Chapter Text
This is not a case file.
There was no murderer in the legal sense, no court proceedings, and no police involvement beyond one detective inspector standing in our tiny yard looking deeply uncomfortable.
However, a civilian casualty occurred. Plastic. Approximately twelve inches tall. Name: Ivy.
Sherlock says it was inevitable. Rosie says it was unforgivable. I say it was a Tuesday.
— JW
__________________________________
The 221B Baker Street carpet was currently a battlefield of indignation.
In the center of the rug stood Rosie, small hands balled into tiny, furious fists. At her feet lay Ivy, a once-glamorous Barbie whose cheek now bore the distinct, mud-caked tread of a Belstaff boot.
“It’s an obliteration, Uncle Sherlock!” Rosie’s voice hit a pitch that made the beakers on the mantelpiece hum.
John Watson leaned against the doorframe, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Love,” he sighed, “I have to ask—what was Ivy doing face-down next to the shoe stand in the first place?”
“She wasn’t near it! I was gathering them for a ride!” Rosie shrieked, gesturing wildly to a nearby plastic dump truck. “The shoe stand was the terminal!”
Sherlock stood stiffly, looking down at the doll as if it were a particularly confusing piece of evidence. “Rosie, the physics of the hallway are predictable. I walk, I look at my phone, I do not look for plastic civilians. However,” he added quickly, sensing the atmospheric pressure in the room dropping dangerously, “I will rectify the error. We shall go to the shop. You can have the new ‘Glitter-Travel’ model. Or two. Identical replacements.”
Rosie’s face twisted. “It’s not the same! This is Ivy! She knows my secrets! You can’t just… download her into a new plastic head!”
The room went suddenly, eerily quiet. Rosie’s lower lip trembled.
Sherlock froze, a rare look of genuine panic flickering across his features as he looked to John for an exit strategy. John braced himself for the inevitable sob-fest.
But the tears didn’t come.
Instead, Rosie’s eyes snapped open, cold and commanding.
“We’re going to have a funeral,” she announced. Her voice had dropped an octave into a terrifyingly calm range. “All my dolls will be there.”
She whipped around, pointing a sharp finger at Sherlock’s chest. “Uncle Sherlock, you are going to make Ivy a coffin. A proper one. Out of your violin string boxes. And it better be lined with silk.”
Sherlock opened his mouth to protest—likely about the sanctity of his instrument supplies—but Rosie was already spinning toward her father.
“And you, Daddy,” she commanded, “you are going to write her autopsy report. I want to know the exact force of the boot.”
John blinked, halfway between a laugh and a shudder. “An autopsy? Rosie, she’s made of PVC.”
“I want it in a folder! A blue one!”
She was already stomping toward the stairs. “I’m going to get Mrs. Hudson. She needs to knit a funeral cloth. Black lace. With beads!”
The flat fell silent again once Rosie disappeared upstairs.
“Well,” John said at last, breaking it, “you heard the Detective Inspector. I’d get to work on that coffin if I were you. She’s got the ‘Sherlock’ glare down perfectly.”
Sherlock looked at the ruined doll, then at his violin cases. “The autopsy report, John,” he muttered, “better be thorough. If you miss the shoe-size correlation, she’ll have your head.”
---
The kitchen table at 221B had seen many things—severed thumbs, toxic mold cultures, and high-velocity ballistics tests—but never a Barbie doll undergoing a full post-mortem.
John sat with his reading glasses on, a standard NHS clipboard in front of him. He poked at Ivy’s caved-in cranium with a tongue depressor.
“Subject exhibits a comminuted fracture of the zygomatic arch,” John muttered, scribbling notes. “Significant epidermal staining consistent with London street grime and… is that Earl Grey? Sherlock, did you spill tea on the ‘body’ as well?”
Across the table, Sherlock was surrounded by a sea of black acrylic paint and balsa wood. He was attempting to construct a scale-model Victorian casket. He had already glued two of his fingers together and was currently trying to use a scalpel to carve IVY into a piece of scrap wood.
“The structural integrity of this wood is abysmal, John!” Sherlock snapped, shaking his hand to try and unstick his index finger. “And the drying time for this paint is an insult to modern chemistry. I am a consulting detective, not a carpenter for the miniature deceased.”
John didn’t look up. “Five minutes ago you were bragging that your spatial reasoning would make you a master craftsman. Now you’re blaming the paint? You’re just being lazy. It’s a box, Sherlock. Four hours of focused labor and you’d have a masterpiece.”
