EPISODE 3:
THE GREAT DERP
Bang! Bang!
Two loud gunshots rang out, followed by a third and then a fourth. Index fingers pressed in his ears, John Watson scurried up the stairwell to find Sherlock seated in an armchair and firing his handgun at the defenseless wall.
"What the hell are you doing?" the army doctor screeched.
"Bored," Sherlock groaned half-heartedly.
"...What?"
"BORED! BORED!" Sherlock Holmes lept to his feet, firing the gun twice more. Scottie and Emily reached the top of the stairs just in time to see John confiscate and unload the weapon. "I don't know what's gotten into the criminal classes," Sherlock muttered. "It's a good job I'm not one of them."
"So you take it out on the wall?"
"Oh, the wall had it coming."
Knowing exactly at what point in the storyline they were, Scottie wiggled his eyebrows at Emily, who acknowledged the gesture with a sharp elbow to his side. Sherlock threw himself down across the couch and the two teenagers filed in, assuming that it was safe now that the flat was no longer being used as a shooting range.
"What about that Russian case?" John was saying.
Emily pulled her purse off from over her shoulder and tossed it onto the already cluttered coffee table. "Psst! Hey, Scottie!" she whispered.
"What?"
She joined him at the opposite end of the room, smiling deviously. "Have you ever played the 'penis game'?"
Scottie frowned. "What, you mean like where people would take turns saying the word 'penis' and gradually get louder until someone else in the room notices and throws a bitchfit over it?" Emily nodded slowly. "But why would we...?" Scottie sighed. "Penis," he muttered as softly as he could manage. This went on for some time and with each turn the two players allowed their voices to slowly transition from a barely audible whisper to an appropriate volume for ordinary indoor conversation.
"Anything in?" John called from the other room. "I'm starving."
"Penis."
He slammed the fridge door shut with a gagging sound.
"Penis."
"What was that?" Sherlock asked, looking up.
Emily pursed her lips together. "Nothing," she purred.
John didn't appear to have heard them yet. "A severed head!" he exclaimed, still in disbelief at what he'd just witnessed. The rest of the gang, however, remained almost disturbingly calm regarding this announcement.
Sherlock settled down once more. "Just tea for me, thanks."
"This isn't over yet," Emily insisted. "Penis!"
"There's a head in the fridge!" John stormed into the living room, his fists in tight balls. "A bloody head!"
"Well, where else was I supposed to-"
"PENIS!"
The entire room fell silent. Three sets of eyes fell on Scottie, who shuffled awkwardly where he stood. He hesitated for a moment, mouth slightly ajar. "I... um... I said... the pen... pen is... Y'know what, never mind. Don't worry about it." Emily pressed a finger over her lips in an attempt to stifle a giggle. Now it was Scottie's turn to elbow her in the side.
"If it is our attention you want you might have at least said something a bit more original," Sherlock said. "Like vagina."
John furrowed his brows for a moment and shook his head abruptly. "That's it - I've had enough of you three. Between their goofing off, and you with your... your disembodied heads in the fridge..." He rubbed his forehead in frustration. "Scottie and Emily. If you're that bored, might I suggest you play something nice and quiet? Cards, perhaps?"
They did so, just to humor the man. Once the two kids had taken over the majority of the floor space, there was a minute or so of silence before Sherlock spoke again.
"I see you've written up the taxi driver case."
"Yes," John said flatly, taking a seat in his armchair.
Sherlock looked back towards the ceiling. "A Study in Pink. Nice."
John shrugged. "Well. Pink lady, pink case, pink phone - there was a lot of pink." Beat. "Did you like it?"
As if going out of his way to irritate his flatmate, Sherlock held up a newspaper. "Ummm... no," he droned. The personal offense John took from this answer was evident across his face.
"Why not? I thought you'd be flattered."
"Flattered?" Sherlock lowered the paper to shoot John a look. "Sherlock sees through everything and everyone in seconds. What's incredible, though, is how spectacularly ignorant he is about some things."
"Now, hang on a minute," John tried. "I didn't mean th-"
"BULLSHIT!"
The awkward silence returned. Emily let out an exasperated sigh and picked up the pile of cards. "Yeah, whatever. Cheater."
Scottie huffed. "I am not cheating. I have half the deck, same as you."
"Yes, because I told you that BS does not work with only two-"
"Sorry, are we interrupting something?" John snapped.
"Hey, you're the one who told us to play with cards," sassed Scottie.
John folded his arms across his chest. "Last time I checked, playing cards didn't involve shouting."
Emily tucked several long strands of hair behind her ear nonchalantly. She was lying across the floor on her stomach, ankles cross and dangling in the air. "Then you're playing the wrong kind of card games, mate."
John took a deep breath before jumping to his feet and darting for the door. "Where are you going?" Sherlock asked, looking up slightly.
"Out." John slid an arm through his coat sleeve and made for the stairs. "I need some air." He bumped into Mrs. Hudson on his way out, who apologized for the incident just before popping her head into 221B.
"Ooh-ooh," the older woman sang, knocking against the open door to be sure that she was welcome inside.
"Mrs. Hudson!" Scottie and Emily cried out happily. They both set down their respective stacks of cards and charged towards their landlady, throwing their arms around her in a tight hug. Mrs. Hudson laughed, patting Scottie on the top of his head. "Now, now," she went on, prying the teens off of her. "That's about enough of that. I just came to drop off a few things."
Mrs. Hudson disappeared into the kitchen. Sherlock sprang up and made for the window. Pushing its curtain aside, he watched the street below in silence.
"Now you kids be good and stay out of trouble," Mrs. Hudson warned, reentering the living room. She paused in the doorway and squinted. "Sherlock, dear, what have you done to my wall? I'm putting this on your rent, young man."
The corner of Sherlock's mouth rose into a slight smirk and Mrs. Hudson disappeared downstairs again. No one spoke. Finally breaking the uneasy silence, Scottie reached over and slapped Emily on the arm.
"Tag! You're it!"
The boy took off, but Emily was immediately on his trail. They circled the living room twice, Sherlock watching with a slightly concerned expression, before Emily tripped over an electrical cord and fell flat on her face. The lamp that it had been attached to came toppling down immediately afterwards, trapping the girl underneath. "You little shit!" Emily hissed, struggling to get up again. Scottie took advantage of her temporary delay and made a mad dash out the door, unable to contain a stream of maniacal laughter.
"I am the king of tag!" he announced loudly somewhere from the ground floor. "Bow down before me, pitiful mortals!"
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Emily threatened. She slid down the stair's railing and jumped off at the bottom.
Unfortunately, despite having already seen the original episode, neither one of them seemed to recall the explosion that was about to go off. Suddenly there was what sounded like an entire fireworks show going off all at once and the sound of glass shattering. The ground shook with the force of the explosion and Scottie and Emily were both thrown to the floor.
When John returned the following morning in a panic, he found Sherlock and his brother Mycroft seated facing one another and in the middle of a conversation as if nothing had even happened. Nearby, Scottie was taking advantage of the fact that Sherlock had told him John's password and had just finished redoing John's blog so that it reflected his headcanons regarding Johnlock. He immediately slammed it shut upon the man's entrance and Mycroft glanced over his shoulder.
"John," Sherlock said.
"I saw it on the telly," John began explaining. "Are you okay?"
Sherlock looked surprised for a moment. "Me? What? Oh, yeah - fine. Gas leak, apparently." Leaning against the side of Sherlock's armchair and seated on the floor, Emily plucked away at Sherlock's violin in her lap. "Can't."
"Can't?" Mycroft repeated, spinning the closed umbrella that he had been holding in the palm of his hand.
"The stuff I've got on is just too big. I can't spare the time."
Mycroft grimaced. "Never mind your usual trivia. This is of national importance. And for the love of God, would you please stop that infernal pizzicatoing? I can hardly stand this dispute without having the theme to Pirates of the Caribbean plucked in the background!" Emily paused in what she had been doing, stuck her tongue out at Mycroft, and then went right on back.
"How's the diet?" Sherlock asked mockingly, successfully drawing the elder Holmes' attention back in.
"Fine. Perhaps you can get through to him, John."
"What?" John asked. He felt quite out of the loop, to be perfectly honest, but did his best to keep the others from noticing this.
"I'm afraid my brother can be intransigent."
"If you're so keen, why don't you investigate it?" Sherlock leaned over the chair's arm and pulled his instrument away from Emily, who then made an obvious display of staged pouting. He strummed at a couple of open strings, checking that it was still in tune.
Mycroft shook his head. "No, no, no, no. I can't possibly be away from the office for any length of time, not with the Korean elections so..." Sherlock and John both met his eyes. "Well. You don't need to know about that, do you? Besides, a case like this, it requires... legwork."
