Hello again, everyone. I'm well aware that I'm falling behind, but not too much so, I assure you. I've got several tucked away in here, but I'd like to publish them in sequence, so I'm holding them back.

Today's prompt: Teapot

From: Wordwielder (don't worry, the teapot comes into play later)

It is not often that Holmes and I are visited by former clients, but not rare either. More frequently they simply send tokens or letters of gratitude, and that is if they have enough means to do so. At times he has solved a case and never heard anything from the client again. On occasion he has been known to retain contact with former clients, but I have seen him talk more to those who might be allies in the future in his fight for justice.

The particular night I am about to recount was one of my favourite times of year – it was midwinter, but not yet bitingly cold, or at least, not so when bundled up and talking to a dear friend on a stroll through one's favourite place in the world.

That 'evening' ramble had begun much earlier than was our wont, but Holmes seemed perfectly content, and I did not mind it very much. After a short lull in the conversation, he produced a short note and handed it to me. "An acquaintance of ours, I believe."

I took it. The address was not unfamiliar to me, but I could not lay my finger on why. The note itself ran:

Dear Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson,

I have not yet been able to fully express my gratitude to you for finding Lysander, nor my delight upon finding so avid a fellow chemist who has a different profession. And I am aware that the content of the letter thus far is probably the norm for thank-you letters.

To be short, I'm worried about Lysander. About his brother's habits I know next to nothing, but Lyle is normally a talkative boy and now is next to silent. He also stays sequestered in his room for hours on end and will only come out on request, returning after whatever I want him to do has been done.

Carl has been by and has noticed Lyle slipping out of his rooms at odd hours of the night, but never consistently – no patterns, no specific timing, nothing to predict what he does.

And today particularly is what made me ask you. I would not have bothered either of you about such a small detail, except that his room should have been cleaned, but his desk has been untouched. Today at breakfast (after I coaxed him to come down), he asked me a sensitive question he should not have known anything about. Obviously, those two things combined have me very concerned indeed.

Dr. Watson, please see if you can somehow bring him down. It would be a great relief.

Yours sincerely,

J. EVERETT WILDE.

That name was familiar to me. Wilde, the chemist, had assisted us some months ago regarding the chocolate poison case, which I had not found eventful enough to write up, though there was a kidnapping involved and I came out of the matter completely covered in chocolate.

I assumed 'Carl' was an abbreviated form of 'Carlton', as in Lucas Carlton, his colleague. I found it strange that Carlton, though a dear friend, would be so familiar with Wilde's son as to feel comfortable reporting the boy slipping out night after night. Speaking of Wilde's son, Wilde had not spoken of a brother on that last case, and his unfamiliarity with the boy's habits suggested that the boy had been recently adopted into the family. Biological brother of Lysander's then?

"Well, Watson? Wilde presents some points of interest in this letter, and it is not yet evening." Holmes glanced at me with an excited cast to his features. What could I do but say yes?

So we hailed a cab to the address, which for the sake of the residents' privacy (and perhaps their safety as well) I shall not relate. The house itself was not overly large, decorated tastefully and simply, and evidently kept clean. However, the effect of young children on the house was also apparent; the mess that was about the house was the quite sort two young boys would cause in high-spirited mischief, and there was a collection of pebbles by the stairs.

Likenesses of a young lady were scattered about – photographs and portraits alike. She was not very similar in face to Wilde, so I assumed she was his wife. The fact that she had not come up in conversation, besides the absence of a mistress's touch in the house, suggested that Wilde was a widower, probably before he moved into this house.

Evidently the master of the house had picked up on this scrutiny of his home, as after we had exchanged greetings he smiled self-deprecatingly. "Admittedly, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, I am not a wealthy man. As long as I earn enough to sustain myself and my sons, I have enough. The boys are out at the moment, so feel free to examine their rooms."

Leading us upstairs to the hallway that lead to the bedrooms, he opened the first one. It was not a large room, but it fit a bed, a desk, and a trunk of what was presumably toys, plus a shelf full of books, a wardrobe, and some whittling project that had been laid out on the trunk. Lysander was obviously a very neat boy, with an eye for detail and a hand for projects.

As Holmes and I wandered the room in search of clues, Wilde waited by the door, not particularly anxious, though he was not placid either. Holmes looked up from where he was leaning over by the window. "How old is Lysander?"

"He is ten, as far as he, his brother, and I have been able to ascertain. You recall that he is a foundling."

"And his brother's name and age?"

"Phoenix Claudius Wilde, age fifteen. Why, Mr. Holmes, you look as though you've struck gold! What on earth have you found?"

