Chapter 1: A Curious Case of the Half-Sister
Chapter Text
“Toast,” Rosie said matter-of-factly, perched on John’s lap like she owned the place, which—given the cheerios she’d artfully ground into the carpet—might have been legally arguable.
John didn’t look up from buttering a small square of toast. “Yes, Rosie. That’s toast.”
“Again.”
“That’s the third one. If you keep eating like that, you’ll outgrow your pink dinosaur pajamas by Tuesday.”
“Again,” Rosie said with finality, stuffing the piece into her mouth and smearing jam across her cheek in the process.
Sherlock sighed dramatically from his armchair without glancing over. “Are we quite finished feeding the child?”
“We’re not all fueled by pretension and nicotine gum, Sherlock,” John muttered, then turned back to his daughter with a quiet smile. “You’ve got jam on your cheek, sweetheart.”
Rosie offered no resistance as John wiped her face, her eyes already drifting toward the stack of wooden blocks that had recently been overtaken by a mysterious stuffed bear invasion.
Across from them, Sherlock clicked the next file shut.
“No. Boring. No. Lies. Bad acting. And oh look, another one claiming her cat was abducted by the ghost of her ex-husband. We’re scraping the bottom of London’s delusion barrel today.”
“Maybe the cat case has merit,” John offered dryly. “Ghosts are very in right now.”
Sherlock gave him a sidelong glance, mouth twitching faintly—what might almost pass for amusement if you squinted. “Please. You and I both know the real horror is in poor sentence structure.”
John chuckled softly, finishing Rosie’s plate and standing to set it in the sink. He moved with that practiced domestic rhythm now, quiet but certain, in the space they’d both grown into without ever discussing it.
There was silence for a moment. Sherlock leaned back in his chair, steepled fingers pressed against his lips. He hadn’t mentioned John’s continued presence at Baker Street for over a year now—nor the way John had never officially moved back in, but left little pieces of himself behind: a jacket slung over the stair rail, Rosie’s teething giraffe by the kettle, a novel opened and forgotten on the sofa’s arm.
Sherlock didn’t mind. He catalogued every object without speaking of them. Emotion, after all, was not his specialty. He understood traces. Not motives.
He was just reaching for the next case file—reluctantly, almost lazily—when a knock echoed sharply from downstairs.
Mrs. Hudson’s voice carried up before either of them moved. “You’ve got a visitor, boys! Bit young, this one. Got a look in her eyes, though. Like she’s about to rearrange the whole flat if you don’t let her speak.”
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “That sounds promising.”
John handed Rosie a block and gave Sherlock a warning glance. “Please try not to scar this one.”
“She hasn’t even entered yet.”
“That’s usually when you start.”
The door creaked open and in stepped a girl—no more than sixteen, wearing boots far too scuffed for fashion but too purposeful to be careless. Her dark hair was tied back in a practical braid, her jacket was patched with mismatched stitching, and slung over her shoulder was a guitar case with a sticker that read: Well-behaved women seldom make history.
She stepped in like she already belonged there.
“Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” she said, her voice clipped but controlled. “I need your help.”
Sherlock blinked. “How unfortunate. So do most people.”
John cleared his throat, instinctively stepping in with a kind smile. “And you are?”
“Enola Stevenson. And I have two things to tell you.”
She met Sherlock’s eyes, and there was a crackle in the air that neither man could quite place.
“First,” she said, “I want you to help me find my mother. She vanished three months ago without a trace.”
“And second?” Sherlock asked, already leaning forward.
“I’m your half-sister.”
There was a pause. Rosie burped softly in the corner.
Sherlock stared. “Come again?”
“Your father,” Enola said crisply, “got drunk seventeen years ago after an argument with your mother. He ended up at a bar in South Kensington. My mother—Dr. Margaret Stevenson, a scientist and activist—was giving a lecture the next day. They met. They drank. They slept together. Nine months later, I was born. The math is simple.”
John blinked. “You’re saying you’re—what—his illegitimate sibling?”
“Yes,” she said. “Half-sister. I’m not asking you to knit me a birthday jumper. I want help. In exchange, I’ll give you proof.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Do go on.”
“I solve things,” she said. “Mum always said I was dangerous when bored. You have a current case? Take me. If I solve it in under six hours, you help me find her. If not, I disappear.”
