His Favorite Melody

A Generous Offer

Upon finally arriving back at 221 Baker Street, John sat Melody down and ran to the bathroom where his small medical kit was. He sat beside her on the couch and gently took her arm in his hands, checking it over. Sherlock was busy printing out photos theh had taken of the ciphers and pinning them to the wall.

Melody hissed quietly as John rolled her wrist in a particular way.

"Sorry. Yeah it's definitely a sprain, but it doesn't seem to be too terrible." He assured her. "I'll wrap it and get you a bit of ice to put on there. Should be fine in a week or so."

"Thanks so much, John. You're a saint." Mel said, watching as he meticulously wrapped her wrist up. When he was finished, he went to the freezer to get her an icepack. He brought it to her, then sat on a stool at the small table.

Melody drew her legs up onto the couch and watched as Sherlock stewed over the small amount of information they had. Hours passed, and she felt her eyelids grow heavier and heavier. Finally, she fell asleep.

By the time she woke up, it was early morning, and dawn peeping through the curtains. The only thing that had changed was that there was now a blanket draped across her.

Sherlock was still staring at the collage on the wall - a print out of the eighteen Chinese symbols now had pride of place. He had scribbled the number translation underneath each - ‘3’, ‘19’, ‘12’ and ‘43’. Numbers that matched symbols accordingly.

"Of course!" Sherlock exclaimed, causing both John and Mel to wake up a bit more. "He wants information. He’s contacting all his people in the underworld. Whatever was stolen - he wants it back. And it’s somewhere here - in code. We can’t crack this without Soo Lin Yao."

"Then I guess you better figure out where she's hiding." Mel said, stretching.

Sherlock looked back at her with a smile. "I guess so. Up for an adventure, Miss Hudson?" He asked.

"Actually, I should probably help mum a bit today. We're working on deep cleaning the flats. Don't worry, I know what to leave alone in here." She assured him with a smile.

He nodded and stood, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before grabbing his coat and scarf. "Come on John. To the museum we go."

John groaned quietly before standing up and following Sherlock out the door.

"Good luck, boys!" Mel called after them as she stood and folded the blanket, draping it over the back of the couch.

She made her way downstairs, where her mother was sitting in the kitchen, dressed in a robe and drinking coffee. "G'morning, mum." She said, smiling warmly.

"Good morning, darling. The boys just left." Her mother informed her.

"I know. But we were cleaning the flats today. I thought I could do Sherlock and John's, and the basement? The boy's flat is more of a light clean anyways." She explained.

"Oh that would be wonderful, dear. If you want to get the supplies, I'll get my cleaning clothes on. Maybe well be done by the time the boys get back. We could fix something for dinner!"

Mel smiled at her mother's excitement and nodded before gathering two containers full of cleaning supplies, gloves, rags, and a couple of buckets. She left one on the kitchen table for her mum and kept the other for herself.

When Mrs. Hudson came back into the room, she was dressed in her cleaning clothes, ready to start. "I'm headed up! I'll let you know when I'm ready to start on the basement." She said,grabbing her stuff and heading upstairs.

She prepared all of her cleaning thing, and grabbed her phone, which someone had graciously plugged in for her the previous night. She pulled up some violin music and began to clean the flat, avoiding doing anything she knew would annoy Sherlock. Within a few hours, she had cleaned and tidied up as much as she possibly could.