Sherlock plucked another note and turned his attention to John, who seemed to be pacing back and forth across the floor space aimlessly. "How's Sarah, John?" the detective asked. "How was the lilo?"
Mycroft checked his pocket watch. "Sofa, Sherlock. It was the sofa."
"Oh yes, of course."
"How..." John shook his head and finally sat down on the couch. "Never mind."
"Sherlock's business seems to be booming since you and he became... pals," Mycroft went on, recrossing his legs.
"Us too," Scottie finally chimed in.
"How could I forget. What's he like to live with? Hellish, I imagine."
"I'm never bored," Scottie, Emily, and John all said at the same time.
"Good," Mycroft said, faking a smile to the best of his ability. "That's good, isn't it?"
Sherlock smacked Emily's hand with his violin bow. She pulled away again and frowned, her attempt to steal back the instrument from right under his very nose having failed. Mycroft stood up and handed a manila folder to John. "Andrew West, known as Westie to his friends, civil servant, found dead on the tracks of Battersea station this morning with his head bashed in."
"Jumped in front of a train?" John guessed.
"That seems the logical assumption."
"But?"
"But?" Mycroft echoed. Scottie and Emily each took a turn repeating the word 'but' after one another, attempting to make each sound more dramatic than the last.
"Ignore them," John instructed.
Mycroft gave him a tense smile. "Believe me, I'm trying. In any case, the MoD is working on a new missile defense system. The Bruce Partington Program, it's called. The plans for it were on a memory stick."
"'Memory stick'? You mean flash drive?" Emily wondered aloud.
"That wasn't very clever," John mused, flipping through the file he had been given. In the background Sherlock had begun rosining his bow.
"It wasn't the only copy."
"Oh?"
"But it's secret. And missing."
"Top secret?"
"Very. We think West must have taken the memory stick and we can't possibly risk it falling into the wrong hands," Mycroft explained. "You've got to find those plans, Sherlock... Don't make me order you."
"I'd like to see you try." Sherlock's voice was flat and hostile.
"Think it over. Goodbye, John... kids." Mycroft nodded to Scottie and Emily, who waved back. John got up to shake Mycroft's hand before he took his leave. "Think it over."
Popping up from between Sherlock's legs, Emily snatched the violin and bow away. She immediately began to celebrate her victory by playing a cheery fiddle tune from The Lord of the Rings. Sherlock made a face but put no effort into standing up to retrieve the thing from her.
"Why'd you lie?" John asked, having to raise his voice to be heard over Emily's playing. "You've got nothing on. Not a single case. That's why the wall took a pounding. Why did you tell your brother you were busy?"
"Moreover, why didn't you tell a single Fatcroft joke?" Scottie demanded, kicking his legs up onto the desk. "I gave you so many to work with last time!"
"Those were quite good," Sherlock admitted.
"Oh. Right." John nodded knowingly. "Sibling rivalry. Now we're getting somewhere."
Emily held down the violin. "Is it just me, or is it always the younger sibling who insists on being a stubborn pain in the ass? No offense or anything."
"Don't pretend you don't miss her," Scottie said.
Emily threw her back against the flat's wall. "I do," she moaned. "I really do."
Sherlock was about to say something when his cell phone went off. He reached inside his jacket, answering it: "Sherlock Holmes... Of course. How could I refuse." The consulting detective shut the phone and put it in his pocket whilst in the process of standing. "Lestrade," he explained to anyone who cared. "I've been summoned. Coming?"
John was at his side in mere seconds. "If you want me to. Of course."
"I ship it," Scottie sighed dreamily.
"Oh, I know you do." Emily rolled her eyes, hurrying to put Sherlock's violin back into its case. "Wait for us!" she called after Sherlock and John. She and Scottie then grabbed their jackets and hurried outside, shutting the door behind them.
"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to wait out here," Lestrade told the two teenagers.
Scottie was practically fuming at this news. "Now listen here! We came all this way-"
"We weren't even in the cab for fifteen minutes," Emily reminded him coolly.
"-we came from less than fifteen minutes away and you won't even let us step inside?"
Lestrade crossed his arms. "You two aren't with the police. That being said, I can't let minors such as yourselves past this public area."
"But we're with Sherlock. He's like the entire Scotland Yard, minus the stupid!" Scottie folded his arms as well and straightened his back as much as possible in a poor attempt to look slightly taller than he really was. He clearly meant business.
"There's a hot chocolate machine just around the corner," John said before following the rest of the adults into the next room.
"Consider me sold," Emily announced, embarking on her latest quest for free hot chocolate. Scottie made a pissed off grunting noise before plopping into one of the lounge's seats.
"God damnit," he growled. "I really didn't expect everyone to be so prejudiced against young people over here. And you're no help, allowing yourself to be bribed with... with hot water and chocolate packets!"
"Hey, a girl's got needs!"
Luckily the others were only gone a matter of minutes. Emily had only just retrieved her drink when Sherlock, John, and Lestrade came flooding out again. "Oh, guess that's our cue," Scottie breathed and they both trailed the squad out.
They were back at Baker Street in no time at all. With hardly a word thrown in their direction, Scottie and Emily followed closely behind the other three as they approached the flat 221C.
"Now hold up," Emily gasped. "That's our flat! You don't mean that...?"
Scottie squeaked. "But would he really, even when he knows we're staying in there?" Sherlock glanced at Scottie and Emily suspiciously before pushing open the door.
"You said this one's yours?" Lestrade questioned, obvious disgust in his face. "It looks like this place has been abandoned for ages."
He had a point. The wallpaper was peeling, dark bits of what was probably mold stained the corners of the room, and there wasn't a single piece of furniture save a table, pushed against the wall and still covered in a thick layer of dust.
"In our defense," Emily started slowly, "we mostly just use the bedroom and kind of chill with Sherlock and John upstairs all day every day."
"What are you talking about? Our room isn't much better and we've been occupying it for months. You keep leaving all your shit on the floor unfolded, oh, and don't get me started on your 'organization tactics' in the bath-"
"Scottie! Can we not?"
"Shoes."
The teenagers fell quiet as John stepped between them, drawing everyone's attention towards a single pair of running shoes that had been placed neatly together in the center of the room. Sherlock dropped to the ground and pressed his nose against the foreign object. Emily bit her lip and exchanged glances with Scottie. A cell phone ringer went off just then and the detective stood up again and pulled out the phone. It wasn't his phone. Rather, it looked exactly the same as Jennifer Wilson's from A Study in Pink. He stared at it for a moment before pressing a button to answer.
"Hello?"
Although hard to make out, the voice on the other line was a woman's, and she sounded as if she had just been crying. "Hello... sexy..." she choked.
Sherlock's brows furrowed. "Who is this?"
"I've sent you a little puzzle just to say hi," the woman went on.
John, Lestrade, Emily, and Scottie held their breaths as Sherlock spoke on the phone. "Who's talking?" he asked slowly. "Why are you crying?"
"I'm not crying. I'm typing and this stupid bitch is reading it out."
Lifting his head, Sherlock appeared to have just pieced something together. "The curtain rises," he mumbled softly.
"What?" John asked.
"Nothing."
"No, what do you mean?" he pressed.
"I've been expecting this for some time," Sherlock confessed. "Feel free to ask Scottie and Emily about it. I've a feeling they know more than they're letting on." Scottie gulped and Emily felt herself turning a flushed shade of pink.
"Twelve hours to solve my puzzle, Sherlock," the woman said over the phone, "or I'm going to be so naughty." The line went dead and an eerie silence filled 221C.
Although Scottie and Emily did, in fact, know the conclusion that Jim Moriarty had been trying to get Sherlock to come to, they ultimately decided against giving it away for the sake of continuity. At St. Bartholomew's, Scottie was just returning from using the restroom when he turned a corner and spotted Molly Hooper and Moriarty coming towards him. Scottie squeaked in alarm and pressed against the wall. He waited until they had turned the other way before making a mad dash to the laboratory where Sherlock, John, and Emily were hanging out.
"He's here!" Scottie screeched, flinging the doors open. Sherlock glanced up from what he had just been doing with the tennis shoe.
"Sorry? Who?" John answered.
"He's here he's here he's here and he's coming this way," Scottie rambled on, tugging at Emily's jacket sleeve.
"Who?" She pulled her arm away when a look of realization suddenly hit her. "...Shit. Shit, this is not good!"
"Not good? This is great! I'm so excited to finally get to see his face in person!" Scottie bounced up and down several times before Emily held the boy in place and shushed him, worried that he would only make John and Sherlock more suspicious of them than they already were.
"Any luck?" a woman's voice called. Molly entered the room, practically gliding to Sherlock's side as if he were a magnet or something.
"Oh, yes," Sherlock smiled.
"Oh, sorry, I didn't..." A second newcomer hesitated in the doorway, but despite the clever disguise he wore, Scottie and Emily were far from fooled.
