Chapter 1
Sherlock Holmes hadn't believed in any higher power since he was a small boy. Fate and coincidence were most people's lazy solutions to odd occurrences in their lives they didn't have the capacity to examine or understand. There was no orchestrator behind the scenes, no deity manoeuvring people to do his bidding, no grand plan. Or so he thought. Until the morning he and Molly Hooper found themselves reunited in a manner much like the way they first met, eight years earlier - standing over a corpse at a crime scene.
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February 1878
After graduating from university with first class honours in chemistry, Sherlock soon found himself on the wrong side of his doctoral supervisors when he dared to criticise not only their methodologies and their findings, but their audacity, as he saw it, to claim to be experts in biochemistry when he already knew more about the field than they ever would. More than that, they weren't even aware of the recent work of M.L. Hooper, whose articles Sherlock had found scattered throughout recent Journals of Chemistry, Biology and Pathology. Their ignorance about Hooper's work infuriated him, leading him to call them names much worse than "ignoramus" and "academic reprobates".
As a result, within just three days, Sherlock found himself with his candidature cancelled, his office emptied and his on-campus flat leased out to another tenant. With all doors in Cambridge shut to him, he headed for London without knowing what he would do once he arrived.
With no set plan, and no academic challenge to keep his brain occupied, Sherlock's opium use, which had only been occasional when he was a student, spun out into a daily habit. With his days thus spent lounging about his Montague Street flat in a state of delirium, he soon found himself living nocturnally. Most days he would wake as the sun set and spend the evenings stalking the streets.
He didn't mean to become a detective. Of course, there had been that one case he'd solved during his summer break in second year, but his deep seeded misanthrope kept him from seeking out other occasions to help those in need. But walking the streets of London's seedy underbelly gave him more than a few chances to stumble upon a dead body – or two – or twelve. Whenever he'd find them, he's stop, studying them, looking for anything that might answer how or why the poor soul had met their demise. In his analysis, he found more and more that the findings he had been gleaning from M.L. Hooper's articles was invaluable to his process.
And so night after night, he'd go hunting for bodies.
And that's when he first saw her, although she was doing her darndest not to appear as a "her" at the time. There was a crime scene on the bank of the Thames near the Tower of London. Inspector Gregson was running the investigation, which meant that Sherlock couldn't get anywhere near as close as he would have liked. From the way the young man next to him was darting to and fro, Sherlock could tell he wasn't happy with his lack of access either.
As Sherlock turned to consider the young man, and why he would be so intrigued by a bloated corpse fished from the river, he noticed something which no one else would have – a slight convex shape around the pectoral area. Although he had made an impressive attempt to bind them with several layers of bandages, Sherlock could tell that this supposed young man had a pair of somewhat modest breasts.
He was no young man at all.
In that moment, the corpse was nowhere near as interesting to him as this new puzzle. He needed to know who this girl was – and why was she so interested in dead bodies that she felt compelled to risk her life and virtue?
He began studying her, reading her for clues just like he read crime scenes. Her hair was hidden under a young boy's cap, and her slacks, shirt and vest had certainly been stolen from her younger brother. Large brown eyes surveyed the scene, and flicked up quickly, catching Sherlock's quizzical stare.
Without wanting to draw attention to herself, the young woman turned away, taking a few steps and joining the back of a group of lads on their way home from the pub.
Anyone else would have lost her in the group. But he wasn't anybody.
For over an hour he stalked her through the streets, keeping a safe distance so as not to make his presence known. At no point did she turn around or show any other sign that she knew she was being watched. Sherlock congratulated himself on his finely-honed skills. A congratulation that was short-lived when he turned a corner only to find himself alone, with the young woman nowhere to be seen.
Sherlock doubled-back, checking side-streets and alleyways to no avail. He was almost about to give up and hail himself a hansom cab when a brass plaque on a nearby townhouse caught his eye.
Hooper.
His brother had always told him that the universe was never so lazy as to conjure a random coincidence.
If this young lady was interested in the dead, then perhaps she knew M.L. Hooper. A servant? A nanny? Maybe his daughter?
Sherlock grinned, glad that his case hadn't become such a dead end. He headed back to his Montague Street flat, forming a plan as he walked, with more of a spring in his step than he'd had in months.