Chapter Text
The next morning Mary dropped me off at Sherlock's on her way to the clinic. My left arm was in a sling and my shoulder still hurt, but the wound was far less serious than what I had suffered in Afghanistan. Mrs. Hudson met me just inside the front door to the building and fretted over me and my injury. But then she moved on to express her concerns over Sherlock caring for the little girl. She said she would not have been nearly as worried if I would have still been living there. I tried to reassure her, but I had my own concerns about him. From what I had observed the two of them seemed to have developed a good rapport but I knew how mercurial he was. I had last witnessed one of his volatile reactions two mornings ago when she had dressed up in his clothes and interrupted a meeting. He had indicated to me then he could keep it under control, but I knew him too well.
When I walked in to the living room of the flat I had shared with him before he disappeared for two years and left me to think he was dead, Sherlock and Chelsea were sitting on the floor with the coffee table between them, playing cards.
"What are you playing?" I asked as I crossed behind Sherlock and sat down at the table and switched on Sherlock's laptop.
"Poker," answered Chelsea. "Lock id teaching me to cheat."
"That's why I refuse to play with him," I said.
"No," said Sherlock, "you refuse to play with me because I beat you every time without having to cheat. Game's over, anyway." Sherlock laid his cards face down on the coffee table. "I need to talk to John for a few minutes."
"Awww," said Chelsea. "I wa going to win thid time."
"No, you weren't," said Sherlock. "Look." He turned over his cards. Four aces.
"How'd you do that?" she asked, giggling.
Sherlock laughed. "I just showed you. Maybe you'd better practice while I visit with John."
Sherlock stood and leaned over me and called up the scans that Molly had showed him the day before. He pointed out the mysterious spots that we had missed when we had looked at them earlier. I was at a loss for an explanation.
"And I am back to thinking that Moriarty is involved somehow." Sherlock paced around the room.
"But yesterday, you said…"
"That was before I talked to Richard Sherbrooke."
Chelsea had been playing with the deck of cards, seemingly oblivious to our discussion, but she looked up when Sherlock mentioned her father's name. "That my Dad."
Sherlock flopped down in his favorite chair, his lanky frame sprawled across it.
"John," Chelsea said, bringing me over a sheet of paper. "I made thid for you. I'm chorry you got chot. Doed it hurt?"
"Just a little. Did you draw this?" It was a childish crayon drawing of a gun and a man (labeled "John") falling backwards, blood splattering everywhere. She had printed across it, Get well John. Come back. Sherlock needs you. Love Chelsea. "What do you mean by 'come back'?"
Chelsea shrugged. "Lock is tad becaude you aren't here like you ude to be."
I looked over at Sherlock, but he was lost in thought. "Did he tell you that?"
She shrugged again.
"What's this other drawing?" I reached across the table where crayons were scattered across another sheet of paper. I slid it out from under them. It was covered with winged creatures.
"Thode are Lock dragon," volunteered Chelsea.
"The dragons inside him?" I asked, remembering Sherlock's conversation with her two days ago.
"Yech. Thid one," she said, pointing to the largest being, "is named Vera, but I didn't know how to pell it. Che id the one."
"The one what?"
"The mean one."
I looked at Sherlock again. "So, you're telling me that Sherlock has a mean female dragon in him named Vera?"
Sherlock's eyes were closed but he said, "John, she's a five-year-old with an active imagination."
"Oh, I'd say she's a five-year-old with incredible insight." I turned my attention back to Chelsea. "Do the other dragons have names?"
She shrugged. "Did you cry when the man chot you?"
"No."
"Good." She went back over to the couch and proceeded to dress a doll.
"Thank you for drawing me a get well card," I said, but she did not respond. The note that she had with her when she arrived that first morning was lying on the table next to Sherlock's laptop and next to my get well drawing. There were four words that were on both papers and they were written exactly the same. And the style of the letters on the rest of the note matched those that were on the drawing. "Sherlock," I said.
"Please don't bother me, John. I'm thinking."
"But you need to see this."
"Not now."
All right, I thought. If that's the way you want it, you can find it out for yourself.
Chelsea suddenly dropped the doll on the couch and looked at the closed living room door. "My Dad id here!" she exclaimed.
Just then, there was a knock on the door and it opened. "Yoo-hoo," said Mrs. Hudson. "You have a visitor." She ushered in a rather banged up man in disheveled clothes, his left arm in a cast. He had coal-black hair and was standing in a crooked manner, obviously favoring his right leg and abdomen.
Sherlock sprang to life and stood. "Richard Sherbrooke."