"Jim! Hi!" Molly breathed. "Come in, come in! Jim, this is Sherlock Holmes." Moriarty took his place beside Molly and slipped his hands into his front pockets sheepishly. "Oh, sorry! Um, this is..."
"John Watson. Hi."
"Yes, and their... adopted... kids? Uh, Scottie, and the girl is Emily, I believe." Scottie let out a dying whale noise and clung to Emily, who remained stiff and uneasy about being in the consulting criminal's presence for the first time.
"So you're Sherlock Holmes," Moriarty said. "Molly's told me all about-"
"HI SORRY TO BOTHER YOU SIR, BUT I'M SCOTTIE AND I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT IT'S AN HONOR TO FINALLY MEET THE GREAT JIM MO-"
Emily clasped a hand over Scottie's mouth and tackled him to the ground. "Stop it!" John scolded, pulling both kids apart and helping them to their feet again. "What's the matter with you two? You're always embarrassed me, especially in front of people you've only just met!"
"Oh, sorry," Moriarty muttered. "I can just go, if it's causing any sort of trouble?"
"Not at all," John promised. "Please, don't let these two scare you away."
"I can only imagine what it's like, having twins."
John's face fell. "They're not mine."
"Yes we are," Scottie and Emily insisted.
"Jim works in IT upstairs," Molly chimed in, attempting to bring the conversation back. "That's how we met. Office romance."
"Gay," Sherlock muttered under his breath. He peered into the microscope before him, displaying little interest in what was happening from the sides.
"Sorry, what?"
"Nothing. Um, hey." Sherlocked nodded awkwardly towards Moriarty, who smiled.
"Hi." The criminal mastermind who was currently pretending to be a derpy Sherlock Holmes fanboy suddenly bumped his hip into something and it knocked off the table so that it hit the floor with a crashing sound. Moriarty quickly apologized and began picking it all up again in a fluster. "Well, I'd better be off. I'll see you at the Fox, about 6-ish?" Moriarty touched Molly's back and looked back at Sherlock. "Bye. It was nice meeting you."
"THE PLEASURE'S ALL MINE!" Scottie exclaimed cheerily.
"Excuse him," Emily said, rolling her eyes. "He has... an odd tendency to blurt out inappropriate things when in contact with attractive British gentlemen at least twice his age."
Moriarty exited the room. "What do you mean, 'gay'?" Molly questioned as soon as the door had shut again. "We're together."
"And domestic bliss must suit you, Molly. You've put on three pounds since I last saw you."
"...Two and a half."
"Well, three."
John pursed his lips together. "Sherlock."
"He's not gay!" Molly spat, her voice rising. "Why do you have to spoil... He's not!"
"With that level of personal grooming?" Sherlock mocked.
"Because he puts a bit of product in his hair?" John made a face. "I put product in my hair."
"Case in point," Emily joked.
"You wash your hair," Sherlock went on, "there's a difference."
"No, no, I see where he's coming from," Scottie said rather matter-of-factly. "Tinted eyebrows, some kind of cream he uses on his frown lines, but it's mostly the underwear that gives it away. Quite visible above the waistline, if you ask me, and a recognizable brand. Never mind that he also left Sherlock his number underneath this here dish, because that's not suggestive at all, nope." Scottie pulled out the slip of paper and folded it in half. "I'll just... hold on this in case we..." Emily snatched the paper away, crumpled it into a tight ball, and tossed it into the trash bin with a warning glance. "Or, y'know. Not. Whatever floats your boat, man."
Sherlock blinked in surprise. "That was... quite good, actually. All valid points."
Without a word, Molly spun around and stormed out of the room. John sighed. "Charming. Well done, boys."
Sherlock turned in his seat. "Just saving her time. Isn't that kinder?"
"Kinder? No, no. Sherlock, that wasn't kind."
Sherlock paused. "Emily," he finally said. Emily looked up, her eyes wide. Sherlock grabbed one of the sneakers by its side and slide it closer on the table. "Your turn. You know what I do; off you go."
Emily seemed flustered. "W-What, me? No, I, uh... JOHN! You should have John do it. His second opinion seems more valuable." When Sherlock didn't let her talk her way out of it, she picked up the thing by its laces and stared at it for a moment, trying to remember what John had concluded in the original episode. But nothing came to her. She put her best effort forth in the task nonetheless: "They're... I don't know, normal-looking shoes. Very... shoe-y, with the... bottom shoe bits and, of course, the top shoe bits too. Laces, tongue, sole..." She set the footwear down once more and gave a satisfactory nod. "Yup. I know a lot about shoes, Mr. Holmes, and I can tell you right now that this is definitely a shoe."
Sherlock took a deep breath, perhaps trying to decide if she was fucking with him or really that stupid. "Did you, I don't know, happen to notice the remnants of a name written in the tag? Perhaps?"
"Actually, now that you mention it..."
He picked up the shoe and turned it in his hands. "The owner loved these. Scrubbed them clean, whitened where they got discolored, changed the laces three... no, four times. Even so, there are traces of his flaky skin where his fingers have come into contact with them, so he suffered from eczema." He flipped them upside down. "The shoes are well-worn, more so on the inside, which means the owner had weak arches. British made, twenty years old."
"Twenty years?" John repeated in slight disbelief.
Emily quite literally climbed up onto the counter to get a closer look. "But I was right," she pressed. "They are most definitely someone's old shoes, and I'm willing to bet whoever they used to belong to is long since dead."
Sherlock ignored her, quickly looking something up on his phone. "They're original, too. Limited edition, two blue stripes, 1989."
"But there's still mud on them. They look new," John said.
"Someone's kept them that way... Quite a bit of mud on the soles. Analysis shows it's from Sussex with London mud overlaying it."
"How do you know?"
Sherlock gestured to the desktop. "Pollen. Clear as a map reference to me. South of the river, too, so the kid who owned these trainers came to London from Sussex twenty years ago and left them behind."
"So what happened to him?"
Emily huffed. "Does no one care what I have to say? He's dead! Deceased! Pushing up the daisies! This... bomber fellow is involved somehow and he wants you to piece together how the murder was done."
"Carl Powers," Sherlock realized, straightening his back.
"Sorry, who?"
"Oh yeah, that's what the guy's name was," Scottie recalled. He strode over to Sherlock's unoccupied side to join in on the conversation. "Sherlock's first case. More or less. This guy was a champion swimmer from Brighton. One day he drowned and no one thought anything unusual of it, except for Sherlock here, because that's just kinda what he does. Went and made a big deal about the victim's shoes having gone missing. Unfortunately he was just a kid at the time and, well, no one really gave a shit about what he had to say. Gee, doesn't that sound strangely familiar?" Sherlock shot Scottie a distrustful look. "What?" he said defensively. "I've done my fair share of reading the papers."
"From the 80's?"
"...shhh."
Later that afternoon the scooby gang was back in 221B and hard at work piecing together Moriarty's puzzle. Or rather, Sherlock was. He had himself cooped up in the kitchen, leaving the others to twiddle their thumbs and stare at the bullet hole-filled wall in the living room. At some point John ordered pizza, as up until then they'd near forgotten about eating altogether, and Scottie and Emily proceeded to devour half the box by themselves in the amount of time that it had taken John to eat a single slice.
Finally John couldn't take it any more and slid open the kitchen door to check on Sherlock. "How can I help? I want to help. There's only five hours left." His back pocket rang and he pulled out a cell phone. "It's your brother. He's texting me now. How does he know my...?"
"It must be a root canal," Sherlock muttered to himself.
"Look, he did say 'national importance'," John resumed, dropping his voice and stepping into the room.
By that point Scottie and Emily could no longer hear their conversation. Emily wiped excess pizza grease off of her fingers with a napkin as they waited patiently until John reentered. "And where are you off to?" she demanded.
"Paying Mycroft Holmes a visit. Don't worry, I'll only be a couple of hours."
Emily leapt to her feet, suddenly getting an idea. "Take us with you!" the girl pleaded. "Sherlock can handle things over here just fine by himself. Meanwhile, Scottie and I can help out with this whole missile crisis!"
John shook his head. "No, no, you'll just get in the way."
"Excuse?" Scottie hopped his way over to the others. "It'll just be Mycroft's super-secret British government headquarters. Nothing dangerous."
"And just how many times do we have to save your sorry asses before you figure it out that you're better off with us nearby?" Emily added. "I mean, take a look at The Blind Banker. We were around for that whole museum shootout scene and everything turned out absolutely fine."
John squinted at Emily. "Blind what?"
"Blind Banker. Y'know, the case involving the Chinese smugglers... Black Lotus, or whatever they called themselves... You called it that because of that one painting at the bank, remember? No? Doesn't sound familiar? Oh, joy. I appear to have gotten my storyline mixed up."
