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"It'll just be a few hours, dear, they said he'd likely be free to leave by noon."

"But I don't think-"

"Oh hush, honestly. You'll be fine."

"But-"

Mrs. Hudson turned, purse in one hand and keys in the other, and fixed Sherlock with a stern, no-nonsense expression. He snapped his mouth shut on instinct, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his borrowed shirt as he stood awkwardly in the hallway with Hayley clinging to the back of his trousers.

"Sherlock, my husband's just been assaulted. I've been asked to go see him, and I'm not about to bring a little girl into a hospital where there's all manner of diseases lurking about. Not to mention you're coming down with something and we hardly need to be spreading a cold round to all those sickly patients, now do we?"

"You're planning to leave someone else's child in the care of a twenty year old vagrant you just met yesterday!" Sherlock's voice came out a bit of a scandalised yelp, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. "That's insane! I could be a... a murderer, or something! I could be mad! I am mad!"

"You're not mad," Mrs. Hudson replied with a half roll of her eyes. "You're a very responsible young man and I've utmost faith in you." Sherlock opened and shut his mouth a few times, trying to come up with a coherent response besides you're bleeding mental, while Mrs. Hudson bent down to address the girl hiding half-behind his legs. "Now Hayley, dear, be a good girl for Sherlock, won't you? I'll only be gone a few hours. You can show him round the house, hm? Read a few of your books?"

Hayley nodded shyly. "Okay Mrs. Hudson."

"I- I could just leave!" Sherlock tried, his last ditch effort to get the woman to see sense. Because honestly this was not an acceptable solution to Hayley's parents being unavailable - trusting a bloody homeless ex-junkie with criminal tendencies and a forged passport to look after a little girl was a horrendous act of negligence. "I could walk out right now and no one would ever even know I was here! She'd be all alone!"

"You won't, though." Snatching up a light crochet jumper (the hell did she need one for in this weather?) the elderly woman bustled off toward the front door. Nothing Sherlock said could seem to penetrate past her single-minded mission to see her husband. "Ring the hospital if you have any trouble, dears, the number's by the phone! I'll just be a tick!"

And with that she was gone.

Sherlock remained standing in the hall, expression caught between sheer outrage and a sort of creeping horror. Oh no oh god he'd been left alone with a child and it was entirely his responsibility to make sure she didn't die or injure herself or burn the place down and no no no no no who ever said he was cut out for something like this!?

"I hope Mr. Hudson's not hurt too bad." Hayley's chirping voice cut into the short stretch of silence which had settled over them in the wake of Mrs. Hudson's departure. Sherlock barely heard her, still staring at the door. The girl looked up to her erstwhile caretaker with a frown and tugged on his trousers to get his attention. "Hey, what's ass-all-ted mean anyways?"

"It means someone attacked him," Sherlock explained vaguely. He glanced down at the little girl, then back up to the door, brought an arm up to his face to smother a cough and grimaced. Oh hell talk about a bloody pile-up of shit... alright, but, well... fuck, hang on... first things first, right? But then no no no oh god he didn't even know what should come first! He'd never looked after a child in his life! This was completely mad!

Dropping his arm Sherlock bit nervously at his lip, scrubbed fingers through tangled hair, then looked down to Hayley. She was blinking up at him with a curious, slightly confused expression on her round little face.

"Is that bad, then?" she asked when it became clear he wasn't going to elaborate on the definition. "Cause you look kinda freaked out."

"I- what?" Sherlock realised his hands were currently tangled up in his hair like a nutter. Self-consciously he shifted them to his trouser pockets instead, tried to appear less like he was about to have a panic attack over something so stupid as being entrusted with the care of a young person. This wasn't a big deal. It wasn't. Really. "I'm not freaked ou- why would I be... ugh, no. I'm... fine. Everything's fine."

"If you're scared you can just say so, you know." Hayley gave him a concerned look and patted his thigh in a childish gesture of comfort. "Daddy says it's important to let the demons out when they get inside your brains and the only way they can get out is if you tell somebody they're there. So you should just say so if you're scared."

Sherlock scrunched up his face in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "Are you suggesting emotions are caused by...? Ugh, no, don't answer that. Your entire sense of reason's been tainted by parental psychosis."

