Sherlock sat at the window, staring moodily at the ground-dwellers who ambled across the street, smarmily laughing at one woman who had the audacity to trip like the slave to gravity she was.

John Watson desperately clung to the newspaper he'd been attempting to read, hopelessly trying to keep the fingers of wind from tearing the pages out of his grasp.

When the Sport's section he'd been engrossed in slipped out of his hands and flew away, he decided that enough was enough.

"Could you please stop doing that?" He asked Sherlock for what felt like the hundredth time.

Sherlock, who had been testily flapping his great, feathery appendages in utter boredom spun around to confront this challenge to his moodiness, knocking over great piles of books and papers from the nearby desk as he turned. The floor was littered with many such accidents; John practically had to wade in and out of the flat.

"Doing what?" Sherlock sneered.

"Making hurricanes. It's becoming a problem." John said patiently.

"At least I exercise all of my limbs. Look at you: you've been sitting there for the better half of an hour. No wonder you tired so easily on our last case."

John blew air through his cheeks in mild frustration. He'd always assumed that angels were benevolent because they spent so much time in the high atmosphere, where there was less oxygen. Their nutrient starved brains made them hear voices and songs in the clouds and from the trees, and feel overwhelming love for all of god's creatures. Now he realized that with great power came great bigotry, and he was attempting to placate nature's prime example.

"No, I tired so easily because I couldn't keep up with the Winglock Wonder. Pardon me for being born without feathers."

Sherlock's own downy feathers bristled unkindly, in clear defense of his delicate ego.

"I didn't mean it like that." John said. He knew that Sherlock was very protective of his flight-worthy status. His latest aerodynamic nickname, which was plastered over the front of every major magazine in the flashiest, most flamboyant colors that would make Charles Lindenburgh cringe and Houdini turn his head in shame, was a needle that irritated him to no end.

"I didn't either. You kept up well. Where did Lestrade end up?"

John chuckled lightly, remembering the red-faced little detective wheezing, clutching a stich in his side as he trotted up to the two of them and hoarsely directing the official arrest of the criminal. "Somewhere near the Thames, I think."

"You were just slow enough to be in the right place at the right time, otherwise he might've escaped on foot. Good show, by the way."

"Thanks." John said, uncertain if he should take offense at the 'slow' comment, or be pleased at the rare acknowledgement. In the end, he simply gathered up the newspaper as best he could.

"Although if he had escaped on foot, I could be making patrol loops right now, instead of wasting away indoors."

"Oh, not this again!" John covered his face with the remainder of the paper in a clever tent.

"Yes this." Sherlock said, fixing John with his steely glint. "Always this, forever this."

"It's not as if there's nothing to be done about the flat." John said reasonably.

"Nothing fun." Sherlock said crossing his arms moodily, batting his fluffy white wings, sending a few papers drifting off on the brief gusts. From out the window of his flat, he could see a few policemen making their own aerial routes above the city. The lurid flashing of their orange 'clearance' belts gave them away, even from miles across the city. He wished more than ever he'd been able to keep Lestrade from confiscating his as he watched one officer with mouse colored wings dive and swoop on an updraft. God, how he envied them.

"You could pick up a bit."

Sherlock snorted a coarse, unkind laugh.

"Oh, fine." John said. He hadn't been serious, just a little bit hopeful. "You could go out to Tesco's?"

Sherlock snarled and cut an angry path through the room, stepping over garbage as easily as he walked on air. In a furious huff he sat himself down Indian-style on his favorite plush stool and made a powerful pout.

"You know I hate that store." He said delicately. "They're isles are too narrow."

He flapped his beloved wings forlornly, and his pout melted into the wistfulness that John was beginning to see more and more of as their weeks passed together. It must've been a terrible thing to have a gift so wonderfully magnificent, so powerfully revered, and yet so horribly crippling.

"You're right." John said sadly. "It's too bad they don't accommodate the ultra-minorities like yourself."

"We could sue." Sherlock said almost cheerfully. John favored him with a sunny smile.

Sherlock thoughtfully flapped his wings, and then pensively folded them again. He steepled his fingers and brought them to his chin until he looked truly angelic, complete with the pure, meditative expression once his frustration melted away.

"I want to fly in the daylight again." He said. It was not a plea, nor was it accompanied with the usual emotion connected with it. It was a simple statement of his one, true desire.

"We've been over this before." John said in anxious anticipation.

"I can't accept it; therefore we go over it again." Sherlock muttered.

John grimaced and turned his face away from Sherlock, he didn't want to look at his angelic friend and think of the building of parliament at the same time; it was a sickening picture, as though the building served as a great cage with Roman-Pillar bars, trussing his friend with chains of legal paper.