John reflected upon this idea for a moment. "The Blind Banker... I like it. Hey, you mind if I use that for the title of my next blog entry?"
"No, use it, please," Scottie urged. "That's just her way of suggesting it to you. Isn't that right?"
Emily nodded vigorously. "That being said, can we come with?"
"Oh, let me think about - no." John slammed the door shut behind himself, as if to make a point.
Rude, Emily mouthed. "This is going to be one hell of a long episode if we're not allowed to do much more than stand around in the background pretending not to know anything."
"Tell me about it," Scottie groaned in defeat. "But I mean, it's not like there's really anything we can do to change that. Even if we told them the answers, Sherlock and John would a) not believe us or b) think that we're in league with Moriarty or something."
"Surprised they don't already. But hey, what if we could?"
"Could... what?"
"Do something to change that."
"I don't think I follow?"
Emily rolled her eyes and and pulled Scottie in by his elbow. "C'mon; I've got an idea, and it may or may not involve identity theft and a slight break in the fourth wall."
Just as it had happened in the episode, John returned a little later that night and Sherlock made a post on his website showing that he had solved the case. The next morning the detective and his blogger had gone back to Scotland Yard to debrief with Lestrade, where the teenagers knew they would receive a new challenge from an entirely different hostage. While John and Sherlock were out, Emily and Scottie broke into the doctor's unguarded room. Emily was busy digging through the older gentleman's closet while Scottie sat on his bed skeptically.
"So let me get this straight," he was saying. "You want to prove a point to Sherlock and John by parading around in their clothing and pretending to solve all these cases faster than them?"
"That's the general idea. I mean, think about it: we have the leg up. We know the answers before Moriarty has even asked their questions. Why shouldn't we take advantage of that?" She walked out of John's closet, wearing one of his infamous jumpers. "Moreover, why not take advantage of that and have a little fun while doing it?"
"Because it would only spell out disaster and hilarity?"
"Exactly!" Emily checked herself out in the mirror for a moment before opening up one of John's drawers and finding a belt to fasten around her waist.
"No offense or anything, but I don't think John normally wears that as a dress," Scottie pointed out.
"And it also doesn't go halfway down his thighs when he puts it on. You got all your stuff?"
"Sherlock already left in his classic coat and scarf, but I managed to find his Purple Shirt of Sex," Scottie said, holding his arms out to the side for Emily to see. She nodded in satisfaction.
"Perfect. Now, they should be arriving at the crime scene within the next hour or so. Let's get going!"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Oh oh! I think that's them!" Scottie patted Emily on the leg to get her attention. His partner in crime shut her sketchbook and they both jumped off of the railing they had been seated on. "Quick, look like we're in the middle of doing Sherlock-y things!"
They did so. Scottie immediately began pacing back and forth across the concrete area and deducing things about the people and objects that he saw, most of which were entirely unrelated to the case at hand (and likely far from correct). Emily followed him from a couple steps behind, occasionally commenting on how brilliant and/or attractive he is.
"Oh, fancy running into you here," Scottie mused, approaching the car that the others had crowded around.
Sherlock, who had just been inspecting the blood-covered seat in the vehicle, straightened his back and looked from Scottie to Emily, eyebrows scrunched up in disapproval. "I thought you two said you'd stay back at the flat?"
"Boring." Although it's true that Scottie wasn't the best of actors, or even in the better half, he did get credit for refusing to break character. "'Sides, we heard about this most recent case and figured you might appreciate our help. How long was it you have, exactly? Only eight hours?"
"How could you possibly...?"
"We already spoke with Mrs. Mumferd," Emily piped up. It suddenly occurred to her that they had no good way of explaining how they had heard of the case in the first place, let alone arrived at that destination before the others. "Just. If you were planning on doing that. You're welcome."
"Monkford," Scottie corrected.
"Gesundheit."
"What's going on?" John had joined their circle now and looked as if he were having a difficult time deciding on whether to be confused or angry. "Scottie, Emily, wh... Is that my jumper?"
"What, this old thing?" Emily gave a little twirl. "I mean, I can give it back if you're that attached to it, but I'll have you know I didn't bring anything to change into."
"But why are you wearing our clothes?"
Emily smirked. "I thought it would be obvious. We're cosplaying - as you and Sherlock. Figured we'd be able to get your attention this way."
"Never mind about that," interrupted Scottie. "Mr. Monkford had been depressed for months. Forgot to renew the tax on his car, which is why he hired one. But that doesn't matter. The important bit is, Mrs. Monkford was quick to contradict and referred to her husband in past tense the entire time. Now, I'm not saying that she was directly involved his yet, but she knows something and isn't willing to tell."
Emily handed a slip of paper over to Sherlock. "Oh, and we found this in the glove compartment. I don't know, you might find it useful."
"How did they even let you into the crime scene, again?" John demanded.
"Janus Cars," Sherlock said, looking at the clue. He looked up at John. "Come on. They managed to find their way here on their own, undoubtedly they can make it back the same way."
Scottie and Emily watched confidently as John and Sherlock's figures grew smaller in the distance. "Well done, my dear genderbent Watson," Scottie finally laughed out loud.
"What are you talking about? That was all you. I couldn't even remember the woman's name right!"
They began to file out in the opposite direction. "Don't worry about it. John's mostly just there to look cute anyway."
"So where to now? This is fun."
"Well, fancy of you lot to show up," Lestrade grunted, folding his arms. "I was beginning to worry that you'd only sent your interns instead. So, is this true? Mr. Monkford's in Colombia now and not actually dead?"
Sherlock and John froze dead in their tracks. "How did you find that out?"
Lestrade seemed confused. "Scottie and Emily. Isn't that why you had them come?"
"Yes... of course," Sherlock answered slowly. The troublemakers stood at Lestrade's side, beaming back at him obnoxiously. "It was the blood that gave it away-"
"Half a pint exactly," Scottie confirmed. "Janus Cars' first mistake. It was... only too obvious that it had been collected and then frozen to make it look as if he had been murdered, providing the perfect opportunity for Monkford to get away."
"Bankers," Emily sighed. "Always such theatrics when it comes to money troubles. Wouldn't you agree?"
"That's... that's impossible..." John stammered. "They didn't even come to the car place with us! What are you playing at?"
"They're right, though," admitted Sherlock. "Mr. Ewart of Janus Cars had a 20,000 Colombian peso note in his wallet, and quite a bit of change, too. He told he us he hadn't been abroad recently, but when I asked him about the cars, I could see his tan line clearly. No one wears a shirt on a sunbed. That, plus his arm..."
"His arm?" Lestrade echoed.
"He kept scratching it, obviously irritating him and bleeding. Why? Because he'd recently had a booster jab, Hep B, probably. Difficult to tell at a difference. Conclusion-"
"He'd just come back from settling Ian Monkford into his new life in Colombia. Mrs. Monkford cashed in the paperwork for life insurance and split it with Janus Cars." Scottie let out a yawn. "I thought we established this bit already?"
"Mrs. Monkford?"
"Oh yes, she's in on it too." Sherlock looked to Lestrade expectantly. He was clearly playing along and had no idea how the kids had been able to come to the same conclusion as him without having been around at all, but props to him for not questioning it. "Now go and arrest them, Inspector. That's what you do best. We need to let our friendly bomber know that the case is solved."
He and John took their leave down the long hallway without waiting for the others to catch up. Lestrade stared after them for a moment before shaking his head, saying goodbye to Emily and Scottie, and then heading in the opposite direction.
"Wait wait wait," Scottie gasped. "He didn't say it! Why didn't he say it?"
"Say what?"
"The 'I'm on fire' line!"
"Huh. You're right." Emily bit the bottom of her lip thoughtfully. "I don't know, think we stepped on his ego a bit?"
The four of them went out to breakfast the following morning. It was a cute little cafe a couple blocks down from Baker Street. Sherlock and John were seated across from one another, Scottie and Emily taking up the remaining chairs and dividing a stack of pancakes amongst themselves. Sherlock was the only one who hadn't ordered a single thing for himself, but the others were quite used to this behavior on his part. He didn't eat much in general, but even less so while in the middle of a case.
"Let's play Fuck, Marry, Kill!" Emily suddenly suggested, sliding her plate back once she'd finished giving Scottie his share. She quite liked that for the most part pancakes there closer resembled crepes than back home.
"Yeah!" seconded Scottie.
John put down his coffee mug. "We aren't playing Shag, Marry, Kill."
"What? Why not?"
"Because," John explained, "someone's feelings always end up hurt. And even if you don't use real people it's still cruel."
Emily pouted. "We promise we won't let our feelings get hurt…"
"He's probably just embarrassed about admitting to suppressed desired with answers about us," whispered Scottie, intentionally loud enough for everyone at the table to hear.