Chelsea ran to her Dad and threw her arms around him as he carefully bent down to accept her hug and put his good arm around her. "Oh, Chelsea, my lamb, I've missed you so much."
Sherlock remained transfixed in front of his chair so I stood and offered Sherbrooke a seat on the couch. He limped over to it and sat down. Chelsea curled up next to him on his right side as close as she could get and he put his good arm around her. She held her father's right hand in both of hers.
"Mr. Sherbrooke, you have an extraordinary daughter." Leave it to Sherlock to jump right into it without any social niceties.
"I know," said Sherbrooke and he squeezed Chelsea's hands.
"Gentlemen," I said, "maybe we shouldn't discuss what we're about to discuss in front of her."
Sherlock introduced me. "This is Dr. John Watson, my…associate."
"She can stay," said Sherbrooke. "Mr. Holmes, you told me in the hospital that you wanted explanations. I'm afraid you'll have to get in line. I've been trying to find a way to explain her for five years. I can tell you what I know, but it's not much."
"Then why don't you begin by telling me what your relationship is with James Moriarty."
Sherbrooke did not hesitate. "I told you already. I don't know him."
"And we both know that's a lie. And a third person in this room knows it's a lie, also."
Sherbrooke looked down at Chelsea who looked up at him and smiled. "She gently caressed his bruised and swollen face with one of her little hands. "Doed that hurt?"
He clasped her hand in his and brought it back down to her lap. "Yes, it does," he told her softly. "But it will be better in a few days."
"Moriarty." insisted Sherlock.
Sherbrooke cleared his throat. "All right. He's someone I've tried to bury…for what he did…for what he's done…to me and my family. But if you insist on resurrecting him." He paused. "I started doing some…some book work for him…oh…seven or eight years ago. He started out as just another client, but then as he trusted me more and more, the figures began revealing some…things that I was uncomfortable being a part of. He was involved in some terrible things…horrible things."
"I know," said Sherlock. "I spent two years unraveling his network. But you were not…part of it."
"No, I…uh…got out. I told him I couldn't do it anymore. I had gotten married and we were expecting our first child. I was scared. He was a monster."
"And he just let your leave? I find that hard to believe," said Sherlock. He had sat back down in his chair.
"No. God, no." Sherbrooke bowed his head. "I thought he did, at first. But…but then…seven months into the pregnancy, my wife, Caroline…Caroline was diagnosed with brain cancer…an inoperable tumor." He looked up at the ceiling. "The day...the very day the doctor told us, I got a text from Moriarty. He said…" Sherbrooke closed his eyes and fought back tears.
Chelsea reached up a hand to her Dad's face again. "Don't cry, Dad."
He squeezed Chelsea in a hug, and then continued, forcing the words out. "He said 'Sorry to hear the news about your wife. Your debt is half paid'."
"Moriarty caused your wife's tumor?" I asked.
"I don't know how, but I've no doubt that he did it. She lived for three years. She lived long enough…long enough to hear the news that the man who had caused us so much pain had taken his own life."
"But Mum id in Heaven now, innit che, Dad?"
He squeezed Chelsea again. "Yes, she is, my lamb."
"But what did he mean by your debt being 'half paid'?" asked Sherlock. "Has he collected on the other half? Surely that can't be the recent incident?"
Sherbrooke shook his head no. "This week was from another client who I tried to break off from. The people I work with don't like it much if you want to stop working for them. No, I figured something was going to happen to me—that I would pay the price of the other half of the debt. I never thought that he would harm the baby. As cruel as he was, I just never considered that possibility. We were just so concerned after Caroline's diagnosis about bringing the baby safely to term before she started treatments. I never…I just never thought…"
"What exactly did he do to Chelsea?" I asked.
"Not Chelsea—not this Chelsea," He squeezed her hands. "My wife delivered a beautiful baby girl. She was perfect in every way. She brought her home from the hospital on the third day. We had her…we had her with us for two days at home. And then…and then…on the third night…Caroline was scheduled to begin radiation for the tumor the next day and...we… uh… went to bed early. Something happened…during the night…something terrible happened."
I looked at Sherlock. I knew he hated long, drawn-out tales, but Richard Sherbrooke was clearly in agony recounting this story and I was all for letting him go at his own pace. I still did not think Chelsea should be in the room listening to all this, but she seemed more concerned over her father's turmoil and showed no visible reaction of her own to the story.
"About four in the morning, we were awakened by terrible screams coming from our baby's room. When we rushed in, we found this little thing in the crib and our baby was gone." He put his hand along Chelsea's head and drew her against his chest. "She was covered in blood and crying so loud I thought her lungs would burst."