Hayley didn't react to his words beyond a slightly befuddled smile, apparently her default response whenever he said something she couldn't quite process. And, hrm... but she was rather resilient in the face of most anything he said to her, wasn't she? Maybe it would be easiest just to speak to her as a fellow adult, then... treat her as if she were an accomplice in this whole absurd situation? Was that even allowed? Probably not. Should try regardless, though, as it was just about the only way he could think of to find a second opinion on what to bloody do with her because damned if he had any clue whatsoever.

"Alright... look," he started. As he spoke he finally took a step away from the spot he'd been rooted to for the last five minutes, cast about for a direction to move in. Where...? Kitchen, back to the kitchen. That was closest. "I'm not... freaked out, or scared, or whatever, because there's nothing to be scared of and that would be moronic." Reaching the dining table he all but shoved the girl into the same seat she'd occupied for breakfast, then took the chair across from her.

"But you're acting super freaky," Hayley pointed out with a frown.

"I am not- that's-" Sherlock huffed, ruffled his hair again, then leant his elbows on the table and rubbed at his forehead. Ugh, christ, he was really going to need a cigarette before too long. "That's anxiety. And I am justifiably anxious because I've never been called upon to look after a child before, I have no idea what to do, and I don't feel it was wise of Mrs. Hudson to put her trust in me so quickly."

Hayley just gave him a confused look. "You're scared 'cause you don't know how to take care of kids?"

"Yes!" Sherlock threw his hands up. Thank god, she actually seemed to be able to understand a portion of what was said to her. "There's this whole mess of rules and things concerning how you're supposed to interact with children but I don't know any of them and it's not like I can just copy what my parents did when I was your age because that would be horrendous and my brother and I spent most of our time together having science lectures which would probably classify as Satanic under your mad little indoctrinated mental paradigm so that's out too and I just..." He huffed and dropped his arms to his sides, fixing Hayley with an aggrieved look. "I'm really not the right person for this."

Hayley scrunched her face up and drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "Well... usually when I have babysitters and stuff they just play games with me. So I guess do that?"

Sherlock shook his head and grimaced around another cough. "Children's games, I'm guessing? Which I've never played. No. God this is ridiculous."

"You never...?" Hayley echoed with a bewildered look. "You mean like tag and hopscotch and stuff? You never played those?"

"Of course not." Sherlock shoved a hand through his hair again, then leant partially forwards as he tried to elaborate. How much of his intended meaning was actually managing to get through Hayley's juvenile little mental processor was a complete mystery, but he didn't much care. So long as she got some of it, that was good enough. "Look, I had a... a less than ideal, shall we say, childhood. I didn't have regular contact with anyone my own age until I was sent to boarding school at thirteen and no one there would have been caught dead playing tag, or conkers or whatever it is normal children do to waste time between classes. Not with me at any rate."

Hayley's face was now a comical picture of exaggerated pity. "What about hide-an-go-seek?"

"Hide and what?" Sherlock asked, blinking. Had he ever...? No. Read about it, though, maybe... that was the one where you had to find people, right?

Across from him Hayley's mouth had dropped open in shock, appalled by his apparent lack of knowledge. Then abruptly her expression shifted into a look of staunch determination. Before Sherlock could say anything else she'd hopped out of her chair, grabbed him by the hand and threw her weight backwards in an ineffectual attempt to drag him from his seat.

"If you don't know how to play hide-an-go-seek then I gotta teach ya 'cause everyone knows how." For some reason this whole issue seemed to be a point of real distress for the girl. Sherlock furrowed his brows and reluctantly allowed her to tug him out of his seat.

"I don't think it's wise to play a game involving hiding when I haven't learnt the layout of the house," he pointed out quite reasonably. Hayley, however, didn't appear to be listening to him - she was far too busy rattling off the rules of hide-and-go-seek over her shoulder as she herded him towards a far wall.

"Okay so you gotta be the seeker first so you can see how to hide good and it's super easy you just cover your face so you can't see nothin' and then you count to a hundred but no peeking and if you don't know how to count to a hundred you can just count to ten ten times and when you're done counting you gotta come find my hiding spot!"

She shoved him face-first into a bare corner of the kitchen. He looked down at her with a flustered, slightly irritated look of exasperation - when the hell had he even indicated that playing a game was the appropriate-? He'd just been asking for her opinion on what to do! But beside him the little girl had put her hands on her hips and was now glaring with such venom that Sherlock relented to pressing his face into his forearm against the floral pattern of the wallpaper without daring to object further. Sod it, fine, just avoid sending her into a tantrum.

"If you manage to get yourself injured-" Sherlock started, but Hayley cut over him.

