Silence hung around the flat.
"And he died on a street corner. Right next to a pub... Are you sure you need my help?" Madeleine glanced up at Sherlock.
"He was stabbed," Sherlock stated blankly.
"Yes, there are people who carry knives."
She absently scratched the back of her hand, her eyes returning to the pages in front of her, while Sherlock crossed over to one of the two windows, looking down at the street.
"The 'smaller cases' you're undertaking, Daddy, what are they?" his daughter asked from behind him.
"Nothing that concerns..." he trailed off, his brows knitting together.
The unexpected silences were starting to irritate John. Sherlock and Madeleine may have had some weird telepathic connection, but he really needed things to be explained.
"What?" John asked sharply.
"Mycroft is here," Sherlock sighed, ignored Madeleine and John's raised eyebrows, and crossed into the kitchen.
Madeleine dashed to the window, glanced down at the street, turned, put the folder on Sherlock's desk, and practically ran after her father.
John was considerably confused.
Over the next few moments, he heard three raps on the front door below them, and Mrs Hudson bustling from her own apartment to answer it. A few words were exchanged before the door was closed and footsteps were heard on the stairs.
Dark mutterings and whispers from the kitchen cut short when Mrs Hudson opened the door leading into the lounge.
The doctor straightened in his chair as Mrs Hudson smiled at him,
"Mr Holmes is here to see Sherlock, dear."
"Thank you, Mrs Hudson," John heard Mycroft say before he stepped into the room. The landlady nodded and quickly closed the door.
Stale cake successfully devoured, John stood up from his chair and stuck his hand out toward the man. Mycroft smiled tightly at him, but did not shake the hand, glancing around the flat.
"Where is Sherlock?" he asked.
John leaned forward to peer through to the kitchen, but saw no one there.
"I'm not sure, he was just here."
"I am still here!" a call came from the archway leading to the kitchen, and the detective reappeared, his daughter close behind him, hissing something under her breath.
"Madeleine," Mycroft greeted his niece when the two joined them in the lounge.
"Uncle," she returned, stepping out from behind Sherlock and folding her arms across her chest.
John watched as glances were exchanged between Sherlock and Mycroft, and Madeleine's face grew darker. The doctor cleared his throat, sitting back down.
"Are you here for a reason, Mycroft?" Sherlock almost growled.
"Why yes, I believe I am; two, to be specific. The first is to enquire as to whether you have accepted the case I sent you this evening. The second is to take Madeleine back to Oxford."
The chill in the room returned from Sherlock and Madeleine's previous argument, and John immediately understood why Madeleine and Sherlock had taken an unusual defensive stance against Mycroft.
"Shouldn't you be in a meeting somewhere? Talking to presidents?" Sherlock asked.
"I have always believed family is far more important."
John heard Madeleine snort before she dropped her gaze to her shoes.
"Then you should be pleased to know that I have given the case to Madeleine and John. As her father, I believe that her education is very important, so I have taken it upon myself to educate her, especially now that we know her school turns out murderers," Sherlock smiled; Madeleine echoed it, and Mycroft returned it.
"You're finally doing what I say."
Sherlock's smile vanished, "No, Madeleine is."
"Madeleine is what?" the girl in question asked, turning her head up to look at her father.
"Mycroft needs help with his job. He's a little incompetent."
Madeleine smiled again, lowing her head to hide it from Mycroft.
"At least I bothered to check how you were doing, how Madeleine was doing."
"You didn't appear to care before. She had to get herself to Scotland Yard to find me because you didn't take her back to Oxford." Sherlock's voice was low and deadly.
"I would be happy to now."
"No, I can't trust you to take care of her anymore."
"But you can trust Doctor Watson? Tch, Sherlock, what happened to family?"
John watched at the small smirk on Mycroft's face grew wider as Sherlock muttered something about 'arch-enemy' and circled around his brother to the window. Mycroft absently tapped his umbrella on the floor, turning his head up to look at Sherlock.
"You remember Miss Adler, don't you, Sherlock?" he asked.
