I feel like I should be honest- the case Sherlock was working on in the last chapter isn't going to be continued in this one, so I didn't actually have a solution for it. However, if any of you have theories for what was going on with Lady Anastasia, I'd love to hear your ideas!

Thanks to everyone who read, followed, or reviewed last chapter, I hope this one is what you are looking for.

Not quite three weeks had passed when Sherlock opened his front door to see John, scowling and looking disheveled on his doorstep.

There was silence.

Sherlock cleared his throat. "Three weeks…"

"I know what I said," John interrupted, "But I already thought of all the smart-ass responses you could come out with on the way here, and believe me, I'm in the mood for none of them."

The detective looked skeptical. "Highly unlikely you thought of all…"

"Sherlock—" John warned.

Sherlock grinned stupidly, knowing it would come across as smugness and serve to further irritate John. He'd been right, of course. One glance told him all he needed to know. John stood rigid, defensive, with his jacket slightly askance on his shoulders. His socks didn't quite match, there were deep shadows under his eyes, and his hands flexed and clenched into fists restlessly. Clearly the newborn had been keeping him up nights, and likely this combined with the woeful existence that was domestic life had finally pushed him to the breaking point this morning, at which point he'd left in a hurry.

Sherlock pushed the door behind him open with one hand and stepped aside.

"Come in, John."

John nodded his thanks and Sherlock followed him inside.

"If it's any consolation, you're not the first to crack under the dull monstrosity of normal life," Sherlock uttered, spitting out the word normal as if it burned his tongue.

"What? How do you mean?" John asked, as they entered the stairwell.

"Mary's already been by. 'Borrowed' one of my cases last week—"

"What? But she never—"

"Hmm, what was it she told you she was doing? Buying…socks?" Sherlock added skeptically.

"Jesus."

Sherlock hummed in agreement. He grabbed his coat and scarf from the hall and started to put them on as he sat down at the kitchen table.

"I was actually just about to head out on a case," he said, as John busied about the kitchen making tea. He hadn't been, but one adrenaline junkie in need of a fix recognized another.

"Is that so?" John asked, with what he probably thought was well-disguised eagerness. He poured himself a cup, pausing for a moment to let the steam curl about his exhausted face. "Anything good?"

Sherlock shrugged. "A body found in a locked flat, no sign of forced entry. The autopsy revealed death by pneumonia but the victim's coworkers say he was healthy the day before he went missing."

John nodded. "Where's the case from?"

"Lestrade brought it by a week ago."

"A week ago?" John was surprised. He opened the milk carton and gave it a sniff, before making a face and deciding he wasn't going to risk it. "Been busy, have you?"

Sherlock exhaled a world-weary sigh. "The limitless petulance of my brother has kept me otherwise occupied. It took time to arrange an efficient method of retribution." At a look from John, he elaborated. "Mycroft took my kidneys."

John snorted a laugh.

"I was in the middle of an experiment!" Sherlock exclaimed, sounding very affronted.

John shook his head. "So what'd you do then? Fabricate a national emergency, ground all air traffic for the day?"

"Please, a disruption like this calls for a bit more than the basics. I orchestrated a masterpiece."

John nodded, putting the kettle back and sipping his tea, a little scared to know what he'd done if raising the terror alert was basic. "And this masterpiece was…?"

"I arranged for Mycroft's staff to have a Bring Your Child to Work day."

"Ok, so…?" John prompted.

"…and then told all the children where Mycroft's secret sweets stash was," Sherlock finished calmly.

John laughed so hard he hurriedly set the milk on the counter so as not to spill it.

Mary had thought that years of training and sneaking across the world with rifles on her back might have made motherhood easy by comparison. She'd been wrong. Mary sighed as she freed a hand to raise the knocker on the door of 221B, setting down her purse, a diaper bag, a bag of bottles and formula, and finally the carrier. Awoken, the baby gave a startled whine.

"Oh, hush, Lily love," she implored, using a free hand to rock the carrier gently, "There's nothing to fret about."

Sherlock opened the door in front of her. "Mary," he exclaimed, gracefully feigning surprise, "John didn't say you were coming."

"Nah, well, he wouldn't have, would he?" Mary said, regrouping her bags and baby paraphernalia. " I figured you boys would be done having your fun by now. What was it today, murder? Domestic terrorism?" she smiled knowingly.

