The Case Of The Missing Identity

Darkness filled the dusty room, only marred by streaks of the dull street lighting right outside. The light passed the windows and the heavy curtains, illuminating some papers scattered across the unkempt table riddled with other chemical equipment and abandoned glasses that reflected the light that fell on them. The fire place was empty, a lonely violin rested mute beside it; while on the mantelpiece a knife was stabbed through a small stack of letters, clearly visible from the two seats in front of it.

Both of them filled.

One figure sleeping, while the other itched for another nicotine patch, a small red bowtie on his lap.

His fingertips rested against each other while his stare was fixed on the figure before him. His mind tried to find a sense to the madness, but his brain refused to give him any plausible answer, which gave him a rush of thrill and irritation all at once.

Bluish grey eyes studied all the evidence it could drag out of the sleeping figure reposing on the opposite couch, and yet it seemed to be all wrong.

He snorted.

That could not be right.

But he wasn't wrong.

Not him.

The faint sound of a closing door downstairs pulled him back from his thoughts for a second. He calculated the exact time it would take for the owner of the familiar tread to come up the stairs and walk through the door, while his eyes were still fixed on the seat across him.

The door groaned in its frame a flash of light danced before his eyes until they adjusted to the electric light, which had been turned much too suddenly.

The man by the door blinked for a second as he processed the scene before him. The other could already see the frown forming on his face; the man's raised eyebrows deepening the already existing wrinkles on his forehead.

He stepped further into the room, flexing his hands and pursing his lips.

"What's this?"

The detective stared especially hard his object of scrutiny, hunching his shoulders. He still didn't look up.

"…I don't know."

"Sherlock!"

He sighed, straightening himself in his chair, as he grabbed the bowtie that lay on his lap for so long. He looked at his friend for a second, then went back to the red bowtie. He groaned in frustration, rubbing his temple and didn't even try to check the anger in his voice.

"I told you, John. I. don't. know."

The doctor could feel his eye twitching at that oh-so-helpful answer, before his gaze went back to the little boy slumped in his chair - why even his chair? Wouldn't the couch be better for a nap?

Whatever.

'Focus, John.' He tried to center his attention on the more important problem here. John had had a tiring day at work and he wasn't feeling too patient when he entered. Sherlock was not helping his sour mood. He could feel his patience steadily wane away.

The fact that he felt like he knew this child but couldn't quite remember how wasn't helping him either.

"How can you not know why some random child is sleeping in my chair?!" He burst out, arms crossed in front of his chest. His best friend just looked at him, his face impassive like he'd just been asked what the weather was, before he answered him with a shrug.

"'Cause I brought him here."

"You what?! God, Sherlock what have you done to him?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, pushing himself up from his chair to continue their little…argument at a more comfortable position. Besides, he could see the pulsing artery at his friend's neck, prominent enough to count his heart rate; and knew he was seconds away from a long tirade about 'manners' and whatnot.

'94 per minute. Oh, come on John, you can do better.'

He shook his head, turning around so that his back faced John while he laid the bowtie on his desk, when he answered drily, "Nothing, John."

Well, Watson didn't buy that for a second.

"And why are you staring at him like that?" John took a deep breath. This was growing ridiculous. They were both being childish now.

The detective turned around, annoyed at how dull John was being.

"Geez, John is it your tiny bubble brain or have you completely lost the ability to observe? I'm not suddenly into little boys even if some crazy fans of your 'blog' might come up with that theory." The doctor stared at the sudden outburst of his friend. It was not like he was lying…fans tend to be…creepy or bizarre sometimes. But beside the inane rudeness of it all, he could see his friend's growing frustration on this matter that (probably, no, hopefully) brought the boy here. Sherlock shook his head, holding his chin in his hands staring down at the little boy while his answer turned to a distant murmur.

"I just told you. I don't know."

John brushed a hand over his face with a sigh, knowing the look on his friend's face. He would not speak to him for the next few minutes, eyes still focused on the little boy. The doctor decided to do his part and went to examine the child in front of him. He knelt down with a grunt, his fingers searching over child's neck in search of a pulse. He let out a relieved breath when he found it was calm and steady. The little boy seemed to be in deep sleep, not at all disturbed by their argument.

