I don't know the primary school system in UK, so please give me the benefit of doubt. I'd actually be grateful if you told me where I went wrong in the school system.

Also, this is not a promise that a 4th chapter is coming up soon. I have so many WIPs now and I want to complete them before I give this more serious attention.

"Yes," Sherlock waved him into one of the chairs, but then she noticed that they were too small for him. Will looked a little embarrassed when he saw his father settling down into a chair meant for kids.

"Daddy!" He whispered in an undertone, as if his father was embarrassing him, "You're si'ing inside our chairs!"

Mr. Watson gave Will a weak smile. Will gave an equally enthusiastic one in return, happy to show his father to his teacher before any of his friends could.

"It's 'in', not inside, William," Sherlock corrected automatically upon hearing that and turned to the peon, who still hadn't lost that bewildered expression from his face. With her eyes, she motioned to him to bring a bigger chair for him and cleared his throat, "Just a moment, Mr. Watson . . . erm, William? This might be the first and the last time I'll be giving you a chance to play outside even if you're supposed to be in here. Do you want to pass that up?"

Will looked a little intimidated by the onslaught of words from Ms. Holmes' mouth, and then miraculously, he understood, and with glee written plainly on his face, he shot out of there like a bird who has just learnt to fly. Sherlock watched after him for sometime in astonishment. She clearly hadn't expected him to understand her and run away. She had at least expected him to stutter and then go away while trying to understand what she had said.

But then, Will sometimes displayed instances of frighteningly sharp intellect even in past. If it wasn't for his lack of sincerity, he would certainly have outshone Cassie academically.

Sherlock settled down in front of Mr. Watson. He looked like someone Sherlock couldn't put her finger upon. He might have been someone from uni and she would've recognised him, if only his face hadn't been so lined with age and worry and sleepless nights. His face was still recovering from tan and sunburns. He couldn't have been very old, given that Will was so young and didn't have any siblings.

"Well, um. . ." she realised that the man was staring at her. Literally, as in the old-fashioned staring with wide eyes and mouth slightly hung open, "make yourself comfortable," she nodded briskly to the chair and opened a file where she had kept Will's assignments away separate from the rest of the class' for the parent-teacher meeting. The official meeting was two weeks later, but the thought that Will might have to spend his nights without proper sleep for another two weeks made her call Mr. Watson as soon as possible.

Mr. Watson snapped out of his trance and sheepishly took the chair that the peon provided him wordlessly. Sherlock glared the lazy, gossiping, dawdling employee away.

"Yes, of course," he said, a little flustered. Sherlock shot him a sharp look. He definitely was someone she must've known (and deleted) in university. Maybe he just hadn't expected Sherlock to be the teacher of his son. Sherlock amused herself by thinking that she could take out some overdue uni revenge on Will, if any.

"So, you wanted to," Watson nodded to Will's assignments, "talk about William. Ms. Holmes, I understand that he is a little—well, not really little—hot-headed, he fights a lot, but I've tried to discipline him—"

Sherlock wasn't convinced.

The man may have the air of a military man of high ranking, but going by Will's volatile nature, there must be something of that sort about his character too, or maybe that was the mother. Being a military man, he must be able to discipline a young boy, but something said that Will was too rebellious to follow the commands of his battle-weakened father.

But there was a certain weakening to his character. When Mr. Watson had walked in, he had been confident and precise in his movements. Now he looked quite fragile. All of it pointed towards guilt. Guilt of not being able to take care of his child the way a normal parent would.

"What's your name?" Sherlock blurted out. Watson rang a bell in her mind, something that she had buried deep inside her with the layers she had erected around herself since the time she had found herself betrayed by the one boy she had put all her trust into. She had tried to delete him, but had succeeded only partially.

That boy—curiously—also had the name Watson

Mr. Watson looked directly at her. The change in his expression could be discernible to even a cow. Those wrinkles seemed to be absorbed back into his skin. He straightened his back up, and the corner of his mouth curled. He blinked, and then in a very steady voice, he said, "John Watson."

Sherlock froze.

Im-fucking-possible.

"John Watson?" she echoed, too stunned to be able to maintain her professional mask.

But there was no mistaking those inquisitive blue eyes, the ones that Will had inherited, the way he gave Will a lopsided but weak smile, the laugh that Will had inherited from his father.

It was The John Watson. The man she had come to hate in her sophomore year in school.

"Funny old world," John smiled humourlessly as Sherlock watched his face carefully, "I thought you remembered me. So you're a teacher now?"

