1: The Mysterious Visitor

"Sherlock, I swear, if I hear that damn violin one more time tonight, I will rip it out of your hands and shoot a hole clean through the middle of it." Sherlock looked up. John had his head stuck round the doorframe of their living and was staring daggers at him. He had clearly been trying to get some sleep, but the way his eyes were alert showed that he had clearly been failing. John raked his hand through his hair in frustration, as Sherlock noted he often did.

Sherlock merely smirked and raised the bow to the strings once more. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw John cross over towards him, and he looked up innocently.

"Is there a problem?" he asked simply. John just glared at him even harder, and made a move over towards their bureau. Still Sherlock didn't flinch. John opened one of the drawers and drew out his gun. Sherlock just looked up with raised eyebrows, an amused expression on his face.

"Really, John? I thought you, of all people, would be able to settle disputes in a more mature way than blasting a hole through the offending article. If I did that, I fear most of my associates would be walking around with a hole in their stomach." He tipped his head to one side. "Perhaps it may be an improvement for some of them. Anderson, particularly…" John narrowed his eyes at him and walked over so he was stood right in front of Sherlock.

"But your associates aren't violins, Sherlock. If you shoot a hole in them, you can't go out and buy a new one. On the other hand, that is the wonderful advantage of a violin. An innocent, inanimate object that can easily be replaced." John pulled the safety trigger and aimed it at the violin. Sherlock thought about John's little speech for a moment, and was about to make a sarcastic comment about the idea that there was most probably a shop that supplied replacement Andersons, but John got there first.

"Oh no you don't," he said, and with that he pulled the trigger on his gun, producing a loud crack, and Sherlock watched nonchalantly as the violin skittered across the floor, now with a large smoking hole straight through the middle of it. John put the gun casually back in the drawer and shut it.

"Told you." Sherlock just looked unimpressed.

"And you think I'm so unprepared as to only have one violin," he said scathingly, crossing the room and opening a panel in the fireplace. He reached in and produced another violin case. John groaned. He firmly removed the case from Sherlock's hands, grabbed hold of his shoulders in an iron hold and marched him to his bedroom. Once there, John shoved him down so that he was sitting on his bed and began to leave the room.

"Right!" he said, picking up the key to Sherlock's room that lay on the top of his cabinet. He pointed it at him. "This is coming with me tonight. You will stay in here and get some sleep, or at least stay quiet. Meanwhile, this key will not leave my sight all night, and I will have a peaceful night's sleep. Good night, Mr Holmes." John turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him, and Sherlock heard the click of the key turning in the lock. He sighed. Now what the hell was he supposed to do all night? He slowly lay back on top of Mrs Hudson's flowery duvet and stared at the ivory ceiling. Perhaps, just this once, he would do as John told him and try and get a little bit of sleep. He was tired, no matter how much he tried to convince John otherwise. Whatever happened, he doubted John would. He'd be paranoid about Sherlock escaping and playing a trick on him.

Sherlock smiled and sat up again. Perhaps he could fool John into thinking that he'd escaped, but instead be dutifully in his room all night. What fun it would be to wind John up in such a fashion. He sprang up from the bed and made a great show of banging around with the door. Finally, he swore loudly and fiddled with the skylight in the ceiling, again with a great deal of noise. He opened it (loudly) and made to climb out. Finally, he fell silent, and knew that John would assume he had made a break for freedom. Sure enough, he heard John's angry voice through the wall.

"Sherlock! Dammit!" he yelled, and Sherlock heard the shuffle of his slippers coming down towards his door. He waited. There was a pause, and he heard John curse quietly. He'd probably left the key in his room. John groaned, muttered for a while and then began to shuffle back towards his room. Sherlock smirked. Mission accomplished. Satisfied, he lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, eventually succumbing to sleep.

At the other end of Baker Street, a taxi pulled up and a young woman stumbled out. Very little could be seen of her face as she wore a red waterproof coat with the hood pulled up, although it was the middle of May and not raining. To any passer-by, her gait would indicate that she was drunk, for she swayed when she walked and tripped over frequently. She quickly slurred her thanks to the cabbie and handed him a twenty-pound note, then watched with unfocused eyes as the cab drove off. She slowly and unsteadily turned around and stumbled up to the door of the first house. After about half a minute of trying to get the door numbers to stop swimming around she could make out the gold digits reading as '100'. She sighed and slowly walked about fifty metres, checking the door of the house next to her. '167A'. Her addled brain could just make out that she was getting closer. She stumbled about an extra seventy-five metres, and checked the door again. This time, it read as '225'. She took a few unsteady steps back, keeping her eyes on the doors, and finally drew to a halt in front of the one that said '221B'. She looked hesitantly at the soiled note in her hands. This wasn't what she'd imagined. She could just about make out the black door with its gold numbers, the vertical letterbox and simple knocker. The place that had been described to her hadn't sounded like a student apartment. Once more, she double-checked the paper in her hands, and looked up at the door. As the seconds ticked by, her thoughts were becoming more and more muddled and cloudy, so she knew she didn't have much time. She took a deep breath, tried to compose herself as much as possible, tripped forward and pressed the simple silver button that served as their doorbell, praying that whoever opened the door would be quick.

