Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was hard for me to accept that almost four hours had passed before the outside world took notice of our hostage situation at the clinic. The young man with the gun had disconnected the landline office phones soon after disposing of our mobiles. Fortunately, the daughter of one of our clients had been trying to contact her mother on her mobile, and after a long while with no response from her nor getting through to the clinic, had finally contacted the police. Pounding on the locked plate glass door out front signaled the arrival of the authorities, but their view of us was blocked by an interior wall.

This new development only agitated the man even more. "Let me go out and talk to them," I suggested. "I'll let them know what you want."

"You think I'd trust you?" he yelled.

"Listen, you can't keep us here forever. Some of these people need help. We've told you a hundred times we don't have any drugs here and…" I stood up on my knees which was a mistake.

He swung and caught my chin with the gun, knocking me sideways. I tried to grab his arm, but the blow almost knocked me out. Mary leapt to my defense, knocking the gun out of his hand, then expertly twisting his arm behind his back and pinning him to the ground. At the time I was totally unprepared for what I had just witnessed and if I had not seen her do it, I would never have believed it of her. It would be a few months before I would learn something of the life she had led before I met her. This incident was only one of many which Sherlock would store in his mind and eventually use to piece together to learn that she was not who she claimed to be. But for the moment, I was totally taken aback by her actions, though grateful that our crisis was resolved and no one had been killed or seriously injured, although my jaw was discolored and sore for a few days.

After the police came in and sorted everything out, we closed the clinic for the rest of the day and I was finally able to call Sherlock on Mary's phone. I had to listen to his tirade about my absence before I was finally able to get in a word about what had transpired at the clinic. There was a pause on his end of the line and then he asked how long it would be before I could get to his place.

"No, Sherlock, that's not what I want to hear," I said. "I just told you that we've been held at gunpoint by a lunatic for the past four hours. Your first question should have been 'are you all OK?' or 'is Mary all right?' You never show the slightest concern for anyone else. It's all about you."

"I assumed," Sherlock responded, "since you're talking to me that you are unharmed. And I heard Mary's voice in the background and you're calling me on her mobile—"

"Just forget it."

There was a moment of silence and then Sherlock said, "Are the two of you all right?"

"No, Sherlock, it doesn't count if I have to tell you to ask if we're OK. Listen, I'm going to take Mary home, and then I'll be over to see you. I guess you've managed all this time by yourself. It will only be another hour or so. What are you doing now?"

"We stopped on the way home from the park and ate lunch and now we're supposed to be taking a nap, but that's not working out. She's lying on the couch talking to her invisible dog and I'm slumped here in my chair, talking to you."

"Why don't you read to her?" I suggested. "Kids like that."

"Read what?"

"Well what kinds of stories did your Mum read to you when you were little? Oh, don't tell me. She regaled you with Tales from the Periodic Table, the Adventures of Cesium and Sulphur."

"Mixing Cesium and Sulphur would cause an explosive reaction," said Sherlock quite seriously.

"Yeah, I think their nicknames were Watson and Holmes. Just find something online—fairy tales or something. Or ask her what her favorite story is. I've got to go. I'll be there after a while."

"Please hurry, John." Sherlock ended the call and plunged the phone into the pocket of his dressing gown that he had exchanged for his coat when the two of them returned from the park.

"Is John your invidible friend?" asked Chelsea.

"It's beginning to look that way," replied Sherlock. "He's real enough, though. I thought you were supposed to be napping."

"I've tried, but my eyech won't tay chut."

Sherlock sighed. Her mispronunciation of words was annoying but cute. "Well, I suppose I could read you a story.

At that suggestion, Chelsea sat up and smiled.

"Come here and sit on my lap and I'll find us something." Sherlock reached for his tablet on the floor next to his chair and Chelsea climbed onto his lap and wriggled around to make herself comfortable. "Do you have any favorite stories that your Dad reads to you?"

"Robin Hood of Wood Fored."

"Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest?" Sherlock searched on the tablet. "Oh, here's a version published in 1850 and it's free. This ought to be good."