While his fingers still rested on his neck, his eyes moved back to his face, and frowned when he suddenly figured out how he knew the child. This was the strange child from the case they'd solved earlier today, even if he wasn't wearing his glasses right now. He remembered the boy's strange behavior; no wonder Sherlock was busy wracking his precious brain over it.

For one, the boy was a huge fan of Sherlock…and John's blog (finally, someone who knew that it was John who wrote it); on the other hand, that alone was strange as well, together with the fact that he was from Japan where his friend might be popular but not enough for a grade school child to notice him. Also, the boy didn't ask for an autograph, his big sister did so in his place. It was also the boy and his family, tourists from Japan, who had found the corpse. Even when the man with the mustache who accompanied the girl and this little boy had told him that he was a famous detective in Japan, it had actually been the little boy poking his nose everywhere, making strange suggestions in a childish voice before blushing all red when Sherlock had eyed him with a suspicious raised eyebrow.

He knew that his friend had been watching him and to be honest he was fascinated and disturbed at the same time that such a small child didn't seemed to be bothered by death, but was instead asking questions which oddly made sense and managed to somehow push the investigation in the right direction. In fact, it seemed like he and Sherlock were solving this case together, despite the fact that the boy had suddenly disappeared in the end. Probably because Sherlock's sharp gaze on him finally freaked him out.

John shook his head with a sigh, it seems like his friend wasn't done with his examination of the little boy yet. But kidnapping this child really was going too far, even for Sherlock Holmes.

"So, what have you discovered?"

"Huh?" He turned around at the sudden question of his friend.

"Don't you find it…strange?"

The army doctor's eyebrow rose at the tone of the question posed to him.

"What? That you somehow drugged the child to bring him here?" he replied sarcastically.

"What? No!" Sherlock raked his hand through his hair in annoyance, obviously not in the mood for biting jokes, and at how slow his friend was being.

"You see but you don't observe, John."

John rolled his eyes at this now familiar adage, but waited for Sherlock to bust out into deducing what he clearly had not seen.

"Okay, let's make things easier for you. Have a look at these." His friend pointed to the little pile of clothes, currently resting on his working desk. A pair of shoes, a red bowtie, a wristwatch, glasses, some little yellow stickers, a strange looking belt and two mobile phones. John frowned as he picked up the bowtie, which looked rather ordinary, if a little worn out, made for a child the boy's size. He could feel his friend's eyes on him, a smile forming on his lips when the doctor finally turned the red fabric around.

"What the-?" The blond blinked when he saw the minute device behind the fabric, something that looked like a miniature dial plate with different numbers like that of an old phone with a speaker resting in the middle of it. A catlike smile spread over Sherlock's lips when he saw the astonishment on his friend's face.

"Try it, John…play with it, try to figure out what it does."

John looked at him with a frown, before focused on the little bowtie, holding it a little closer to his face to have a better look at the mechanism.

"But how-?!" Apparently the device was close enough to his mouth to be activated, because the voice that vocalized his speech was a stranger's.

"Holy shit, what the hell?"

"Not exactly my thoughts but it also fits." Sherlock chuckled, a knowing smile in his eyes, when his friend turned to him, shock still plainly visible on his face.

"What about the rest?"

"Oh you mean these?" He pointed to the other accessories. "A pair of shoes which gave you the power to kick a hole through my head, probably used for those footballs which come out of this belt, and glasses which also function as a tracking device, most likely for these pretty little things." Sherlock smirked at the bamboozled expression on John's face, while he pointed to the yellow round bugs. It was priceless.

"And let's not forget, a wristwatch which contains darts that can put you into a nice deep sleep. And lastly, these two different phones." He murmured more to himself than John, before turning to his friend again, annoyance clouding his voice, "And if you'd examined him properly, you would have noticed the scar of a shot wound on his stomach, along with the fact that his right index finger shows signs of a callus, which indicates the frequent usage of pens, which is odd for a child of his age, but the ink patterns in the neat little notebook I've found match the pen he has, and also matches his knowledge of our language which you'd already pointed out during the case this morning. " Sherlock reminded him, shaking his head.

"Now you know why I took him with me…I needed answers, I needed to observe and deduce." The detective grumbled, pacing up and down in their living room, while John just stared at him in disbelief.

