A/N: HELLO, EVERYONE! It has been ages since I have posted on this site, the reason being my immense amount of work in college. However, since I am now on break, I would like to continue my literary endeavors. I just recently watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie, and, as I had anticipated, I absolutely loved it. For those of you reading my other story, fret not, I shall continue it. But I just HAVE to write another Sherlock Holmes. I haven't touched this subject for over a year, but hopefully it doesn't show. I hope you all enjoy this, and, if you have no idea who Clara is, I suggest you first read my other two stories, "Jack of Knives, Queen of Poison," and "Hearts, Hope, and Diamonds." These stories aren't exactly up to par because I wrote them some number of years ago, but they still provide the necessary background for this particular piece. Anyway, enough of my rambling; I hope you all enjoy!

Prologue

Domesticity was, as far as Sherlock Holmes' seasoned genius could conclude, one of the greatest abominations projected upon "today's" modern society; tedium, monotony, and routine were all amongst the most heinous fates that could befall a man.

However, this was an opinion – much like the many of his others – that the vast majority of people failed to share. Even those closest to him could not comprehend his utter hatred for nearly every sort of conformity. True enough, he was a misanthrope – that much was obvious. But his disdain for common etiquette far surpassed a mere annoyance with the hoity-toity frivolities of his class (and those above him, though he refused to recognize their legitimacy) and the illogical obsession with raising one's civil status. He disapproved of the very core of human reasoning.

This was not to say, of course, that Mr. Holmes was particularly avant-garde or liberal in his beliefs. As far as he was concerned, social stratification was entirely necessary. Not all men were created equal (he was living proof of that, thank-you-kindly), and therefore it didn't make sense for them to be treated as such. What especially irked him, though, was the fact that such bumbling idiots – oftentimes his employers (however, he was his only true employer, as he incessantly found himself reminding people) – comprised the upper echelon of British culture. Their heads were so far up their own derrieres that they failed to see that he was not helping them, he was merely using their issues to keep himself entertained.

But this was a tangential argument. What was really bothering him was not so lofty and philosophical in nature. His current dilemma stemmed from the fact that Clara was asking him to fetch the groceries from the market.

Married life was not for the faint of heart. There were very few things that could rattle the iron trap that was Holmes' composure. Nothing frightened him, and nothing surprised him. His resolve was absolute: once he set his mind to something, it was a sure bet ("take note of the gambling allusion, my dear Watson") that he would stick with it.

But Marriage, that sacred institution legitimized by a man wearing a ridiculously large hat marked with a cross, was proving to be more difficult than he had anticipated.

He'd foreseen problems, yes – Holmes was many things, but he was certainly not naïve. However, he had expected that his… affection (the word 'love' was far too foreign to grace his lips) for his dear and beloved wife would allow him to overcome such hardships.

But Clara, oh Clarissa Barker Holmes… She'd never been an easy woman to suffer. But he cared for her and she was one of the few people who'd ever weaseled their way into his miniscule (almost nonexistent, if you asked his closest comrade) circle of trust. He respected her, despite the fact that she was not his intellectual equal (so few were, it was hard to be too choosy…). In fact, he did indeed love her – as a husband should love a wife, at that. Although, he had to admit, there were a few times when his fondness for her became a tad too akin to a scientist's love for his experiments. But that was to be expected, he supposed.

He liked to push her to her wit's end, see how far he could stretch her temper before she snapped. He'd found that her tolerance for such things depended entirely on the topic at hand. For example, a short quip regarding her intelligence earned him an equally sharp response, but in good humor. A jab at his decision to marry her, however… Well, let us just say that he'd found soon enough that it's best not to tread into such territory.

Chapter I

"Darling," he drawled facetiously from behind the closed door of his study, "I've already told you that I am in no mental state to be leaving the house right now. I'm on the brink of a – " Clang – "momentous" – Pop – "innovation" – Bzzup – "that will revolutionize" – Bang.

"Save it," she interrupted testily, lifting a dainty hand to massage the narrow bridge of her nose, "I don't want to know. I'll just have Wiggins do it, I suppose."

"Wiggins! How do you know about the – "

"Baker Street Irregulars? Really, Holmes, do you take me for a fool? You and I both know that you shouldn't be left unattended with guests by the door… Especially after the Langdon incident…"

"He insulted my practice!"

"He asked you to help him find his Springer Spaniel, Holmes…"

"Precisely!"

Clara rolled her eyes in a distinctly un-ladylike fashion. "Be that as it may," she insisted, "you didn't need to say what you did."