Chelsea laid her head back against Sherlock's chest and raised her left hand to lightly grasp the collar of his shirt as he downloaded the book, Robin Hood and Little John, Or, The Merry Men of Sherwood Forest by Pierce Egan. "OK, from the beginning:

" 'In the year of grace, 1161, during the reign of the second Henry, two travellers, travel-stained and mounted upon jaded steeds, wended their way through the intricacies of the vast forest of Shire Wood or Sherwood, situated in Nottinghamshire. It was an evening in March, chill and cold; the wind came in fitful gusts, whistling now, and anon sighing through the young green leaves and old boughs of the huge trees. The sun was fast declining,…'"

Sherlock read aloud for only a few minutes when he noticed that Chelsea had fallen asleep. It had no doubt been a long day for her since she had been sitting on the stairs when he awoke that morning and they had had quite a long walk to the park and back plus her exertions on the playground. He did not want to risk waking her and he could not reach his laptop on the desk from where he sat, so he took the opportunity to research "changeling" on the tablet. The note she had with her that morning said she was a changeling, but not the bad sort. A cursory study of what was available on the Internet seemed to indicate that in folklore almost all the changelings were bad. For the most part, in the stories changelings were fairy children, or in some cases old fairies, left in place of human children. What could her father have possibly meant by that strange statement? Surely no one in the present day believed in fairies or changelings.

Sherlock was still pondering that question, with Chelsea still asleep on his lap, when I finally arrived. He indicated for me to be quiet and to take a seat at the desk. "The note's there that was with her," he said softly. "Tell me what you think of it."

I read the note through twice. "Do you have any idea who "R" is?"

"Is that the first thing about it that jumped out at you?"

"Well, no, the part about the changeling is pretty odd. I don't even know what to make of that. How has she been all day?"

"Like a five-year-old."

"Did you actually say you took her to the park—Regent's Park, near here?"

"It's not my idea of the way to spend a day, but it did take up most of the morning. I really don't know what to do with her, John."

I couldn't help smiling. The picture of her sleeping on his lap was one that I would not soon forget. "You seemed to have put her to sleep." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I had a horrible thought. "You didn't give her anything, did you?'

"John!"

"Sorry. I've had a bad day."

"The cut and awful bruising on your chin speak to that. Do you…uhm…want to tell me about the gunman, about what happened?"

"No, but I will tell you how it ended. I think I'm more upset about that than the whole hostage thing." I related how the gunman had knocked me out of the way and Mary had jumped to my defense and had wrestled the man to the ground. "Sherlock, I don't know what to make of that! My fiancée, the woman I'm going to marry, acting like, I don't know, some sort of ninja. I mean, I'm supposed to be the protector, the one taking care of her. And, here, she jumps in, in front of our colleagues and those other people and does that. She might very well have saved my life, she may have saved all of our lives—no telling what that idiot would have done with the police outside. And I don't even know why I'm upset with her for doing that. But I can tell you the ride home was pretty quiet, because I just don't know what to say to her. How would you feel in that situation?"

"I think I would be grateful that I was marrying a woman who could and would do that sort of thing, who possessed that skillset that—"

"Oh, what would you know?" I interrupted. "You don't even have a girlfriend. If you did, you wouldn't say that."

"You asked my opinion, and in my opinion, you're angry because Mary was the hero and not you. I suggest when you go home tonight that you take her in your arms, tell her how beautiful she is and how lucky you are to have such a woman in your life, and that you hope she's always beside you."

"When did you become such a romantic?" I asked.

It was just then that Chelsea woke from her nap and rubbed her eyes with her hands. She reached up and patted Sherlock on the cheek. "Did you finich the tory?"

"No, we didn't get very far. We'll read more later. This is John," he said, indicating me.

"Your invidible friend?"

"He materialized finally."

Chelsea slid off Sherlock's lap and trotted to the lavatory.

"She's cute," I said.

"Back to the note," said Sherlock, standing and coming over to the desk. He sat down opposite me. "People don't really believe in changelings today, do they?"