"What? But he's a child, Sherlock! What could all of this possibly mean?"

"Nothing."

The small voice immediately got their attention. He was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, as John followed his gaze to his friend before gliding to the dart watch lying on the table beside his glasses with an annoyed look.

Shinichi could feel his heart hammering in his chest, it had only taken him a second to know where he was. 221B, Baker Street. The place smelled like old paper, tea and chemicals from Holmes' kitchen lab. A part of him was freaking out that he could be in his idol's living room, but the cold, penetrating eyes of the great detective that scanned him for more clues quickly quelled that feeling. The little boy shivered, fingers clutching at the soft material of the chair, tensed. He knew that it had been a bad idea to involve himself in another case, right after the tennis disaster, but when he heard that the officer had called for Sherlock Holmes and he simply couldn't resist.

He knew that things started to go wrong when the detective focused more on him than the case and yet he gave in to the temptation to solve a case with his idol.

Well this is where that got him. Sherlock Holmes knocked him out with his own wristwatch and the look on the detective's face told him, that he had already figured out way too much.

Conan swallowed. He couldn't allow him to get involved with the Organization, great detective or not. He didn't want to endanger Holmes or Watson. It was time to utilize his mom's acting genes, but before he could even open his mouth Sherlock interrupted, like he had just read his mind and knew what he was planning to do.

"Don't even bother to try it, midget, we won't fall for your childish act again. Isn't that right, John?" He announced with a hard smirk. Shinichi bit his lips while John looked at his friend in confusion.

"Huh?"

An amused glint shone in the detective eyes, when he turned around to the coat stand by the door.

"But if you want to play around, that's fine by me. So, let's play a little game." Worry gripped John, when he saw the small child trapped underneath his friend's unnerving gaze, shrinking even more into the big seat. He frowned at the boy but was fast interrupted by his friend when he tried to intervene.

"Sherlock- I think you-"

He threw a grey coat from the stand at the boy, who nearly got swallowed by the fabric, before pushing it down on his lap, tousling his hair in that way.

"That jacket was left by a man here last week, who demanded my help. Tell me something about him." The detective ordered, plopping himself in the chair in front of the boy, tugging out his phone to type something; seemingly not paying attention to them anymore. John saw a spark of annoyance in the child's eyes, his fingers crawled into the coat as he stubbornly peeked over it at his friend.

"And what if I don't want to?" The boy looked up, half hidden by the overlarge jacket in his lap.

Sherlock merely shrugged, still focused on his mobile. His answer held a slight threatening tone though.

"Well… that would be a shame of course, since I would need to call your 'Ran-neechan' and tell her about your little toys here, since such weapons hardly belong in the hands of a little innocent child." John's mind easily connected the name with the high school girl, most probably the elder sister of the boy.

However, that seemed to do the trick.

"Fine." Shinichi grumbled. He could feel a slight touch of red on his cheeks but since Sherlock Holmes was busy with his mobile, he probably hadn't seen it. It didn't surprise him that the detective had found out so easily how to blackmail him, but it made him anxious nonetheless. He fingered the fabric in his lap, his eyes darted back to Sherlock for a second before he finally gave in, unfolding the jacket to have a better look at it, while he could feel John's eyes on him the entire time. Shinichi's mind automatically made deductions on the little hints he saw in the grey texture, but frowned when he finally answered.

"He' s tall… probably in his forties, but has quite a stressful life since his hair is turning grey already, he' s addicted to cigarettes, even so he tries to lower his consumption- without much success. He's meeting with different women, so probably just got divorced from his wife." His eyes stopped at the strange dent on the side of the jacket, before he looked up at Sherlock with a smirk.

"Nice try Mr. Holmes, but this isn't the coat from one of your clients; it's Inspector Lestrade's." A smile flashed over Sherlock's lips, before he groaned in fake frustration.

"Who is the most annoying client I've ever had."

John still stood beside them, watching something he knew he didn't completely understand. He had known that it was Lestrade's coat, since he forgot it here the past week, but how could the boy have guessed it!? Together with the details, which were in fact true. And how was it that Sherlock still didn't show interest in the boy but was instead playing with his damn phone when his gaze had been boring holes into the child just minutes ago?