"John, it wouldn't hurt anyone…" Sherlock pressed.

"No." John blankly said.

"Just for an hour or so."

"Sherlock." John said, trying his best to keep his face straight. "No."

His feathered friend flexed his anxious wings. They itched to kiss the atmosphere, to tickle the belly of the sky. He, himself, longed to shower in a cloud and dry himself in a jet stream, to feel the icy wind roaring through his ears and gently caressing his skin with its sensuous touch.

"They passed the Icarus law to protect people with wings." John tried to reason cautiously.

"Well, it feels like they're jealous, and trying to put us in cages." Sherlock sighed huffily, and made a similar noise by brushing the feathers of his two extended appendages together.

"I know," John said, feeling his heart break for his friend. "I'm sorry, truly, but it's against the law."

Sherlock refused to look at John, and instead stared doggedly at the floor.

John picked himself up out of his chair and stretched his legs, his only form of locomotion, pacing around the floor once, before finally settling on leaning against the window.

"Sherlock, you know I'd do anything for you…but the price of getting caught in daylight… it's too high."

Sherlock's silence was louder than an objection would have been.

"They'd clip…" John couldn't bring himself to say the rest. He looked down to the sidewalk and watched the ambling little routes people made amongst themselves. He spotted one person with a stunted pair of gray wings projecting from the folds of an equally ugly green jumper.

Wings, on people, came in all of the colors in the rainbow, and unfortunately in all sizes. Wing size was generally genetic, meaning that if a person had a mother with long wings and a father with short wings, they would themselves have either long or short wings. A few people even made a market of pure-breeding babies with the largest, most elegant wings; which was, of course, totally illegal.

Sherlock's family, it seemed, bred for wing quality mainly. The reclusive avian man had never let very much about his personal life slip, but it was apparent, even to John that Sherlock had grown with people who had encouraged his strange gift, and he imagined who had encouraged him to fly regularly and often in the rolling country sky of some large manor home that would have suited the Holmes' sense of fashionable wealth and quality.

Then again, most people simply did not have wings at all. In fact, it was rather difficult to find someone with wings in adulthood. It was an obvious fact of life that winged people were discriminated against for jobs as a minority, and had difficulty finding clothes, or sitting in chairs with a back. Many parents would have their children's wings surgically removed as babies to save them the hassle later on, as Sgt. Donovan's had. Still others thought it was a God-sent miracle, and would allow their children's wings to grow, and eventually teach their children to fly (somehow).

John didn't know what Sherlock's story was exactly, but it soon became apparent that surgery had never been an option. The wings protruding easily from his back were some of the largest wings that John had ever seen. Any attempt at amputation would mean taking a dangerous amount of blood from Sherlock's body. The wing joints were too close to the lungs to even try. That and the feathered detective would rather lose his arms than part with his luscious, pearly white beautiful gifts of aviation.

"Can't you…" John started and failed to speak. His earlier failure seemed to have sapped him of his confidence. Thinking about Sherlock's childhood had, naturally led him to think of Sherlock's family, which had taken a dangerous route towards attempting to solve their problem.

"Can't you… talk to Mycroft?" John tried.

The raw rage and terrifying flame of blue anger that erupted in Sherlock's angry glance silenced him utterly, and left him feeling very sheepish for quite some time.

Sherlock glared at him, but said nothing. John was right; Mycroft was the logical person to turn to. He had an enormous amount of influence in what was increasingly becoming a nightmarish government, heartlessly oppressing a minority and depriving a people of their birth-rights. Therefore he was the first person Sherlock had turned to.

"Mycroft won't help." He said finally, bitterly. "They have him locked up in his gilded cage, and he's too happy to realize he's trapped."

Sherlock wove his fingers together and clasped his knuckles tightly. "Utterly, utterly happy. Utterly trapped."

John started violently. "Trapped, you say?"

"Utterly." Sherlock mused.

"Good, because if not, I'd say that looks suspiciously like him trying to get out of a car that just pulled up."

It was Sherlock's turn to jump.

"What!?" He exclaimed, flapping his wings furiously and managing to levitate himself a foot off of his stool. With practiced ease, he hovered over to the window and accidentally wrapped John in a shawl of his left wing.

"I'll be." He said, watching the slow, languid flapping of one wing as his brother attempted to shimmy awkwardly out of his car.

"He must be off his diet again." He deduced with quiet triumph. "He's having more trouble than usual fitting in the car, even with the 'special adjustments'. That and there's no longer any pressure to maintain an optimal flying weight."