"Armed robbery," Sherlock replied smoothly, "John needed to ease back into the—" His eyes grew wide, faltering as he noticed for the first time the carrier that Mary was stooping to pick back up. His eyes fell upon the tiny pink fist that curled around the edge of the blanket. Sherlock swallowed, looking up, suddenly only able to look anywhere but at the baby. "…. the game," he continued lamely.

"Oh, that's right, you've not met Lily yet, have you?" Mary asked, pulling the plush blanket back an inch to move one of Lily's little hands in a wave. "Say, 'hi, Sherlock!'" The baby looked up at her mother and hiccupped, and looked thoroughly startled by the occurrence.

Sherlock stared at the baby's little nose and grey-blue eyes. It had been one thing to rationalize away the idea of John and Mary having a baby when it had all been theoretical to him. He knew the basics of the process-after all, it was a fairly common occurrence among normal people's lives; John and Mary had obviously joined the teeming masses that decided to give up their time, money, health, and integrity one night in the dark to conceive what would, nine months later, be a squalling brat that lacked fine motor control or powers of speech and needed every concern tended to.

Somehow, his brain found it a degree harder to construct this argument when the product of such foolishness was…breathing at him. And blinking with wide, curious eyes the exact same color as her father's.

"Um, hello," he said, not really aware of the fact he was addressing a baby.

"Uh, Sherlock?" Mary called gently.

"Hm?" he replied distractedly, snapping out of his daze and realizing that he'd held his hand out formally to the carriage for a handshake, out of reflex.

"Three weeks old," Mary continued, laughing, "Bit above her pay grade."

The detective straightened up, blinking quickly. "Right. Yes, of course. Um, come in. John's asleep."

He stepped aside so Mary could pass him into the flat; he followed her up the stairs into the living room where John was fast asleep on the sofa. He and Sherlock had spent several hours dashing about London on his latest case, and they'd returned to the flat to discuss the case and look over some evidence but John had crashed almost immediately upon sitting down.

Mary set her various bags down.

"Would you like some tea? You probably could use it," Sherlock remarked, deducting Mary's appearance in a once-over, "Bags under the eyes, obviously the same clothes you slept in last night, constriction of blood vessels around your wrists and in your eyes suggest dehydration, and I'll just assume you haven't had anymore sleep than John has. You look awful."

"Uh, I—" Mary stammered, at a loss. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose for a moment, "Tea would be lovely, thanks."

It was only a minute later, when she was over her incredulousness that Mary realized… Sherlock was making tea? She peered into the kitchen to check, but her ears had not been deceiving her; he was in fact bustling about the kitchen with his back to her, putting a kettle on the stove. Mary shook herself slightly, picking up the baby carrier and went to go sit on the end of the sofa next to John.

Sherlock had his back to the Watsons, engrossed in the act of making tea, but he was listening as he heard the couch springs squeak and John awoke with a start. He was caught between trying not to pry in on the hushed conversation that followed, and hanging on every word, trying to glean details of these past three weeks of his friend's life that he'd missed.

John's voice came from the other room, quiet and slow with the remains of sleep.

"Mary? Oh…god, I'm sorry. Look, I know I said I was checking in at work…"

"And you really thought I believed you?" came Mary's soft reply. "Please. I saw the look in your eyes days ago, spend too long without your hobby and you get cranky," she teased. They were both silent for a moment, before she added, "You needed an escape."

John smiled, looking away guiltily, grateful that Mary wasn't holding the stress against him like he knew she had every right to. Then his brow furrowed as he remembered what Sherlock had said earlier.

"…As did you," he said.

"What?" Mary asked, deliberately ignorant.

"You weren't buying socks," John said, smirking and half sitting up on the sofa to face Mary properly.

"Ah, that," Mary enthused, her voice laced with quiet humor, knowing full well that she'd be caught out at this, "Well, I did eventually end up picking up socks on the way home."

John studied her, sleepily and affectionately, for a long moment. He shook his head. "Alright. Since I'm in no position to talk, I won't ask. I'll just assume," he said, taking Mary's hand in his, "that you weren't running around doing anything too strenuous or dangerous on your day off."

"Who, me?" she exclaimed, copying John's sarcasm, "Running into danger? Never!"

They both smiled.

