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Doctor: This is the story of the extinction of Gallifreyans. It is not how I thought it would end. I thought I was the last of the time lords. But then I held my second son in my arms for the first time and felt his heart beats...I had hope restored. I could not have imagined that love would end it all.
***
John could see three figures standing over Sherlock's grave. It was the anniversary of his death and John made a special effort to go to the grave today. He had tried to move on. He had married and divorced. He couldn't let go of his one true love. And so here he was bringing flowers to a grave exactly three years to the day of his beloved's death. He hadn't known at the time that he was in love, not until it was too late. He couldn't quite shake the thought that it might have changed things. Sherlock might have had something to live for, but John had long ago come to terms with the fact that he would never really know what motivated Sherlock.
Three figures. Two tall men and a finely dressed woman. In John's view women didn't dress so well these days but he had been told he was old fashioned. One man turned and saw him coming, seemed to say something to the taller of the two, who moved away into nearby trees. Strange place to put an old police box. The other two waited at the grave. Strange, they didn't seem like Sherlock's street network and John didn't know who else would be visiting Sherlock's grave.
"Afternoon," he said politely as he stepped up to the other side of the grave.
"Dr John Watson?" the woman asked.
"Yes," he replied. "You knew Sherlock?"
"I'm Melody Holmes."
*** ***
Meanwhile across the country and in the past...
Rory pulled on a robe and went to find where the Doctor had parked the Tardis this time. The noise that the Tardis made flying with the hand brake on had woken them. He was surprised when he heard the Tardis take off again so quickly.
One the floor in the middle of the living room was the Doctor's cradle and a Tardis blue suitcase. Rory started when the cradle moved and he heard the distinct noise of a baby.
***
"Melody Holmes?" John's lip quivered, but he tried to look away before they saw. "A relative then?" his voice hitching slightly.
Melody fidgeted a moment. Finally she looked to the Doctor, uncertainty in her eyes. He nodded slowly, which she rewarded with half a grin. She went to stand by John, who tensed slightly at her proximity. She lightly placed her hand on John's shoulder, spreading her fingers marginally.
"He loved you, darling" she said quietly, to his back. John made short, strangled sob, but placed his left hand over hers on his right shoulder.
The Doctor stood on the other side of John, making a sympathetic face at his back. "Sherlock....he was a very special man, John. No grave could hold him down"
John sucked in a breath, and Melody's fingers tightened on his shoulder. "I miss him so..." His voice broke, and his brows furrows in pain. "...So much"
"He misses you too, John. You were always his one weakness, the one thing he could never walk away from" The Doctor said, softly. John turned sharply, to look at him.
***
"Rory? Is it him?" Amy came flouncing in, but stopped cold when she saw Rory cradling a bundle of blankets carefully to his chest. She stared at the pair of them.
Rory could not look away from the child's eyes. Staring down into that sweet, pale face, he saw that while completely human in every appearance, there was something disturbing and haunting in the child's eyes. Stark, lush curls framed the cherubic cheeks. Rory looked up at Amy finally.
"I think we're meant to keep him" His eyes pleaded with Amy.
***
"How much do you love him, John?" Melody asked.
John frowned as he looked between Melody and the unnamed man. "What do you mean misses me?"
"He's not dead," Melody said.
"I saw him. I saw his body. I felt his pulse." John's voice was as shaky as he felt but his soldier's training froze him in place, in fact the shake in his left hand that had plagued him for the past three years stopped. He was perfectly steady.
"Yes. You did. He sacrificed himself for you. Are you willing to do the same for him? Are you willing to give up everything? To walk away from everyone? To be dead to the world, for him?" the odd man asked.
"Who the hell are you? What are you talking about?" John demanded.
***
Amy saw the suitcase and went to it. Even with all the travelling they had done with the Doctor, she was still surprised when she opened the case. It was bigger on the inside. On the top, placed to be so deliberately noticable, was a letter in a Tardis blue envelope. Her hand shook as she picked it up, remembering the last time she opened one.
~Dear Mum and Dad,
Nope that will never sound right.
Dear Ponds,
That's better.
Dear Ponds,
I thought long and hard about how to do this. What to say and all that. But...
Well, it's like this. In my time and place, River is dead. Well, no that isn't right. She will never be dead. I made sure of that. But she is somewhere safe where we can't go. At this point in time, we have two sons, Mycroft who is human and Sherlock who is Gallifreyan. Rory is holding Sherlock. Mycroft is away at school. He will turn up on your doorstep for the holidays. I know you will welcome him. River will be along in about a week, your time. Break it to her gently.
Rory, I know you always wanted kids. Raising your grandkids is probably not what you expected but well here they are.
