Sherlock Girl - Bloodlines ch.7

The local police milled about the large house, some staring at the
grand halls and portraits, others paying more attention to the
obviously valuable items on display. Very few of them actually got on with the work at hand, the work they had been rather begrudgingly called in for. The bodies of Sophia's parents.

The local DI had already taken statements from everyone and they were all now sitting in the living room of the house, looking to each other occasionally as they read through the family tree spread across the floor.

John was the only one not around the family tree, which had even taken Mycroft's interest, he was too busy looking at the portrait of his ancestor behind the double doors. Sophia noticed this as she briefly looked away from the  family tree, so she jumped over it and walked over to him.

"I've heard the stories about him" John muttered as Sophia joined him by the painting, "The story is that he died, but only because no-one ever found out what happened to him, he just dropped off the radar one
year. Everyone always wanted to know.." Sophia noticed him staring into space again and she hugged him. John chuckled as he returned it.

"I wonder what they would think if I told them about what really
happened to him." John mused and Sophia started to giggle. "The looks on their faces if I introduced you afterwards, their relative from a long-lost relative thought to have just dropped dead."

Sophia was full out laughing now and John joined her.
"What about Mary?" Sherlock added. He had listened to the entire conversation and, as much as he respected John and his family, he had to admit that their mind-boggled faces would have been a hilarious thing to see. The consulting detective looked over to his brother and
was surprised to see him smiling.

"Perhaps it will have to be arranged. I'm sure the rest of your family would love to know the truth, wouldn't they John?" Sherlock continued, his grin widening as John dissolved into another fit of laughter.

Sophia suddenly stopped laughing as she heard talking just outside the door, causing everyone to turn and look at her. Sophia put her ear to the door and continued to listen and John managed to stop himself laughing as he tried to hear what Sophia could. The voices got closer
and Sophia heard more of the conversation, growing more and more concerned as she continued to listen, unwittingly putting everyone else on edge as she showed it.

"What happens now? To the girl?" the first voice asked, obviously a younger officer, new to the force.

"She's only 16, so she goes to the nearest member of family we can track down. Thou-" The second voice broke off as Eve shouted "NO!". The two officers walked into the room to find Eve glaring at them, joined by Sherlock, Mycroft and The Baker Street Irregulars, who had all obviously heard what they had just said.

John stepped out from behind the door with Sophia following him, staying behind John. Sherlock stepped over the Midnight family tree to stand by John and Sophia moved until she was standing between the two men.

"You are delusional if you think that you're just going to cart Sophia off to some random relative she's never met!" Eve shouted, opening her mouth to continue, but closing it again as Sherlock held up a hand to stop her.

"They are. The DI believes he's hiding his long-term affair from his wife, who is half his age as it is. His affair with the new intern
hasn't gone unnoticed though and she plans to divorce him the first chance she gets. The young sergeant here has just recently transferred. He thinks all of this is just a simple misunderstanding even though we've all told him otherwise and he refuses to believe us. Therefore proving how delusional he is." Sherlock finished there and the two officers just gawped at him.

"but it is the law that she goes to a relative." The young sergeant stuttered eventually, causing the DI to come out of his shocked state.

"Besides" he told Sherlock with a shrug. "They can't be any worse than her father."

Everyone just stared at him blankly, but Sophia caught on first and narrowed her eyes at the pair, stepping forward slightly. She paused
as she felt a hand resting on each of her shoulders, but she didn't stop glaring at the two officers in front of her.

"You knew" she growled and they took an involuntary step back.

"You knew" she repeated , no longer growling, but the officers took another step back anyway.

"What do you mean?" Eve asked, but felt stupid immediately as she realised what Sophia was talking about.

"YOU KNEW!!!" she screeched, causing the officers to turn to her.

"Wait a minute, you knew Sophia's father was abusive. And you did nothing!" John added, glaring at the two officers that looked ready to run for the hills, screaming like little girls.

"Get. Out. Now." Sherlock told them, putting extra emphasis on every word.  The Sergeant turned to run, but the DI grabbed his arm and held him in place.

"We didn't do anything about her father because he was more scary than you are Mr Holmes. Sophia will be sent to the closest relative we can
contact, its that or we arrest her for causing her mother's death." the DI told them, glaring back at Sherlock.

Sophia had moved before anyone could stop her, leaving everyone
stunned as she kicked the DI in the stomach, sending him to the floor.

