Only Yours

42

Sherlock's P.O.V

I've gone into shock.

I know I've gone into shock because suddenly I feel strangely dizzy. There's a wooshing sound in my ears and I can hear my breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

Someone is helping me sit down, I don't know who, and then the strangely familiar looking Doctor hands me a paper bag, his eyes twinkling.

Someone says something about privacy and I can hear people leaving the room as I breathe into the bag. Slowly, steadily, the dizziness fades, my vision is restored and the wooshing in my ears stops.

And now I'm opening my eyes and William, my son, except he isn't actually, is sitting opposite me staring at me with impossibly wide eyes and I'm looking at him, looking at all the similarities between us, we could almost be the same person and now they're telling me he isn't mine at all, that the child I nurtured and loved, clothed and fed, took on cases and taught how to shoot isn't my boy at all.

He's someone else's.

'Dad? Dad, what does he mean?' William asks, looking absolutely terrified. I just shake my head at him, shutting my eyes against the torrent of memories. William saying his first word, William taking his first step, William solving his first murder. I see him winning Science competitions and I see us playing a flute/violin duet together. I see him with his Oxford Acceptance letter and I see him after Jonathan died, sobbing in my arms.

I see my son.

Except he isn't actually my son, I've been raising a strangers child.

And then I catch sight of Irene and anger floods my mind.

'How dare you, Irene Adler. How dare you give me a child that wasn't mine, allow me to care for it, love it, only to be told he isn't actually my son at all when he's eighteen years old. How dare you.'

Irene swallows, her eyes shifting nervously. 'Sherlock, I don't know what to say, I thought that he was yours-'

'You just didn't want a child so you palmed him off on the first man you remembered you'd slept with eight to nine months previously.' I growl as she shakes her head furiously, looking from my, her son and back to me. 'I swear, Sherlock, I swear. I only slept with three men in six months before I fell pregnant with William. One was over a year before he was born, one was you and one was a man named Castiel Winchester and I- I took precautions with him.'

What?

'Precautions?' I say quietly. She looks relieved I'm no longer shouting. 'The morning after pill. Stops you getting pregnant-'

'And why didn't you use it after I had sex with you?'

Suddenly, I see a very different future for myself.

I see John and I living abroad together, happy, content.

And childless.

'I didn't- I never imagined you would get me pregnant.' She laughs.

That does it.

I stand up, throwing my chair backwards, and shout as loudly as I can, 'You changed the course of my life, Irene Adler! You gave me a child who isn't even mine without- without permission! Do you have any idea what that's like?'

'Sherlock!' John hisses, his eyes darting to and from William. 'He's your son.'

'Except he's NOT, is he?'

The moment I say it, I know I don't meant it. I want to turn to William, who's wearing a horrible, shocked expression on his face and I want to apologise, but before I can open my mouth he's gone, out of the room.