AN: You shall have to pardon me for all this darkness and angst. Also, I apologize if the nature of this case upsets anyone, but it was necessary to make the story work. Rest assured, there is nothing in here more graphic than what you might find on television crime dramas, so no need to fret.

Reviews/constructive criticism are welcome and encouraged.

Sherlock flicked the chess board away in frustration, upsetting several pieces, and leaned back in the chair, arms crossed huffily.

John's brows furrowed as he looked up at him over the decimated game. "What the hell was that?" He demanded.

"It was a fluke; I don't know how you did it."

"What?" He looked down at the board expectantly, but the little beady-eyed knight had no idea either.

"Don't expect to win so easily on a regular basis, I'm hardly on top of my game today." He tipped forward and ruffled his curly hair with a sigh.

John chewed his tongue pensively. He had made only eight moves, but then, this was Sherlock. The last time they had played chess, Sherlock had beaten him cleanly in just thirteen moves. John was self-admittedly rubbish at chess; he played too defensively and could only plan two or three moves ahead, where his adversary could manage at least twenty. Their matches were hardly fair. Yet this time, John realised, Sherlock had already projected every possible outcome of the game and determined that John would win.

A smile cracked his face as it occurred to him that Sherlock Holmes was - of course – assuming that John Watson would be playing as Sherlock Holmes would have played. That wasn't the case. John would have made a mistake somewhere, would have missed an opportunity or left a piece undefended. Sherlock would have won, but that didn't matter. Sherlock wasn't playing against the mere man that was John Watson, he was playing against himself, and he had lost.

"No more chess today, then?"

"No."

"Tea?"

"Please."

He began to gather up the little pieces, but Sherlock's hand fell over his. "I've got it, make tea." John raised his eyebrows but left him to it, sauntering off to the kitchen to fetch the kettle. Sherlock turned the rook over in his hand, warming the cool stone piece with his palm before dropping it back into the blue velveteen bag.

If the news stories were any indication, Lestrade would be here by five. Two little girls, found dead, all the withheld details pointed to something...unsavoury, something sexual, statements from police suggested something gory, likely torture. With a third reported missing this morning, snatched on the walk between her home and her school, it was only a matter of time. She was dead by now, almost certainly.

He felt a strange and unfamiliar pang of dread in the pit of his stomach and his mouth tensed slightly.

"You'll want to wash a third mug, John."

There was a knock on the door downstairs. Right on schedule.

John glanced from Sherlock to the staircase. "Planning on getting that?"

"It's Lestrade." He announced, as though the declaration spoke for itself.

John pursed his lips slightly, but set down the newly-scrubbed mugs and scuttled down the stairs to the door. Brief, distant words of greeting were exchanged, and John returned with Gregory Lestrade tight on his heels.

Definitely the little girl, definitely murdered, definitely raped. The set of Lestrade's shoulders and the weight of his footsteps left no doubt. Sherlock's eyes never left the scattered chess pieces as the DI approached.

"I told you when you asked me last year," his voice was a low rumble, "I don't take this sort of case."

There was a brief pause, just enough time for Lestrade to be completely unsurprised by Sherlock's pre-emptive rebuttal. "Yes, I remember," he glanced at the armchair but didn't take it, "and we didn't solve that one, either."

"Not my problem." John retreated uncomfortably to the kitchen, silently hoping that the kettle would take its sweet time to boil. He was interested, certainly, but he got the distinct impression that he should keep his distance from these two obviously agitated men.

"Say whatever you want to remove yourself from this, but you must know what's going on by now, never mind that we haven't reported it. These are children, and they're being tortured and killed by some sick bastard. You have it within your ability to stop this, should you elect to do so, but for some unfathomable reason, you refuse."

John had stopped bustling around the kitchen to listen, almost without realizing it, but Sherlock hadn't missed a beat. "Kettle's boiling over, John." It was. He hissed a profanity or two and rushed to turn off the stovetop.

Sherlock turned, finally, to meet Lestrade's glare. "Rapists are not like other criminals. Motive is hazy at best, always emotionally complex, behaviour is irrational and unpredictable. I'm not a psychologist, Detective Inspector; this is not my field of expertise."

Lestrade turned away, clearly frustrated, his hands tapped anxiously inside his coat pockets. "Sherlock, everything is your field of expertise. I know you could give us something to work with, a fucking eyelash, anything." He was swearing, very uncharacteristic, he must be profoundly affected indeed. "Just come take a look, this one was only found an hour ago. I've got the file on the two others. If you come up with nothing, I won't bother you about it again, but I'm begging you – "

"Oh, I'll come up with something," he interjected. He sat back further in the chair and pressed his fingertips together over his lips. "But if I make a mistake, if I'm wrong, then when the next girl turns up, it will be my fault, for wasting police resources, for letting the killer escape, for butting in. By the time your people and the media and tear me apart it'll be as though I strangled the victims myself. I may not care much about public opinion, but your superiors certainly do. One major mistake and I'll never be allowed on another case, all because you didn't accept it when I told you that this is not my area."

Lestrade scratched his eyebrow, more or less an excuse to break Sherlock's piercing glare. He was done, nearly ready to back off, but he had one last pocket ace. "It's one thing to try and then fail anyway," he said, his voice poisonous, "but you're letting this happen. By choosing to do nothing, you might as well be strangling them yourself, you might as well have broken their fingers, fucked all of them yourself and dumped their bodies in alleys –"

"Go and look at the bloody crime scene, Sherlock!" John roared, slamming the mug he was holding down on the countertop. Lestrade spun to look at him, but could see only his quivering shoulders and his hands splayed out on the counter, knuckles bloodless. Target reached.