Holmes leapt to the desk and began inspecting it. "Do you have a key for this drawer?" he inquired, pointing at the only lock on the piece of furniture. Having exhausted my powers at the window, I drifted over with interest.

"No; only Lysander has that key."

"And he is not here?"

"No. He and Nick went out a few hours ago and have not yet returned. Gellert, the dog, is with them."

"Hum!" He had evidently not brought his lock-picks. "Does Master Phoenix have a room of his own, or does he share this one?"

Wilde backed out of the doorway and made the short journey to the room opposite. "He used to. In the end he insisted on having his own." It was quite a bare room, with only a bed, a desk, and a wardrobe and no personal effects whatsoever. "He does not have much, though I intend to remedy that this Christmas."

I smiled at that, even as Holmes shoved us all out of the room and beyond the doorway, rushing downstairs, only to return with the tea set. I gave him a look, but he only smiled and placed it under the only window in the room that was not boarded up, then hiding himself and us in such a way as to be invisible from that window.

Ten minutes ticked by, and as a clock somewhere struck seven o'clock two hands appeared over the windowsill. Then a head of flaming hair, and young Lysander Wilde boosted himself up and into the room as deftly as a breeze, and very nearly as silently. Had we not been so quiet, we would not have heard him.

But as his shoulders and chest rose into view, his knee shot in and knocked over the teapot, which clearly surprised him.

The boy nearly fell over backwards, but hoisted himself in all the same. Hot on his heels swung the Irregular I knew as Wilde, dressed in his rags and much more silent and agile than the other, avoiding the tea set completely. This was Phoenix Claudius Wilde, I realised, the elder brother!

Once the boys were safely inside the room, Wilde tried to poke his head inside, but Holmes shushed him quickly and motioned for him to look. A third boy was coming in through the window, a boy I could recognise almost instantly by the mousy head of hair, a boy who had been one of the chief visitors during the three years following Holmes's false death.

Roland Hawthorne swung himself into the room, and crashed straight into the poor teapot, which shattered loudly on the floor.

As soon as we allowed him downstairs, Lysander rushed for Gellert, the fox terrier who had shown such loyalty to his young master during his kidnapping. As the boy ruffled his dog affectionately and talked to it as one might speak to a baby, the elder Wildes began their story:

Alexander Wilde, James Everett's cousin, had a wife, Persephone, three children, by name Andromeda, Phoenix, and Lysander, and a well-paying job. He was set for life, until a sudden fire killed both the adult Wildes, driving the remaining members of that small family to three different paths: death, desperation, and delight.

Phoenix had been alone in his room when the fire began, and his shouts never met an answer. He was far too young to know that by the time he crawled through the heavy smoke clogging his doorway, his parents were most likely already dead and his sister on her way to being so.

As he caught up his little brother – the only member of his family he had been able to find and save – he removed a red-hot circle of metal, a coin perhaps, from the half-hysterical, half-delirious Lysander's hand. It would be disfigured forever, if Lysander lived long enough to heal it. The infant's eye was already damaged, and the boys' lungs were filling with smoke quickly.

Upon reaching a safe spot away from the fire, and seeing to both his own burns and his brother's as much as he could, Phoenix collapsed, only vaguely marking when he started to lose consciousness…

When he awoke, the fire was out, night had fallen, and Lysander was gone.

Naturally, the boy, only seven years old, panicked and began searching for his missing baby brother, but as he had been rather slow to learn to speak, he could not accurately convey his wishes in a way that would influence anyone to help him. His singed and ragged appearance did not help matters any, either.

Eventually, and involving some fighting, he was taken in by a gang of street boys who would become the Baker Street Irregulars. "And I'm very grateful, Mr. Everett, for your generosity," he finished; "but I regret none of what's happened. The past is the past, and I like my past."

Master Roland, who was seated beside Phoenix, added, "I knew neither of them before I saw a boy shivering next to a baker's shop to soak up the warmth. I gave him my coat on impulse, and he broke into my house to thank me." He laughed at my expression. "Yes, doctor, he did in fact jimmy my window to thank me in person."

"But Lysander's behaviour?" asked Wilde.

"Quite easily explained, Mr. Wilde," Holmes replied confidently. "He was rather bored during his free time, and Master Lysander has a rather more adventurous spirit and stranger friends than his peers. He came to me."

You decide! Did Lysander come to Holmes in disguise/under a different name, leaving Holmes to form the conclusions on his own and realize that his newest recruit is in fact Nick Wilde's brother? Or did Holmes leave it out intentionally in order to have a bit of a lark at his Irregulars' expense?

Hope you enjoyed, and cheers to any of you with New Year's Resolutions!