Welcome Home: While this next story may not seem very grand or exciting, it's an important part of not only Sherlock's life, but it was also a new step in Linda's growth as a mother. According to Sherlock, when he was going into shock after he was shot, he had to find something to help him take his mind off of the pain, and I wasn't surprised when he said the name of a certain dog...
Chapter One
"Arrrr! It do be land up ahead! Lower the anchor!" Five-year-old Captain Sherlock called as he and his first mate sailed the open seas of the small backyard.
"Aye, aye, Cap'n!" First mate Wendy, his youngest cousin, called happily, lowering the invisible anchor out of their makeshift pirate ship. At three-years-old, Wendy was different from the other cousins that Sherlock had been forced to spend time with; although she was unbelievably ordinary and plain like the rest of the group, she was the only one that happily cooperated with whatever Sherlock wanted to do, even if it was pretending to be pirates every time they met for a play date. And who could turn down such silent obedience? "Cap'n, watch out for the rocks on the bay!"
"Batten down the hatches!"
Wendy immediately set to work with battening down the invisible hatches, but Captain Sherlock was too late in calling the command.
"Abandon ship!" Together, they both jumped out of the cardboard ship and landed in the soft, warm summer grass, laughing at the sheer silliness of their fantasy.
"Sherlock! Wendy!" Helen called from the kitchen. "Come and get your snacks!"
As they got up from the ground, the family's Scottish terrier, Hector, came running over and eagerly followed them back to the house. As Sherlock watched Wendy and Hector walk together, a pang picked at his conscious. Though Mycroft had told him over and over to never be jealous of what anyone had, especially when it came to what simple people had, there was one thing that Sherlock was constantly jealous of when it came to the extended family:
They had a dog.
The longing for a furry companion got stronger and stronger each time Sherlock spent time Hector, and even though he had asked his mother many times to consider getting a dog for their own family, he was met with increasing resistance. But not this time. Sherlock had been doing some light research via Mycroft's many school textbooks and libraries of encyclopedias and had made a case that Linda was sure to agree to. He had spent days practicing what he was going to say and how he was going to say it until there wasn't any choice but for her to say yes. It was a foolproof plan.
And like any good-old fashioned victory, he had to make sure and bring a gift for the losing side...
"What are you doing?" Twelve-year-old Mycroft strolled into the kitchen to see Sherlock standing on a stool by the counter, carefully measuring ingredients around a mug.
"Making tea."
"Ah." He leaned against the counter, watching his little brother with a mixture of love, exasperation and suspicion. It was obvious to him what the little boy was up to. He barely needed the clues of the black hairs all along his shorts, the grass stains on the top of his socks or the fact that the tea that he was preparing was made with milk and three sugars. "You won't get her to budge, you know," he said after a few seconds.
"Yes, I will," Sherlock said without taking his eyes off of the mug.
"What makes you think so?"
"Mummy loves numbers and facts."
"And?"
"So I give her what she wants and she gives me what I want."
Mycroft chuckled, more out of pity than amusement. "That's not how it works, brother dear."
"Stop calling me that," Sherlock snapped, taking the mug and carefully getting off the stool. Why his older brother had suddenly started calling him that was beyond him, but he didn't have time to figure it out. He was on a mission.
He walked past Mycroft, making sure to make a goofy face for good measure and walked up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom, where Linda was lounging back in the large armchair by the window, knee deep in preparing the monthly household budget. She barely noticed that Sherlock was standing right next to her, holding her favorite blue mug in his hands.
"I made you tea."
She looked and he offered it to her with a sweet smile. "Oh, thank you, darling." She smiled and took the mug and sipped lightly at the warm tea. "Just the way I like it, too."
He seemed extremely pleased to hear that and quietly shuffled his feet. "So, Mummy, I've been thinking."
She stopped drinking at his gentle, yet motivated tone.
"You know, we as a family are lacking something."
Slowly, she lowered the mug from her lips. "We are?"
"Yes. And I think I know what we need." I
knew it, she thought to herself. Here comes the blasted dog argument again.
"Did you know that statistics say when you have a dog, your chances for suffering from depression, high blood pressure and high cholesterol all go down?" Well, at least he wasn't trying to beat around the bush like he normally did; it was going to make ending the discussion much quicker.
"None of us are depressed, have high blood pressure or cholesterol," Linda said flatly, setting the mug down on the table next to her.
"And you get over the common cold faster-"
"Sherlock, how many times do we have to have this talk before you finally understand that the answer is no?"
He pursed his lips in aggravation.
"You only want a dog because your cousins have one. Well, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to play with Hector and get your dog fix through him."
"Hector's boring," he grumbled.
"Everything's boring to you, Sherlock," she said with an eye roll. "And besides, what makes you think getting our own dog will be any more exciting? For the last time, no." She picked back up her pen to continue writing. A few seconds passed, and then Sherlock's small, skinny body collided with hers as he jumped up in the chair to wrap his arms around her shoulders, his blue eyes wide and starry-glazed. She had to admit; he looked so amazingly adorable when he was begging.
"Please, please, please Mummy!" He shook her to make his words seem more real. "I promise, I'll finish all my vegetables and stop playing pranks on the milkman!"
As much as she would've loved to stop getting calls from the milk company about Sherlock's tricks on the innocent milkman and cease the world wars that started every night at the dinner table about the spinach and broccoli that he refused to consume, she knew that it wasn't going to do a thing to change her mind.
"You're supposed to do all of those things already," Linda said tiredly.
"But-"
"Sherlock."
They stared at each other and then Sherlock huffed, quickly released her and stormed out of the room. Mycroft's bedroom door was open and he barreled right in without announcing himself, flopping down on the bed to stare at the wall in fury.
