Return to the Solution

As a medical man, Dr. John Watson was an avid supporter of exercise and its benefits on the human body. Not only did movement help prevent certain cardiovascular ailments, but recent studies were beginning to conclude it released endorphins that could chemically alter your mood, giving you a sort of a physical high.

If the latter were true, Watson was going to be in peek shape, both mentally and physically when this ordeal was over.

If it would ever be truly over…but when could that possibly happen? Marie, as the child was called, was no ordinary case that would simply conclude itself in a matter of time, she was a living and breathing child that would require care for the rest of his life.

He sighed to himself, if Holmes could hear his thoughts he would be thoroughly appalled. Watson could hear him now,

"Well of course she is a living breathing child, Watson. Did you expect some sort of stuffed doll?"

What did Watson expect? If he were to be completely honest, the thought that Sherlock Holmes would ever be part of bringing a child into the world that Holmes himself spent so much time despising, had never crept its way into Watson's inquisitive mind.

But perhaps the thing that bothered Watson most, was that Holmes himself apparently didn't see it as a possible outcome either. This in itself was a most troubling fact and so absurdly odd that the good doctor had difficulty even touching the disturbing topic.

He had half a mind to turn back around, take a left, walk two blocks east and march up those all too familiar 17 steps and confront Sherlock about this very thing before he remember his untimely leave and determined there must be a better way…or rather a better source of information.

Yes, that is what he would do. Watson would go straight the source of all of this, his dear companion's elder brother.

After all, it was Mycroft who brought the girl in the first place.

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Sherlock sat in a slight stupor after Watson made his hasty retreat. Had he known his reaction would be quite so emotionally driven perhaps he would have come up with a less….shocking narrative.

Standing, he made his way to his bed chamber, thinking a good plucking of the Stradivarius would be most helpful in easing his racing thoughts. He would have preferred cocaine but Watson had slowly been depleting the solution and Sherlock had not the energy to search for a vile of an almost nonexistent narcotic.

However returning to his room reminded him of why he was seeking solace from his thoughts in the first place.

There she laid as peaceful and innocent as….as…..well, he wasn't entirely sure he had ever seen anything quite as soothing as the child before him. And yet, he reasoned, he had spent very little time around children, so perhaps all of them exhibited this sort of angelic radiance.

This was, of course, before they began to experience the injustices of the world, before they became accustomed to death, and betrayal, or to hunger.

Suddenly an idea occurred to the master detective, what was it a child ate? Very little, if he recalled correctly, children were terribly stubborn and refused to eat so many of his common dietary needs that he feared Mrs. Hudson would have to go out of her way in order to accommodate one.

The thought of Mrs. Hudson made him grimace, she was, more or less, in the dark about Marie. In-fact, the woman had not been told of the true relations of the girl, and Sherlock assumed that she believed her to be a daughter of a client, or a distant relation of Watson.

Something could be done about that later though, he supposed. But thinking about long term relations reminded him that the girl had no clothing. Mycroft had left a reasonable sum of money for purchasing necessary items, the fact he felt Sherlock was ill-suited to afford child's clothing was almost offensive.

Never the less, the child would require suitable clothing and seeing as he couldn't exactly divulge to the land lady why she should purchase clothing for Watson's niece, he feared he would have to buy the necessary items himself.

Unfortunately, Watson's foolish little narratives had made him somewhat of a small celebrity. And while he would never mention his paranoia to the good doctor, Sherlock had, on more then one occasion, had the eerie suspicion that he was being followed.

Even if he was wrong in his beliefs, a possibility he highly doubted and yet was willing to accept all the same, he still could not risk letting the criminal populace of London know he now had a new weak link ready for breaking.

But Sherlock Holmes had been in plenty of places without having to "be" there. He was not fashion inept, but upon discovering if you wore something enough, people began to expect you in it, and would almost go as far as to not recognize a person in any other attire, he found it to be, pardon the pun, child's play to disappear among the crowd.

So it was with much confidence that Sherlock Holmes went to his closet, and expected to reemerge as a perfectly respectable father.

However, the Great Detective would soon learn that the clothes don't necessarily make the man.

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I don't really like this chapter, but I have a sneaking suspicion the next one might very well be my favorite, or perhaps I'll hate it the most.

I guess we will find out when I write it huh?

Hehe, as always, thanks a bundle.