Madeleine's eyes snapped up from looking at her shoes. The disgusted look on her face caused a small smirk to appear on John's. He raised an eyebrow as she turned to him and mouthed 'bitch'. John turned back to the tight lipped argument Sherlock and Mycroft were having, the smirk still apparent:
"... doing back here?"
"I thought perhaps Madeleine needs a role model, someone to whom she can relate," Mycroft answered easily.
"Relate to?" Madeleine started. "The only thing I can relate to that witch, is a wooden b –"
"- Madeleine is perfectly content, thank you Mycroft," Sherlock growled from the window, cutting across Madeleine.
"Fine." His daughter matched his tone, though it wasn't directed at Mycroft. "I have things to attend to. Let us away to the morgue, Doctor John."
"Do you think that's safe, Sherlock? Your daughter going to a morgue?"
"Come on." Madeleine seized the doctor's wrist and pulled him through the door, sending him up the stairs to his room to change.
xsherlockx
"What's the time?" John asked as they climbed into the back of the taxi.
"Close to ten thirty," Madeleine replied, sitting herself back on the seat. "Will Ms Molly still be there?"
"Molly? Uh, maybe." John cleared his throat, turning his head to look out the window.
Madeleine was quiet for a few moments, before she took her phone out and began aimlessly searching through her contacts. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw the name 'Irene Adler', and his interest in the woman was renewed.
"So who's this 'Miss Adler' Sherlock was talking about?" he ventured, looking back toward her.
"A friend," Madeleine muttered in return, not turning away from her phone screen.
"The governess you were talking about before at the college?" he asked.
A smirk appeared on Madeleine's face as she tilted her head up toward him. "No, Uncle's idea of a good match for Daddy."
If he had been drinking something, John would have spluttered. Alas, only his eyebrows shot up at her statement. He really could not picture anyone as a 'good match' for Sherlock. The surprise of the detective having a daughter was big enough; the doctor did not really need to know how Sherlock came to have her.
"But?" he coughed.
"But she's a total bitch," Madeleine returned to her phone. "Sure she's attractive, but she knows she is. Daddy doesn't need someone around who thinks she's better than she actually is, when she's clearly not."
John had to smile.
"Besides, she and Daddy don't get along anyway. He hates her. Well... I say 'hate'..." She looked back up at him. "The first time he met her, he did look a little intrigued, but when he started talking to her, it was like someone had given him a murder case and it had turned out to be the brother because of some childhood feud about a tricycle; a complete disappointment."
The doctor frowned, and then had to cough to cover his chuckle.
"She's incredibly fun to prank call though," Madeleine told him. "She lives in America, but she's one of Uncle's flunkeys – a stooge if you will – so she gets to go to all of these amazing places around the world. I'm pretty certain she was helping with those Korean elections... or something... "
"And she's come to London to meet Sherlock?" John asked.
"Possibly," Madeleine shrugged. "Uncle's really interested in Daddy's social life."
"I'm assuming that's a bad thing."
Madeleine smiled. "Ms Molly is more suited to Daddy than Irene is."
xsherlockx
"Ms Molly!" Sherlock's daughter grinned when she pushed the door open into the morgue.
The young woman standing over a corpse of a forty year old woman jumped when her quiet was interrupted, spinning around to face the door. She really hadn't had enough time to think about Sherlock having a daughter, and suddenly having the girl barge into her morgue like Sherlock would have was just a little too much.
"Oh, um, hello."
John followed Madeleine into the room, smiling sheepishly at Molly. "Sorry if it's too late, Molly."
"It's fine." Molly forced a smile. "Is Sherlock with you, then?"
"No," Madeleine replied for him. The girl wandered over to the table Molly was standing at, and glanced over the body.
"Asphyxiation?"
"Uh, yes, actually," Molly nodded.
"We wanted to have a look at Hubert Walton; his file said he came to St. Bart's," John told Molly.
"Oh, yes, hold on a moment." Molly disappeared into an adjoining room. She had no idea what had possessed her to help.
Madeleine whistled as they waited, still looking over the dead body on the table.
After a few moments Molly reappeared pushing a trolley with a bag covered body on it. She wheeled it into the middle of the room, and began unzipping.
Madeleine and John approached the trolley, looking over the mound of flesh that was Hubert Walton.