She stood in front of him, glaring at the sergeant as if to say 'Tell
anyone and you die, now run' and he ran out of the room and through the front door. Eve listened as she heard the sound of gravel moving, telling them that Mycroft's remaining minions had floored the sergeant for them.

"In what way could you blame me for my mother's death. I've spent the past six years wondering if she'd ever come looking for me after she
left, if she cared enough about her daughter to try and rescue her from the demon she ran from. How could I have caused my mother's death?" Sophia continued to glare at the man as she spoke, her tone implying the threat that she posed.

To everyone's surprise, the DI chuckled as he tried to get to his feet.

"You still don't get it do you? I thought you were smart Sophia. Your mother died because she came back for you. Your father admitted killing her because she wouldn't open the door for him when she came back."

Sophia managed to keep her composure long enough for the DI to get to his feet, he looked away from the stunned Sophia to address the rest of the room.

"I’ll clear this little mess up for you as if it never existed, but
only if you let me see what's behind the door." he told them all.

"We can't open it, Sophia can't work it out." John told the DI icily as he pointed to the door, where most of the police were already walking out. The DI chuckled as he turned to the ex-army doctor.

"Now that's a lie doctor Watson and you know that for a fact. Just let me see what's behind the door." he told them. Eve walked forward and stood in front of the DI, glaring into his eyes as she grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the stairs, Sherlock and Mycroft following. Ophelia and her friends followed soon after, leaving John with Sophia, who was still frozen in shock.

Sophia continued to stare blankly into space until John put a
comforting hand on her shoulder and she turned to look at the stairs, where two of the remaining officers were carrying a gurney with a body
bag. John felt her shoulders begin to shake as the gurney moved out of the door and he spun Sophia around to face him. She closed the short distance between them and, for the second time that day, clung to his jacket and cried.

"I did this" she sobbed as John wrapped his arms around her.

"No you didn't Soph, your father did." John told her, but she just
shook her head and continued to repeat "It’s all my fault" as she
sobbed into his jacket. John heard footsteps making their way down the stairs and he pulled her over to the large armchair by the fire, she automatically shifted to let him take a seat before she sat on his knee and continued to cry onto his shoulder. He smirked as he remembered an incident four years ago where she'd done exactly the same thing, but thankfully neither of them was injured this time.

He just sat with her and let her sob onto his shoulder for what seemed like an age, not quite knowing what he could say to her to make her stop. When she did stop, she was breathing deeply and John found
himself smirking again. John gently lifted her up and got to his feet, placing her gently back in the chair and grabbing the blanket off the back. He grabbed a pillow and placed it gently under her head, then placed the blanket over her and walked out of the room to let her sleep.

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Halfway up the second set of stairs, John was met by a panicking Ophelia and her friends.

"What's going on?" he asked immediately and Ophelia tried to explain. She was speaking far too fast for John to understand all of it, but he understood the words 'DI', 'guns' and 'hurt'. He ran right past Ophelia and her friends and got his gun out ready as he understood what he'd recognised, what Ophelia had been trying to say. 'Sherlock
hurt'.

John ran the length of the corridor and stared. Sherlock, Eve and Mycroft were glaring at the DI, having a stand-off that John stayed out of. Instead, John stood by the entrance to the small corridor and looked at how much of the room he could see. He couldn't quite see the
DI, but he could see his reflection on the  marble mantelpiece.

John studied the reflection carefully and, though he wasn't as good as Sherlock with calculations, he worked out how the bullet would ricochet. The DI moved and John could tell he was about to take a shot, so John fired first, The bullet ricocheted off the marble
mantelpiece and embedded itself deep into the DI's leg, giving Mycroft enough time to disarm him and Eve enough time to floor the DI. John casually walked into the room at that point and looked to Sherlock.

The bullet hole in Sherlock's white sleeve was obvious, even if there hadn't been blood pooling around it, travelling down his arm and dropping to the floor from his elbow, adding to the already dry pool from earlier. John ignored the DI and ordered Sherlock to sit. He shouted down the stairs for someone to grab the first-aid kit for him and one of Mycroft's minions handed it to him as they pulled the DI off the floor and dragged him away.