Sherlock laughed. It was rare. It was not kind.
“You expect me to bring a sixteen-year-old amateur to a crime scene to prove bloodline?”
“I expect you to recognize a mind equal to yours,” she snapped.
John winced slightly. Sherlock froze.
Rosie stacked another block.
Chapter 2: The Girl and the Crime Scene
Chapter Text
221B Baker Street, 10:47 a.m.
“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” John muttered for the third time as they stepped into the cab. Rosie was strapped snugly in her car seat beside him, gently gnawing on a teething ring in the shape of a narwhal.
“And yet,” Sherlock said without looking up from his phone, “you’ve still come along.”
“I’m morally obligated. Someone has to make sure you don’t traumatize her.”
“She invited the trauma,” Sherlock said coolly. “I’m simply providing the opportunity.”
Across from them, Enola Stevenson sat with arms folded, booted feet tapping a sharp rhythm on the cab floor. She watched the two of them with an intensity that made even Sherlock shift slightly.
“Is this how you always flirt?” she asked dryly.
John choked. “We’re not—he—we’re not—!”
“—Flirting?” Sherlock supplied, without looking up.
“Yes,” John snapped, cheeks faintly pink.
Enola tilted her head. “Interesting. Defensive deflection, slight dilation of the pupils, pulse elevated. You do realize I’ve read all your casework, right? This sort of tension shows up everywhere. Chapter four of the Hounslow Arson Files practically read like an Austen novel.”
“Right,” John muttered. “Because that’s normal bedtime reading for a teenager.”
Enola shrugged. “I got through the Encyclopaedia Britannica by age ten. I needed something with emotional stakes.”
Sherlock did look up then, eyebrows raised—not in disbelief, but interest. “Did you, now?”
“I find well-documented chaos comforting.”
John rubbed his temples. “She is you. She’s literally a small, smug, slightly more feminist you.”
“I’m taller than him,” Enola said. “By two centimeters.”
Sherlock blinked. “You measured?”
“I measure everything.”
The cab rolled to a stop outside a narrow alley in Shoreditch, where yellow police tape fluttered like a warning banner. Lestrade stood at the edge of it, squinting into the sunlight.
As they approached, he took one look at Enola and frowned. “Sherlock. You bringing interns now?”
“She’s a visitor,” Sherlock said. “She believes she can solve this in under six hours.”
“Six hours?” Lestrade laughed. “Good luck, kid. Even he hasn’t cracked it yet.”
“That’s because he hasn’t let me near it,” Sherlock replied, brushing past the tape without waiting for permission. “Let her through.”
Lestrade hesitated. “She’s sixteen.”
“So was Joan of Arc,” Enola said. “And I brought gloves.”
That earned a blink from Lestrade. “Fine. But if the press gets wind of this—”
“They’ll be far more concerned about your lingering coffee addiction than about a competent teenager,” Enola called over her shoulder.
John tried very hard not to grin. “She’s going to cause you trouble,” he whispered to Sherlock.
“I already know,” Sherlock murmured with a smug smirk on his face.
Crime Scene: Shoreditch Alley, 11:05 a.m.
The body was still there, positioned carefully between two dumpsters. Male, mid-thirties, suit rumpled but expensive, neck angled sharply. No obvious wound. A briefcase had been carefully placed beside him.
Sherlock crouched next to the man and began cataloging quietly: “No bruising on the knuckles, no signs of struggle. Wallet still present. Expensive watch untouched. This wasn’t a mugging.”
Enola didn’t speak. She simply moved.
She took in the body with a long, deliberate scan of her eyes, stepping lightly around the perimeter. Her hands stayed in her coat pockets, but her shoulders tensed the way Sherlock’s did when he was seconds from a breakthrough.
John watched her circle the scene once. Then again. Then a third time, slower. Her eyes weren’t just scanning—they were remembering. She tilted her head toward a discarded cigarette butt, sniffed once, and smirked faintly.
“Trace elements of lavender oil,” she murmured.
Sherlock looked up, just slightly. “Interesting.”
“Cigarette brand is from a boutique chain in Hampstead,” she added. “Target demographic: women aged 45-60, with disposable income and yoga memberships.”
“Victim’s wife?”
