Chapter Text
"Why aren't you in any of these pictures?" Andrew asks absently.
He asks everything absently, to be honest, his brain always off somewhere the rest of them can't even fathom, never mind reach. Sherlock loves his son but most days he's as bewildered by him as anyone else. He assumes this is how most of the world feels about him, so in its own way it makes him proud.
"What pictures?" Sherlock asks, most of his attention on inspecting Andrew's packing for hidden chemicals or other illegal substances. Sherlock isn't going to find them all, but he can make it a little more difficult for Andrew to terrorize whoever he ends up living with in the dorms.
John could help him, but that would mean being useful instead of wandering the flat aimlessly with a poorly-disguised expression of dismay. Andrew's never been out of his care for more than a week, and after nearly twenty years of marriage Sherlock can tell when John's looking at his children and seeing the people they are versus the infants they used to be. Drop off day at Uni is going to be ugly.
"These ones, they're birthday photos," Andrew says, holding them up with one hand while flipping through a folder he has for reasons only he knows. So far Sherlock's seen the chemical formulas for a pesticide, as well as some sort of velocity theorem and an instability equation, and under it all a nude magazine. "I'm just a baby, look."
"'Just' a monstrously over-sized excuse for an infant, you mean," Sherlock answers.
Andrew sighs, thrusts the photos out at Sherlock. "Look already."
They're photos of his first birthday, Andrew covered head to toe in cake, enthusiastically mashing it in his hair. Sherlock hasn't seen these in years, didn't know John had even kept them. "I was away," he answers.
"I know," Andrew says, and Sherlock finally catches on that his son is deliberately not looking at him. "You were declared dead two months earlier. You just disappeared for almost two years." Sherlock doesn't bother asking how he's sorted that one out; he's been hacking into Mycroft's systems since he was thirteen. "Why did you leave?"
"I didn't have a choice." The words are so similar, the expression he's faced with so carefully nonchalant. It's the ugliest form of deja vu he's felt in a while. "Don't ask your dad," he warns. "It'll just upset him."
"What doesn't?" Andrew snipes.
Sherlock gives him a sharp look. "I'm serious."
"I know, God."
Sherlock eyes him. "You already asked him, didn't you?"
"How was I supposed to know it'd send him round the twist?" Andrew says defensively.
Sherlock rubs his eyes. "Wonderful. You realize those were the worst two years of his life, yes?"
"I do now."
"Do now what?" John says from the doorway.
"Nothing," they say simultaneously.
"Okay, now I'm worried," John tells them.
"Worried enough to help pack?" Sherlock asks.
"No Sherlock, I really don't feel the same need to shove him out the door the way you do," John starts, derailed in exactly the way Sherlock expected him to be. The look Sherlock shoots Andrew says 'you owe me', and from the way Andrew winces, he clearly gets the message.
.
Sherlock had rather thought the whole matter was settled after that, because once John got a look at the various 'contraband' Sherlock hadn't bothered to tell Andrew off for, it became a whole different discussion. John and Andrew fought only rarely -- it was apparently much more enjoyable to save their attitude for Sherlock -- so the novelty factor in that particular scenario was immense.
"Where did you go?" Andrew asks some time later, from the other side of Sherlock's lab counter.
Sherlock looks up over his glasses in exasperation. "What does it matter?"
"No reason," Andrew says, working much too hard to affect an air of nonchalance neither of them were buying anyway. Some days he wondered about his son. "I just want to know."
Sherlock sighs, looks back down at his sample and takes note of its viscosity. "Everywhere."
"Everywhere," Andrew parrots. "You went everywhere, like Santa Claus."
"This is your dad, you know that, yes?" Sherlock says, standing up. "You talking nonsense to me."
Andrew scowls fiercely. He may have unfortunately garnered more of Sherlock's physical features, but as soon as he opened his mouth people knew he was a Watson. At present, Andrew found it more than a little embarrassing.
"Well stop dodging the subject!" Andrew says, leaning over the counter to look at Sherlock's test. "And that's not going to work."
"I bloody well know it isn't," Sherlock tells him, shoving back from the counter, "and stand up straight." Andrew complies and Sherlock turns to snap his gloves into the bin. "Andrew, there's nothing for you to know. I was gone two years resolving an international threat. It was very dangerous and very difficult. I finished and returned home. The end."
"Since when do you care about international threats? You argued with Monica all last week about where Belarus was, and Dad says you've been there a half-dozen times and still got it wrong."
"Like anything else, I care when it becomes relevant."
Andrew had on an expression like a mule. "I'm going to find out where you were, Papa, you know I will."
"I wish you the best," Sherlock tells him, and with great regret bins his sample as well. "Just be aware that if you bother Dad with this anymore I guarantee one of your cell lines will go missing."
"But they're at a very delicate stage and it would take months--" Andrew grimaces at Sherlock so fiercely Sherlock almost laughs. "Fine," he snarls, and stalks out of the room.