“Four hours?” Sherlock stood abruptly, a smudge of Midnight Onyx across his cheekbone. “In four hours I could solve a triple homicide in Southwark or learn the basics of Finnish! I am not spending a fiscal quarter of a day building a receptacle for a toy that has a ‘Made in China’ stamp on its posterior!”
“Rosie said it has to be handmade,” John reminded him, finally looking up with a grin. “She said it needs ‘Uncle Sherlock’s genius’ infused into the wood.”
Sherlock froze.
He looked at the mangled heap of balsa wood, then at the clock. The calculation was visible in his eyes: effort versus fallout.
“Fine,” Sherlock harrumphed, reaching for his phone with his non-glued hand. “The genius shall be in the procurement.”
“What are you doing?” John asked, watching his thumbs fly.
“Ordering a 1:6 scale mahogany display casket from a boutique collector in Paris,” Sherlock said loftily. “Velvet lining. Brass hinges. Delivered tomorrow evening at precisely six.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s outsourcing,” Sherlock corrected, wiping his hands on his apron. “Now, back to your report. I expect a full tox screen on that mud. If there’s even a trace of the Great Stink, Rosie will want a decontamination ritual.”
John sighed. “I’ll get the swabs. But you’re the one explaining to Mrs. Hudson why there’s a French coffin arriving for a doll.”
---
The mood shifted instantly.
The bickering vanished the moment Rosie’s footsteps thundered down the stairs, followed by a sound that made both men drop what they were holding—a real, broken sob.
Rosie stumbled into the kitchen, face blotchy, tears streaming. She wasn’t angry now. She was devastated.
“It’s all gone wrong!” she wailed, burying her face in John’s cardigan. “Ivy is broken, the coffin is just sticks, and now—and now—” she gasped, “Mrs. Hudson has an arm-ache! Her room-a-tiz is acting up and she can’t knit the funeral cloth! Ivy’s going to be cold in the ground!”
John scooped her up immediately, rubbing her back and shooting Sherlock a sharp do something look.
Sherlock stood frozen, half-painted wood in hand.
“Rosie, listen,” John said gently. “Mrs. Hudson just needs rest. It’s not your fault. Or hers.”
“But the funeral,” Rosie sniffled. “Everything is ruined.”
Sherlock cleared his throat. “Rosie. Ivy cannot feel temperature. However,” he added quickly, “the aesthetic requirement for a shroud remains valid.”
He showed her the delivery confirmation. “The casket arrives tomorrow. It has velvet. Deep purple.”
“Purple?” she hiccupped.
“The color of royalty.”
He glanced at the mantel and plucked a jet-black silk scarf from its hook. “And this is Grade-A mulberry silk. A designer shroud.”
“It’s very soft,” Rosie said.
“It’s the best,” John agreed.
“Okay,” Rosie said. “But Sherlock, you have to carry her. And wear your long coat.”
“The greatcoat. Yes.”
---
“No. No no no.”
Rosie frowned at the silk.
“Not your silk scarf. Ivy needs wool.”
Sherlock paused. “Silk is—”
“Wool!”
John smiled. “She’s got a point.”
“Mrs. Hudson’s needles are silent!”
“She’ll have nothing,” Rosie whispered.
Sherlock scanned the room, then stopped.
“Oh no,” John murmured.
Sherlock untied his charcoal wool scarf.
“This is cashmere blend,” he said solemnly. “If I donate a section—”
“You’d cut it?”
“I have two,” he lied.
“John. The shears.”
“You’re a good man.”
“Stop leaking from your eyes. We have a shroud to tailor.”
“Can we put a tassel?”
“I shall calculate the dimensions.”
---
“No no no. You’re not cutting it. I like it on you.”
Rosie exhaled. “I guess we’ll just bury her under sand with a headstone. She’s just plastic after all.”
Then she grinned.
“I want lookalike Ivy new doll tomorrow, Uncle!”
Sherlock froze. Then slowly lowered the shears.
“Plastic?” he said faintly.
“She’s messy now,” Rosie shrugged. “New Ivy will be clean.”
“The one with the scooter,” Sherlock muttered. “Fine.”
“And the sand!”
John looked at his clipboard. “So I don’t need to finish the boot-force analysis?”
“Keep it,” Rosie said. “It’s evidence.”
She paused at the door. “Your scarf is very pretty. It would’ve looked silly as a blanket.”
When she vanished, Sherlock turned to John.
“She’s terrifying.”
“She’s a Watson-Morstan-Holmes hybrid."
Sherlock adjusted his collar. “Now help me find Scooter Ivy. If I get the wrong one, I fear the sand burial will be for me.”