"Ah, Mary," John sighed, his worry-filled voice barely above a whisper, glancing down at the carrier where Lily was sleeping, "How're we going to raise a kid if we both keep this running-into-danger thing up?"

She answered confidently, "Well, she has an assassin and an army doctor for parents, and if you don't think she's made of the same tough stuff, then you don't know your daughter well enough." At that moment, Lily woke up again and started to cry, rising quickly from a quiet cough to a shrill whine. "See? She agrees with me."

Sherlock stepped back from the counter where he'd been listening and realized he still needed to finish making tea. He grabbed three teacups for the tray. Sherlock was both desperately searching John's words for any sign of irreparable change from the person Sherlock knew, and trying to avert his attention for fear of finding it. It was exhausting. He needed a smoke.

"Tea!" he announced, stepping into the living room and setting down the tray. John and Mary both looked up at him as he came into the room, and god, their faces—they're so unreserved, honest, and genuinely glad to see him when they looked at him, Sherlock thinks they've forgotten exactly how rare it is for people to act like that around him. He could write a book on everything he sees written in their expressions, in all the tiny details of their mannerisms, and it occurs to him that they just let him; they know he can pry their secrets out of them if he chose, and he's seen both of them become so defensive and closed off they hide things even from him, and yet, they don't bother.

As he's pondering this remarkable fact, Sherlock took an unnecessarily long path around the room to his chair so as to avoid walking directly by the baby carrier.

John picked Lily up to get her to stop crying, she quieted quickly once settled against his shoulder. After checking to make sure that nothing was wrong, he rocked her gently to calm her down, closing his eyes. Sherlock took the opportunity to study John, his eyes habitually darting back and forth to pick up any important detail. He saw the same exhaustion that John had been sporting when he first arrived, abated now with the help of some rest, but Sherlock was surprised to also see such relaxed contentment there as well. How could John and Mary love this 8-pound bundle of ear-splitting noises and weird smells so much that they severely sacrifice all things that make their lives easy? Sherlock couldn't understand, and he really hated not knowing.

The conversation between the three of them ventured on; Sherlock complained about cases and about Mycroft, John and Mary both remarked about the relative ease of solving cases to being the parents of a newborn. Eventually John and Mary began to bicker lightheartedly about whether John's alcoholic sister's apartment or Sherlock's chemical-and-who-knows-what-kind-of-assorted-body-parts laden flat would be the least safe environment for a 3-week-old child.

Sherlock began to lose track of the conversation, and when his gaze fell again upon little Lily, he realized what it was that he found so off-putting about the baby. He couldn't learn anything about her. Most people, or more accurately most adults, he could look at and with one glance learn all he needed to know about how they lived, the various influences of their lives and what mattered to them. Most people walked around with their whole life stories, private details and horrifying secrets included, written all over their faces without ever knowing it. But Lily…she was like a blank slate. She hadn't lived long enough yet to accumulate all the habits, hardships, and indulgences of life that showed on everyone else's faces.

He tried to formulate his normal detection.

Appearance: Laying in cradle, wide-eyed, wearing a tiny yellow jumper, covered in a fuzzy white blanket of child-size proportions

Indicates: ?

He tried again. There had to be something for him to learn.

Observation: Child's sleeve folded up a bit at the hem, remnants of a fingerprint in talcum powder, child smiling and babbling happily

Conclusion:…Recent diaper change? He was unaware of how these things worked. Was that a normal occurrence in the daily life of a child this size? He was fairly certain it was. In any case, he'd learned what Lily was to him.

A puzzle. One he'd keep his eye on. And god help anyone that ever tried to harm or cheat Lily in the game, because (not unlike many cases Sherlock worked when he and John were flatmates) he was pretty sure it would destroy John should Sherlock fail to prevent it. And he simply would not allow that to happen.

Sherlock carried on the conversation with John and Mary. All in all he found emotions like the ones that he'd had swinging back and forth all day exhausting, so he was more than a little relieved when Mrs. Hudson arrived to steal the attention, with many a coo over the baby of "Ooh, isn't she lovely!," and, "She really does have her mum's eyes, dear," and so forth. Pretty soon Sherlock was excusing himself to his room as Mary was bundling Lily up in another layer she'd brought along (as the temperature had dropped a few degrees since they arrived).

Their fond farewells followed him all the way upstairs, through his thoughts for the rest of the evening, and into his dreams.