"What do you mean your baby was gone and Chelsea was left in her place?" asked Sherlock. "Chelsea is not your child?" Sherlock and I were both confused at this turn in the story.
"Look at her," said Sherbrooke. "That yellow hair with all those curls, those green eyes, that fair complexion. Do you see any of me in her? My wife looked just the same as me. Straight black haired Irish and this dark skin of mine isn't from being in the sun, nor was my wife's. How could we produce a child like this? No, our Chelsea looked just like us. She was born with a full head of black hair and the biggest, brown eyes you've ever seen."
"Genetics do strange things sometimes," I said.
"We knew our own baby, Dr. Watson. And this child in the crib that morning was not ours. My wife picked her up, to try to stop the screaming and to see what was causing all the blood…and that's when we saw her back. Oh God, it was awful."
"What did the police say?"
"The police? How could we go to the police? And he knew we couldn't! What would be their first thought? I don't doubt but that you had the same idea when you first saw those scars, Mr. Holmes."
"That you were the cause…or your wife. It's not unheard of."
"Besides, not thirty minutes after we found her, I got another text…signed JM."
"What did it say?" I asked hesitantly.
"'Congratulations on your NEW baby.' And 'new' was in all caps. "She is the redemption for all your sins. Your debt is paid'." Sherbrooke bowed his head. It was obvious he was exhausted from telling the story. Chelsea stroked his arm.
"But you didn't take her to a doctor to see to the wounds on her back?" I asked, horrified that the cuts had been allowed to heal on their own which explained their jagged appearance.
"A doctor would have been no different than the police. She's never seen a doctor, per se. I've gotten her shots at the clinics and she's never been sick. No one in the medical profession has ever seen her...her back"
"Well, that's no longer true," said Sherlock.
"What? What did you do?"
"Dr. Watson here is an MD. And the first day when she came, different clues led me to think that Moriarty was involved somehow. So we had some X-rays and CT scans taken," said Sherlock.
"Oh, no," Sherbrooke moaned.
"But actually," I said, "few people have seen them. And no one in authority. So, for the moment the secret is safe."
"But how could you have suspected Moriarty in the first place? I've never even said that name in Chelsea's presence."
"Well, there was her name for one thing," I said hesitantly. "Her two middle names are an anagram for Moriarty."
"What?" Sherbrooke said, confused. "Mary Troi?"
"Change the letters around," explained Sherlock. "It spells Moriarty."
"My God, I never knew that. That has nothing to do with him. My wife and I both liked the name Chelsea and we decided each of us would pick a middle name. Caroline chose Mary for her grandmother. She thought I wanted Troi for an old school mate named Troy. I never told her it was for Deanna Troi of Star Trek. She was the first person I ever had a crush on." For the first time in our presence Richard Sherbrooke smile.
I glanced at Sherlock. I knew from his expression that he had no idea who Deanna Troi was. "I'll tell you later," I said.
Sherlock stood. "So you are saying that your baby was taken during the night and another one—this Chelsea—was left in its place."
"Not 'it,' Mr. Holmes. My daughter, my baby."
"And you raised her—this Chelsea—as your daughter, even keeping the same name?"
"What else were we to do? We both knew our baby was gone…and probably…probably dead. And we've not kept it a secret from her. Caroline and I both have told her the story from the very first. She knows she's a changeling."
"But in place of Moriarty, who you claim is responsible, you substituted fairies." I was having trouble following his reasoning.
"I needed…I needed to have an explanation, a reason for the terrible wounds on her back, for her screams of pain that we soon discovered were related to whenever she cried. I first went to a priest. You know what he told me? He said the cuts on her back were a stigmata. That they were the marks of the scourge of Christ before he was crucified. That when she cried it was the Blessed Virgin's tears for her son and that's what caused the pain. What kind of a God would do that to a child, Mr. Holmes? What kind of God would curse a baby with such pain? The fairy story made more sense to me. And who's to say that's not where Moriarty got her from? Aside from the bleeding and the pain, surely you've noticed she's not quite right, that she's fey."
Sherlock jerked his head up at Sherbrooke's last statement. "How dare you say that, sir! How dare you say such a thing in her presence!"
I had often heard people make insulting remarks to Sherlock. When I first met him, Sergeant Donovan called him "freak" to his face. I assumed he took those comments as a badge of honor. Maybe they hurt him more than any of us would ever know.
Sherbrooke struggled to his feet. "She knows she's loved. She knows she's safe with me."
"Safe like she was this week when you were almost beaten to death because you have some clients you disagree with? Safe in the home of a sociopath?" Sherlock's face was red with anger.
I stood from my chair at the desk and went to stand by Sherlock.