"What!? But- How?!" The doctor stuttered in shock, he could feel his eye twitching slightly when Sherlock sighed, finally putting his mobile aside.

"Easily, John." His friend proclaimed in a calm voice, which only aggravated his temper that flared in the presence of extraordinary geniuses. He fished the thin grey coat from the boy who watched Sherlock's explanation in silence.

"You see some grey and black short hair on the lapel of the jacket, he must have a short haircut, somewhat military style judging by the length of the hair strands; shape and style of the jacket allows us to guess his age to be younger than what the silver strands might give away. There is a faint smell of tobacco- different sorts of it I might add, along with a bit of debris from the cigarettes in his right pocket- what also would allow to come to the conclusion that he's right handed by the way. You can see that the lining on the left upper arm is somehow discolored and a little yellow. We have a summer jacket here so he probably wears it over a tee shirt or something similar which allows his bare skin to touch the lining along with the nicotine patches we both favor, which would cause the change of color on the texture. The women part isn't hard to guess seeing slight shades of different makeup on each side of the collar, which probably got there when he kissed them good bye on each check so that their skin touched his jacket late at night. They could've been his mother and other relatives but the chances of that are very slim. The fact that he just got divorced is a little harder to observe. The coat isn't new, he wore it for a few years now, you can see that the sleeves had been decently rolled up at some point of time, so that the fabric gained the same color like the rest of the coat, faded by the sun, but just at the end you can see a straight streak of texture that didn't get in contact with the sun before. The accurate line tells us that it was ironed and done with care, while now, it's done rather messily by Lestrade himself. And since our little friend has just seen Lestrade this morning it would be easy to connect the dots seeing the slight dent his weapon had left on one side of it when he wore the coat over it." He smirked and faced the child once more.

"You might have overlooked a few details but since you're still in training that would be no wonder."

Sherlock was pleased to see the boy's cheeks flushing with pride, while John gaped at them like a fish, before he got enough hold on himself to vocalize his thoughts.

"Good god, Sherlock, please don't tell me that the boy is your long lost little brother," the detective rolled his eyes, before his gaze fixed itself on the child again.

"Oh, don't be silly, John." He muttered before a big smile spread over his lips. "He's much more than that."

Conan could feel the detective's eyes on him again, analyzing him with his cool glance, just as Shinichi had done to Lestrade's jacket. Shinichi bit his lips and stubbornly crossed his hands in front of his chest before he shot Sherlock a calculated look.

"I know what you're doing, but I must ask you to stop, Mr. Holmes."

The suddenly stern voice of the grade school kid caught their attention. John saw one eyebrow of his friend rise in interest while he folded his fingertips together.

"Why?"

The little boy swallowed, biting the inside of his cheeks and avoided their eyes, instead suddenly looking very interested in Sherlocks bony friend on the mantelpiece, before clear blue eyes fixed themselves on the detective again, suddenly seeming to be much older than they should be.

"Because you don't know what you're getting yourself into."

Sherlock frowned, looking down at the little boy in doubt.

"Is that so? What problem would a highly intelligent seven year old child who's secretly solving cases in another man's name and invented a second identity as a high school student cause?"

That was it.

The boy grew pale in a second, but his eyes never left his friend's. Meanwhile, John couldn't believe what he had just heard; there had been a few stories that had been told inside these walls which were hard to believe, but this?

This was preposterous.

"What?"

Sherlock eyed him from his seat, while John stood there seeming shell shocked. The boy didn't deny it and the haunted look in his eyes told him that he was treading through a sensitive area…but there was something else in the child's gaze that he couldn't read.

Awe, wonder, relief or weariness?

He couldn't tell.

He would have loved to continue the terse silence between them, simply studying the boy and figuring out the truth based on the boy's reactions to his assumptions, but he could sense John's growing irritation at being the only one not in the loop. Sherlock got up from his seat again, pointing to the child with a grandiose gesture.

"It is an honour to introduce you to the true famous Sleeping Detective of Tokyo. The boy is the brain behind the strange man who introduced himself as a detective today. He uses the watch to knock him out, using the bowtie to solve the case in the man's voice and name. I doubt he knows anything about it at all, given his attitude."