"What are you doing here?" Sherlock demanded quietly, angrily. She imagined that John was making fun of her profession.

"I'm William's parent," he said, and Sherlock could detect a sneer to his tone and an extremely possessive edge coming to it. "The only parent. I have a responsibility to him. I was trying my best to go on but you had to. . ." he trailed off.

"Well, congratulations. I'm William's teacher, as you very unhelpfully pointed out," she said, gritting her teeth and keeping her face beautifully aloof. Inwardly, she chided herself for her extremely unprofessional behaviour just because of her ex-boyfriend, "so let's get this over with."

Sherlock couldn't verbalise how angry she felt, seeing John again. John had betrayed her, John had made her keep the baby instead of taking the pill and then he had run away for good just after she had delivered, run away when he had got an offer letter from King's and had realised that he wouldn't be able to pay his rent for the halls and bring up a baby with a girl he had been going out with for six months. Those promises, hollow promises John made while smuggling her out of her house to look at cribs and baby. . . paraphernalia and telling them what an odd and ridiculous family they'd be—

Sherlock swallowed those bitter thoughts in. John didn't know the hell she had gone through. To have your baby die and your boyfriend leave in a single day and people and your classmates assuming right till your senior year that you're an irresponsible slut just because you were going to be a teenage mother. To have your mummy and daddy and Mycroft, bloody Mycroft, traumatise you, force you into abortion every single day till two months before the delivery—

Sherlock fisted her hand into the hem of her skirt under the desk. John kept looking at her as if he had done nothing. How dare he even have the audacity to look Sherlock in the eye?

"True," John bit back, while he looked incredulous at Sherlock declaring that she was Will's teacher, "let's get this over with."

"Good," Sherlock said as calmly as possible. She couldn't let this affect herself. She couldn't let this affect herself, she chanted over and over again.

"I've not called you here because William fights a lot. While sometimes he does end up in front of the Head Teacher, I can tell you that," she avoided John's eye for something she couldn't really comprehend, "William fights only when he is provoked, so that's not really an issue."

She could sense John raising his eyebrows at 'not an issue'. She could almost hear John's old voice saying that she was being tactless. Odd. She hadn't had a single moment of imaginary John speaking to her all these years, and then the man himself appears and suddenly she was remembering the way John used to laugh at her lack of tact.

"Children fight all the time, Mr. Watson. Boys kick each other, girls tug at ponytails. Surely, you'd also lose your well-cultivated sense of adulthood and discretion if someone provoked you in the wrong ways. That's a perfectly natural tendency. The reason I called you is," she drew out Will's creative writing assignments and handed them to him, "this."

All bitterness drained out of John's face when he recognised Will's penmanship, "That's. . . William's."

"Otherwise I wouldn't be giving them to you," Sherlock said, "Usually we grade them and hand it over to the parents during the official parent-teacher meetings—at least that's what I do; I have no idea what other teachers do—so that the children don't misplace the papers or lie about losing them or something, children are excuse factories who are good at looking innocent."

John kept nodding, trying to hide a smirk. His nod was a bit too artificial to be true, and it was driving Sherlock on edge.

"Go on," Sherlock leaned against the back of her chair, "give it a read."

Sherlock watched John's face. Now that she took a full second look at him, he looked almost the same to her. Those blue eyes, but only creased with worry, reminded her of the senior-year John, when Sherlock had only been a freshman with an impossible crush on the cute senior—

She stopped before she could go on any further. She was supposed to glean information about Will from his father's expression.

John proved an interesting man. She recalled that he had six A levels-the school had been very proud of him-went to King's, became a doctor, and now Sherlock could clearly see that had just returned from the army—Afghanistan or Iraq. Unusual choice of vocation. She pondered just how much Will must have drawn his nature from that of his father. Mother. . . well, she was still unknown. Sherlock itched to know about which wretch John had married—who he had deemed better than Sherlock to raise his kid with.

Sherlock glanced across at him, and she could see John's face muddied up with a lot of emotions—guilt, horror, shock, pity, self-reproach.

"Done?" Sherlock asked, breaking the quietude before John became suicidal. But instead he looked embarrassed.

"Ms. Holmes, I—" John looked at a loss of words. For a man who was quite sure and occasionally cocky of what he was going to say, he looked so uncertain, but then his tone became flat, extremely so, "I really hope you'd hand it over to me today. This," he pointed at the accused paper, "this is family problems he's written about."

