A/N: I might still come back and take this away.
I don't insert Rosie more in my stories because I so often have to "send her to her room upstairs" (that's code for a superfluous character going away to be forgotten, in tv shows), or have John end up the poster boy for a neglectful father.
I guess this is sort of a spin-off from that last one in the Sequel.
1of2.
Monday.
'"My chair!" The Pappa Bear cries out. "Someone has been sitting in my chair!"'
For some mysteriously endearing reason my little elf child knows for herself alone, Rosie giggles at the well known bedtime story. It could be the different voices I make or the over-exaggerated acting, but you can't really read a bedtime story as if it were a pharmaceutical catalogue, can you?
Well, maybe you can, and maybe the child would fall asleep a lot faster, but it turns out I'm a writer of sorts. A blogger. A hyperbolic romantic butchering the English language, some would shrewdly say when their E. coli cultures are confiscated.
'More, daddy, more!' Rosie demands. When my daughter is not sleepy, I tend to turn back the book page instead of forward, and add a few shock discoveries from the Bear family to clues of Goldilocks' breaking and entry felony.
'"Footprints! There are small feet prints on the floor of our wonderful home!" Little Bear spots at once.'
Rosie shakes her head, too knowledgeable. Sometimes I suspect Sherlock has been indoctrinating my child in the petty, non-violent crimes detection. I can't otherwise explain how Rosie exposed another toddler for trying to smuggle home the class pet, a bright orange goldfish. Apparently the orange goldfish was destined to be fed to the boy's cat. Rosie insists she saved the goldfish by exposing the boy. Sherlock seemed surprised by the whole tale I shared, yet as I turned around I think I still saw the two sharing a secret handshake.
'"My mug, someone has drunk tea from my mug!" Papa Bear protests. "Someone should have washed the mug after themselves!"'
Rosie giggles harder than ever. 'Twas Uncle Sherlock!' she cries in delight. The little snitch is probably knowledgeable of some random appropriation of my RAMC mug. I'm better off not asking.
Since we moved to Baker Street – a return for me and a new home for Rosie – she's been getting on so well with the gang. They are the extended family I don't have, or the one we'll never know if her mother had forsaken. Now I didn't introduce Sherlock as an uncle. Someone at nursery must have asked for clarification, because my girl came back home insisting Sherlock was her uncle. I smiled apologetically to the detective, only to find him all solemn at the time. "It'd be my honour", he told my child, who understood nothing of the sudden gravitas. As for me, I felt a huge weight lift from my chest. I always knew the two got on so well, but this was proof that Rosie is Sherlock's favourite in her own right. No longer just because she's John Watson's child.
I brush her blonde curls, so soft. Even Rosie's room, one of Mrs Hudson's spare rooms thrown in for no extra rent because it's just next to mine. They would have me believe the room just happened to be pink and perfect all the while it had been just an extra empty room. Rosie just loved it the moment she first came in.
'"My book, someone has—'
Soft knocks on the bedroom door interrupt our story in an almost timid way. We both turn to look at the uncharacteristically shy detective, looking uncomfortable jumping in on our family moment.
Well, Rosie and I won't have that!
'"Look, it's Uncle Bear! Has anyone touched your magnifying glass, by any chance?'"
Sherlock blinks, utterly at a loss for a couple of seconds. He then comes closer, snatches the book of my hands, and with a deeply concentrated wrinkle in his forehead he scans the through the scarce pages of a four year old's book. He then hands the book back, mechanically, still lost in a fairy tale with talking animals and lost children. And finally:
'"Ze Vather Bear iz not miztaken, I believe I am Uncle Bear, little child..."'
I chuckle. 'Uncle Bear is French with an appalling accent?'
'Or a speech impairment, ever thought of that?' he snaps back in mock self-righteousness.
'Fine. Rosie, Uncle Bear is French, he's here visiting the country.'
Rosie giggles again. I ask naturally: 'What is it?'
'Papa Bear is silly, it wasn't Goldilocks!'
'Hmm?'
'Goldilocks is not a robber.'
'Oh?' My daughter knows what a robber is. Will the nursery contact social services? Surely not if they write children's books like Goldilocks.
'But she sat on the chairs, ate the porridge and—'
'It was Uncle Bear who took the mug, we needed to save the goldfish's life!'
'What?'
Sherlock cuts in hastily, turning off the bedside lamp. 'Just drop it, John! We should let Rosie sleep! Research shows cognitive impairment can set back a sleep deprived child when—'
Rosie's giggles cut the darkness with a dreadfully wise reverberation.
I squint at the great detective. He looks exceedingly guilty under the filtered moonlight from the window.
Sherlock sighs.
'We'll return the goldfish in the morning and apologise, John. We weren't the only ones trying to bring him home, remember?'
Seriously, how many toddlers do I have?
.
Wednesday.
'Dad is alright, darling. Just a bit... wet.'
The little girl playing on the living room's rug, pouring tea for the skull and the doll, is still looking up in surprise. Sherlock tenses behind me, I sense. In the back of my mind the pieces tweak. Sherlock fears I may back down on my decision to mingle together my family and 221B's work.
At times like this, I do wonder if I'm being neglectful by daring off home, leaving Rosie in Mrs Hudson's care, to go hunt a murderer – that turned out being just a jealous ex-girlfriend that had faked her own death on social media, so now we had no murder and no murderer, and whom, when confronted, angrily pushed me into a swimming pool.
Sherlock grabbed and cuffed the criminal just as the police was arriving. Lestrade was amused. He wanted every single detail. I insisted I wanted to return to Baker Street at once. He only took pity when I started shivering and sneezing.
All the way back, as Greg Lestrade insisted on giving us a ride (statements left for tomorrow), I was feeling incredibly guilty I had bolted off after Sherlock. I should have been home – dry – with my child. She must be asking herself why have I gone out and when am I coming back.
Now we got here, I'm dripping water on the floor, snuggled in Sherlock's borrowed wool coat, and I see Rosie didn't miss me.
She smiles, her mother's clever smile, and confides to her doll:
'Daddy is silly. Clothes off before the bathtub.'
I chuckle amused. All tension gone, I feel the chuckles rattle my shoulders.
Behind me, Sherlock huffs.
'Clearly a pool', he corrects. 'The smell of chlorine is overwhelming.' And he walks out in a strop.
Is he jealous of my attention?
Upon my word, it's like having two toddlers at once...
.
TBC