"I was merely making an observation," he hissed manically, his head popping out abruptly from behind the door. His unruly brown mane was in complete disarray, as had become customary, and he had smudges of what appeared to be soot on his forehead and cheekbones. "It's not my fault that people can't see what is right in front of them. If anything, I was doing him a service." "Plus," he added as an afterthought, "I thought I'd thrown you off with the five-minute-long conversation about hydrangeas."

"You would know better than anyone how far my patience can extend," she retorted, suggestively quirking an eyebrow.

He let out a short bark of a laugh and pointed some sort of bronze beam at her. "No need to get your feathers in a ruffle, my dear," he chided before quickly disappearing back into his study.

"Sherlock, you're incorrigible," she muttered under her breath.

"Thank you, Mrs. Holmes!" he called exuberantly. It seemed the vast majority of their conversations were to take place through his study door, at least for the time being…

"What's all the commotion about?" Mrs. Hudson called from the bottom of the stairs.

"Nothing, Auntie, don't worry," Clara responded calmly.

"You two really must get your own home. This is no place for a married couple to be living!" she nagged for what seemed like the millionth time.

"Hogwash!" came Holmes' muffled voice. "This is as good a place as any! And my practice has already been established here! It would confuse my customers if I were to move… And then we would have to rename the Baker Street Irregulars… The proposition is simply out of the question."

"But there's no room to raise a family!" Mrs. Hudson insisted vehemently.

"A family!" Holmes scoffed viciously. "There will be no such thing."

Clara looked at her aunt sadly. It was true, this was a conversation they had had many a time. Holmes was beyond adamant on the issue – he was not having children.

"It is a couple's duty – "

"Please, Auntie, there's no reasoning with him on this matter. Just let it be."

"Plus," came Watson's voice as he exited his room, "there are more than enough Holmeses in this world, as far as I'm concerned."

Clara smirked at him and didn't betray her true feelings on the matter. In reality, she desperately wanted children. When she'd first married Holmes, she had thought that she would be content to simply live with him as a couple and the proposition of a family was out of the question. But she had been wrong; the longer they were together, the more she yearned for a son or daughter to raise. She was getting older, and the opportunity to start a family was becoming less and less attainable. Clara honestly did not understand her husband's aversion to the prospect. He talked about children with such distaste, but she saw how he interacted with Wiggins and the other members of the Irregulars. He was no Watson, but he was still fairly competent in dealing with the boys.

That said, however, accidents did happen. Though, somehow, they hadn't had any accidents just yet, or even any scares. Holmes must have been doing something without her knowledge, because it didn't make sense for things to be progressing the way they were otherwise.

"You look a bit morose," Watson commented.

"I'm fine," Clara replied quickly.

"You're not – "

"No, don't be absurd. We both know he'd make a horrible father."

"Not quite so horrible as one might think…" he tried.

"No, I'm quite sure that he would be."

"This issue is something of a hot subject on his end too, then?"

"You might say so."

"Well, that's unfortunate. How else are you going to pass on that massive intellect of yours, Holmesie? The world would be at a loss without presence of your genius." Watson called, rapping on the door.

"I assure you, Watson, that there have to be better ways to pass on genes – ways that don't involve diapers and spit-up. I'm sure technology will soon advance in such a way that I do not have to reduce myself to such things. Plus, there's always Mycroft..."

"Do you reckon Mycroft will be settling down anytime soon, old boy?" Watson baited.

"That's beside the point!"

"Touchy subject," Watson whispered conspiratorially to Clara.

The madman emerged again from his self-imposed incarceration. "It is only a touchy subject because everyone sees it fit to make it a touchy subject," he said hurriedly. "And quite frankly," he continued, "I don't understand why it is the concern of anyone aside from myself and my wife. So I would be much obliged if everyone else would kindly heed my will and just stay out of it." And then the door was shut once again.

"It's best not to bring it up," Clara then solemnly explained to Watson.

"A bit late for that," he noted, on his way out the door.

"Perhaps. But John, where are you going?"

"Why?" he asked suspiciously. Clara smiled to herself, well aware of the fact that Holmes' presence had apparently rubbed off on her – now even dear Watson suspected that she had ulterior motives.

"I was just going to send for one of the boys to go fetch the groceries, but if you're headed out…"

"Alright, I'll do it."

"Splendid!" she said, handing him a slip of paper.

Watson glanced at it. "Is there any particular reason why you need 'seven heads of cabbage'?"

"Oh, Sherlock must have added that."

"I don't want to know," he mumbled, echoing Clara's earlier sentiments. "Do you have any idea what he's doing in there?"

"Not a clue."