John's eyes drove back to the little boy, the child, the seven year old who was accused of being in the habit of solving crimes. But what his mind told him could be nothing but a joke was confirmed to be otherwise by the tension in the boy's frame and the way he flinched at Sherlock's 'introduction'.

Okay fine…a very highly intelligent child with the morbid hobby of running around crime scenes and solving murders, that he could live with; but then he knew there was more to it than what Sherlock told him just now.

"And…the false identity?"

John's question was answered, but not by his friend, but by another familiar voice from the doorframe.

"Isn't what he thinks it is."

Cold brown eyes observed the scene with an arrogant smile, hands resting on his umbrella as he shot Sherlock his signature pitying look.

"Again, dear brother, you're so close to the truth but still wrong."

"Mycroft?" But the government agent ignored Doctor Watson, and instead focused on the boy in his seat, like a hungry wolf looks at its prey.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop dangerously when the cold eyes of Sherlock's brother met the steel blue ones of the little boy. Sherlock watched them in silence for a while before he shot Mycroft a questioning look.

"What do you mean?"

Mycroft seemed to ignore his brother and took a seat on the edge of their sofa, his calculating gaze on the boy unwavering as he shook his head with a sigh, looking up at his little brother.

"I'm sure the false identity fits into your picture perfectly but what if I tell you that there's just a tiny detail you got wrong? It's just the other way around."

Sherlock looked at trembling poker face of the child and then back to his brother.

"Impossible!"

Mycroft just chuckled, shaking his head in disappointment.

"Oh, but wasn't it you who said 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?' But I guess that you couldn't come to another conclusion without the right proof." The detective frowned at his elder brother.

"And what proof do you have to such a spectacular deduction?"

Shinichi's face paled when Mycroft eyed him with a stern gaze. Sherlock could see the boy shrinking deeper into John's seat, his chest was heaving short and fast, even as he tried his best not to give anything away. Mycroft simply ignored his question and addressed the boy directly instead.

"I'm sure you forget it in the heat of the situation, boy, but this town has maximum government surveillance in the whole world. We have our eyes everywhere." The boy was white as a sheet now. It seems like he perfectly knew what was coming.

Conan flinched at Sherlock's sharp tone, when he finally lost his temper.

"Damn it, Mycroft, spill it already."

"I'll do more than that, little brother." He grinned a dangerous sharp smile.

"I'll show you."

The older Holmes brother got his phone and pulled up a video for John and Sherlock to see.

Shinichi could feel something disintegrate inside him. He had a very good idea what the two of them were looking at. A defeated sigh escaped his lips as his insides felt like they were on fire, with Mycroft Holmes' calculating gaze boring holes in his head. He swallowed, looking up at his role model who was studying the video with a blank expression while Doctor Watson's face showcased a plethora of expressions. Shinichi bit his lips, moving his eyes away from them, to their shadows on the floor.

'Well…there goes that secret. How angry would Haibara be when she finds out what happens?'

The video was a compilation of a few security cam feeds, which showed the child running down Westminster Bridge in the direction of the London Eye with a girl following close behind. It took him some time to lose her, hiding inside one of the bright red phone booths. Sherlock frowned, he could hear John humming in anticipation when nothing seemed to happen, the crowd moved on without the boy coming back out of the cell, but the camera was still focused on it.

"What-" John wanted to ask but he was hushed with a sharp hiss, eyes still focused on the bright screen of his brothers mobile when the door of the phone booth finally opened again.

Similar face, same hair, same phone.

But it was a high schooler who reappeared on the street.

"Shinichi Kudo."

Sherlock whispered, while John took a sharp breath, stumbling back from the phone to fix his gaze on the child in his seat. Mycroft eyed his brother lazily, demanding his phone back with a simple gesture of his hand, while he looked up at his younger sibling.

"I see you've done your homework."

"But- but-" John stuttered.

'What is that? A sci-fi movie?' He had studied medicine. He knew what he just saw must be a trick, there was no way that something like that could be real. It should not be possible for the human body to- to change like that.

"That's-"

"Impossible?" Mycroft suggested, before answering his own question with a shrug, eyes still fixed on the boy.

"We thought so too, but a simple check of fingerprints proved to us otherwise." The child flinched in his seat, not meeting anyone's eyes. Sherlocks lips thinned while his mind recalculated what he had figured out until now.