Sherlock was awoken at the sound of a shrill ring. It took him a few seconds to work out what it was, but he quickly recognized it as his and John's doorbell. He heard a groan from the next room, and John stomped out. Sherlock had no choice but to stay in his room anyway.

"Sherlock! If that is you coming and waking me up at six in the morning, I'm going to kill you!" he yelled. Sherlock smirked. "What the hell do you even get out of this? Is it funny, is that it? Well, let me tell you something: it isn't damn funny for me! We're not all like you, you know! I, for one, happen to like my sleep! An undisturbed sleep!" John's voice grew distant as he went down the stairs, and as he disappeared, the analytical side of Sherlock's brain began to try and work out who was at the door. It clearly wasn't Mycroft or Lestrade: that was obvious from the pressure and length of the ring. It wasn't a particularly familiar style of bell-ringing, so he had no choice but to assume that it was a doorstep salesman or something similar, although why they were calling at 6:04am baffled him. He could still hear John shouting abuse, apparently at the Sherlock outside the door, but all of a sudden it stopped. Sherlock wondered what had caused the sudden stop to his ranting, but had no choice but sitting dutifully and waiting to see what happened. He strained his ears to try and hear any conversation, but he couldn't hear anything, so he sat on his hands and bounced on the mattress a bit. Bored. Bored, bored, bored. If only John hadn't locked him in, he could be down there opening the door, relishing the opportunity to swear at some doorstep tradesman who was crazy enough to call round this early in the morning. But he had nothing to do. Bored.

John swore he was going to kill Sherlock when he opened the front door and found him stood there smugly. He continued to yell obscenities at the door as he fumbled for the key, only pausing when he actually opened the door. The sight that met his eyes surprised him so much, he couldn't utter another syllable. In front of him stood a young woman. She had relatively tanned skin and long, glossy auburn curls, and was wrapped in an oversized red coat. John couldn't fail to admit that she was beautiful. Everything about her took his breath away. But the biggest surprise was when she lurched forward, clutching the doorway for support. John took a step back as she looked at him, her breathing shallow and inconsistent.

"Mr…Holmes?" she whispered, her words barely audible. At a first glance, John would have assumed that she was drunk, but the beads of sweat on her forehead and her shaking hands suggested otherwise. She shoved a small piece of paper at him, which he took and quickly read:

221B BAKER STREET. MR HOLMES WILL HELP YOU. HE IS A GOOD MAN. I LOVE YOU.

John looked at the note and then back at the girl; she was fading fast. He gently held her wrist and took her pulse. As he had expected, her heartbeat was dangerously slow – he could make out in a fraction of a second that there was some kind of potentially lethal sedative coursing through her veins. With the girl's vision becoming more unfocused by the second, John made a snap decision to look after her for the couple of days that she would need to recover. He quickly scooped her up in his arms, began to talk softly to her to try and keep her conscious, and carried her up the stairs to the flat as fast as he could.

Sherlock had almost resorted to try and break the door to his bedroom down with boredom, when he heard John's footsteps coming back up the stairs. He listened carefully: they were slightly heavier than normal, so perhaps be was carrying something heavy; he could just make out John talking quietly, but there was no other set of footsteps so it couldn't have been a person… A few minutes later, Sherlock heard the key turn in the lock on his door and John poked his head in. There was no trace of the man who just a short while ago had been shouting obscenities at a wooden door. No, John looked worried.

"What is it?" Sherlock asked. John turned around, looking back at their living room.