"Wonderful. Well, let's just hope he doesn't light dynamite in the laundry chute again…"

"It wasn't dynamite, it was a very specific assortment of chemicals, and I needed a controlled environment!" Holmes yelled from upstairs.

"How can he even hear us?" Watson asked himself.

"Don't dwell on it," Clara dismissed, patting his shoulder affectionately. "Off you go," she said, placing his bowler hat atop his head and ushering him out the front door.

Three knocks, varying in severity but equally spread apart in timing… Clara was at the door.

"What do you want now, darling?" he drawled.

"I have your cabbages," she said, un-amused.

"You may bring them inside."

She turned the doorknob slowly, mildly afraid of what she might find.

When she entered the room, the air was hazy with some sort of smoke or dust or combination of the two (yes, surely it was – Holmes was at his pipe even more than usual, it seemed). Her blue-green eyes darted around quickly, trying to figure out what he'd been working on so meticulously for such an extended period of time. The curtain that had once-upon-a-time divided his workplace from Watson's was drawn, indicating that he was absorbed in something that he didn't want her to see.

Holmes himself, on the other hand, was at his table, fiddling away with some sort of metallic contraption.

"What is it you have there?" she asked.

"Something that will surely change the way man communicates forever," he said, teeth clenched around the stem of his pipe. He didn't even bother to glance up at her.

"What do you need the cabbages for?"

"That's another matter entirely. I wrote that down days ago…"

"I only started this list yesterday…"

"No matter. The thought has passed. It will have to be resumed another time. Right now, this demands my full attention."

"What is it?" she asked, now sufficiently curious. She took a step forward in an attempt to get a better look at what he was doing. In front of him was some sort of rectangular metallic box with a long bronze antenna-like structure attached to the top. There appeared to be some sort of hinge on the front of it, and Holmes was using a toolkit to position some copper wires inside.

"I like to call it a bilateral radio," he said finally, shutting the small metal door with a flourish. There was a small dial on the front. "Let's try it out, shall we?" "Here," he instructed, shoving it into her grasp. He then opened his desk drawer and procured a more or less identical version of the same object. "I was inspired," he continued, "by the work of someone who has recently made himself of great interest."

"By whom?"

"That matters not. Now, go downstairs and stand outside the neighbor's front door."

"Why the neighbor's?"

"Because the ventilation in this building is such that I can hear everywhere else. Now go!" She couldn't help but suspect that he'd made the ventilation as such…

Clara did as she was told, undeniably curious. All of a sudden, she saw the window to Holmes' room fly open.

"Now," he yelled from the upper floor of their Baker Street residence, "Turn the dial to the right!" He then disappeared from view.

With an exasperated sigh, she did as instructed. There was an annoying buzzing noise, but all of a sudden she could hear Holmes' voice as if he were standing right beside her.

"Hello? Can you hear me?"

"Sherlock?" she gasped, nearly dropping the machine in shock.

"Yes! Clara, I can hear you. Oh, perfect, perfect. Wonderful. Alright, you may come back inside."

Then, all the noise ceased.

Once she was back in his study, she couldn't help but gawk.

"Close your mouth, dear, you wouldn't want to collect flies," he said nonchalantly.

"How – what?"

"Yes, it's a two-way communicator. I can see you didn't fully grasp the meaning of a bilateral radio…"

"It's incredible!"

"Yes, well, I can't take all the credit. I myself was never much of a mechanical engineer… Always preferred chemistry. Much of the basic concept was taken from an entirely different contraption that I came across. In any case, I'm glad to see that it's effective…"

"You weren't joking when you said it was something revolutionary…"

"No, unfortunately not. It's a new age."

"What are you going to do with it?"

He shrugged and took a long drag from his pipe. "Keep it and use it as needed, I suppose. That's what I do with all my inventions."

"But this isn't like anything you've devised before! Think of how this could change the world."

"Think of how it could change things for the worse. No, I don't think 'the world,' as you say, is ready for this sort of technology just yet."

Clara thought for a moment. "What was it you were referring to when you mentioned 'an entirely different contraption'?" she asked suspiciously. She couldn't help but flicker her gaze towards the drawn curtains to her left.

Holmes followed her line of sight, and, before she could make a dash to see what they concealed, he was in front of her, blocking her way.

"Now, now," he started, placing his hands on her shoulders "that's not meant for your eyes."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"It's still in the developmental phases."

Clara relaxed in his grip, silently assuring him that she wasn't going to violate his wishes. However, as he too began to relax, she darted past him and through the partition.

A/N: I hope you all liked it! Please review and let me know what you think, because I'm not going to continue this is there isn't an interest; Sherlock Holmes stories take a lot of effort and planning, more so than some of the other things I've written. Thank you so much for reading!