"It wasn't Conan who invented Shinichi Kudo but-"

"Just the other way around. I see you've finally come to the right conclusion." Mycroft finished his brother's thought when Sherlock finally found his voice again.

"But how?!"

Mycroft shot him a calculating glance before his eyes moved back to the boy.

"That is something I would like to know myself."

"It seems like Shinichi Kudo vanished just after he solved a case in a roller coaster, then just a few days later, Conan Edogawa suddenly showed up." Sherlock murmured, more to himself than everyone around but still got the attention of both men in the room…before a high but suddenly cold voice interrupted his thoughts.

"I told you to stop."

"Why?"

The question came quick as a shot from both the Holmes brothers at once.

But instead of caving in, their target held their gaze before pointedly turning away, stretching the silence between them into a dangerous atmosphere. Sherlock just watched him; he could see the tension behind the calm façade, while his brother's usually calm British temper seemed to run short.

"Boy,I believe you don't know what this is about."

Mycroft hissed, pushing himself up from the sofa to force the child to look up in an even higher angle. Shinichi raised one eyebrow, eyeing the man before him with a frown.

"Oh, but you're wrong on this count, Mr. Holmes. I know exactly what this is about and sorry but I'm not sharing secrets with someone who'd rather feed his own brother to the sharks, than disobey his country. "

"Seems like someone else also did his homework; right, John?" Sherlock grinned, while his friend just stared at the little boy in awe. He remembered quite well that it took him a while before he was able to speak to Mycroft in that tone. And yet a child…high schooler…whatever, was talking to him like that, well he had to admit Sherlock was right, this was ridiculous.

Shinichi didn't look at the two of them, firmly keeping his gaze on Mycroft instead, choosing his words with care.

"I'm sure your government is…interested in my case, but I can promise you that whatever you do, it won't end well for any of the parties involved."

"Are you threatening me, boy!?" he growled, while Kudo shot him a sweet smile.

"No, I'm merely warning you, Mr. Holmes."

Mycroft's lips thinned. He'd had enough. He was growing tired of this child's attitude.

'Play time is over.'

He brushed away non-existent lint from his sleeves, not meeting the boy's eyes when he spoke.

"I fear you don't have a say in this anymore." The government agent announced, his voice cutting through the tension in the room sharp as steel. "Seventeen or seven, you're still a child."

John shivered, it felt like the temperature had suddenly dropped under Mycroft's cold voice. The urge to step in front of the child, or rather – not child, made him move, before he stood protectively beside him. His body was frozen in place but ready to move at the same time, an old habit from his time in the army coming through.

Conan didn't shrink away this time, but Mycroft's next words made the air in the room shift, the doctor stepping in front of the child the moment Mr. Holmes finished his comment.

"Our facility is very interested in what happened to you and I'm sure we have methods to figure it out on our own if you're not willing to speak."

Even unspoken, the threat seemed to get under their skin. Shinichi tried to ignore the shudder running down his spine, the hidden fears that sometimes haunted him at night, but he couldn't fully hide the anxiety in his eyes. He knew that Doctor Watson had seen it when the man took a protective step in front of him while Sherlock's sharp tone expressed his own anger.

"Mycroft!" he yelled in angry disbelief.

"What? Oh come on, brother mine! You can't tell me that your mind isn't considering the endless untapped potential here as well! Someone, nay, something – something that's able to change a high schooler back to a child." He told them, eyes wavering between his brother and the boy.

"Just think about what the world could do with that kind of technology."

"You mean what you could do with it."

Sherlock's hissed accusation was followed by deep silence.

But the fact that Mycroft didn't deny it was foreboding enough for John to reevaluate his opinion on Mycroft.

"You know that what you're suggesting is a crime on all levels of humanity, right?" He muttered, while Mycroft merely shrugged.

Goosebumps rose on John's skin, when his friend's voice echoed through their living room so cold and empty like he had never heard it before.

"I never thought you to be so cruel."

Mycroft sighed again, shaking his head.

"Sherlock, again, your emotional background is against you. Just image what we could achieve with the boy."

"You'll do no such thing." The detective growled at his brother.

"Sherlock." He warned.

"Not on my watch."