"I didn't know you were a sociopath," Sherbrooke said. "I knew you were the most brilliant man I'd ever met. I knew of all the people in this world, you were the one man I could trust with her. And I was right, wasn't I?"
Sherlock relaxed his stance and turned away, his hands on either side of his head.
"I was right, wasn't I, Dr. Watson?"
I just stared at the man for a moment before asking, "How many more clients do you have that are likely to…uh…react violently against you or Chelsea?"
"Quite a few, I'm afraid. It's the nature of the business. When you're doing illegal things you can't take your disputes to the police. You have to settle them yourself. That's why this latest attack has forced me to make a decision. I'm getting out. I'm getting out of the business and I'm getting out of England. I'm going to make a new start somewhere—Canada, New Zealand, maybe America. I think I can disappear and make a good life with my little girl."
"John," said Sherlock, turning to face Mr. Sherbrooke again. "Would you show our guest what we've discovered on the scans. Chelsea, come with me and let's collect your things." He held out his hand and Chelsea went over to him, Brownie's leash trailing behind her as usual, and went with him to his bedroom. I heard the door close.
"Mr. Sherbrooke, I think you need to see this." I motioned for him to come over to the desk.
In the bedroom, Sherlock picked up Chelsea's clothes where he had stacked them on a chair and stuffed them back into the paper bag she had brought with her when she arrived. Chelsea climbed up on his bed and started to take off her new trainers.
"What are you doing?" asked Sherlock. "Those are yours."
"I can keep them?" she asked.
"Of course you can keep them. They'd hardly fit me. They might fit John."
She laughed. "No, they wouldn't."
Sherlock sat on the bed beside her. "Listen, Chelsea, I know that you will have forgotten all about me in few days or weeks, but—"
"Lock," she interrupted, "I will never forget you."
He smiled and closed his hands around hers. "Yes, you will, but—"
"No, I won't." She pulled one of her hands from his and pointed to her head. "You will alway be in here. And here." She pointed to her heart. She leaned forward and took a big breath through her nose. "And here." She pointed to her nose and laughed.
"I have an idea." He went over to his wardrobe and found a handkerchief and ripped off a small square of it. He took his favorite cologne and dabbed some on the remnant. "Let's put this in your pouch." He opened the embroidered pouch that hung around her neck. "The fragrance will last for a while. And every time you open it, you can smell it, and remember me."
"Will you remember me, Lock?"
"Of course, I'll remember, and I want you to know that if you ever need anything, if you're ever in trouble or if…I don't know…if something happens and you need a friend you can trust, I will be here. You can always come to me. In fact…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen. "I'm going to write down my name and address and number." He tore the piece of paper off and folded it several times. "I'll put this in here in the secret part of your little bag where no one else can ever find it. Just you and I will know it's there."
She stood up on her knees and hugged Sherlock around the neck. "I love you, Lock."
"I love you, too, Chelsea."
She pulled back a little bit and laid her hands along the sides of his face. "And, Lock, you didn't teach me to lie and cheat and teal. I already knew how to do those thing. Well, I didn't know how to cheat at poker, but when Dad and I play checker, I tumtime cheat."
"Yeah, well, I probably haven't been the best influence on you, though."
She kissed his cheek. "You taught me to be a Jedi."
"About that. I really was just teaching you to fence. I know how to fence, but I really don't know how to be a Jedi. Come on. I need to find something to put your doll and things in." He picked up her sack of clothes and moved towards the door but she stayed on the bed.
Chelsea ran her hands along the cotton rope she held. "Maybe I chould leave Brownie with you to keep you company chince John id not here anymore."
"No, I think Brownie would rather stay with you…for a couple of more years, at least. I have Vera and the other dragons for company."
She slid off the bed and took his hand.
"Is Vera really her name?" he asked.
Chelsea shrugged and smiled. "That what che told me."
When the two of them walked into the living room, Mr. Sherbrooke was standing by the desk. His eyes were red and glistened with tears. "What do I do, Mr. Holmes?"
"Exactly what you've been doing. Raising a unique and gifted daughter in the best way you know how."
"But what are those…things inside her? What does the future hold for her?"
"None of knows what the future holds for any of us. You know, you could have saved us a little trouble if you had explained more in your note that you left with her. Even if you had written your name."
"I did."
I handed Sherbrooke the note from the desk.
"This is not mine. It's not what I wrote. It's some of it, but not all. It's certainly not my handwriting. Chelsea, did you write this?"
Chelsea was still holding Sherlock's hand. She looked down at the floor. "Maybe."
"That's not a 'maybe' question," her Dad said sternly. "It requires a yes or no answer."
