sherlock realises that John must be looking at the notebook sitting open on the kitchen table. Thick paper rustles—John is looking at the birth certificate, too.
"Forty days," John says, and takes himself and his sounds down the hall to Sherlock's bedroom.
Whether he's telling Sherlock or reminding himself isn't clear.