"Count to a hundred!" she ordered sternly. The shift in volume of her voice indicated she'd already darted off toward the hallway. "And no one's allowed to go outside so don't even think about it mister!"

"Why would I-"

"A hundred!"

Sherlock bit out an annoyed sigh but reluctantly did as he was told. It was this or continue to sit around fretting about not having any idea what to do with children, after all... might as well go along with things.

Counting turned out to be rather unbearably boring, so to keep himself on-task he began switching languages at every tenth digit. Finally some few minutes later he'd at last gotten to '... dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć... sto' and with an irritated huff shoved himself away from the wall. Well that had been utterly tedious. Game was certainly off to a brilliant start, then. What had she said to do next?

Oh, right... apparently now he had to find her. Of course. Couldn't be too difficult.

He turned to lean his back on the wall he'd been counting against (stifling another cough, ugh his throat might as well be sandpaper) and scanned the room around him. Scuff marks from her shoes on the floor, arranged in such a way to suggest she'd sprinted for the hall... he made his way in that direction. Carpet fibres misaligned just there, another few to the right, the decorative cloth on that table sported a slight wrinkle where it hadn't before. She'd tried hiding under the vase arrangement, then, and decided it was too open. Moved on to...? Ah, second door on the left - smudge marks on the handle, hadn't been shut at the same time as the others judging by the divots on the carpet. Had to have gone through there.

Opening that door turned out to lead to a small office-like area Sherlock hadn't seen before. Several framed documents lined the walls above a bookshelf to his right, stacked high with medical texts. A desk dominated the centre of the room with a modestly-sized window to the right open to receive a shaft of morning sunlight. This was clearly Harold's study.

Sherlock paused in the doorway and scanned the area. Very slight shift of the leather rolling chair behind Harold's desk... obviously Hayley had curled up on the seat to stop her legs being visible in the gap between the desk's back and the floor. She was hidden underneath the desktop, then. This wasn't a very challenging game.

Biting back a sigh Sherlock made his way over to the desk. He'd meant to yank the chair out and tell Hayley her idea of hiding was complete rubbish... but before he could do so he found himself distracted by the papers strewn haphazardly over the glossed wood of Harold's workspace. A small pile of documents; patient case studies, it seemed, though none of them recent. The latest was from the mid-nineties. And every one of them had "outcome: deceased" written in the subject header. That was interesting. Odd, perhaps? What had Harold been researching?

Slight snickering coming from below; Hayley evidently thought he'd failed to notice her, perhaps under the impression her clever hiding spot had left him lost and confused. Not bloody likely. Sherlock's face settled into an annoyed frown - focus still trained on the papers strewn across the desktop - and with a free hand he shoved the chair back to reveal the little girl curled up in the seat like a cat.

"Hey!" she cried indignantly. "No fair, that's cheating cause you heard me laugh!"

"I already knew you were there." Sherlock's voice had gone a bit sidetracked as he flipped carefully through the case files, being sure not to move any too far from their original positions. They all seemed to be write-ups of patients who'd had adverse reactions to a particular brand of chemotherapy drug. In red ink Harold had gone through and circled all the dosages mentioned, scrawled notes alongside with comments like 'reasonable? check double', and a scattering of other illegible fragments hovered around all the passages detailing the progress and possible causes of fatal side-effects.

Probably all to be expected on the desk of an oncologist, cancer treatment research. But then, strangely... a large section in nearly all the papers had been left free of written commentary; the suggestions for alternative treatments were all conspicuously skipped over. And off to the side, a list of pharmaceutical vendors...

"What're you looking at?"

Sherlock blinked over to Hayley. Abruptly he realised he was standing round snooping through some doctor's paperwork for no good reason - probably not the best of behaviours to be role-modelling to a child. He dropped everything back into the exact places he'd found them and took a step away from the table to thwart himself getting distracted by anything else. Honestly, what was with his brain latching on to anything that looked even remotely like a pattern? Fuck's sake he didn't even have a working knowledge of cancer treatments - this was not only none of his business, it was nigh-incomprehensible. Idiot.

"Papers. Nothing important." He flipped a hand dismissively, then quirked a questioning brow down at Hayley as something occurred to him. "I've won the game, then?"

Hayley scoffed. "Uh, no. I still gotta find you, dummy. Then whoever found the other faster is the winner."