"Is that what the umbrella was for?" John asked as Mycroft emerged, stretching his arms and back in one great grasping motion at the sky, his legs with two swift kicks and his wings with trembling exultation. The first thing John noticed was the absence of Mycroft's favorite accessory besides his assistant: His black umbrella. "Making a smooth landing?"

He could imagine the scene perfectly: Mycroft flying over the spot he wanted to land, straightening himself to a standing position, and as he plummeted to earth calmly unfolding his umbrella, grasping the crook of the handle and instantly arresting his descent: he would arrive in much the same fashion as Marry Poppins, only, probably with much worse news, and much less singing.

"I'm not sure what the umbrella was all about." Sherlock lied.

"Looks like he's coming up." John said.

"Looks like I'm going out." Sherlock replied. In a flash he raced through the flat until he reached the window at the other side. He easily pulled it open and put one leg on the sill leaning out into the ally of the building with a rush of barely hidden expectation.

"Don't!" John said grabbing his arm and pulling him back into the flat.

"Why not?" Sherlock snapped. He wanted so badly to fly out and let the naked sun warm his skin.

"Why!" John exclaimed incredulously. "Of all the places in the world to hide from your brother, what makes you think he won't find you in the sky? It's the one place he can catch you."

That gave Sherlock sufficient pause to step off the ledge. He scolded himself for not thinking of that himself.

"That and it's against the law…we were just talking about it! You know that!"

Sherlock muttered something in the way of an apology.

"Maybe he brings you good tidings?" John said half-sarcastically, half-excitedly brushing his fingers through his hair. "Good tidings and a difficult case?"

"Hah!" Sherlock quipped. "Whatever he brings, it's never good."

"Talking about me already?" Mycroft asked pushing the wood of the door to the flat and letting himself in. Fitting his large, cream colored wings through the door was a challenge, but at last he managed to stand, with more or less of a dominating demeanor inside the flat, eyeing the usual mess with the usual measured disapproval.

"Hello Mycroft." Sherlock said without any pleasure, much as one might address the aunt who smothers one with kisses, or the uncle that steals birthday money.

"Morning Sherlock, how are you?" Mycroft said smiling pleasantly. He turned his head a fraction of an inch and fixated his hawk-like eyes on John.

"Hello John, how's the new kettle?"

"What do you want?" Sherlock interrupted the empty niceties, ensuring John never got the chance to ask how Mycroft knew about the new kettle.

"Can't I just check in on my favorite brother when I happen to be in the neighborhood?" He said, still grinning, head oscillating slightly, like a parrot on a perch.

He's your only brother, isn't he? Thought John.

"Must be important, otherwise you wouldn't bother schmoozing at us, like we're some half-rate politician, or unknowing ambassador." Sherlock said, sizing his brother up. Mycroft had developed a small pouch in his stomach, which he cleverly hid beneath his well-tailored jacket. He increasingly resembled the dodo bird, long extinct with a funny nose, stubby legs and a chubby, ill proportioned body. All he was missing was the stubby legs, although if he continued to develop his ill-proportioned body it soon wouldn't matter.

"It is important." Mycroft admitted, still smiling, but with a little flair of insecurity behind his predator eyes.

"Ah, so I was right. I refuse." Sherlock said quickly, looking, for all purposes as though his intrigue was piqued, despite himself. John glanced at him in shock, until he saw the dim blue flame burning behind his formerly glazed eyes. Nothing to worry about, Sherlock was interested. That was all that mattered.

Mycroft sensed his brother's interest and preyed on it. "You won't once I tell you about it."

"Oh?" Sherlock challenged.

Mycroft's left eyebrow arched elegantly, and his wings folded into sharp arches much in the same fashion one might fold their hands atop their desk when they decided to talk about business.

"Yes." He said, allowing for a suspenseful pause.

"You know as well as I that the latest ordinance against avio-homnids was somewhat forced by political necessity."

Sherlock said nothing, but allowed his cold, hateful silence to speak volumes about his opinion.

"Well, as far as opposition goes, support for an immediate reprieve of the bill is in the pipeline, supported by many Facebook groups, and other such nonsense." Mycroft paused again. John couldn't tell if Mycroft was artfully inserting pauses for dramatic effect, or if talking for any length of time exhausted him breathless.

"Although, in fact, there was never much doubt about the eventual unpopularity of such an action." Mycroft stretched his wings slightly, in emphasis. "'Save the Angels' has about as nice a ring to it as 'Save the Whales' and no one would stand for the oppression of such wondrously magical creatures, especially when one rising star turned into an international hero."

Here he gestured at Sherlock, who accepted the singular action as one might accept a kiss from the hated aunt that smothers, or an IOU from the thieving uncle.

"Get to the point." Sherlock warned.