Sherlock was silent for a moment, his eyes likewise fixed on John's turned back.

"Lestrade, go wait in the hallway."

His shoulders sagged in relief, "So you'll come, then?"

"I didn't say that, I said wait in the hallway. I need to have a word… with my colleague."

Irritated, but undeniably hopeful, he slid one last look between the two residents of 221B and retreated down the stairs.

Sherlock stared at John intently, waiting for him to turn around which, slowly, he did. His face was slightly pale, set in a stony glower.

"What?"

"What do you think?" A moment of silence. "You don't take rape cases?"

"You heard me."

"Why not?"

"Because they are not precise. Deducing the actions of carnally irrational people is considerably less exact. It's a job for a psychologist, not a detective."

"But Lestrade is right. You could find something to go on."

"You heard what I said, John." He repeated emphatically.

"This is about your ego."

Sherlock's eyebrow twitched and he laced his fingers over his stomach. "Is it?"

"You're afraid of being wrong." He growled, and once he said it, he couldn't stop himself from saying the rest. "You don't care if everyone hates you, most people already hate you, but you're afraid of looking like an idiot, of having a moment of humanity. And you can say you don't care all you want, but this makes you squeamish. You can deal with all the blood and guts in the world, but something about a little kid being raped and tortured puts you off."

"It puts you off."

"Of course it does, it disgusts me, it's sick."

"You sure you're not just projecting, then?"

"You sure you're even human?"

Sherlock lowered his eyes for a moment, and John wasn't sure if he had touched a nerve or just provoked a thought. The electricity between them nearly made John's hair stand on end as he waited for Sherlock's reply.

"You will do the medical examination of the victim," He stated flatly. It wasn't a question, but a condition. If John was going to be insistent on this case, he was going to realize the full discomfort of it.

John swallowed. This hadn't immediately occurred to him, but he was a doctor. This was his job. And he had, for better or worse, made this case his business. He nodded curtly.

They threw on coats and shoes with little of their normal enthusiasm, but when they reached Lestrade in the hallway Sherlock sank into casework mode. John could see it in his face, the picture of efficiency.

Lestrade had arrived not in a police cruiser, but in his own car, and where Sherlock would normally have insisted on taking a cab, he conceded to let the DI drive them to the scene. John wasn't sure if it was a disappointment or a relief to sit in the back in silence while Lestrade briefed Sherlock on the particulars of the victim, the crime scene, and the circumstances surrounding her death.

Her name was Lucia Printz, ten years old, curly brown hair, brown eyes. She had gone missing on the six-block walk from her house to school and her teacher had phoned her mother when she had failed to turn up for her first class. The mother, apparently, was inconsolable. She normally walked her daughter to school, but had suffered a migraine that morning and had allowed Lucia to walk the short distance herself. Now the girl had turned up dead, dumped in an alleyway between three and four in the afternoon, apparently sexually assaulted, brutally beaten, and strangled.

John could see the cogs working in his head already. It was an unusual crime, even beyond the paedophilic aspect. Committed in broad daylight, surprisingly local, the body having been found only a few miles from where she had been abducted. Both the street where the girl had been picked up and the area where she had been disposed of were fairly busy, yet none of the interviewed parties had noticed anything unusual. Sherlock was already dissecting the facts, sitting quietly and absorbing every detail that Lestrade was pouring out for him. John heard him flipping through the files on his lap.

Lestrade parked two streets up and they filed out, Sherlock still carrying the case notes under one arm. The alley in question was cordoned off with police tape, and the adjacent road was blocked by four police cars and an ambulance, lights spinning silently. Traffic had been redirected further up the street. He lifted the tape and stood aside to let them duck beneath it. John found himself half-braced, waiting for the obligatory "afternoon, Freak," or "why is he here?" but both Anderson and Donovan were conspicuously absent. He wondered if Lestrade had arranged this intentionally, knowing that Sherlock would be hesitant to accept and hoping that a little less criticism might persuade him. Regardless, it was a welcome change. Someone from the forensics team crossed their path and handed a pair of latex gloves each to Sherlock and John before leading them further into the alley.

"Most of the last hour has been spent securing the area and taking photographs," Lestrade explained, trailing slightly behind. "We've turned her over, we had to so we could check for vitals, but otherwise nothing's been touched. The sexual assault is just conjecture, based on the previous two cases, but this level of violence says they're almost certainly connected."

John balked slightly as they rounded the damp pile of cardboard boxes stacked on the left side of the cobbled alleyway and he saw the pitiful bundle curled behind them. She seemed so terribly small, even for the age of ten, like a doll. Though there wasn't a doll in existence with a face so destroyed. She was blue with bruises, one cheekbone looked broken, and her half-open eyes were bright red, bleeding. Her body was turned awkwardly at the abdomen. She had clearly been laid in the foetal position before her torso was turned to check for breath and pulse. Her shoulders were bare, but she was wrapped in a clean white sheet, then in a black plastic bin liner.

He stopped several steps short of approaching her, trying to switch off John and switch on Dr. Watson MD, but the change was slow in coming.