"I found you in less than two minutes, you're not likely to do better than that," Sherlock pointed out, but Hayley was already pushing at his legs to get him to walk towards the hall again.

"Don't be a butt-face!" she snapped. Sherlock obligingly let her herd him back to the kitchen. Once there she positioned herself against the same wall he'd been stood by earlier and shot him a stern look. "Okay so now I'm gonna count and you hide and don't go outside, remember!"

"Alright, alright." Sherlock raised his hands placatingly, rolling his eyes as Hayley shoved her face into her hands against the wall and started counting. Ugh, right then... hiding... in an effort to amuse a child foisted on him by an old lady whom he'd met in the street less than a day ago. Obviously. Good lord this whole situation was absurd.

Hayley was taking her sweet time just getting to ten so Sherlock leisurely ambled out into the hall, considered his options. Well, the room he'd been in this morning had had a closet, hadn't it? He supposed he could... stand in there, or something. It was the only place he could think of right off hand and he didn't much feel like dashing about the house looking for another likely spot. To Joshua's room, then.

The covered meal Mrs. Hudson had left for him still sat on the bedside table next to the rumpled pile of blankets he'd left, so he appropriated another few slices of fruit from the tray to nibble on in hopes they'd take some of the edge off his sore throat. Coughing would doubtless give away his location, after all. Not like he cared, of course... (though damned if a little girl was going to beat him at such a stupidly simple game - he was four times her age he'd bloody well better win.) Opening the sliding closet door without it squeaking proved to be a bit of a trick, but he managed. Closed the mirrored panels behind him, stood in the darkness therein leaning on the far wall with a slice of apple still half-out his mouth. Beginning to feel a bit of a pillock, really. Nothing for it but to wait though... at least it didn't smell too badly of moth balls in here.

His opponent, predictably, was taking bloody forever to figure out where he'd gone. Thankfully she was loud enough in her frenzied dashing about that one could deduce her location in the house just from her footfalls, so Sherlock felt relatively safe letting her wander about where she would. Not like it was his problem if she destroyed any breakable objects, anyway. Idly he picked at a bit of peeling wallpaper next to his hand and wondered how long he'd have to remain cramped up in this stupid closet before Hayley either found him or admitted defeat.

The piece of plaster he'd been picking at shifted, pulled free from the wall with a soft shuff noise and he startled, thinking he'd actually torn the entire section off. (Bloody hell he hadn't been pulling that hard!) But when he looked down it was to find instead that a square section of the wall itself had actually come loose in his hand - some sort of jerry-rigged trap door? The plaster was cut in straight corners all the way through, as if by a knife or box cutter, and behind it...

Intrigued, Sherlock crouched down to peer into the little alcove he'd inadvertently uncovered. Pitch-dark inside, but with the scant bit of sunlight filtering through the cracks in the closet door he could almost make out a bundle of objects. A hidden stash? This had been their nephew's room, hadn't it? Contraband, then? Interesting. Fascinating, even. He grabbed the bundle and squinted at it in the half-light. Couldn't see a thing. Too dark...

Get out of the closet, then, you idiot. Oh, right.

"Hey! You're supposed to stay hidden!" Hayley exclaimed indignantly as Sherlock re-emerged into the bedroom. She'd been on all fours searching under the bed, apparently not having considered that his height would make it impossible for him to fit under there, and was now glaring up at him like he'd committed some horrid atrocity by breaking cover.

"You've lost anyway, it's been longer than two minutes." As he spoke he moved over to the bed and dropped the little bundle onto it. The string holding the makeshift pouch together came loose and a small assortment of items along with a rolled up sheaf of papers tumbled over the quilt.

"Where'd you get that?" Hayley asked curiously.

Sherlock picked up a small photograph of a dog. "It was hidden in the wall."

"Neat!"

He let her fiddle with the odd little handful of plastic cars and dinosaurs from the collection while he unfurled the stack of papers. Rolled fairly tightly, some yellowing at the edges - clearly they'd been behind the plaster for quite some time.

The topmost item was a note:

Aunty H - if you've found this I'm sorry. I know you said I should stop prying into this stuff, but I can't just ignore it. Someone's gotta do something. He needs to be stopped. Even if it means I- (the next few words had been hastily scribbled through in black ink by a shaking hand) -... I know he'll try to convince you I'm crazy again. And maybe I am a little. But please, aunty, I know it's hard but you have to believe me this time. I've got proof now. If he finds out I got this stuff I'm dead but I'll make as many copies as I can before he notices. The police won't listen, but someone needs to know. Someone has to...