Sherlock continued to zone out of the conversation, probably still thinking about the whole Moriarty situation. The detective's eyes shifted to the pink phone that was lying face up in the middle of the table. John, on the other hand, wasn't so easily above Scottie and Emily's childish games.
"Fine," the doctor gave in. "Shag Emily, marry Sherlock, kill Scottie. Happy?"
Sherlock's eyes snapped up again but still he said nothing. Emily pursed her lips into a smile and kept eating. Scottie took a sip from his cup and then slammed it down on the table forcefully.
"Wow, okay, asshole. Two can play at this game: fuck Sherlock, marry Emily, kill John."
"Mine would probably be… fuck Sherlock, marry John, and kill Scottie." Emily smiled guiltily at Scottie from across the table. "Sorry Scottie."
Scottie slouched his back into his seat. "Seriously? You'd rather sleep with men old enough to be your father than let me live?"
Emily shrugged. "Wouldn't you, given those circumstances?"
"Okay, yeah, but I have a gender preference so…"
"See, this is why I didn't want to play," sighed John. "It isn't fun and everyone involved ends up offended."
"I still want to hear Sherlock's answer," commented Emily. "And then I promise we can stop."
"Oh yeah! Sherlock, tell us yours!"
Sherlock made a face. Evidently the man didn't appreciate having been pushed to participate. "How about no," Sherlock replied flatly.
"Aw, come on!" begged Scottie. "Pleaseeee?"
"Marry John, shag John, kill no one," Sherlock said quickly, looking away. John, who had been in the midst of sipping at his mug, suddenly choked at this and very nearly spit the drink all over the table.
"That isn't how the game works…" Emily reminded him.
"Good. Because I refuse to play."
Emily huffed. "Then I refuse to check on your dumb mold cultures while you're out."
The girl had quite possibly struck a nerve on that one, because Sherlock narrowed his eyes and revised his previous statement to "Marry John, shag John, kill Emily."
"Don't I get a verb?" asked Scottie. "You can't have John on there twice, y'know."
"Do science with Scottie?" Sherlock tried. Scottie nodded at this approvingly.
Emily shook her head. "Whatever. Round 2: Lestrade, Anderson, Mycroft. 1 2 3 go!"
"Fuck Lestrade," Scottie and Emily both said almost immediately.
"I thought you said this would be over after Sherlock answered," John pointed out.
Sherlock held up a finger. "Question: can I kill at least two of them?"
"Do we need to review the rules of this with you, or…"
"Also why are these all male? Don't you think that's a little immature?"
"No one gives a shit except for you," Emily sang, licking at her fork.
John rolled his eyes and took a bite from his own plate before continuing. "Christ, we've hardly stopped for breath since this thing started," he transitioned. "Has it occurred to you-"
"Probably."
"-has it occurred to you that the bomber's playing a game with you? The envelope, breaking into Scottie and Emily's flat, the dead kid's shoes. It's all meant for you."
"Yes. I know."
John put down his fork. "Is it him then? Moriarty?"
"Mm, that's a good one too," Scottie nodded. "Add him to the list."
"Man, fuck Moriarty. Fuck Moriarty, but like, fuck Moriarty. You feel me?"
Both John and Sherlock turned their heads to the children with suspicion. Emily and Scottie both immediately occupied themselves with sipping at the remainder of their water glasses with straws. But before any questions could arise out of this there was a loud beep that came from the pink phone. Sherlock unlocked it to see that it had just received a text: a picture of blond woman, followed by three beeps. "That could be anybody," he said.
"It could be. Yeah." John fidgeted with his jacket some. "Lucky for you, I've been more than a little unemployed."
Sherlock squinted. "How do you mean?"
"Lucky for you, Mrs. Hudson and I watch far too much telly." Standing up, John retrieved a remote from the cafe's counter and turned on the TV.
Scottie leaned over the table. "I don't know about you," he whispered to Emily, "but I'm beginning to question John's masculinity."
His friend pulled a strawberry off from the top of her pancakes and ate it. "He isn't kidding about watching a lot of TV. Just last week I got him to sit through a season and a half of Supernatural."
While they were talking, the pink phone rang. Sherlock reached for it but Emily swiped it first from next to him. "Hello?" Beat. "Oh. It's for you."
She held it out to Sherlock, who swiped the thing away and held it to his ear. "Hello?" There was a pause as he listened to the person on the other line, but unlike in the show, they couldn't hear the other voice. "Why are you doing this?" John watched Sherlock intently during this time. Sherlock shook his head at him, hung up, and then turned his attention to the TV hanging on the wall somewhere behind them.
"Hey, d'you think they'd let me keep that?" Emily asked, leaning closer to Scottie.
The boy raised an eyebrow. "What? The pink phone?"
"Sure. It's nicer than the piece of crap I use and as long as Moriarty continues to pay the phone bill…"
Scottie rolled his eyes and sipped at an icy glass of water. "You're a little shit and you know it."
On the screen, the blond woman was still being shown. A caption read Make-Over Queen Connie Prince dead at 48 as a reporter's voice explained that she had been found two days ago by her brother in their house in Hampstead. Sherlock was up and out the door before the others even had a chance to finish their breakfasts.
"I don't understand," Scottie was saying. "I thought you said you wanted to solve all the cases before them to prove a point?"
"And we have proved it. Sherlock knows what we're capable of on our own - the way you knew about the whole Carl Powers thing, and how we beat them to Lestrade with their same conclusion. Any more than that and we're going to start looking like the bomber ourselves."
Scottie jumped in front of Emily, cutting her off. "Bullshit. You just don't want to go in there and see the lady's dead body."
"Corpses are icky!" she wailed. "I've seen more than enough corpses since I got here. The excitement of it all has started to wear off. Besides, they're just gonna take a look at her, try to determine an unusual cause of death, and..." Emily trailed off, staring somewhere behind Scottie.
"And...?"
Emily blinked. "Oh! Nothing, I just... Doesn't that look a lot like Willow?"
Turning to see where Emily was pointing, Scottie became aware of another girl about their age headed in their direction down the sidewalk. Spotting them, she stopped abruptly and looked up before spinning around again and continuing back the way she came. "I think that is Willow!" Scottie exclaimed, chasing after her. "Willow! Willow!"
For the first time Willow fell victim to a real-life glomping by not one, but two people she had previously only met on the other end of a computer screen. "It is you!" Emily squealed excitedly. "I can't believe I'm finally getting getting to meet another AANer!" She let go, as if suddenly remember that her internet friend still needed oxygen to function properly. "But, I don't understand. What are you doing here?"
Willow struggled for words. "I... It's a long story, to perfectly honest, but I'm so happy to finally see you two in person! You look great! Except... I don't know, I kind of expected you both to be a little... well, taller, I guess? Especially you, Scottie. Emily's got a good couple of inches on you."
Scottie frowned. Willow was a good head taller than the both of them. "Well excuuuse me, Miss Friendly Giant!"
"So now do you believe us about this whole 'being stuck in the Sherlock universe' ordeal?"
"I still don't know how you shits did it, but I always believed you," Willow said.
"Hold up!" Scottie interrupted. "We were talking with you on Tinychat just last night! You couldn't possibly have been back in the States one night and then the next morning woken up in a shady hotel room in the middle of London, unless... you went to bed back home one night and woke up in a shady hotel room in the middle of London the next morning, just like us! Oh, this is great news!" Scottie clung to Willow again.
Willow smiled weakly and shoved him off of her. "Yeah, yeah. Something like that. Now calm your tits before I have to file a restraining order against you two."
"Oh, just wait until you meet Sherlock and John! You're going to love them! I bet you can even stay with us in 221C, too. I'm sure they won't mind. Then we can solve cases together and who knows, if we're here and you're here, maybe the rest of And Another Note will show up at some point and-"
Scottie stopped when he heard his and Emily's names being called. The both of them looked up to see their group exiting the building. John waved his arm, signalling to them to come along. But when they looked back, Willow was gone.
"W-What?" Emily stammered. "I don't understand. She was literally just here! We... did see her, right? We're not going crazy?"
Scottie shrugged. "Maybe she just needs some time to settle in? The good news is, we now know she's here and knows our address if she wants to come find us again."
"I don't like this," Emily admitted, starting to walk towards Sherlock, John, and Lestrade again. "There was just something... I don't know, off about her. And then the way she just went and disappeared like that."
"You're absolutely right. She knows too much." Scottie squinted his eyes with a look of determination. "We should kill her."
Emily smacked him square in the chest with the back of her hand. "Quit fucking around and take this seriously! I just… I don't know. It's like my spidey senses are tingling, you feel?"
"That doesn't sound right."
"Shush. I just get this weird feeling that we can't trust her. I can't explain it."
