Chapter Text
The case was moving quickly now.
Too quickly.
Sherlock didn’t sleep the night before. Not for lack of trying — but because every time he closed his eyes, he saw Marlene Withers’ kitchen table. The open jar of marmalade. The half-smoked cigarette stubbed out on the windowsill. The missing shoe.
And the voice — not Moriarty’s this time, but his own. Cold, rapid-fire deductions cycling through his mind like a faulty metronome. Performance. Intent. Message left. Witness observed. Try again. Try again.
By dawn, he’d already scribbled six new theories on the living room wall in wax pencil.
Rosie stirred upstairs.
John’s alarm would be going off soon.
Sherlock ran a hand through his hair, eyes bloodshot.
He needed to go out. To the scene. To the boyfriend. To the building opposite Marlene’s — there was a tenant with a broken window and a broken alibi.
But John had a hospital shift. Twelve hours.
And Rosie couldn’t come.
"You want me to babysit?"
Molly’s voice was half amusement, half genuine disbelief.
“I’m aware it’s unorthodox,” Sherlock said over the phone. “But you’ve done it before. Briefly.”
“Once. At Bart’s. For twenty minutes. While you interrogated the vending machine.”
“She knows you. She likes you.”
Sherlock looked over at Rosie, who was playing with a set of measuring cups on the kitchen floor. She looked up at him and gurgled happily. One measuring cup was in her mouth.
“I have no other options.”
“You know you do,” Molly said gently.
Sherlock’s jaw clenched. “I have no other acceptable options.”
There was a long pause.
Then: “Alright. I’ll be there by ten.”
Molly arrived bundled in a scarf, cheeks pink from the wind.
“Look at you, little lady,” she beamed as she knelt down to Rosie’s level. Rosie blinked, then grinned wide and reached out toward Molly’s necklace.
“Well,” Molly laughed, “I suppose that’s a yes.”
Sherlock hovered awkwardly, already half in his coat. “There’s food. There’s nappies. There’s—”
“I know how to watch a child, Sherlock,” Molly said kindly. “Go. Do your work.”
He stood still for a beat longer.
Then, abruptly: “Thank you.”
Molly looked startled, but smiled. “Of course.”
He was gone a moment later, coat flying, scarf catching the wind like a shadow behind him.
By noon, Sherlock had stood face-to-face with Marlene’s former partner: a wiry man named Darren, who claimed to have “seen the light” and now lived above a spiritual crystal shop. He offered Sherlock herbal tea and insisted that “Marlene ran away because of bad energy.”
Sherlock didn’t buy it. Not because of the tea, but because the man’s fingernails were dirty with soil that didn’t match the plants in his flat. He wore a heavy coat despite the warmth. There was a bruise on his knuckle that didn’t align with any recent injuries he’d mentioned.
But most damning of all — he kept referring to Marlene in the past tense.
Sherlock left him with a warning and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Outside, the wind bit his skin through his coat, but he didn’t mind. His mind was sharp, adrenaline prickling his spine.
Still, somewhere underneath the rush — there was an ache.
A pull.
The faint image of Rosie’s small hands, reaching for his curls. The way she’d leaned her head on his shoulder that morning, murmuring, “’Lock stay.”
He shook it off and moved on.
Back at Baker Street Molly sat on the floor with Rosie in front of her, plastic stacking cups spread in chaotic formation. She looked at the child with a strange mixture of affection and awe.
“You’re kind of amazing, you know that?” she whispered. “You got him to soften.”
Rosie giggled and threw a cup.
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
Molly looked around the flat. It was cleaner than it used to be. Not clean, exactly — Sherlock still left folders everywhere, and there was a bullet hole in the skull on the mantle — but there were signs of life.
Photos of Rosie. A tea towel folded on the counter. A rattle shaped like a bee.
Sherlock Holmes had made room for a child.
It made her throat tighten unexpectedly.
Sherlock returned just before six. His coat was damp from rain. His hair was windblown. He looked almost… human.
“She was an artist,” he said without preamble. “Marlene. Not professionally. But there are sketches in her neighbor’s bin. Ripped up. That’s where the footprints came from — the neighbor’s. He was watching her. Obsessed.”
Molly blinked. “Do you… want to sit?”
“I—” Sherlock paused, suddenly noticing Rosie curled up against her leg, fast asleep. “Did she… was she alright?”
“Perfect. She had mashed bananas and danced to ABBA.”
“Ah.”
Molly studied him for a moment. “You’re getting better.”
Sherlock looked down. “I’m not sure.”
“You are.”
He didn’t respond.
As Molly gathered her things to leave, she turned at the door.
“You’re allowed to stop sometimes. You know that, right?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Well. Learn.”
She left him standing in the soft hum of the lamp-lit flat, Rosie breathing gently on the rug.
John came home to the smell of stew — Sherlock had attempted to cook. Sort of. The results were edible, and that alone felt like a miracle.
After dinner, John read Rosie a book while Sherlock sat nearby, watching her eyelids flutter as she drifted off. The day’s storm had worn off. She clung to Sherlock’s scarf like a security blanket.
“She missed you,” John murmured.
“I missed her.”
“You’re good with her, you know.”
“I wasn’t always.”
“You are now.”
Sherlock didn’t reply. Just sat there, eyes on the sleeping child.
After John carried Rosie to her cot, he returned to find Sherlock still seated in the same spot, hands in his lap.
“You alright?”
Sherlock nodded slowly.
“I just… don’t want it to stop.”
John sat beside him. “Then don’t stop.”
Sherlock exhaled, voice nearly inaudible. “I don’t think I could survive losing it.”
“You’re not going to. We’re right here.”
There was a pause.
And then, finally — Sherlock leaned against him, just slightly.
John didn’t move.
They stayed there in silence, warm and whole and fragile.