"Yech."
Sherlock looked down at her in amazement.
"I tried to tell you, Sherlock, and you wouldn't listen," I whispered, gloating inwardly.
"I copied tum of your letter when you were getting ready that morning. You didn't tell him everything. And he needed to know I liked bitcuitch."
"Oh, my dear," said Sherbrooke. "I wish I were able to pick you up in my arms right now."
Sherlock handed me the sack of clothes and bent down and picked up Chelsea. He carried her over to the couch and stood her up there while he packed her doll and the doll clothes and crayons and colouring books into a cloth bag he had found in a kitchen drawer. "She needs to be in school," said Sherlock, addressing the wallpaper behind the couch, "but I realize she can't be."
"I can do all right by her," said Sherbrooke, "and there's loads of educational stuff on the Internet. Maybe when she's older and can better control her…her impulses…her crying. God, what would a school think if that happened in a classroom?"
"I will…uhm…help you carry all this down to get a cab," Sherlock said. "Come on." He hoisted Chelsea in one arm and the bag of toys and the two lightsabers in the other. He came over to me and I arranged the sack of clothes on top of the other bag in his arm.
Sherbrooke and I followed him down the stairs and out onto the pavement where I hailed a cab. I loaded the things into the back. Sherlock was still holding Chelsea.
"Good-bye, Chelsea. Remember what I told you," he whispered in her ear.
She hugged him tightly around the neck and then put her hands alongside his head and looked wordlessly deep into his eyes for a moment before he broke contact.
"Tell John good-bye," he said.
She leaned sideways, still in Sherlock's grasp, and lightly touched my injured shoulder. "Poor John. It will be all right."
Sherlock set her inside the cab, then turned to her father. "Take care of yourself, Mr. Sherbrooke …for her sake. And…and if anything develops, I'm always here."
"Thank you, Mr. Holmes. For everything."
The taxi drove away with father and daughter, Chelsea turned around and watching us through the back window until they were lost in the traffic.
"Are you all right, Sherlock?" I asked as we headed back upstairs.
"Of course, I'm all right. Maybe I can get back to work now."
When we reached the living room, he stopped. There between the cushions of the couch, a frayed bit of rope peeked out. "She left Brownie," he said quietly.
I walked over and pulled out the cotton rope and handed it to him. I won't say there were tears in his eyes, but I think there were. "Maybe her invisible dog went with her and she just left his leash," I suggested.
"John, don't write about all this in your blog, not for a while yet. And if you do, change the names and whatever else so no one can ever find her."
"Of course. You know, about the way she seemed to be able to read minds? Do you think she was really telepathic?"
Sherlock shook his head. "I would describe it more as empathic. She seemed to possess some kind of clairsentience. She had this…I don't know…heightened sense of awareness when she was in physical contact with another person. Although even that's not quite descriptive. Because both times we were at the hospital, that first night and yesterday morning, she was almost overwhelmed by the press of emotions there. But, unfortunately, at age five, she didn't yet possess the vocabulary to articulate what she was sensing most of the time."
"And now with her father taking her out of the country, I guess it's something we'll never know for sure," I said.
"And I suspect that it's something that left unnurtured, will wither and fade in time."
"But I guess this case is closed for now," I said, "Of course, technically, it was never a case at all, was it?"
"Actually, I was just hired last night."
"What? You have a new case?"
"No, last night a five year old asked me…told me…to solve her mystery. So I guess I'll have to do it, no matter how long it takes…because that's what I do." Sherlock's phone dinged. "It's a text from Molly." He scanned the incoming message. "Oh, John."
"What is it? What'd she say?"
"Chelsea's DNA results came back."
"And?"
"The report said the sample was contaminated. It…uh…" Sherlock cursed, which he rarely did.
I grabbed the phone from his hand and read the text. "Unidentifiable. What's that supposed to mean? The lab said we should resubmit it. Sherlock, we took that sample under sterile laboratory conditions. There was no contamination on our end."
Sherlock's lips were pressed together in a thin line. "Molly probably still has the blood draw from that first night. Or I still have her tooth. I suppose we could get a sample from that. If it would do any good. Maybe she really is a changeling. "
"What? You think she's not human? Sherlock, she's a little girl with…with some psychological problems, maybe, and some unknown physical ones, too, but she's a hundred percent human."
"You're probably right." Sherlock sat down in his chair.
"There's no 'probably' about it."
"I hate unsolved mysteries, John. I like to have definite conclusions with things neatly sorted and all the ends tied."
"Life's not always like that," I said.
"It should be." He steepled his fingers against his mouth.
"But then there wouldn't be much call for great detectives like yourself."