"Well, no wonder she left. You're just gonna go around shouting out uncalled for accusations like that..."
"Oh, piss off!"
Back in 221B, Sherlock had plastered pictures of Connie Prince and other various bits and pieces of information regarding the previous two cases up on the wall. John and Emily had split off from the group, going to the house in Hampstead to investigate. Meanwhile Sherlock paced back and forth across the flat, hands pressed together as Lestrade watched impatiently.
"Connection, connection..." he was mumbling. "There's got to be a connection! Carl Powers, killed twenty years ago. The bomber knew him, admitted that he knew him! The bomber's iPhone was in the stationary from the Czech Republic. The first hostage from Cornwall, the second from London, the third from Yorkshire, judging by her accent." Sherlock flailed his arms about in irritation. "What's he doing? Working his way around the world? Showing off?"
Sherlock's phone rang again. This time he put it on speakerphone so that Lestrade could hear as well.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" an older woman's voice asked. "Joining the dots? Three hours. Boom... boom." The phone cut to a dial tone and Sherlock hung up.
"Well that wasn't morbid at all," Scottie said from where he had melted himself into the couch.
Mrs. Hudson let herself in several minutes later and Sherlock went to take a call at the other end of the living room. "It's a real shame," the landlady sighed, scanning her eyes across the wall sadly. "I liked her. She taught you how to do your colors."
Lestrade looked down at her, an eyebrow raised. "Colors?"
"You know! What goes best with what. I should never wear cerise, apparently. Drains me." Scottie wrinkled his nose at the thought of Mrs. Hudson in as atrocious a shade of pink as that.
"Who's that?" Lestrade asked Sherlock when he rejoined them.
"Home Office."
"Home Office?"
"Well, Home Secretary, actually. Owes me a favor."
Mrs. Hudson kept her eyes fixed on the makeshift board. "A pretty girl, but she messed about with herself too much. They all do these days. People can hardly move their faces. It's silly, isn't it? Did you ever see her show?"
"Not until now," Lestrade shook his head.
Sherlock rubbed his hands together, smiling. He fetched his laptop from the table somewhere behind him and opened it up to play a video.
"That's the brother," Mrs. Hudson explained, leaning over to see. "No lost love there, if you can believe the papers."
"So I gather. I've just been having a very fruitful chat with people who love this show. Fan sites, indispensable for gossip..." Sherlock informed her. Scottie, clearly bored out of his mind, let out an exasperated sigh and flopped off of the furniture and onto the floor. "Sorry, is there some place you'd rather be?"
"You've no idea."
Emily wasn't getting a lot of anything done herself, either. She'd mostly resorted to taking up an armchair in Kenny Prince's living room and stroking his cat, which closer resembled a hairless rat than a feline, if we're being perfectly honest here. Connie's brother Kenny sat down beside John on a nearby couch, crossing his legs and ultimately making him feel extremely uncomfortable.
"I don't know what I'm going to do now," Kenny said.
"Right."
"I mean, she's left me this place, which is lovely... but it's not the same without her."
John made a face, leaning back. "T-That's why my paper wanted to get the full story. Straight from the, uh, the horse's mouth. You sure it's not too soon?"
"No!"
"Right."
"You fire away."
Emily tried to keep from throwing up in her mouth. Things went on like this for some time more after John quickly phoned Sherlock to tell him about his newest lead. Although she knew the man was barking up the wrong tree, Emily said nothing and continued to play with the cat... thing until there was a knock at the door.
"That'll be him," John said.
Kenny looked up from fixing his hair in a mirror. "What?"
"Ah, Mr. Prince, is it?" Sherlock strode into the room, reaching out to shake Kenny's hand.
"Yes?"
"Very good to meet you."
"Thank you."
Sherlock didn't stop shaking the gentleman's hand. "So sorry to hear about-"
"Yes, yes, very kind. Shall we, uh..."
Sherlock let go then and leaned in close to John. "You were right; the bacteria got into her another way."
"Oh, yes?"
"Yes."
"Right, we all set?" Kenny clasped his hands together in anticipation before posing by the fireplace.
"Draw me like one of your French girls," Emily said from beside John. Without looking he attempted to put an arm on her shoulder while shushing her, but missed and ended up touching the girl's face. Emily licked it and he pulled away in disgust.
Meanwhile, Sherlock had begun snapping pictures like rapidfire. "Not too close," Kenny instructed. "I'm raw from crying." This request was, of course, completely and utterly ignored.
The naked cat yowled and rubbed up against Sherlock's leg. "Oh? Who's this?"
"Sehkmet. Named after the Egyptian goddess."
"How nice. Was she... Connie's?"
"Yes. Little present from yours truly." Kenny bent down to pick up the hairless animal.
"Sherlock, ah, light reading?" John asked.
"Oh, uh..." Sherlock frowned down at the bulky camera in his hands. He proceeded to flash it directly into Kenny Prince's face several times more.
Kenny blinked and jerked about, shouting, "Bloody hell, why are you looking there?"
"Sorry!"
"You're like Laurel and bloody Hardy, you two! What's going on?"
John nodded his head towards the door. "Actually, I think we've got what we came for. Excuse us."
"What?"
"Sherlock! Emily!"
"What?"
"We've got deadlines."
Sherlock and Emily scurried after him. Kenny stared after them in surprise and anger. "But you've not taken anything!"
Just outside, they were rejoined by Scottie, who had been waiting patiently alongside the exterior of the house. And by that I mean hiding in the bushes and waiting to pop out and them. As soon as Emily came around the corner from the front porch, he reached out and grabbed her ankle. Emily shrieked and instinctively kicked him in the face.
"Ouch!" Scottie yelped, picking himself up again.
"Serves you right, giving me a heart attack like that."
"It's a good thing we were transported into the Sherlock verse rather than Amnesia's. You'd get us both killed trying to fight back."
"Yes, oh, yes!" John was saying from several feet ahead of them. He laughed out loud.
Sherlock raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You thought it was the cat? It wasn't the cat."
"Wh... Yes, it is! It must be! That's how he got the tetanus into her system. Its paws stink of disinfectant."
"Lovely idea." Sherlock looked as if he were trying not to laugh himself.
"He coated it onto the claws of the cat," he explained. "New pet. Bound to be a bit jumpy around her. A scratch is almost inevitable. She wouldn't have..."
"It's alright, John," Scottie said, patting the doctor on his back reassuringly. "We can't all be genius detectives."
John made a face. "Oh, and I don't suppose you have any bright ideas?"
"As a matter of fact, I do! You're assuming Mr. Prince murdered his sister for her money, am I right or am I right? Of course I am; I'm always right." Scottie paused, checking to make sure that the others were paying attention to him. "Well, isn't it obvious? It was revenge! By Raoul! There was this whole campaigning dispute between the two of them - I don't remember the specifics, but you can ask Sherlock, he actually read the articles online - anyway, Connie threatened to disinherit Kenny and-"
"Wait, wait, wait a second!" John stepped in front of Sherlock and John, causing them to stop walking. Emily was a little late on the uptake collided into Sherlock's backside. "What about the disinfectant, then? On the cat's claws?"
Sherlock shrugged. "Raoul keeps a very clean house. You came through the kitchen door, saw the state of that floor, scrubbed to within an inch of its life. You smell of disinfectant!" Emily sniffed her own hands at this observation. "No, the cat doesn't come into it. Raoul's internet records do, though. I hope we can get a cab from here," Sherlock said, mostly to himself. He then continued walking down the very middle of the street while John remained where he stood, likely trying to keep from feeling too embarrassed.
Scottie patted his arm again on his way past. "Next time," he cooed.
The following morning, Sherlock and John were seating in their respective armchairs whilst watching the news on TV. The newscaster was going on about how twelve people were killed in a gas explosion.
"Old block of flats," John muttered over his shoulder at Sherlock. "He certainly gets about."
"Well, obviously I lost that round - although technically I did solve the case." Sherlock picked up the remote control and muted it. "He killed the old lady because she started to describe him. Just once, he put himself in the firing line."
John frowned. "What d'you mean?"
"What's there not to get?" Emily laughed. She walked into the room from the kitchen carrying a can of soda and settled down on the opposite end of the couch from Scottie. "This bomber fellow, whoever he might be and whom I'm absolutely positive not a single one of us has ever encountered before," she gave Scottie a warning glance as she said this, "is kind of like a crime spree prostitute."
"A what?" John choked.
"Criminal for hire," clarified Scottie.
"Say, are you two planning on adopting a puppy anytime soon?" Emily asked, sipping at her drink. "Because honestly I've been waiting years for that one and I still can't believe it hasn't happened yet."
"Casual reminder that we haven't technically known them for a full year."