“Possibly. Or someone posing as her. Also—” She crouched, lifted the man’s hand carefully. “Ink under the thumbnail. Blue. Faintly acidic smell. Printer ink, low-grade, likely from a home office. Combined with the tan line on his ring finger and the scuff on the back of his shoe—”
She looked up.
“He was running. Away from someone.”
John crossed his arms. “Okay, but what about cause of death?”
“Hypoxia,” Enola said at once. “There’s faint bruising at the trachea. Ligature mark under the collar—consistent with a wire. Clean, quick. Probably done by someone who knew exactly where to apply pressure. Which rules out random crime.”
She stood. “This was targeted. I need three hours. And access to his office.”
Sherlock stared at her, long and thoughtful.
Lestrade gave a low whistle. “You weren’t kidding.”
“I never do,” Enola said.
Sherlock smiled. It was small, almost imperceptible. But John saw it.
221B Baker Street, 5:26 p.m.
It took four hours and eighteen minutes.
The killer, it turned out, was a business partner with a fake identity and a mountain of stolen patents, exposed thanks to Enola’s quick hack into a forgotten email cache and a hand-drawn map of the firm's WiFi router. It had taken her less than an hour to find the hidden server behind a fake filing cabinet wall.
By the time Lestrade was shaking his head and whistling again, Enola had already returned to 221B with Sherlock and John. Rosie was asleep on John’s shoulder.
Enola set her guitar case down and sat cross-legged in the center of the flat like she’d done it before.
“My mother disappeared on my sixteenth birthday,” she said simply.
Sherlock looked up. “And she left no note?”
“She left a book. The Language of Flowers. Annotated. With a pressed anemone inside—symbolizing forsaken love. Also, a small fortune in bearer bonds. And a letter telling me who my father is.”
She looked at Sherlock.
“Your father.”
John’s mouth opened. Closed. Then opened again. “Okay. That’s… a lot.”
“I’m not asking you to believe it,” Enola said. “I’m asking you to help me find her.”
Sherlock said nothing.
Enola stood. “I’ll go, then. Thank you for the case.”
“Where are you staying?” John asked.
She hesitated. “Hotel, probably. I’ll find something.”
Mrs. Hudson’s voice came like a whipcrack from the stairs.
“No, you won’t. You’ll stay here. John’s old room is clean, I dusted it yesterday. You look like you need three cups of tea and a nap.”
Enola blinked. “I… thank you?”
“You’re family,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Even if you’re not, we’ll sort that out later.”
Sherlock watched her go upstairs with a strange look on his face—something between doubt and curiosity. John leaned next to him.
“She’s not lying,” he said quietly. “You believe her.”
“I believe,” Sherlock replied softly, “that we have a lot more to learn.”
Chapter 3: Flowers and Fingerprints
Chapter Text
221B Baker Street – Two Days Later
The book sat open on the kitchen table like a silent challenge. Its spine was cracked in the center. A dried sprig of rosemary had fallen loose sometime during the night, scattering flecks of green across the page.
Enola sat barefoot on the counter, sipping lemon tea and reading the margin notes in her mother’s exacting script. Every annotation was precise—underlined, circled, occasionally footnoted in Latin. Occasionally in cipher. Her fingers twitched toward her pocket notebook.
John stood at the stove with one hand cradling Rosie on his hip and the other expertly flipping a pancake. “You know,” he said, eyeing the book warily, “when someone leaves you a floral guide instead of a forwarding address, that usually qualifies as a red flag.”
“I prefer ‘coded message,’” Enola replied, brushing her braid over her shoulder. “Red flags are for amateur dramatics. This book is a map. My mother doesn’t do sentiment unless it has structure.”
Rosie reached for the pancake pan. John gently intercepted. “And the money?”
“Legal. Mostly. She sold her patent for a clean water filtration system to a Swiss environmental firm. Got paid in bearer bonds to avoid attention.”
Sherlock strode in then, coat flaring dramatically despite the absence of wind, as if the flat itself created a vortex just for him.
He looked between the table, Enola, and the baby.
“Someone is burning something.”
“Pancake,” John said.
“Ah.” He sniffed. “Cardboard. How thematic.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Sherlock ignored him, picking up the floral book with two fingers like it might bite. “Have you ruled out the possibility that your mother orchestrated her own disappearance to avoid detection?”
