Sophia Holmes and the Empty Hearse (Sherlock's Daughter Fanfic) *Completed*

Chapter Eighteen - The Empty Hearse Part VI

John drags us over to a café down Marylebone and we take a seat inside. Dad winces slightly as he takes a seat, his battering from John reawakening his injuries in Serbia, but otherwise unhurt. John and Mary sit opposite me and dad, the arrangement feeling not dissimilar to an interrogation. John has reacted relatively better than me, all things considered, and has calmed down considerably.

"So where have you been?" John asks me. "I called in on you last year and Mrs Hudson said she hadn't seen you since the funeral. We thought ... after ... you know..." he fades off and I pull my left sleeve down subconsciously. He thought I'd killed myself. I'm not going to tell him how close I came.

"I'm really sorry, John," I say, unable to look at him. "After it all happened, I just shut everything else out. All that mattered was avenging dad and keeping myself distracted. It never crossed my mind that you would be concerned."

John reels back as he scoffs, visibly offended. "How could you think that? After all we went through." He considers something for a moment. "You're like a daughter to me."

"Why is it I'm only able to get fathers who leave me behind at the first sight of trouble?" I say without thinking. Dad frowns and John shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It was you who left Baker Street first, not me," I point out. "You knew what I was going through and yet you left me. Clearly you didn't care that much about me."

"I couldn't stay in Baker Street," John protests. "It hurt too much."

"And you think it didn't hurt with me?" I say in disbelief. "I needed someone who I could rely on. Turns out that's neither of you." John goes to speak, but I talk over him as I turn to dad. "So go on then, how did you do it?"

"Do what?" dad asks.

"Your great master plan, the reason for all of this. You haven't told me."

"Do we have to do this now?" dad asks and I nod.

"Absolutely. I want to know how the Bart's Morgue had you down as dead when they clearly knew you weren't. I want to know how you fooled me."

Dad sighs, but nods and steeples his fingers in front of him. "When I sent you back to Baker Street, I invited Moriarty to meet me in on the roof of Bart's. But I knew from the moment I stepped out that his plan was for me to die. I calculated that there were thirteen possibilities once I'd invited Moriarty onto the roof. I wanted to avoid dying if at all possible. The first scenario involved hurling myself into a parked hospital van filled with washing bags. Impossible. The angle was too steep. Secondly, a system of Japanese wrestling ..."

"You know, for a genius you can be remarkably thick," John interrupts.

"What?" dad says, stunned.

"I don't care how you faked it, Sherlock," John continues, tightly. "I wanna know why."

Dad looks bewildered. "Why?"

"Because Moriarty had to be stopped," I answer. John looks at me pointedly and I realise. "Oh. 'Why' as in ..." I point at him and he nods. "I see." I turn to dad again. "Yes. Why did you not bother telling us you were faking it?"

"That's a little more difficult to explain," dad says.

"I've got all night," John says darkly.

Dad clears his throat and looks down, realising whatever he says next won't go down well with us. "Actually, um, that was mostly Mycroft's idea."

"Oh, so it's your brother's plan?" John replies. I knew he was involved, but I didn't know he knew from the beginning. So first he sells dad's information to Moriarty, then mine to S.H.I.E.L.D., and then he neglects to tell me he knows dad is alive. I'm really doing well with family.