Mycroft paused. This time, not so much for dramatic effect, but seemingly from… what was that flickering John saw behind his eyes…doubt? He couldn't be sure. Surely the incomprehensible expression spoke volumes to Sherlock, but Sherlock himself stayed as blank as stone throughout the entire affair.

Mycroft unbuttoned his coat and reached into a hidden pocket tailored to hold things invisible to the outside world. He pulled out a folded picture and hesitantly handed it to Sherlock.

"Officially I was never here by the way." He said mock-cheerfully as Sherlock opened each riveting fold with his slender fingers. "CCTV will show no images recorded, and seven of my workmates can account for my presence in my office at this time."

John watched the curiosity etch across Sherlock's face, and them get swept away by a quiet awe.

"What is it?" He asked, feeling lead-headed.

"That." Mycroft pointed to the photo, now caught in Sherlock's irrevocable iron grip. "Is the only picture of the only man who can… how do you say… grease the wheels for the reprieve of Icarus' Law. He's talking with the man who stands to gain the most from the continual upholding of the law. That was the last time he was seen: two days ago near Piccadilly Circus. His wife hasn't seen him since."

"When you say he stands to gain the most… what exactly do you mean?" Sherlock asked, still struck with a reverie of shock and doubt.

Mycroft smiled again, softly, yet firmly. He could not say.

Sherlock understood at once. "Fine." He relented. "I'll find him."

"Good." Mycroft nodded to them each in turn, and clapped his wings as he turned to leave. "Good Morning."

"Good Morning." John said confusedly.

Sherlock noiselessly sat himself on his stool. This; the most wonderful, amazing present had come from the most unlikely of places: Mycroft. A message from the future that change was in the air. It wasn't free of course, it came with the unspoken vow of future work for his brother, but it also came with the exhilarating possibility of being able to help free himself and his people, like a modern day Moses.

"Did Mycroft leave a name?" John asked.

"Written on the back." Sherlock said handing the photo off to John without looking at it. He was thinking glorious thoughts of pastoral beauties, observed from the heavens.

John scanned the image, a grainy CCTV photo taken in the dark corner of a dark alley at night. Even squinting, John could barely make out the image of two men walking through the chest-high shadows, at each other's arms and, apparently, chatting animatedly. One man was tall and lean, with a beakish nose and wispy white hair. He looked like an egret. The other man was shorter, with sleek black hair, and an elegant black suit. He looked like a penguin.

John flipped the paper over and read the names. Egret man's name was written directly on the back of his image, but the name of penguin man (presumably) was hunched down low in the corner, and written in a horribly quick scrawl.

Egret man's name turned out to be John Mann, while Penguin man took James Moriarty.

"Mo…ri…art..y." John sounded out the name, tripping on the tricky syllables.

"I've heard that name before." Sherlock said quietly.

John looked up from the picture expectantly. "Where?" He asked.

"Nowhere good." Sherlock replied enigmatically.

"Well." John said, wishing he had more to add, or perhaps a plan to be made.

"Do we…?" He was at a loss.

"Can we find this Moriarty and ask him a few questions?" the circuits connected in his brain suddenly, and he found himself quite pleased with the results.

"No." Sherlock said.

John looked at his friend in irritation, and then looked again in reverie. Sherlock had his head bowed, fingers steepled in the praying position and wings folded like a true angel.

John put the photo on his lap and glanced once out into the sun-soaked streets, but the image of his flat mate's coal-black trusses, ivory skin and silken wings were burned into his retinas. He imagined, not for the last time, about the first time Sherlock had flown for him. How impossible it had all seemed, that a man could defy gravity. How incredible it was that his flat mate could shine as brightly as the blistering sun boiling in the velvety folds of a parched sky. How impossibly perfect he had looked floating down on a breath of wind, taking the scent of the atmosphere down with each deft beating of his lovely appendages, white shirt billowing pristinely, torn from where he had tucked it into his pants, reflecting the glare of the sun in great spears of light and waving angelically like robes. How wonderfully inviting his outstretched arms had seemed.

Then, John Watson had thought to himself: "Here is someone upon whom I can place my faith."

"You'll do it, you know."

Sherlock looked up.

"You'll find him, and then you'll fly in daylight again." John said. It wasn't blind hope, nor was it in any way an opinion. It was a simple statement of his one true desire.

"If I go up again, I'll take you."

It was John's turn to arch his eyebrow.

"I can carry someone; I'm light enough, and you're light enough." Sherlock said tartly, as though he were the slightest bit insulted.

John smiled, thinking of London as seen from the air: a few unattractive rectangles and suffocating plumes of smog.

"I'd love to."