Sherlock watched the pink phone that was seated beside him intently. "Taking his time this time." The cellphone went off just then, and Sherlock pursed his lips into a thin smile. "Speak of the devil." John leaned forward and watched intently as the other man flipped in open. Sherlock's face fell. "Your dragons have finished mating," he read.
"Oh! That notification's for me!" Emily let out, jumping to her feet.
Scottie raised an eyebrow at the girl. "When the hell did you have time to install minigame apps onto crucial evidence?"
Giving Emily a judgmental glare, Sherlock closed the notification and set the thing down again. Emily continued to stand awkwardly for another couple seconds before sinking back down onto the couch. There was a brief pause and John looked back towards the muted TV set. "Anything on the Carl Powers case?"
"Nothing. All the living classmates check out spotless. No connection."
"Good God, this scene sucks!" Scottie finally blurted out. "I keep forgetting how boring everything is between cases."
"Maybe the killer was older than Carl?" John went on, ignoring the boy.
"The thought had occurred."
"So why's he doing this, then - playing this game with you? D'you think he wants to be caught?"
Sherlock pressed his fingertips together in front of his mouth and smiled slightly. "I think he wants to be distracted."
John laughed humorlessly just before getting out of his seat and making towards the kitchen. "I hope you'll be very happy together."
"Oh!" Emily waved her empty soda can in the air as if showing off the fact that it was now empty. "While you're already up, mind fetching me another one of these?"
"Sorry, what?" Sherlock shot back over the girl.
His temper rising, John turned back and leaned his hands on the back of the chair. "There are lives at stake, Sherlock!" he hissed. "Actual human lives… Just - just so I know, do you care about that at-" The man was cut off when the aluminum can that had just been chucked made contact and bounced off of the side of his face. "What the bloody hell is wrong with you?!" he spat, whirling around.
Emily and Scottie both threw an accusatory finger at one another. "Caring won't get me another soda," Emily whispered. Scottie tried his best to hold back laughter.
Sherlock pursed his lips. "Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them." There was a long and tense silence between the four people in the room and then the pink phone received a text, signified by the Kim Possible message tone. Scottie raised an eyebrow at Emily, who grinned guiltily. "Excellent!" breathed Sherlock, picking it up. There was a quick beeping noise and a picture that only Sherlock could see. "View of the Thames. South Bank - somewhere between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo. You check the papers, I'll look online," he said, reaching for his own phone. He glanced up again at John. "Oh, you're angry with me, so you won't help." John shrugged. "Not much cop, this caring lark."
Emily huffed. "Man, y'all are useless. I guess I'll just go get one myself." She stood up and pushed past John.
"And I'll… casually go back to reading fan fiction, I guess," Scottie mumbled half to himself. "If anyone cares. No? Okay."
John scanned his eyes over a newspaper. "Archway suicide," he said.
"Ten a penny," snapped Sherlock.
"Two kids stabbed in Stoke Newington."
"Oh my god, this one is like Smaug has the personality of Martin Crieff and he's all insecure and trying to convince Bilbo that he's a terrifying dragon and oh my god this is great," Scottie wheezed. "Are half of these even for real?"
There was an exaggerated gasp from in front of the fridge. "How could that have been the last one?"
John moved along to the next paper. "Ah," he began, "man found on the train line - Andrew West."
Sherlock gave his phone a judgmental look. "Nothing!"
"Wait wait wait, I've got something!" Scottie exclaimed, sitting upright. Both Sherlock and John stopped what they were doing and looked over at him. "Emily, come quick!" he went on. "This one's a crossover between Star Trek and…" he stopped, glancing up. "Oh hello everyone."
Sherlock shook his head and began making a call: "It's me. Have you found anything on the South Bank between Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge?"
Apparently Lestrade had, and the group joined him beside a river less than an hour later. They were standing over a man's body and currently discussing whether or not this event was connected to the mysterious bomber.
"Any ideas?" pressed the Detective Inspector.
"Seven… so far…"
"Seven?"
Sherlock and John dance around each other inspecting the corpse. Emily began tapping her foot impatiently while Scottie pulled back a sleeve to glance impatiently at his watchless wrist. "He's been dead for about twenty four hours," John finally piped up. "Maybe a bit longer. Did he drown?"
"Apparently not," Lestrade commented. "Not enough of the Thames in his lungs. Asphyxiated."
Emily nudged Scottie with her elbow. "Hey, I'm bored out of my fucking mind here. It's like being Richard Castle minus the witty theories and sexual tension."
Scottie blinked. "I didn't understand that reference but go on."
"Do you want to, I don't know, go see a movie or something?" The girl dropped her voice to a near whisper as to not be heard over the crime scene-related discussion still going on nearby. "They obviously don't need us here, not to mention I have little to no faith in our combined ability to take on the Golem creature."
Scottie squinted. "Since when have you been so worried about getting someone hurt by being in the way?"
"Oh, I don't know, since we nearly got shot full of bullet holes in a museum? We aren't invincible, you know."
"Touche."
Scottie and Emily successfully avoided causing any unnecessary trouble in seeing that movie, and despite it not even being that good of a film, for the first time in a long time the couple of teenagers wandered the streets of London together, taking in the sights like overexcited tourists. They laughed at and cheered for street performers, took a stroll through the park, and got kicked out of a pub for being underage. It was nearly 2 AM when the kids made it back to Baker Street with sore feet and the last of John's stolen pocket money spent. It was then that they realized they hadn't brought along a copy of the apartment key, but luckily their excessive banging was enough to wake Mrs. Hudson, who unhappily helped them into their own flat. They overslept the following morning, and as such ended up missing Sherlock and John's departure for the art gallery.
"How could we let this happen!" Scottie wailed, throwing himself back down upon his bed face first.
Emily sat at the edge of her own bed painting her toenails. "Hey, I've been up since ten," the girl said in defense of herself.
Scottie lifted his eyes to glare at her. "Yeah, that's because you crashed the second we go back, whereas I stayed up to check in with And Another Note."
"It was like, midday then. Weren't they all in school?"
"It had already ended for some of them," answered Scottie. "Various US time zones and all that fun stuff."
"Was Willow on?"
"No."
"Weird. I wonder what's going on with her. I mean, I don't think that was a shared delusion we experienced the other day, and so of course I'm worried about her and how she's holding up. I don't know. There's just something fishy about the whole thing and I don't like it. But that being said, there isn't really anything we can be expected to do about it until she ever decides to pop up again." Emily shrugged. "Anyway, we aren't missing much by staying here. If they're on the art gallery case right now, shouldn't they just be proving that that Vermeer is a fake?"
"Yeah, and then wrapping up the case John has been working on for Mycroft," Scottie whined. "I can't decide which is worse: getting dragged along on all the boring bits of the detective work or being left behind on all of them!" Scottie jolted upright with a gasp, startling Emily so that her hand jerked to the side and nail polish across the side of her face. She shot Scottie a dagger-like glare, which he seemed not to notice in his own excitement. "The pool scene happens tonight, too!"
Their conversation was cut off when Mrs. Hudson let herself into the room carrying a tray with two homemade sandwiches. "You two are just like Sherlock," the older woman sighed. "Always so wrapped up in your own affairs and forgetting to take care of yourselves in the process. It's past noon and the two of you haven't even eaten breakfast yet! Aren't you starving?"
"Oh, positively ravished," Emily let out, reaching for one of the sandwiches.
Mrs. Hudson handed the second one to Scottie who took it happily. "Now what do you say, dears?"
"Thank you Mrs. Hudson!" they both exclaimed through full mouths.
"Now you kids keep out of trouble, you hear?" Their landlady half-smiled, shaking her head. They promised to do so (with very little intentions to keep said promise) and waited until the woman had disappeared into the hall again before picking up their talk.
"I just don't see how it's going to work out," Emily said, taking another bite. "Sherlock sure as hell isn't going to let us come with, and if we hang out with John instead, what if we end up strapped to bombs of our own?"
Scottie wrinkled his nose. "For all you know sitting around here will end up getting us grabbed instead of John. Again. Also, have I mentioned, it's the pool scene we're talking about! With the snipers and Moriarty and "is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket or are you just happy to see me" and oh sweet Jesus what if we actually get to see what Sebastian Moran looks like!"
Emily just shook her head in disbelief - partially because Scottie did make a valid point of them being possibly screwed over no matter what course they took, but also because not even she expected him to remember the exact gun type in the quote. When she didn't appear to have anything to add on the topic, Scottie sighed in defeat. He continued to eat his sandwich in silence for another minute or so before a strange idea occurred to him. Scottie swallowed. "Hey, Em?"
"Oh dear. I'm only 'Em' when you're about to suggest something particularly reckless."
"What if we got there first? You know, before Sherlock sends out that text so that Moriarty won't have sent his guys after John and/or us yet, but also so that he can't stop us because we'll already be there."
Emily hesitated, looking at Scottie long and hard before responding. "I'm listening."