"And he's intelligent and observant enough to describe them so precisely. Such a home environment as yours is hardly healthy for the mental development of such an impressionable child. He spends sleepless nights. I don't say anything when I catch him napping in the free periods. He's energetic and he's bound to be tired easily."

John looked livid when she confronted him like that. That was odd too. The John she knew didn't object to reason and logic, however cold and cruel it was. He swallowed his anger quickly, "Home environment?"

"PTSD, aunt's alcohol problems, aunts shouting and hitting," she pointed out in Will's assignment, and then pulled out another assignment. "This is Robbie's assignment. He's William's best friend. Give it a read."

When John was finished, he was overwhelmed by the difference between them. Sherlock didn't know whether to be smug about it or not.

"William is a unique boy. I've seldom seen someone as helpful and caring as him. Yes, he and Robbie are mischief makers, but we can pardon that. But this," she pointed at Will's assignment, "this might, it can make a permanent impression on him—"

At that very moment, a sharp cry broke out from the playground—unmistakeably Will's. It took both of them only a second to rush to their feet and hurry towards the playground—which was adjacent to Sherlock's classroom.

Upon spotting Will trying to get up, John broke into a raw-throated cry, "Will!" and rushed towards the six-and-a-half year old boy. Sherlock, for her part, tagged behind John, who was a surprisingly fast runner.

Upon coming close, John swallowed upon seeing the large amount of blood flowing freely from Will's right knee, where the skin had broken and a sharp end of metal had probably sunk into. Will, for his part, tried to stifle his cries and stay brave in front of them, especially his father, but the pain and the sight of his own blood was probably too much for him to handle. As for John, he became completely immobilised for a moment. Bloody army doctor, sewing up lacerations on the battlefield and helpless in front of his bleeding—literally—kid, Sherlock thought.

"We'll need to get him into the MI Room," she said, as John broke out of his reverie. Taking out his handkerchief, he pressed it on the wound and tried to block the flow of blood, while whispering soothing words to Will like, "it's okay, love! You're a brave boy, aren't you? You're my little soldier. Boys don't cry, right?" Will clenched his bony little fists as his father pressed harder onto the wound.

"Need to get him a tetanus shot," Sherlock said, her heart beating frantically and her senses kicking at the boy's pain. Something instinctive told her to snatch the boy from John and hold him to her chest, but she didn't. John wouldn't appreciate that. No parent would appreciate that. She glanced around to see a couple of teachers coming out to see what the noise was all about. John picked Will up bridal style as Sherlock pointed to the jagged metal edge from one of the swings the workers had replaced.

Will's lips trembled, and he looked from Sherlock to John, his face heartbreakingly painful as John carried the boy inside with difficulty.

"Ms. Holmes, could you—?" he motioned to his blood-soaked handkerchief. Seeing as it wouldn't serve much purpose, she drew out her own and tied it around Will's knee as the boy tried to inch away from her forceful hand, but Sherlock held on to his leg stubbornly and tied it firmly around his knee.

"See," she pointed to his knee hopefully, "much better."

Will actually took some time to peep at his wound, and hugged his father tighter.

"Just a couple of more steps, love," John kept whispering, his voice heaving with the strain of rushing with a tall-for-his-age boy in his arms. Sherlock rushed forwards first, and called the nurse out of her slumber. She kicked into life as soon as she spotted the child being heaved inside. With curt instructions, she motioned John to put Will on the bed while she undid the knot of handkerchief. This time, Will gave out a cry of pain that he had tried to contain within himself. A fat tear made its way out of his eyes as he cried out, "Daddy!"

In an instant, John was around the other side of the bed, taking his hand and rubbing it, "Be a brave boy for Daddy, Will. Please?"

Will bit on his trembling lower lip as John squeezed his hand. He began sobbing loudly when the nurse cleaned his wound with antiseptic.

"Be gentle, would you?" Sherlock snapped at her.

The nurse did not bother shooting her a withering look as she continued cleaning the wound. Everyone knew what Ms. Holmes was like.

"It stings!" Will protested to everyone.

"It will, a bit," John reassured him, "but it'll get you better, won't it?"

"Be'er?" Will questioned.

"Better," John promised.

"He needs stitches," the nurse declared. Sherlock had expected it, as had John, yet he looked shocked. Will looked positively horrified and frightened.

"You said i' will ge' be'er," he said in a weak voice to John, "you lied."

John looked at a loss of words, for which Sherlock made up as said, "William, your father meant that the stinging will get better. He didn't say anything about stitches. Do pay attention."