His face was round, stubble covering the skin on his jaw and around his mouth. Light strawberry blond hair had sprouted about halfway across the top of his scalp, framing his receding hairline perfectly. He had an odd shaped nose, flat, as though it had had a brick thrown at it when he was younger – and slightly oval shaped.
"Stabbed in the chest?" Madeleine asked rhetorically as she snapped on a pair of gloves.
"Yes. Oh, a-and his clothes... " Molly disappeared again.
Madeleine prodded at the skin surrounding the wound. It was an odd sight for John, seeing a young girl interested in death.
"Well placed, directly between the fourth and fifth rib," he heard her mutter.
"Are his glasses there?" the girl asked when Molly returned with a clear plastic bag. Madeleine ran a finger over the bridge of his nose, where – John could see now – there were little indentations where glasses had pushed in on the skin.
"Yes," Molly confirmed, setting the bag down on a clear bench next to Hubert.
Madeleine was quick to begin rummaging through Hubert's clothing: a hoodie, t-shirt, pair of jeans, sneakers, socks, a wallet with a couple of pounds in it and the glasses.
John was vaguely aware of Molly going on about the dead man on the table as he watched Madeleine:
"... he works in IT and lives with his sister in a small flat. She didn't know anyone that would have wanted to kill him –"
"Where does his sister live?" Madeleine looked up.
"Oh, in an apartment, I have it in his file." Molly handed her a clip board with various sheets of paper on it.
"Let's pay a visit to his sister."
"It's at least eleven, Madeleine, can't it wait until the morning?" John suggested.
Madeleine gave him a look. "Fine."
She peeled off her gloves, handed the clip board back to Molly and swept out of the morgue.
"Sorry..." John offered as he left.
xsherlockx
Baker Street was dark and silent when the two pushed open the door into the kitchen.
"Sherlock?" John called into the darkness, switching the light on in the kitchen.
Madeleine had already moved ahead into the lounge, while John turned into Sherlock's bedroom. Seeing nothing stirring in the darkness, and feeling a slight twinge of panic, he returned to the kitchen and crossed into the lounge. Madeleine had turned on the light, but still there was no sign of Sherlock.
The lounge was a mess. Sherlock's arm chair looked as though it had been kicked over, and papers from his desk were littering the ground. John's favourite mug, which he had earlier had some tea in, was now lying on the floor in pieces, a dark pool of tea soaking into the carpet surrounded the small sharp edges.
"Found him," Madeleine sighed from beside the couch. She was staring down at the ground.
From his vantage point, John could not see anything because the coffee table was in the way. He stepped around a pile of papers and stood behind Madeleine.
Sherlock's feet stuck out from under the couch, the hem of his blue dressing gown just visible.
"What the bloody hell are you doing?" John asked. The tone of his voice caused Madeleine to back at him over her shoulder.
Madeleine nudged Sherlock's foot with the toe of her shoe. The two heard a groan, and the two feet were pulled under the couch.
"He had a fight with Uncle," Madeleine said blankly, shrugging. She began to unbutton her coat, walking away toward the kitchen.
"About what?"
"Who knows? He doesn't talk after fights with Uncle," Madeleine told him. "Let alone answer emails," she added darkly.
"So what do we do?" John asked from the archway, motioning his hand up in Sherlock's general direction.
"Leave him, he'll get over it."
"That's it?"
"That's it," she confirmed, hanging her coat over one of the chairs pushed up against the kitchen table.
John stared at her.
"Tomorrow, we visit Julie Walton," she announced, before disappearing into Sherlock's room.
Im grinning sheepishly as I post this to you guys. I'm SO SO VERY SORRY!
I know it has been a while, but some things needed to be sorted out with the new year and everything. I didn't want to flood my lovely beta with any more work than I know we both have too. However, about a week and a half ago I got a review which went something along the lines of 'Please post something, I miss seeing updates'. So then began the burning need to write a new chapter. Hello Chapter Ten.
Thank you, all you awesome people, for following, reviewing and making sure I actually update. THE HIATUS IS OVER!
Please remember to review because honestly, it makes me want to write more, LONGER, chapters for you :D