"Of course not. Maybe he doesn't mean it in the fairy tale sense. Maybe it means something else."

"Like what?"

"Don't know," I said. "Just maybe it has another meaning."

"In the stories," said Sherlock, "people would do awful things to prove the child was a changeling, like holding it over a fire or under water."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not suggesting anything, John. That's just what the stories said, but that's the third time today you've insinuated that I'm somehow going to harm this child. If you and Mary have a baby, you're not even going to let me near it, are you?"

"Hi, John." Chelsea came back in to the room and skipped over to Sherlock's side. "Lock wiched you were here all day."

Oh, Lock did, did he?" I said.

"Not Lock. Lock!" she said, frustrated at not being understood.

"Sherlock?" I asked, confused.

Sherlock put his hands around her waist and lifted her onto his lap. "You have no idea how many S's there are in words, John, until you're around someone who can't pronounce them."

"So how do you say Chelsea?" I asked.

"Chelly," she replied, smiling.

"And there's no discernible pattern to her substitutions," said Sherlock. "Sometimes she replaces the S with a D or a T or a CH sound, or she just drops the S or the whole syllable altogether like in sugar or Sherlock or Sherwood Forest."

"Well, let's figure out your father's name," I suggested.

"I already tried that this morning," said Sherlock. "It's Dad."

"According to the note here, it starts with an R." I said. "Chelsea, when people come to see your father or you walk into one of the shops and people say hello to your Dad, do they say, 'Hi, Robert' or 'Hi, Roy' or 'Randall' or—"

"Richard," said Chelsea.

"Remarkable, John. Keep going." Sherlock scribbled the name on a piece of paper.

Compliments from Sherlock were rare, so I continued. "Well, do some people call your Dad 'Mr. something?' Like in your note, your Dad calls Sherlock 'Mr. Holmes.' Or I'm 'Dr. Watson.' So someone might call your Dad 'Mr.'—"

"Mitter Brook."

"Brook," repeated Sherlock, writing it down.

"No, not Brook," said Chelsea. "Brook!" She slapped her hand against her forehead.

"Don't worry, Chelsea. He gets that reaction from me a lot, too." And then it struck me. "Sherlock! Brook. Richard Brook?"

"It doesn't mean anything, John. It's a common name. There must be thousands of people named Brook in England."

"But it can't be coincidence. Richard Brook? The name Moriarty chose to ruin you? To prove you to be a fraud?"

"John, Moriarty's dead. He's been dead for two years. I was there. I saw him die."

"You're forgetting something, Sherlock."

"What?"

"I was there that day, too. I saw you die."

"That was different. That was staged."

"And you think his death wasn't."

"I know it wasn't."

"OK. If you say so," I conceded. "So, this Richard Brook must have been a client of yours or someone you know. Not a close acquaintance—he calls you 'Mr. Holmes.' Anybody come to mind?"

"No."

"OK," I continued. "Let's work with your whole name, Chelsea. What comes after Chelsea?"

Chelsea shrugged.

Let's try a different approach. When I was little and I did something bad, my Mum would say my whole name. She'd say, 'John Hamish Watson'," I said gruffly. "What does your Mum say when you're bad?"

"Her Mum's dead, John."

"Oh…uh…sorry. What does your Dad call you when he's upset with you?"

"Chelly Mary Troi Brook," she said, imitating my gruff voice.

Sherlock wrote down the names.

"That's a very pretty name and unusual," I said. "Chelsea Mary Troi."

"Oh, John." Sherlock's face had gone even paler than usual.

"What is it?" He had been writing the letters in her names, rearranging them.

"Mary Troi," he said.

"Yeah? What about it?"

"Mary Troi is an anagram." He looked up at me and held up the paper. "Moriarty."

I snatched the paper from his hand. "Jesus. You just reminded me Moriarty's dead."

"So," said Sherlock, "how much of a coincidence is it that her father's bookend names are Richard Brook and the letters of her middle names spell Moriarty?"