“Yes,” Enola said, “because she left me a copy of The Language of Flowers annotated in her own cipher, a full year’s worth of funds, and an envelope that reeks of red gardenia oil.”
“Red gardenias don’t exist,” Sherlock noted.
“Exactly. Which means the oil is manufactured—rare, expensive, and only distributed by a supplier in the Pyrenees. Which I traced back to a delivery address in London. No name. Just an initial: L.”
Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “You did this in two days?”
“I had the data,” she said. “Just not the map. The book is the key.”
John looked up from the pan. “What does the letter say again? The one she left with the book?”
Enola didn’t hesitate. “It says: ‘You are stronger than anyone knows. Do not let the Holmes bloodline make you cold. Remember the flowers. I love you more than my freedom.’”
John froze mid-pour. Sherlock was already pulling on gloves.
“Let me see it.”
Enola handed him the letter carefully, watching him the way one might observe a telescope aimed at Mars. Sherlock turned it over, tilted it toward the light, and examined the seal.
“No watermark. Ink slightly smeared on the right. Fiber is handmade—pulp from northern fir, likely pressed at a private mill. Signature matches earlier writings. But the indentation…” He paused. “There’s something else written here.”
John came over, leaning in.
Sherlock tilted the page toward the light again. “Yes. Impressions beneath the signature. Someone wrote another line. Then tore the top sheet away.”
“Can you recover it?” Enola asked.
Sherlock didn’t respond with words. He simply retrieved his small crime kit from under the stairs, flipped open a case of graphite powder and a soft brush, and began carefully dusting the paper. Within minutes, faint ridges appeared.
Enola stepped closer, breath held.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes, whispering as he translated the impressions.
Do not trust L. He knows.
The room fell still.
Enola took the letter back gently, her voice soft. “So she was scared.”
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “And cautious enough to leave a warning buried beneath a message of affection.”
John lowered himself into the armchair, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’ve got a missing mother, a secret warning, a mysterious L, and a teenager playing floral cryptographer in our kitchen.”
“I prefer ‘reluctant protagonist,’” Enola said.
Sherlock turned to her, suddenly very focused. “Tell me about L.”
“I don’t know much,” Enola admitted. “Only that the oil order—delivered under L’s name—was connected to a company called Violet Flame Holdings. It doesn’t exist anymore. Liquidated three weeks before Mum disappeared.”
“Shell company,” Sherlock muttered. “Likely used for untraceable transactions.”
“But there’s a trail,” Enola said. “If I can decode the next flower combination, I’ll have coordinates. I’m sure of it.”
Sherlock studied her for a moment.
“You’re frustrating.”
“You’re predictable.”
John snorted.
Later that Night, 11:42 p.m.
Enola played softly on her guitar in her room—John’s old room now wallpapered with flower diagrams, coded letters, and two maps pinned with red thread. The chords were gentle, precise. Classical fingerstyle, warm and deliberate.
Sherlock stood just outside the door, listening.
He didn’t interrupt.
Downstairs, John sat on the couch, half-asleep, Rosie snuggled against his chest. A fire crackled quietly in the grate.
Eventually, Sherlock joined him.
They sat in silence for a moment, both staring into the fire like it might speak first.
“She’s very bright,” John said softly.
“Too bright,” Sherlock muttered. “It’s… disconcerting.”
John smiled faintly. “You mean familiar.”
Sherlock glanced sideways. “You think she’s telling the truth.”
“I think she believes it,” John said. “And that’s enough for now.”
Silence stretched again. The fire flickered orange across the walls.
Sherlock shifted slightly, voice quieter. “You’re still here.”
John looked up, brow raised. “You want me to go?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“I just… I thought perhaps you were only here for Rosie.”
John didn’t answer right away. When he did, it was barely above a whisper.
“I was. At first.”
Their eyes met. A long, aching heartbeat passed.
Then Rosie snorted in her sleep and rolled over, breaking the spell.
Sherlock turned away. “I’m going to analyze the oil sample again. Good night.”
John watched him go.
Upstairs, Enola listened through the floorboards.
“Progress,” she murmured, grinning. “But slow.”
She turned back to her cork board, added a new card, and wrote in large block letters:
OPERATION: GET THEM TO KISS
Phase 1: Emotional Exposure – initiated.
GoodCringeyWriter on Chapter 1 Tue 04 Nov 2025 01:56AM UTC
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