Eve walked past John patching Sherlock up and Mycroft hovering nearby, past Ophelia still jabbering away too fast to understand and straight to the living room, where she found Sophia curled up asleep in an armchair. Now, Eve knew Sophia didn't often sleep well and, rather like her own, some of the nightmares could be quite disturbing. Eve became worried when Sophia started mumbling in her sleep, telling Eve that the dream was even more disturbing than usual...

~~~~~dream~~~~

Sophia was standing in a the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but grey. She looked down at the grey ground as black lines started to
form, they ran out into the distance and spread out in wierd shapes, creating a bizarre tree.

She realised what it was when figures appeared on the edges of the tree, some figures coming closer than the others. In the distance she could pick out Sherlock and Mycroft, who were looking to Sophia's right. She turned to see the Moriarty brothers where the subject of their attention. She paused as she found Eve in the centre of the two groups, grinning goofily at her as she pointed to a branch of the family tree covering the floor. Sophia, unable to stop herself in her dream-state, followed that line, and another, and another until another figure came into view, John.

She lost control as everyone vanished once more and the landscape was blank. The tree began spreading out from her feet again, but this time
it didn't go as far. Instead it stopped and a name appeared on the floor and a voice echoed through her dream.

'I managed to grab her for you. How are you going to get her back un-noticed?' it asked and Sophia knew that she recognised it, but that it definitely wasn't her father's voice.

It was her father that replied.
'Just wait. I'll be back in a week and you'll have your share of the
fortune. Don't worry about it...'

Suddenly Sophia was moving again and she tried to get everything to stop, knowing that it was quickly turning into a nightmare. There was
nothing that she could do though and she was soon faced with her
mother's name on the floor, and beside that a wardrobe lying on its back. Again she could hear voices around her, bouncing around in the emptiness.

'You still don't get it do you? I thought you were smart Sophia. Your mother died because she came back for you. Your father admitted killing her because she wouldn't open the door for him when she came back' the voice said, startling her as she recognised it.

That was the voice of the man that had taken her from 221C, that was the man who had been talking to her father, that was the DI.
~~~dream end~~~~

Sophia woke with a start and sat bolt upright, not knowing that her legs had been balanced over the arm of the large chair, causing her to topple sideways off the chair as she sat up, landing in a less than graceful heap on the floor. Eve squeaked in surprise and turned to
look at the chair, only to find Sophia in a heap on the floor in front of it.

Eve scrambled off her own chair to help Sophia to her feet again, only to hit her head against Sherlock's as he crossed the room to do the same thing. Eve and Sherlock stood back rubbing their heads and Sophia
pulled herself to her feet, too preoccupied with the information she had to laugh at the pair. John walked in and raised his eyebrows when he saw the two geniuses rubbing their heads.

"What happened he-" John started to ask, but Sophia interrupted him.

"John, the DI works for my father!" she interrupted.

"We know! he just shot me!" Sherlock told her.

"That's not what I meant. You've told me that you couldn't work out who took me, well I know!" Sophia exclaimed and they all frowned in confusion, so Sophia elaborated. "You know I hear some things when I'm asleep, I heard him talking with my father, asking for his cut of the fortune."

"But the fortune is no more than old Journals, why would he want
some?" Eve asked, but then worked out the answer to her own question, but John actually voiced it.

"They both thought it was going to be some sort of gold or jewels, like we did when we first heard of it. That's what everyone automatically presumes."

"It is, well part of it anyway." Sophia muttered and everyone turned to her. Sophia rolled her eyes and walked towards the stairs, everyone following to satisfy their curiosity.

Sophia paused by the open door and pulled one of the keys out of its lock. Sherlock pushed the pendant into the painting and the panelling swung open again. Sophia pointed to the carpet covering the floor of the small alcove and Sherlock sighed.

"That's desperately obvious, how did we miss it?" Sherlock asked himself as he looked to the giant keyhole pattern on the carpet. In the centre of the pattern there was a hole in the carpet, almost unnoticeable, but the locking mechanism shone out, showing that it was no random section of floorboard.

Sophia inserted the key and turned it, smirking as Eve jumped back into the wall as the painting swung forward.

"Highly predictable" Sherlock muttered, but he walked over and pushed the painting back to reveal the alcove behind it.

He pulled out one of the oriental boxes and held it out to Sophia, almost hitting her on the head with it as she walked over to join him.

"What the....ooh!" Sophia squealed as she opened the box. Eve frowned at her friend's odd behaviour, but then looked over Sophia's shoulder and into the box. Eve grinned and grabbed another box from the shelves behind the painting, grinning widely as she opened it.

Sherlock smirked as he opened another, seeing the gold and silver coins inside. Sherlock turned the box to John and the ex-army doctor gawped.