Chapter .05

They have been living together for some time, Mycroft and this female vampire. The one with the long brown hair that smells of snow, parchment, and poppies. Anthea, Sherlock thinks she is called. At first Sherlock assumes that, like many of Mycroft's relationships, it is simple companionship that holds them together, but when he visits them in the Northern Ireland and sees Mycroft laughing at something she has said – laughing as he had not done in decades and decades – Sherlock begins to rethink his earlier assumption, just ever so slightly.