Don't be angry, Amy. They can't grow up on the Tardis it will mess with them something awful. I will be by often and so will River.
Now there are instructions regarding Sherlock. Phone me if you have any trouble. The first thing you should know is never take him to see a human doctor.
Hugs and kisses,
The Doctor.~
***
The strange man fiddled with his suspenders for a moment. "We want our.....we want Sherlock to be happy. And he's completely miserable without you, John."
"yeah, hang on. - Sherlock's alive? Has been all this time? " a myriad of emotions passed over John's features.
"He gave up everything important to him, so his loved ones could go on living. Sherlock.....well, he's a bit different from the rest of you. But you've always known that, haven't you, John? "
John looked up sharply, thinking for a few moments before nodding slowly.
Melody went to stand beside the other man. He looked her in the eye warmly. "He's not ready" She whispered to him. "Sherlock needs him" the man said, resigned.
"I want to....whatever Sherlock needs." John said, walking up to them. Melody's eyes cut over to where the old Police box stood.
***
Rory had his head in a cabinet, fixing the sink. Well, trying to fix the sink. He wasn't having much luck. But that didn't stop him from tinkering about, taking pieces off, and looking utterly confused when it came time to put them back together.
Sherlock toddled into the room just then. He was 3 years old now, and to the amazement of the Ponds, he'd kept his shockingly dark curls. He listened to Rory muttering to himself for a moment, before tilting his head to the side in curiosity.
"Try tightening the compression nut. If that doesn't stop the leak, disassemble the fitting, coat the gasket with Teflon and reassemble the connection" Sherlock's small voice snapped off matter of factly.
Rory turned around so fast, that he smacked his forehead on the cabinet.
"OW!....Where did you learn that?"
"I read it in a book" Sherlock shrugged and skipped from the room
Rory pressed a palm to his bruised forehead, and yelped "Amy!.....Amy, he can read!"
***
John followed her eyes. It didn't take John long to realize that she was right, even though part of his mind still screamed that he couldn't be. "Sher...Sherlock," he said as he moved hesitantly towards the police box. "Sherlock!" he finally cried as he ran. The Doctor and River stood by and watched as he reached the Tardis and then simply stopped. He wasn't sure if Sherlock was hiding behind it or in it or what. Sherlock opened the door and they stood staring at each other for a second before they flew into each other's arms. For a long time they stood like that until John pulled back and held him at arm's length. "It's you...You are really alive."
"It's alright, John," Sherlock said.
"No..." John replied and then his anger boiled over. "No! It's not alright! Have you any idea what you put me through? What you put Mycroft through..."
Mycroft knows. He's known all along," Sherlock replied.
"He...I'm going to bloody kill him! After I have finished with you."
Sherlock smiled. "You deserve an explanation."
***
Amy rushed into the kitchen.
"He can read."
"Yes, I heard you," Amy replied. She picked him up. He was heavy for his tiny frame, especially so since he was so skinny dispite their efforts to feed him up. He ate just so much, obediently trying what they insisted upon but when he had decided he had eatten enough he stopped and could not be conjouled, tricked or forced to eat more. She sat him on the kitchen table and stood in front of him. "Who taught you to read?"
Sherlock looked thoughtful for a moment and the shrugged his shoulders making his mop of curls that so reminded them of River, except in it's colour, bob about his face. Huge piercing blue eyes looked innocently at her. "Okay so you can read, but that doesn't mean that you understand what you read."
"I would hardly call it reading otherwise, Mother," he relied.
"Amy, this is Sherlock," Rory said as if that explained everything. "What have you been reading?"
"Everything," he said.
"We should have expected this. The Doctor did say he would be bright," Amy said, hesitantly.
"But it is sudden," Rory qualified.
"I have been reading for 14 months and 3 days. Though that might not be accurate since I started reading before I could tell time," Sherlock announced.
"And you didn't think to tell us?" Amy asked.
"It has taken some time to become proficient at it."
"He's been reading the dictionary," Rory said.
"And the encyclopedia and...well, I did say everything. The series of books on raising a child was interesting but in my case, highly inaccurate. Is this another thing that I do not share with human children?" he asked.
***
Sherlock walked over to where The Doctor and River stood. John frowned slightly as they held a whispered conversation. He was ecstatic that Sherlock was back, God, he was alive! But he wanted some answers, he deserved that much. Sighing, he stalked over to the trio.
"Look, can we skip the secretive conversations, and get to the part where this makes any damn sense?" He said to Sherlock, but he was looking accusingly at Melody and the other man. Because he felt deeply that Sherlock would have never left, not....John had to swallow back some unnamed lump in his throat.
Sherlock looked uncertainly at The Doctor. "He's not ready..."
"You worry too much, he's not as fragile as you might think, brother" Melody smiled warmly, cupping Sherlock's cheek.