Both the nurse and John looked at her like they wanted her right out of this. Sherlock tried to look nonchalant about it, "Well then, spit-spot. He needs stitches."

"But I don' wan' stichhes," Will complained, as if there was no wound in his knee that had almost split it open. The nurse went on, saying something about 'covering up till doctor sees' and 'infection' and 'septic', and started dressing Will's wound.

"Well you need them," Sherlock said dismissively, "so you can't argue."

Upon seeing that Ms. Holmes was being unreasonable, he turned to his father so that he could persuade him, "Daddy, I don' wan' stichhes. Seb had 'em las' month, and he said it hur' a lo', bu' he took it like a brave boy."

John looked pained, "Sorry, but Ms. Holmes is right. You won't be able to play until you don't get stitches."

That seemed to waver Will's resolution of no stitches a bit.

"And anyway, Seb was lying to you," Sherlock pointed out, "stitches don't hurt. Anaesthetics are used. He was just pretending to be a brave boy in front of the girls."

Will peered at Sherlock tearfully. The only thing he understood was that Seb had lied to him. He looked at his father, just to be sure whether Seb had really lied or not.

"Stand up now," the nurse ordered, and John helped Will up, holding his bony arms strongly.

"Can you stand up, love?"

Will nodded weakly, never the one to let his father down. Sherlock felt a weird jealousy at the scene, something that was completely unwarranted—or at least supposed to be so.

"There's a clinic around the corner," Sherlock spoke, "we can take him there and get the stitches."

John looked at Sherlock weirdly, narrowed his eyes—and then—

"Thank you, Ms. Holmes," John said with a hint of coldness in those fiery blue eyes, "but I think I can take care of my own boy."

Sherlock's face fell ever so slightly, as Will glanced at her, imploring in his gaze. He wanted Ms. Holmes, Sherlock concluded. She wanted to go but—

"I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Watson," Sherlock said equally coldly, while Will looked confused and disheartened that his daddy hadn't liked his teacher.

Without even a nod or an acknowledging glance, John led Will around the corridors towards the exit towards Sherlock's classroom. He retrieved Will's school bag, swung it over his shoulder, and then picked up Will—Sherlock could hear protests of "I'm a big boy now"—and stared wistfully at the father-son couple.

"Odd guy," examined the nurse, "didn't even say thank you."

Sherlock felt the corner of her lips curling, and then with a last look she retreated to her classroom to pack for the day.

When she reached her desk, she noticed that John had taken away Will's assignments.

John was in for more—because Will had discovered that he was not only going to get stitches, but also an injection for tetanus.

"How many te'anus injections will I need, daddy?" Will asked beseechingly, "I had three las' year."

"Two," John corrected, patting his hair, "You love getting injections. The doctor always gives you a candy for it."

Will curled into a ball of misery, "I don' think this doctor will."

They were waiting for the doctor, who was checking another patient inside. Several people looked at Will and gave him looks of pity.

"Why not?"

"Did you see how huge he was?" Will exclaimed, "he's the sor' who eats away all the candy instea' of saving for boys."

John smiled, "Don't worry. I'll ask for one from another doctor."

"Everybo'y's looking a' me," he noticed, changing the subject as if he had never been talking about it. John found hard to keep up with Will sometimes. He was so like his mother, he thought with a stutter of his heart, "why?"

"I don't know, love—okay, here we go, our number's here. You'll be a brave boy, won't you?"

Will nodded solemnly and tugged at John's hand, wincing quietly at the pain in his leg. John wanted to scoop him up, but it was only a few steps and that would be all. But as they reached the door of the "huge" doctor, the doctor surprised them by rushing out with a rude apology, almost shoving Will to John's side. John held on to Will protectively as he shot the man's back a death glare. As much as he wanted to confront the doctor for being so rude, Will was hurting and he looked up at John with newer tears forming in his eyes. He made Will sit down in a nearby chair while he went to ask at the reception what the hell had happened.

"Oh," said the receptionist, "I'm terribly sorry. Dr. Alvarez just left, after an emergency call."

"Well, my son needs stitches, he's in a lot of pain," John said, pointing to Will who stared at his father avidly, "and I'd be grateful if you could schedule someone."

"Well," the receptionist checked on her computer, "We've erm. . . well, there's a doctor in room number three. She'll be free in another five minutes. Maybe I could schedule you. . .?"

"That'd be great, thanks," John said tiredly. The receptionist gave him a charming smile and went on with her work.

"Daddy?" Will looked at him sadly, his blue eyes wide and his lips pouting, "You're a doctor. Why can' you trea' me?"