"It's a girl, Sherlock…" Sherlock looked unimpressed. "She turned up on the doorstep. She's been drugged." Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"John, you must learn to keep your emotions in check. Just because it's a girl who appears to be drugged doesn't mean that you immediately bring her up here. It's an early Saturday morning, John. I expect there were lots of girls out on the town last night who had a few too many to drink, and fancy a bit of action. Preying on an emotional, overly sympathetic man like you…she probably couldn't believe her luck. Now take her downstairs. Order her a cab if you really want to. But I see no logic in bringing in a girl who is no different from thousands of others. I expected better from you, John." Sherlock sat back down on the bed, swung his long legs over the covers, picked up his phone from the bedside table and began to text Lestrade. John just watched him and threw the soiled note at him. Sherlock's brow furrowed as he read it and he stood up once again.

"Well this makes things more interesting…" he muttered, and made his way over to where the girl was lying, on their sofa. John looked after him helplessly. As long as he lived, he swore that he would never understand what went on in the brilliant mind of Mr Sherlock Holmes.

Following him out, he saw Sherlock kneeling at the side of the girl, checking her pulse, breathing rate…all the bog-standard diagnosis procedures.

"Drugged," Sherlock said bluntly, and John rolled his eyes. Evidently, in Sherlock's mind, he hadn't just made that exact statement about a minute ago. "Can you tell what kind?" John crossed the room and knelt down by the unconscious girl, checking her pulse, heartbeat and probing her mouth open to see the condition of her throat, and when he found nothing, rolled the sleeve of her coat up to examine her upper arm.

"Propofol. Administered via injection to her upper arm about three hours ago. It's a wonder that she managed to stay conscious as long as she did. She'll be out for at least thirty-six hours, maybe less depending on the exact strength and quantity in her system." He looked up at Sherlock. "We can't chuck her out. She'll die." Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "To get it out of her system properly, she needs a shot of morphine, just to get rid of it faster. I can give her that, but she'll need a good couple of weeks to recover fully. Med kit, please." John held out his hand, and Sherlock smiled at the way he went into doctor mode. He handed him the kit without questioning, and John quickly administered the shot. He stood up and handed the case back to Sherlock, who put it back in their bureau.

"I think…I think she ought to stay here until she recovers," John said firmly. She's in no fit state to go back out onto the streets, and I'd feel awful if anything happened to her." Sherlock just nodded his assent absentmindedly. He wasn't really interested in the girl, just the note that came with her, and he decided to head down to St Bart's and get the microscopes and x-rays involved.

"I'm heading down to the morgue," he said, grabbing his coat from the back of their front door and winding his scarf around his neck.

"What? But Sherlock, it's half past six in the morning…" John said in disbelief.

"Details, details, John!" Sherlock said eagerly, already halfway out the door. "A possible case of a drugged girl and her mysterious note, directed straight to us. Why, John? Who would specifically tell a young woman to come to 221B Baker Street, but then drug her before she could leave properly? And how did they know my name? So many questions, John! How can you fail to love it?" John just looked at him.

"If you say so." Sherlock did a little spin on the spot, grabbed John's shoulders and planted a kiss on his forehead.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" John said angrily; Sherlock just grinned like an idiot.

"Don't you understand, John? There's finally something to do! I'll be back by midday…hopefully. Just do…do whatever. I don't really care." And with that, Sherlock was down the stairs and was slamming the door behind him.

John blinked. In a way, he was happy that Sherlock finally had something to do, so perhaps would stop him tearing the flat to pieces or playing that damned violin in all hours of the night. But on the other hand, he was left alone in the flat with an unconscious girl whom they knew absolutely nothing about. He looked down at the sofa, where a sheen of sweat was starting to appear on the girl's forehead. He knew that the next few hours would not be a pleasant one for either of them, so he knelt down at her side and studied her face.

He didn't know or remember what colour her eyes were, but she had a heart-shaped face with a smooth complexion, although being ever so slightly tanned. Her curls that were sticking to her forehead were glossy and beautiful, falling to just below her shoulders. He could see soft crinkles around the corners of her eyes, so he knew she must smile a lot. Her lips were full, although currently a deathly purplish-blue. Overall, he thought that she had a very kind face, which just increased his wonder about what her story was. She must have had enemies if someone had drugged her, or just perhaps somebody who didn't want her involved with Sherlock. He scrolled through his known list of such people in his head. There were the dummies in the police: Donovan, Anderson…but he couldn't really imagine that either of those would have done something like this. The only other person he could think of was Mycroft…now there was a hugely likely possibility. He knew how Mycroft had tried to discourage him from associating with Sherlock…yes, Mycroft was the only one he could think of that really had it in him to drug an innocent young woman. He felt angry at Sherlock's brother involuntarily, and was only brought back to reality when the girl lying on the sofa in front of him let out a piercing scream.