Dr. Kim and Mr. Jeon

Sherlock's daughter

The rain and thunder continued on into the night, pitter pattering into the cobblestone streets outside the Holmes residence. The grandfather clock in the hall ticked with the passing time, and the crows outside crooned their eerie madrigal. Half the town was already asleep by this time of night but Sherly and Irene were not. They sat at the table that had once accommodated Sherlock himself, and for even a moment in the dim light of the candle both the women could still see his figure seated pensively on a chair, smoking his beloved pipe.

For a moment, neither spoke. The silence between the two felt heavy with their musing, most of which circled the detective's death. While it all felt as if it were some nightmare that had come to haunt them for just a while - that it would go away when they opened their eyes, the feeling was far from the truth, and they knew so.

"Your father loved the rain." A chime sounded from the clock. The hour had passed over.

Sherly turned away from the window she'd been looking out and set her sights on her mother. The woman looked as if within a day she had aged a decade, and her once impeccable posture - A skill obtained from her own mother - now crumpled itself over the table. Her pale cheek rested against the mahogany wood as her glistening eyes stayed fastened to the auburn flame of the candle, observing it with a dull pensivity.

Sherly wondered how her father would have responded to seeing his wife in such a state.

"Dear Irene," She could imagine his sigh, "if you were not still breathing I'd have deduced death itself had come and stolen your soul." The thought of it brought a wistful smile to her face.

Irene's lips separated again and a wistful sigh tumbled out. "Sherlock never fancied the thunder however," a single and almost unnoticeable tear drifted out of the corner of her eye and landed on the table top, "He said that it was as if God himself was telling him to cease the constant pondering."

"He would have been most displeased with today's weather then, I suppose." Sherly responded in a slightly humorous tone, which caused her mother's lips to curl the smallest bit upwards.

"Most undoubtedly."

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It hadn't taken very long for Irene to take her leave for the night, retreating into her bedroom. Sherly was left alone, accompanied by the orchestral chimes of the clock and the constant rain. Her eyes remained on the dreary streets outside the window pane, where the cold and darkness reigned – a reflection of what London was without her father.

"I don't assume so Miss Holmes, however, I find it quite peculiar that you as his only child would ask such a question and yet not volunteer to fill it." The deep voice echoed in the confines of her mind, slowly tearing its claws into the very being of her conscience.

Her mind could faintly visualize the man's face through the hazy fog of pouring rain, but it would never forget his eyes. Deep as the grave yet warm as the fire that burnt from within them. They pierced her soul with such emotion it felt as if her inner self had been executed by the gaze.

Her mother had always said, "The eyes speak what the soul cannot", and in those eyes, Sherly saw her disappointment in herself mirrored.

Slowly, she pulled herself up from her seat, taking the small candle as she trudged quietly up the staircase and past her mother's room to the loft. It was a place in which her father was allowed to dwindle in his mysteries. Piles of forgotten papers and books bathed in dust lay across each and every surface above the floor. The old leather couch Sherly remembered her father using during most of her childhood was positioned near the window, and his family of pipes still hung up on the wall, awaiting the day he took them down to be used again.

Everything about the room was so much like her father, down to the very smell of tobacco that had seeped into the very walls. Like a criminal's fingerprint, Sherlock's trademark had meddled with each and every instrument, paper, and dictionary that crowded the room.

Sherly genteelly ran her fingers along one of the many books on a large oak shelf, stepping gingerly across each wooden panel until she could seat herself in the cold leather chair. Her eyes met the fog outside again as they avoided the sight of her reflection in the glass.

"I'm not Sherlock." She reasoned with herself quietly, embracing herself as she pulled an arm in under her bosom. "I'm not father."

Her eyes trailed to the portrait on the wall across from her. Her father's serious features came into view through the little light the candle in her hands gave. His dark eyes bored down into the depths of her own as if he were wordlessly repeating Dr Kim's statement from the afternoon previous, causing her to feel most suddenly ashamed, though she knew her father would never force her to take his place.

Her hand instinctively reached towards her pocket in her skirt, retrieving the magnifying glass she had been given days prior by her dying father. Twirling the wooden handle around in her slender fingers, she watched the light from the candle leap from the telescopic glass. Her own face was brought into view by the instrument – the dreary look on upon her features gazed back at her, and for the first time, she could see her father's similarities in her own.

"What will be of London when pass, Mr Holmes?"

"London will continue to be London."

"And who will solve London's great mysteries?"

"If I am dead, how should I know the answer to that question?"

"What of your daughter?"

"What of her?"

"Will she take your place as London's detective?"

"Sherly is not my shadow, neither is she my apprentice. Her occupation is of her own deciding. She will choose what she believes is right."

The magnifying glass felt heavy in Sherly's hands, just as the revelation settled heavily upon her shoulders.

A strike of lightning split the sky and the inevitable boom of thunder shook the glass pane beside her.

Alive with new enlighten, Sherly's eyes lifted to her father's ashen ones in the portrait.

"I must choose what I believe is right." 

A/N: 

This took several hours and it still feels less descriptive than the first chapter- 

Also, what do you think Sherly is going to choose?

What sort of person do you think Sherlock was?

Bye