"Ouch!" Scottie hissed. "Stop elbowing me with your shoulder!"
"Shhh!" Emily hissed back. "Trying to fit the both of us into one of these tiny rooms was your dumb idea!"
"No, I said we'd hide out in the changing rooms. You're the one who squeezed in here with me."
"Well fine, if I'm not wanted here maybe I'll go find my own changing room!"
"Good! Do that!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
The two of them were crouching on top of a chair that they'd dragged into the little room so that no one who came in would see their feet under the wood panels, and a red curtain blocked their view of the Bristol South Swimming Pool. Emily had only started to shift when she heard a door being pushed open. Both teenagers froze, tensing up. After about a second the thing shut itself, which echoed throughout the near empty building, there were footsteps growing closer to where they were squished up next to each other and Emily checked her phone to see that it was exactly midnight. That must be Sherlock, then, which struck her as weird because neither of them recalled hearing John having been brought in. Emily started to lean forward, hoping to see if John's feet were visible in one of the stalls alongside theirs, but Scottie pulled her back.
Luckily for them Sherlock had yet to discover the teenagers' presence, as they heard him begin the scene as scheduled: "Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present. Oh, that's what it's all been for, hasn't it? All your little puzzles; making me dance - all to distract me from this."
There was a long pause before a second pair of footsteps could be heard. They stopped again. "Evening," went John's voice. "This is a turn-up, isn't it, Sherlock?"
Scottie looked as if he were about to cry and it took all of his energy to keep from making a peep. To the untrained eye this may've looked like a gesture of fear, but Emily know all too well that her friend had gone into fangirling mode. She just hoped to God he didn't fuck everything up with it.
Sherlock's voice was quieter now. "John. What the hell...?"
"Bet you never saw this coming." A couple more footsteps and then a pause. "What… would you like me… to make him say… next?" Moriarty's playing around with John like a puppet was so much harder to listen to in person. "Gottle o' geer… gottle o' geer… gottle o' geer…" John's voice almost broke in that moment, and Emily cupped her hand over her mouth to ensure her own silence.
"Stop it," demanded Sherlock.
"Nice touch, this: the pool where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson too. Stop his heart."
"Who are you?" Oh, God, he even sounded more desperate just from being in the same room. And then a door at the other end of the pool could be heard opening. Scottie grabbed onto Emily's arm in anticipation, very nearly cutting off its circulation, but she said nothing.
"I gave you my number," Moriarty's creepy and yet unnervingly soothing voice rang out. "I thought you might call." They held their breaths as the man came closer. "Is that British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket… or are you just pleased to see me?"
"Both."
"Jim Moriarty. Hi!" Beat. "Jim? Jim from the hospital? Oh. Did I really make such a fleeting impression? But then, I suppose, that was rather the point. Don't be silly. Someone else is holding the rifle. I don't like getting my hands dirty." Moriarty's voice came even closer the next time he spoke. "I've given you a glimpse, Sherlock, just a teensy glimpse of what I've got going on out there in the big bad world. I'm a specialist, you see… Like you!"
You could just about hear the sneering in Sherlock's voice. "Dear Jim. Please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover's nasty sister? Dear Jim. Please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America?"
"Just so."
"Consulting criminal. Brilliant."
There was a strange mix of emotions bubbling up in Emily. None of the previous Sherlock experiences she was gifted with felt half as real or intense as this one. Not even when she and Scottie had first met Sherlock and John, or when they were being shot at or ran into Moriarty for the first time. She was somehow both unbelievably scared and happy at the exact same time. Emily glanced up at Scottie to see if his face, which could only be partially seen through thin strips of light that came in through the locker, conveyed a similar interpretation. Rather, the boy looked as if he were fighting back a sneeze.
"Isn't it? No one ever gets to me…" Moriarty went on, "and no one ever will."
Don't you fucking dare, Emily mouthed.
There was the sound of Sherlock cocking his pistol. "I did."
"You've come the closest. Now you're in my way."
"Ah-CHOO!"
There was a very long silence. Scottie rubbed at the bottom of his nose. "Sorry," he whispered back. Mere moments later their curtain was pulled open. Scottie and Emily looked up, wide-eyed, to see none other than Moriarty standing across from them.
"Carry on like we were never here?" Scottie tried weakly.
A slight chuckle came from the man. "Well don't be shy now," he purred. "You made your bed. Now lie in it."
Moriarty backed up, giving the two of them room to step out from their hiding place uneasily. Now they could see Sherlock, who stared back at them with a horrified look about him. The gentleman seemed at a loss for words. John looked away with a mixed expression of fear, anger, and sympathy. They guessed he'd heard them earlier and knew they were there but, of course, said nothing to give them away. When no one else spoke, Moriarty slowly erupted into a fit of laughter.
Several more uneasy seconds ticked by and the consulting criminal calmed down, wiping a tear away from his eye. "Oh, this is just too good," he exhaled. "I can see why you like having them around. But then, people do get so sentimental about their pets. I would've assumed you had these two on a much tighter leash." Two little red dots slowly shifted to where Scottie and Emily were standing. Scottie threw up a middle finger in the direction the laser sights were coming from, and Emily slapped his hand back down.
Sherlock lowered his gun somewhat. "Believe me when I say I didn't know about this. Please. They don't know anything. Leave them out of this."
"Oh dear. You aren't perhaps slipping, are you?" Moriarty chuckled to himself. "I have one of my own, you know. And unexpected addition to the family, if you will. Do you think that's a coincidence?"
"I don't know what you expect me to think," Sherlock said bitterly.
"Would you like to meet her?" Moriarty asked. He stepped to the side. "You can come out now, Willow dear. The other grown-ups are almost dying to get to know you." The pool's side door opened slowly, and a girl of about Scottie and Emily's age took a couple steps inside but said nothing.
"Willow!" Emily gasped, taking a step forward.
"Don't," warned Scottie. He grabbed onto the edge of her sleeve just to be safe.
"Oh? So she is a friend of yours? This just keeps getting better and better. Wouldn't you agree, Sherlock?"
"Take it," Sherlock said, attempting to change the topic by taking out the flashdrive and holding it into the air and then tossing it underhand to where Moriarty was standing.
Moriarty caught it effortlessly. "Huh? Oh! That! The missile plans! Boring! I could have gotten them anywhere." He tossed the thing into the pool, and there was a splash as it hit the water's surface.
"John can't launch himself at Moriarty," Scottie whispered urgently.
"Huh?" Emily shot back.
"We're standing in between the two of them. There's no way this can play out exactly the same now."
Emily took a deep breath. Scottie was right. But they were in too far now to try and put the show back on its original course. "Let her go," Emily demanded.
"What the hell are you doing?" Scottie hissed, pulling tighter on the girl's sleeve.
Moriarty blinked. "Pardon?"
"I said let her go," repeated Emily. "Willow's our friend, not one of your lackeys. She belongs with us, not… running around doing your errands."
"Your friend?" Moriarty mused. "If she was your friend, why do you think she would choose to spend her days with me? I don't normally enjoy the company of other people, but Willow here made quite the intern. Relaying messages, keeping tabs… She could be the one holding the sniper rifle right now. All I'd have to do is say 'please'. Is that the kind of friend you prefer to keep? One who will shoot you down at a simple command?" Willow looked away, avoiding the eyes of her fellow internet buddies.
"Shut up."
"Emily," Sherlock warned, slowly starting to lift his weapon again.
"I said shut up, both of you! I know Willow, and she would never do any of that! She's a good person, and you're nothing but a murderous psychopath and a liar!"
"Oh, I don't lie, Princess. You ought to know that. But I do applaud your nerve, standing up to me and Daddy like that, I really do. It's only too bad he doesn't appreciate you for it."
"How do you mean?" Emily asked, her voice softer now.
"Well, isn't it obvious? Sherlock thinks you're worthless. They both do, really. Of course, you can never expect them to admit it, but that's men for you. Your little friend there… perhaps he's the only one here who truly cares. But then again, he's in the same boat as you are. Always getting in the way, slowing them down… Sherlock Holmes isn't your babysitter. He doesn't have time to play games with children."
"He played games for you," Scottie said under his breath.
"Stop it," Sherlock demanded, gun still fixed on the consulting criminal. "Don't listen to him, Emily. Don't move, don't talk, don't even breathe - that goes for the both of you."
"Ooh, and how does that feel, Princess?" Moriarty mocked. "Ordered around like Sherlock's plaything."
"You heard the man," Emily choked. "He said stop it."
Moriarty pulled his lips back into a crooked smile. "Make me," he taunted.
Without warning the girl suddenly leapt forward, ripping out of Scottie's grasp. "Emily!" several distressed voices called after her, but it was too late. Emily only just heard the sound of a gunshot before everything went black.