John thought of a simpler explanation. "I don' have stitching things, you see."

Will seemed to consider that and shrugged.

After sometime (and lots of Will-mopes and sulks), their number thankfully arrived and John ushered Will as fast as they could.

The doctor was a slim, blonde woman who had their backs turned to them. She was checking something on the charts while she spoke in a faux-cheerful voice, "Hi, I'm Dr. Sarah Sawyer, make yourself comfortable on the chairs there. I'll attend to you shortly."

John blinked, and then cleared his throat smartly, "Erm, doctor, my son—"

"Erm, just one second hold—?" Dr. Sawyer spun around almost immediately, but then she met John's eyes and hastily coughed her words down, "well, just one sec, Mr. . .?"

"Dr. Watson," John looked at her steadily, extending one hand. Sarah took a look at it and took her gloves off to shake his hand. When Will saw that he was being ignored, he let out a small cry of pain.

"On, and this must be the young man, erm . . . William, right?"

"I'm a boy," Will corrected her petulantly. Sarah laughed and clapped her hands.

"Well then, Will—can I call you Will?"

Will looked at his dad who gave him a nod, "Okay."

"Well then, Will, let's get you on the bed, yeah? You don't need to be scared at all. You're a very brave boy, most of them throw a screaming fit even entering for this. The next part's easy. You lie and you chat with your dad."

Will and John shared apprehensive looks. They had never really "chatted". it was Will who took the first initiative, "Can I watch Cou'age the Cordly dog?"

At this, Sarah shook her head, "Ah, no. There's no TVs here, is there?"

Will seemed reluctant to go on with it, but the pain in his leg was intense. John thought he was a brave boy, battling it like that. If it were him, he'd have been tearing up, at the least.

"Well," John began apprehensively. He had been away from home most of the time and didn't know Will as well as a father should, "you could tell me about your school."

Will looked distressed, but then he began, "Today, Seb brought his PSP to school. . ."

"She was so nice!" Will chanted excitedly, as they sat at the back of the bus, "She gave me three candies. Three, daddy, three!"

They had exited out of the clinic with a Will who was advised not to take part in any strenuous activity for a week—which had earned John a pout—with Will's medication in a brown paper package and Sarah's number in the front pocket of his shirt. Will yawned and tried to move his legs, as if trying to experiment exactly how much force would make his stitches burst open bleeding again.

"Will, no," John warned, "Dr. Sawyer warned you not to, didn't she?"

"She said tha' I could call her Sa'ah," Will said, "Imma call her Sarah."

Somehow, Dr. Sawyer had made her way into Will's heart within an hour. There was nothing else he could talk about. He talked about how pretty she was, how nice she was, and moreover she gave him three candies, which was a big thing for Will.

"Okay," John gave in, "Sarah asked you not to move your leg, yeah?"

"Okay," he shrugged, but when John began to look elsewhere, Will began to swing his legs again with another enormous yawn. John heard it, thinking about what Sherlock had said—he didn't want to think about Sherlock anymore. She had done to him the worst possible thing a person could ever do. Did she never really have a sense of shame about what she did—continuously proclaiming herself as Will's teacher when she clearly understood (if John had to go by the way she stuttered to a stop when she heard his name) that she was Will's mot—

John closed his eyes. He had only begun to interact with Will on a daily basis, giving up his life in the army upon hearing that Clara and Harry were on the verge of separation and that Harry being the closest biological family member, Will would have to live with her. He didn't want to—couldn't—share his life with Will with anyone else, much less the birth mother who had abandoned them and made John battle through his undergraduate life with the burden of an infant.

"I'm tired," Will sagged against John, and soon before John could process it, he was already asleep. It reminded him of the way Sherlock slept, when she had rested her chin against John's shoulder after the—

John shook his head, watching the sleeping marvel that was Will. He might have fought with him through university, working three jobs, paying the rent for the halls and studying on scholarship, but all that mattered was that Will was here, safe, healthy, energetic, smiling.

Happy?

John rested Will's head against his shoulder. Tonight, he'd not let him sleep alone. Tonight, even if he had nightmares of men with their limbs severed off, gaping throats and other impossible injuries, he wouldn't wake up, because he'd know that Will was there, asleep.

He'd put an end to it. How dare Sherlock question his fathering abilities when she was absent for nearly Will's whole life? If necessary, he'd also withdraw Will from St. Paul's Academy.

John knew he was overreacting. But one thing he was going to ensure. Will was not going to spend any more sleepless nights.

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