Brown eyes met grey ones, neither of them giving in.

"I fear you don't have a say in this dear brother." The older one declared in a slight nasal tone, his mouth drawn together like he had a sour taste in his mouth.

"You know I do. You're going to delete this video, Mycroft."

"The Government-" He wanted to object, but Sherlock`s temper finally snapped, a threat hidden in his bellowing voice not unlike Mycroft's just minutes ago.

"We both know that you are the damn Government."He laughed humorlessly, while his cold blue eyes fixed themselves on his brother, leaving Mycroft to grind his teeth.

"You won't lay a hand on him."

"Sherlock!"

Silence.

John could feel his heart racing in his chest, he glanced down at the boy who shot him a nervous and worried look before both focused back at the Holmes brothers.

The first sign of defeat was seen when Mycroft flared his nostrils as he took a deep breath, clenching his hands around the hilt of his umbrella.

"Fine… fine." He grumbled, while Sherlock raised his head, waiting for his brother to continue.

"But you better see to it that your little apprentice won't fall into the wrong hands. Because I promise you that he as much more darker things to fear than the British government. You may think I am the villain here Sherlock but at least he would be save with us." He warned, pointing to the…'child' with his umbrella. Mycroft used the silence which followed to calm himself down, righted his tie before he turned to them once again, bidding his goodbyes.

"Sherlock, John." He muttered and focused his gaze on the child once again, before he finally left them. "Boy."

Nobody moved until they heard the door shut behind him. John took a deep breath, it seemed like he had stopped breathing for a second and now his lungs demanded air for his brain to understand what just happened.

He groaned, running a hand over his face and through his blond hair before his eyes focused back on the boy, while Sherlock had turned around to stare of out of the window, either making sure that Mycroft had really left or he just went back to his Mind Palace again.

'Maybe both.' The doctor thought. To be honest he could really use a drink now himself, even Mrs. Hudson's cider would do it.

"Thank you. "

The small voice nearly made him jump.

The boy…Conan Edogawa- no, Shinichi Kudo looked up to them for a second before his gaze fell back to the floor.

Sherlock had turned around like a hawk at the sound, his eyes fixed on the small child before he exchanged a look with John who understood it immediately.

Shinichi swallowed, he could hear the traffic outside while his eyes rested on the well-used violin by the fire place. His heart still hammered loudly in his chest. That was a close call. And if what he knew about Mycroft Holmes was true it wasn't over yet. He groaned, sinking deeper into the chair. Ai was going to kill him for that.

He sighed, when suddenly a pair of grey blue eyes appeared before him, a startled yelp escaped his lips when Sherlock picked him up like the child he appeared to be, and set him into the chair the army doctor had prepared for him.

John watched the child squirming in his friend's hands, trying not to picture the high schooler in his place when Sherlock put him on the client's seat he had prepared, before he let himself finally fall back into his own chair, ignoring the slight headache that began to form right behind his temple.

Sherlock took his usual seat, shooting the boy a calculated look who blinked at them in irritation, before the detective finally spoke.

"You're under my care now," he told the boy, whose feet didn't even touch the ground. He in turn raised a questioning eyebrow.

"In order for this," Sherlock said, gesturing to the three of them, "To work, I do need a little more information on your current…state."

The boy frowned, scanning his friend.

"But that's my case."

John sighed at the similar glow that suddenly appeared in their eyes.

He knew he was going to be both fascinated and exasperated in the upcoming days.

"And now mine too."

They smiled at each other, a smile that marks the start of a great adventure together.

The doctor groaned, pushing himself up from his seat to make them some tea.

This was going to be a long night.

Hello my dear readers!

First of all thanks for finishing this little one-shot. I wanted to do something like that for quite some time now and I do hope you like it! I´ve planned some more… like Shinichi meeting Sherlock… or trying to find a place to change back or something like that. (Please feel free to suggest some wishes, ideas for future OS)

You may have already guessed that the Conan timeline is his stay in London with Ran and Mori (of course I needed to change some things since Sherlock is a living person in this slight AU).

A big big biiig "Thank you" to my Beta WinchesterOf221B, who did an amazing job with this, since I am not a native.

I would love to hear your opinion in a little comment !

See you,

Shelling ~