The rest of the missive had been torn off, the paper crumpled and worn. Sherlock flipped wide-eyed to the next page and found a thick stack of what looked like official medical documents - purchase orders, dosages, nurse logs... and buried at the very bottom a summary of Harold Hudson's malpractice insurance pricing. He scanned that page in particular, noting the number of patient fatalities. Was that high, for an oncologist? How was one to know what constituted a normal death rate? The insurance premiums, maybe... abnormally raised? Damn, couldn't tell without a baseline to draw from...

"Did Josh leave this stuff here?" Hayley piped up, cutting into his thoughts. Sherlock glanced down to find her pretending to ramp a toy car off the rear end of a dinosaur.

"Apparently." Besides the troubling sheaf of papers there didn't seem to be much else of interest in the stash. Half a dozen small toys, a short glass pipe (still smelt of marijuana - he grabbed that and tucked it back out of sight before Hayley could do something stupid like lick it), a few photographs of school friends and a newspaper clipping of a smiling couple with a dog. Presumably all normal hidden treasures of a teenage boy.

Hayley's expression had fallen as she continued to push the toy car around. "I miss Josh... he was really nice. He used to read books with me and do all the monster voices."

"How long ago did he leave?" Sherlock asked as he flipped back to the nurse logs, trying to decipher the hasty notes scrawled into the margins. Mrs. Hudson had already mentioned something about the boy disappearing last August, he recalled vaguely - it would be interesting to see if their stories matched, though.

Hayley shrugged. "I dunno. A long time ago... like a year I guess? He said he'd call me when he got to Michigan but he never did."

This fact seemed to dampen her spirits considerably. Without warning she dropped the car she'd been holding onto the quilt and looked up to Sherlock with a slight quiver to her lip. "Do... do you think he doesn't like me anymore?"

She sniffed forcefully, eyes welling up - oh christ she was going to cry. Sherlock baulked and cast about frantically for something to say that might mollify her. Think, think... she wanted to know Joshua hadn't forgotten her, right? Why hadn't the man called, then? Had to be some explanation, something that would...

"He didn't mean to abandon you," Sherlock realised in a flash of insight as he shifted the papers in his hands, caught sight of the note on top. "He's probably been killed."

Hayley fixed him with a horrified expression, choked on a strangled little gasp, and Sherlock's eyes widened in response his own words. Shit, wait, that... hadn't come out right. Why had he-? Argh, no, try again you daft idiot!

"That is, er..." He brandished the papers in his hand, trying to force back the wince for his own utter lack of tact. "These documents indicate he was collecting sensitive information, so it would make the most sense to assume he's been... erm. Well either that or I suppose he may have gone into hiding? But that's generally quite tricky to pull off without significant resources to fabricate a new identity, so..."

"J-Josh isn't dead!" Hayley screeched, her expression gone furious. "Why would you-!? H-he went to Michigan like he said he was gonna!"

"Do you have any proof of that?" Sherlock asked before he could think not to. Would be quite enlightening to find out the answer, actually... perhaps Mrs. Hudson had a phone number on hand? Could it be cross-referenced? How had they been informed of his whereabouts, anyway, before losing contact? Or had they lost touch, even? Perhaps Mrs. Hudson had spoken to him recently? And what about Harold? If this was all in relation to some malfeasance perpetrated by the doctor, then he could be...

"You're one of Satan's liars!" Out of nowhere Hayley hurled a toy car at his head, sobbing, then bolted out of the room in tears. Sherlock was taken off-guard enough to forget to dodge - he yelped in surprise as a plastic wheel hit him square in the face, clapped a hand over his nose with a pained grimace. Oh fucking fuck, why had she-!? Right on the sodding bone, christ, if it was bleeding he'd-... Oh no, hell, where'd she gone!?

"Hayley, hang on... wait!" Sherlock dropped the sheaf of papers onto the bed and turned to chase after her. A coughing fit stopped him mid-step, however, forcing an arm round his spasming abdomen as he doubled over in pain. Argh, fuck, just ignore it, ignore it... find the girl. Injuries weren't important.

Down the end of the hall he finally stumbled into was the front entryway of the house - a screen mesh with a heavier wooden panel for security, veranda and garden beyond. Mrs. Hudson hadn't bothered to lock either of them when she left.

Both doors had been flung open, now, swinging on their hinges.

Shit.

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