"Told you," Mycroft said lazily from his homework by his desk. He waited for a usual sarcastic quip in response to his words, but nothing came. Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw that Sherlock's face was buried in the pillow, his little body shaking with obvious distress. With a gentle sigh, Mycroft set his pencil down and got up to sit by his brother on the bed.
"Sherlock, it's not the end of the world."
"Is too," The voice in the pillow muttered. "Why do our dumb cousins get a dog and I don't? It's not fair…"
"Life isn't fair, brother dear." He waited for Sherlock to get riled up and snappy, but he just stayed silent. "At any rate, why do you even want a dog?"
"Why DON'T you?"
Mycroft leaned back against the wall to watch the black mop of curly hair bury even deeper into the pillow. To him, the issue of having a pet seemed so trivial in the grand scheme of things. Why invest time and effort into something that can't even talk back to you when there were more pressing things to accomplish? But that's where the brothers differed from one another: while it was hard for Mycroft to identify with the world of emotional goldfish and their everyday issues, Sherlock was still very in touch with the world around him, and had yet to really experience life outside of the four walls of the Holmes house.
As much as he wanted his baby brother to be his complete equal, there was just some things that were going to take him longer to learn. Until then, there wasn't a true reason to kill such an innocent spirit.
"You know," Mycroft started, already sure he was going to regret saying what was on his mind. "Mummy isn't the only parent in this house..."
Almost immediately, Sherlock sat up with an 'I'm-an-idiot-why-didn't-I-think-of-that' expression and scuttled out of the room, going down the hall to stand in front of Chris's study door. Usually, when the door was shut like it was then, it meant that no one was to disturb him, but this was an emergency; Sherlock's happiness was at stake. Reaching to open the door, the handle stayed put at his efforts to make it move. Locked. With a sniff in both annoyance and humor, he went down the hall and into his bedroom to search for the blonde hair pin that he had stolen from his mother's mountainous collection…
Chris looked up from his paperwork as the door's lock clicked softly. This wouldn't be the first time, he thought to himself, as he set the pen down and waited for Sherlock to reveal himself. With a rush, the door slammed open brutally against the wall and Sherlock came striding in, his chin jutted high as he stopped in front of the desk to stare at his father.
"Well, at least my lock-picking skills didn't go to waste," he muttered dryly, trying his best to hide a grin of pride. "Sherlock, I'm very busy-"
"I want a dog."
They stared at each other.
"A dog," Chris repeated slowly.
"Yes. A dog. A canis lupis familias, a mutt, a puppy, a canine…however you want to say it," he finished with a shrug.
"Uh-huh." Apparently, Sherlock had been reading from the encyclopedias again. "You know your mother doesn't want a dog in this house, right?"
"I know."
"Well." He shrugged. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Change her mind."
"And what makes you think that I can?" Chris asked, making a tent with his fingers, looking extremely interested in the answer to that question. Getting Linda to do anything she was dead set against was like poking at a sleeping bear with a very sharp stick; it just wasn't done. With a sigh, Sherlock walked around the desk to stand directly in front of his father, a look of utter seriousness on his face.
"Please, Daddy?" If there was anything that could make Chris bend his will in all different directions, it was those crystal blue eyes that Linda and the boys all shared, and right then, in that moment, he felt his heart melting as he studied his son's face.
"You've really thought about this, haven't you?"
Sherlock nodded eagerly. For a few seconds, it looked as though Chris wasn't going to answer, but eventually, he sighed. "
Tell you what. I'll talk to Mum and I'll see what I can do for you."
Though Chris could tell that it wasn't exactly the answer that Sherlock was looking for, the little boy smiled all the same. "Thank you, Daddy."
"You're welcome, son." With a smile, Chris watched Sherlock leave his study and put a hand to his mouth in thought. It was very likely that Linda wouldn't change her mind, but if he was going to give it a try, he had to make sure to plant the right words that would stick in her mind...
Later that night, as they were in their bedroom getting ready for bed, Chris looked up from his book to watch Linda braid her long blonde hair by the mirror.
"So," he started casually. "Sherlock told me that he wants a dog."
She stopped. "Got to you, did he?"
"Well, he did pick the lock of the study to come tell me about it. Lin." He closed the book and set it down. "Don't you think you're being a little too harsh about this? Just because you didn't grow up with pets-"
"You didn't have pets, either."
"Mum was raising five boys; there was no need for a pet with that much craziness around her," he replied with a light chuckle. "But just because we didn't grow up with pets doesn't mean we should deprive Sherlock of the experience." She turned around and walked to the bed.
"I just don't think it's a good idea."
"Why?"
"Sherlock is too young for that responsibility. And I can't even think about how one would turn this house upside down. The messes it'll make." She shivered as she sat down. "No dog. I would rather build him a science lab so he can plot world domination than get him a pet."
"He may be young, but he's much smarter and cleverer than other children his age. We could talk to him about his part to play in taking care of one, give him some guidelines to go by."
"That sounds lovely, but Sherlock can barely stay out of trouble with rules all around him. I highly doubt getting a dog would change that. Besides." She stared at him. "You're forgetting that you're not the one who has to keep this house in order. I am. And I am NOT cleaning up after an animal. That's that. I'm sorry, but the answer is still no." With a shrug, she crawled under the covers and turned her back to him. His gaze drilled into the back of her head.
"You know, part of being a parent is thinking about the happiness of your child."
After a few seconds, she heard him settle down and the room was bathed in darkness as the lamp shut off. "I know you want Sherlock to be happy." his voice said softly. "Just…think about it, okay?"
She didn't answer, but settled deeper into the pillows. Why he even bothered to talk her about it, she hadn't a clue. It wasn't as if she would just magically change her mind because Sherlock finally had Chris get involved.
Their discussion didn't change her mind in the slightest. The answer was still no.