John looked between Sherlock and Melody, and when neither spoke, he blurted out, "Somebody better start talking!" and walked a little away from them, balling his fists in anger. Why? Why would Sherlock leave without telling him? He had let John think he was dead, let him grieve, let him wish for things....
"There are other worlds, secrets in this life that you've never dreamed of" Sherlock stated plainly. John stared at him, awaiting explanation. Sherlock shrugged. "An ordinary mind couldn't handle the true complexity of the nature of time".
John tilted his head, before unleashing a growl of pent up agitation, and launching himself at Sherlock. Melody and The Doctor jumped between them. "Take it easy, cowboy" Melody said, rubbing John's arm. He jerked away from her, too angry to be comforted.
"Time isn't a straight line. It's all bumpy-wumpy". When John looked at him like he was an idiot, he continued, gesturing with his hands, as if that explained everything. "It's very complicated. But Sherlock isn't exactly who you think he is. Well....he is - but he isn't."
"Oh, well, thanks for clearing that up. I was afraid I was going to get the run around". John looked pointedly at Sherlock.
"I haven't always known either, John. I was raised here, by human parents, but I'm...." He gestured towards the other two.
***
The year Sherlock turned five proved to be very trying for the Ponds. Sherlock wasn't your average child - his intelligence was phenomenal. However, neither Amy or Rory really knew the true extent of it until they went to register him for Primary school.
The day they went down to the school to register him, they tried to explain his unique level of intelligence, so they might put him in a higher level. The administrator sat the boy down, and put a test in front of him.
Sherlock looked at it with disdain. "Bored".
Amy looked to Rory for help, though she wasn't entirely surprised by Sherlock's reaction. Rory nodded once, resolutely, then crouched beside his son's chair.
"What's the point of being clever if you can't prove it? If...if you don't take the test, you'll be stuck in a lower level with children eating snot, and putting paste in each other's hair" Rory said in a low voice, so the administrator wouldn't overhear. Sherlock looked truly stricken for a moment.
"But I'm above all this rubbish." He glanced at the administrator. He was a balding man, in a gray suit with a blue tie. "This man's a cheater. Cheats on his wife, she knows by the way, Cheats on his records, tsk tsk, and cheats on his diet, oh." Sherlock pulled a artificially sympathetic face.
"What?!" and "Sherlock!" were shouted simultaneously. Rory, still knelling beside him, whispered "How could you possibly know that?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "The art of disguise is hiding in plain sight. No one notices a small, quiet child in a school office. One who might hear a lot of things not intended for small ears".
After much hushed discussion, Sherlock was advanced to secondary school.
"Bored"
***
Sherlock took John's hand and walked away from his parents. John silently went with him. As they walked slowly around in the cemetery Sherlock explained. "Moriarty had assassins on you, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade and heaven knows who else. He was going to kill you all if I didn't jump."
"Yes, Greg and I worked that out. That's why we didn't clear your name. We decided it would be too dangerous," John replied. "But you could have told me!"
"It was too risky. Even this is. I can't be sure that my enemies would leave you alone even now. Also I would have to explain to you about who I am and how I survived," Sherlock said.
"So who are you and how did you survive?" John asked. "And why the hell am I holding your hand?"
"Because you love me," Sherlock told him.
"Yes, yes I do, and it was easier to love you when you were dead."
***
The overseer of the test which Sherlock had taken was doubtful about everything. "A child this young will not have the concentration to sit this test. It is 3 hours long," he warned the Ponds. He seemed to have his doubts justified when Sherlock handed in the test in half an hour.
The woman from the Board of Education sat in the armchair across from Amy and Rory who were sitting on the couch. Sherlock was sitting between them. "I suggest home schooling until he reaches his teens. Then have him re-assessed for who level he should enter the school system. I have all the papers filled out, all you have to do is sign them, and you will receive the first lot of material in the mail shortly.
"What were the results of the test you had me take?" Sherlock asked.
The woman looked at Sherlock as if she was surprised that he had any input in this. "Um...you are well advanced in many areas but lack basic skills. For instance, your writing."
"I am 5 years old," Sherlock replied. "I do not yet have the manual dexterity. I would have done better if the test had been computerized."
"No doubt. But basic writing skills is a prerequesite for advancement."
"So you are prejudiced again the disabled who are unable to write?" Sherlock asked.
"You aren't disabled."
"It seems that my dexterity is a disability to my education."
The woman floundered and looked to Amy and Rory for help. "Sherlock, we can't find a school that will take you," Rory pointed out.
"I think we should contact your parents," Amy said.
Sherlock wrapped his arms around Amy's arm. "I don't want to leave," he said suddenly very much a five year old.