"But, Sherlock, James Moriarty died two years ago. And his creation Richard Brook came about in those few months before his death. She's five years old. The timeline doesn't work. And what about the name Chelsea?"

"I don't know."

"What are you two talking about?" the subject of our discussion asked.

"Nothing," I said. "We're just talking."

"Not so fast," said Sherlock. "Chelsea, have you ever heard of a man named Moriarty?"

"Nope," she replied.

Sherlock and I kept switching positions as we argued for and against a possible connection between this child and Sherlock's dead nemesis. But I was the one who suggested what we had both been thinking. "If she is somehow connected with Moriarty, she could be dangerous. I don't know…she could be booby-trapped somehow."

"She's been here all day, John. Nothing has happened."

"Did she bring anything with her?"

"A sack of extra clothes. I went through it this morning to see if I could find any clues to her identity. "

"He could have planted something in her, something with a timer. And I don't mean just explosives. She could be carrying a virus or something. You think because she's a little girl that would stop him? Look at all the innocent lives he blew up and those are only the ones we know about. Maybe that has something to do with the changeling reference."

"Tears," said Sherlock.

"What?"

"Look at the note. It says 'don't make her cry.' What if there's something that's triggered by her tears. Today in the park, John. Something happened. It was like she wanted to cry, but she forced herself not to. She was standing there stiff and unresponsive, almost catatonic, and then she came out of it."

"I didn't cry." Chelsea, still on Sherlock's lap, put her hand on his cheek.

"I know you didn't," said Sherlock. "But why not?"

"Not pode to. It hurt too much."

Sherlock and I looked at each other. "I think we should get some scans of her," I said. "We might find something."

"John, this is ridiculous. We're letting a ghost take over and plant ideas in our minds."

"You're right," I agreed. "You're absolutely right. We're just getting carried away."

"She's just a little girl."

"Who just happened to be left on the doorstep of a sociopath by a dead psychopath."

Sherlock exhaled a long sigh, then stood, still holding her. "All right, kid. Looks like we're going for a ride. Where's Brownie and your jacket?" He sat Chelsea on the floor and she went over to the couch to retrieve the rope where she had left it.

"Who's Brownie?" I asked.

"Her invisible dog."

"Oh, I see."

"No, you don't." said Sherlock.

"Where are we going?" Chelsea asked as Sherlock helped her slip on her hooded jacket.

"We're going to hospital to check some things out," Sherlock answered honestly which was probably a mistake.

"No!" Chelsea screamed as she pulled away from him.

I knelt in front of her. "It's OK, Chelsea. Nothing there is going to hurt you, I promise."

"No!" she shouted. "My Mum went to hotpital and che died!"

"But you're not going to die, Chelsea," I tried to reason with her. "I work in a kind of hospital. I go there every day and nothing bad happens."

"Almost nothing, except for the random maniac with a gun," added Sherlock.

I shot him a look. "You're not helping."

"Sorry. Chelsea," Sherlock said, also kneeling in front of her, "people go to hospitals all the time to get well. We're just going to run some tests to make sure you're all right."

"I'm not tick."

"No," I said, "of course you aren't sick. It's not like when you have a sore throat or a cold. But there might be something else…and we have to make sure you're OK."

"I'm tared," she said.

"You don't need to be scared," I said. "We'll be right there with you."

"And afterwards," added Sherlock, "we'll probably stop for ice cream."

She took one of Sherlock's hands and looked him in the eye. "Promich it won't hurt?"

"On my honor." He separated her index finger from the hand that held his and touched it to his forehead and then touched it to hers. "I'm telling the truth, aren't I?"

She stared silently into Sherlock's eyes for a moment "Ok," she relented, breaking her eye contact with him, but not releasing his hand. "I'll go to hotpital."

"What was that last bit all about?" I whispered after we had gone downstairs and were headed for my car. Chelsea was walking beside Sherlock, still holding his hand.

"Don't let her touch you, John. She can read minds."

"What?"

"She thinks she can anyway."