.
“I’ve only ever tried to protect you,” Papa says from the doorway.
Andrew looks up from where he’s sitting on his bed, tries to still his ever-busy hands. His father looks distinctly uncomfortable, which does not bode well for the rest of this conversation. “You have,” he reassures him, hoping that will make him go away.
It doesn’t work. “Your dad could take care of himself, but you were just an infant.” His father tugs at the bottom of his jacket like he’s trying to straighten it, though it wasn’t out of place to begin with. It’s something he’s seen Grandmum do on the very rare occasions when she’s flustered. It makes Andrew incredulous to see his father so thrown by what is really just a simple exploration of the facts, and he immediately knows his father is hiding something.
“While you are not my oldest child you have the distinction of being the first,” his father continues, which is true, and makes Andrew obscurely proud. He holds it over Lucy’s head whenever she’s being more annoying than usual. His father clears his throat. “I wasn’t going to take any chances.”
The answer is tedious and a half-truth, Andrew just knows it. “How does leaving us alone make us safer?”
“You weren’t alone,” his papa snaps. “You had your aunt and your uncle, your grandmother. Lestrade, for all the good he does.”
Andrew frowns at him, because if he’d wanted a bullshit answer he could have pestered his dad and been told something appropriately reassuring and vague days ago. As soon as he thinks it he considers the idea that he’s probably being uncharitable. Well, his dad had been equally as insulting two hours earlier when he’d confiscated all of Andrew’s technically illegal drugs. It wasn’t as though he was going to use them. And if he did, it would have been purely for experimental reasons, because really, the last thing he wanted to do was dull his observational skills during a testing--
“Feel free to come join us back on earth, Andrew,” his father says, and okay, now Andrew’s into a full out scowl. “I’m not talking about this again so you better start prioritizing. And life at Uni is already loaded with illegal substances and plenty of opportunities for poor decision making, so stop pouting because your dad found your stash.”
“I wasn’t -- and anyway, this isn’t about me, this is about why you were gone for two years and you never told any of us about any of it!”
“I told your father.”
“Well I guess senility has finally kicked in, because you’re failing to notice I’m not him.”
His father raises an eyebrow at him. “Yes, that distinction is becoming less and less obvious every day.”
“That’s not funny,” Andrew snaps. He loves his dad, really, but his dad is so safe, and boring, and worries about everything.
On paper his dad is an ex-army doctor with at least two years of his service overseas blacked out for security reasons. He’s a crack shot, he’s jumped from buildings and shot out cars windows and beaten up loads of people, and is covered in scars of which he’s explained only about half.
Andrew, though, has only ever seen his dad bringing them to and from school, and complaining about the price of Andrew’s clothes, and how much they all eat, and giving Kaden baths and freaking out over the state of Lucy’s room. He won’t even go in Andrew’s room normally because he says it gives him too much stress. So physical attributes aside, Andrew really fails to see any resemblance. “Papa what exactly did you do?” he says, all prurient interest because really, this is fascinating. “It must have been something pretty bad if you won’t even talk--”
“Alright,” his father says, and steps into the room, shutting the door decisively behind him to sit on Andrew’s computer chair. “I tried this John’s way, it didn’t work.” He's talking almost to himself at first but then turns all his attention on Andrew. “If you go looking for those files you’ll find them. I know you will. Mycroft did the best he could but he wasn’t expecting someone as -- persistent -- as you to go searching almost twenty years later. If you want the information, you’ll get it.” His father looks so serious for once Andrew’s brain is largely focused on just one thing. “And you’ll regret it. Because you’re right; I did things that were not good. Not even a little bit.”
“Why?”
“Because it wasn’t about doing what was right and good, it was about doing what I had to.” His father has a look on his face that’s entirely unknown; Andrew files it away for further study even as he tries not to flinch back from its intensity.
“What do you mean?” he asks, embarrassed and annoyed when he sounds like nothing more than a stupid kid.
His father sighs, and his face shifts into someone Andrew recognizes, someone mildly exasperated at best. “It means you’re only seventeen. Just be a teenager for a while. The information is never really gone, is it?”
Andrew shakes his head slightly and his father rubs at his eye with one finger. “There are more relevant things for you to worry about right now, yes?”
“Yeah,” Andrew says, scratching at the back of his head.
His father sighs and stands up. “Get some rest,” he tells Andrew, patting him on the shoulder. “The countdown’s on, and if your dad’s attitude right now is any indication, tomorrow is going to be a very, very long day.”
Andrew groans and drops his head in defeat, the sound muffled by the opening and closing of his door.
He gets up, goes to the landing of the stairs. “Papa!”
“What?” he hears from around the kitchen.
“I need to go to the store,” he hollers down.
“Now?”
“I won’t have time to replace the liquid nitrogen tomorrow.”
“Andrew David William--” His father starts. Andrew smiles.