So sorry about the wait... life is what happens when you'd rather be writing fanfiction. :)

Warning: trigger for child abuse. :(

I'd forgotten about the stitches until I felt the crackly tugging across the skin of my back and saw the water in the bath turn pink. I probably should have mentioned something to Doctor Watson sooner, but I honestly had forgotten about them in the surrealistic turn my afternoon had taken. Now I'd apparently tugged them open when I'd stretched too far to scrub at my back with the flannel. This was going to require some attention. I picked up John's mobile and sent a text to Sherlock's phone.

Help.

That was all the text said, and the speed at which it propelled John and Sherlock into action was actually rather astounding. The two men were on their feet and dashing off to the loo within seconds, Sherlock calling out the boy's name as he went.

When they entered the small room, they found Cecil in the tub and above the water, wet strands of chestnut hair plastered to his forehead. His knees were drawn up to his chest, knobbly knees poking up out of the lavender scented bubbles. John nudged past Sherlock and went to kneel beside the tub.

"Cecil?" John asked. "What's—oh my…"

"John?" Sherlock asked, noting the way that John's speech had trailed off. The detective approached and sat on the lid of the toilet right behind John. He was about to ask what was the matter, but then as he looked at the small boy sitting in the tub, he saw.

There was a ragged line of poorly seated black stitches extending in a straight, four-inch line underneath Cecil's right shoulder blade. The stitches had been torn open at one end and a thin trickle of blood was running down his back. Cecil was looking up at them with curious eyes, not a hint of the pain that he must be feeling reaching his face. John made a tisking sound under his breath and reached a hand back towards Sherlock.

"Sherlock, fetch my kit from the closet, will you?" John's eyes never left the wound on the boy's back. Sherlock made a noise of agreement and dashed off for the kit. John reached a hand up and pushed some of the damp curls off the boy's forehead.

"Oh Cecil…" John muttered. "What on earth happened to you?"

Cecil picked up the mobile from where it lay on the edge of the tub and pecked away at the keys with his thumbs. While it would never cease to amaze John at how intuitive children of the 21st century were with technology at such a young age, he was at this moment grateful for the child's aptitude. Cecil had finished typing when Sherlock came back in with John's medical kit in his hand. He handed it to the doctor and Cecil wordlessly handed the mobile to Sherlock. Sherlock accepted it and read out the message.

"I got hurt at the playground. I fell off the bars and cut my back open. Frank and Celia didn't want to take me to the hospital."

John scoffed angrily as he set about cleaning the wound, daubing it gently with sterile cotton swabs. "Why not, Cecil?"

Sherlock handed the phone back and Cecil spent a few minutes clacking out his response. Sherlock again read the message, saying, "They didn't want the doctors to see. Frank said he learned how to stitch in the army so he sewed up my skin with thread from the sewing kit."

Sherlock felt a hot pang of anger spear him in the gut. "Cecil? What didn't they want the doctors to see?" It was bad enough that the boy hadn't received proper medical attention for the cut on his back, but the phrase 'not wanting the doctors to see' had terrible implications.

"Sherlock…" John said, a queer note of anxiety and calm rage in his voice. It was then that both the doctor and Sherlock realised that in addition to the laceration on Cecil's back, the expanse of the child's pale back and shoulders also exhibited a range of purplish-red bruising. The bruises wouldn't have been visible when the child was clothed, but if a doctor had examined the boy, they would have seen the clear indicators of child abuse.

"Cecil, did Frank and Celia give you those bruises?" Sherlock asked, his voice much calmer than he was on the inside.

Cecil accepted the mobile back from Sherlock and typed one word. "Obviously." Sherlock snorted in amusement at the boy's use of his trademark word, but the amusement was short-lived as anger boiled up inside him. There was never any reason to strike a child… a child that was so small and trusted so implicitly.

John exhaled heavily and finished pulling out the last of the shoddy stitches from Cecil's skin. He wanted to storm out of Baker Street, find Frank and Celia Jones, and then pummel them into oblivion for what they'd done to Cecil and undoubtedly what they'd done to their other foster children. But right now, the boy needed Doctor Watson and that's who John was going to be. So instead of storming out in a fit of righteous indignation, he pulled out sterile stitching material and placed a gentle hand on Cecil's shoulder.

"Cecil? I need to redo these stitches okay? I'm going to put something on it to numb the skin and dull the pain, but if I'm hurting you at all, just shake your hand or something okay?" Cecil stared into John's eyes for a long minute before he nodded acquiescence. John set to work numbing the area with a local anaesthetic and Sherlock joined his partner on the floor, kneeling at the edge of the tub.

Sherlock held Cecil's hand the whole way through the re-stitching of his wound. Cecil didn't make a single protestation. When it was done, they drained the tub and bundled Cecil into a fluffy towel. Sherlock and John left him alone so that he could change into a set of pyjamas that Anthea had dropped off while John had been stitching Cecil's back. (She'd also left several other bags of boy's clothing, but they'd go through that later.)

Sherlock and John came out of the kitchen—where they'd been quietly discussing Cecil's abuse—to find the aforementioned boy lying on his stomach on the couch, his mouth opened and a quiet snore issuing forth. The two men shared a small smile at the sight of the boy finally resting comfortably, clean and with a full belly and the cut on his back stitched properly.

"We have to find Cecil a proper family, Sherlock," John murmured.

"I know," Sherlock said, staring intently at the boy. "I know."

So I'm going to send out an appeal to you. I have an idea about where I want this story to go (obviously) but if you have any suggestions or ideas about activities or interactions you'd like to see between Cecil and Sherlock, John, Mycroft, etc... let me know! At this point, I think a prompt or two might help keep me on track. :) Danke!