She told her parents she was old enough to not need a babysitter after school, but they insisted, and so Sherlock picked her up every day from school.
Well, mostly every day. The days he didn't have cases.
She supposed more often than not it was Mrs Hudson who picked her up.
But she didn't mind. Either way she was taken to Baker Street.
She loved it there. Father and Sherlock had lived there together for years, and sometimes she swore the memories were so engrained in the walls that she could hear them, leaning against a wall, breathless and giddy after a chase. Sometimes she could feel the sadness too though. She knew all about what Sherlock had done. Even if her parents hadn't talked to her about it (which they did, only after she brought it up) it couldn't be erased from newspapers and the lives of almost everyone she knew.
Because almost everyone in her life had been touched by what Sherlock had done.
Uncle Greg and Uncle Mike and Auntie Molly and Grandpa and Grandma, who were Sherlock's parents, but the closest thing she had to grandparents besides Mrs Hudson, and even Anderson, who she wasn't even sure what to call him. All of them had been affected by what Sherlock had done.
Of course, her father was the most. They were best friends. (Some days he would just be sitting quietly, and she thought that she could see the pain in his eyes, even though it was so many years ago now, so long ago that Sherlock had left him. She supposed some sorts of pain never got better with time, and always made sure to hug him extra tight before bed, just to reassure him that she wasn't going anywhere, and neither had he.)
But she supposed that if Sherlock hadn't done it, her parents never would have met, and she would never have been born.
Some days, when Sherlock looked at her with something like awe on his face, she wondered if he was thinking about that.
She should probably have been frightened of him. He was that sort of man, all tall and imposing and sharp angles. But she just couldn't fear him.
After you've heard tales of someone in Buckingham palace wearing only a sheet, you really couldn't look at them in that sort of light again. Besides, he'd never been anything but gentle to her. She had no doubt that he could be cold and harsh and unrelenting when he needed to be, there was just something about him that she could sense, hidden away whenever he was around her.
People were interesting like that, she supposed. Sometimes what you saw was only what they wanted you to see.
Sherlock was a brilliant actor. She could see how carefully constructed he was around other people, around most people. But with her and her parents, he was different. The carefully presented front fell, and behind it was a wonderful person.
She wasn't sure why he didn't let people see that, but she knew that he had his reasons. And even if she didn't understand, she would respect them.
Respect was important in relationships.