Consulting Daughter (BBC Sherlock)

Settled Down

"Kiss me, and you will see how important I am."

-Sylvia Plath

Sherlock's POV:

Emotion wasn't something I was use to reigning. I didn't have that wide a variety to contain anyway. But the feeling I was experiencing right now wasn't new. It was, in fact, an old friend. So I welcomed it, but did not understand it.

Fear.

Fear was there when I saw John standing by the pool, strapped to a bomb.

It was the same fear I had felt as I had fallen to my death those two years ago.

Originally, I had come home from Scotland Yard and hadn't noticed something was wrong. But then I smelled something sickeningly sweet.

Chloroform.

That same emotion rooted in my chest when I noticed the empty house. There were signs of struggle. Otherwise I wouldn't have worried. But Kyna was missing and all I had to go from was a slip of paper that had clearly fallen from her captor's pocket.

That fear was there also, when I found her, tied to a chair and so bloody she was almost unrecognizable.

...But anger had drowned that out.

Kyna was innocent, but I knew that she also had my intelligence, so I remained silent as I approached the metal man, and when her eyes flickered towards me, catching my eye, I didn't need to tell her anything. I allowed her to read my mind.

She impressed me.

And then I shot the man and I relished in it.

It took everything I had not to flay him, because Kyna was, in that moment, my daughter.

It had been four months since the kidnapping.

Molly had been released from the hospital at the two month mark and was currently staying at 221b at the insistence of Kyna. ...She had no memory of what had attacked her. John told me that her amnesia was due to shock, but I already knew that. What I wanted to know was information that was much harder to come by.

When Kyna had asked that Molly stay with us, I had argued that the pathologist was much more useful at her own home, but Kyna crossed her arms and did her best to look like a teenager. I did not cave... I simple decided that it was best for Molly to stay with us.

I also had a strong premonition that Wiggins was visiting Kyna when I was away. Honestly, he wasn't even tactful about his feelings. They were on display for any person to observe. Of course, Kyna was blissfully ignorant.

"Is Wiggins still in contact with you?" I asked her nonchalantly one morning. She looked up from her book. We were sitting in the living room and I found that I quite liked when we did this. It gave me company and time to think. Before I had faked my death, it was John that had kept me company. But now John was at the grocery store. We didn't have milk.

"You tell me." Her eyebrow raised. It was one of those rare moments where I could actually deduce her properly.

I observed. "You fancy him."

"I don't 'fancy' anyone. That's silly nonsense." She said stiffly. Like father, like daughter.

"Fine then," I corrected. "You like him. You enjoy impressing him and you dote on his company. How do you not fancy him?"

"Sherlock!" She shut me out completely, sticking her nose back in her book.

I smiled to myself. I enjoyed badgering her.