"Where's Jen?" John asked looking around for the girl as Sherlock was pinning a hundred different connections on his board. There were things of Jen's, Moriarty's and Ursa's all across the board. He had to find her; he needed to find Ursa, or it was all over.
"We have a case to solve, John," Sherlock answered before he showed John a text he received not long after receiving the text from Jen.
This is a hard one. 48 hours before I start chopping Gina up piece by piece. Finish James Moriarty's game. -Ursa
Sherlock turned and looked at his board as John reread the text over and over trying to make sure he understood what was happening. John's eyes flickered up to Sherlock, who was pacing as he muttered to himself. "What does she want? What did he want?" They were hand in hand; he was sure of it. He pushed his hands together. He pulled up every little information about Jen, Ursa, Moriarty, and the game he had been playing. Peter was released because of Moriarty; Damon implied that Moriarty wanted Jen dead, but why? Ursa?
"Why Jen?" John asked. "I mean why would he target her of all people? Why would Ursa target her?" Sherlock paused and stared at him for a moment before something seemed to click.
"Her," Sherlock repeated. "Why her? Maybe it isn't about Moriarty; maybe it's about Jen. I need to find out about Jen, about the blank spots in her life, things she's suppressed." There was something Jen wasn't remembering; something she chose to suppress, something terrible but what? Sherlock riffled through his mind palace lining up everything he knew. It was agonizing as he seemed to reach a barrier as the figures in his mind refused to cooperate.
"Tell me," he demanded shaking the Jen in his mind palace. Seven meant a secret never to be told. It was a secret Jen had hid even from herself, but it was something he knew. Something he refused to acknowledge. He needed her to tell him to find the information.
"Look closer," Raine told him from behind. He spun to the woman to look at her. His frustration was growing, and his anxiety was enough to shutter his mind to a halt.
"You see, but you don't observe," Jen smiled. He took a deep breath and looked at Ursa as he memorized the woman. Observe, he told himself trying to bottle away his emotions. Observe, Jen's life depends on it. He started at her feet. New shoes, there was no dirt on them. Heels. Without the heels, she was perhaps five foot. Knee, she had a bad knee as she put all her good leg. His eyes drifted to her hands. They were clean with no smudges on them and no calluses. He continued to her face and hair, and he paused to really stare at her. Grey eyes looked back at him bored with him already. Flustered, he spun around to look at Jen and then back at Ursa.
"No," he breathed. Height, knee, eyes, hair color, they were all the same. "Sisters?"
"What?" John asked breaking Sherlock out of his mind palace. He rushed over to the board and ripped off a picture of Raine that Jen had in her file.
"Look at her, what do you see?" he asked shoving the photo at him. John stared at the picture and shrugged before Sherlock ripped down a picture of Jen and held them side by side. John looked back and forth between the two. Why hadn't it been so obvious before?
"They could be twins," John remarked looking between the two women wondering how he hadn't seen the similarities. There were a few differences between the two.
"Exactly," Sherlock answered. What he thought was the obvious hit him.
"What are you saying?" John asked still not comprehending how the two could possibly be related. There was no way; they were two different. They hated each other.
"Jen's sister," he replied knowing he had to go to someone who would know the truth, and the first person that came to his mind was Robert Verown.
"You really think they're related?" John asked again watching as Sherlock hailed a cab in Germany. They were going to see Robbie; he had the answers they sought. John had asked the same question multiple times trying to still wrap his head around it. It seemed impossible, but Sherlock seemed so sure.
"It's the only logical explanation," Sherlock snapped. "You saw Irene and Peter with her. Perhaps one of her siblings turned against her with Moriarty's twisting," Sherlock told him. "It makes sense! He would have met her when Moriarty employed Peter! It's so obvious! Who hates each other more than family?"
"But Jen doesn't know?" John questioned. "How could she not know?"
"She has blackouts; she suppresses things she doesn't want to know," Sherlock replied. "It's a defense mechanism she had developed over the years."
"What about Moriarty?" John asked. "What was he doing with Jen? Why not find Raine directly?"
"Perhaps at the time she was unattainable," Sherlock answered. "She's been quiet for years, but she would come out for her sister and brother. The murders got her attention."
"So she hates Jen?"
"She loathes her," Sherlock confirmed. The cab stopped letting the two out in front of a well-lit manor. Sherlock knocked on the door, and Robbie answered looking worn down. He had lost weight and hadn't slept in days. He reeked of whiskey and cigarettes. Guilt was a heavy burden, and it only strengthened Sherlock's hypothesis.
"Holmes, Watson, I've been expecting you," he admitted wondering why it hadn't been sooner. He wanted this to be done with. "Come in. Sit down." The boys sat down in the drawing room as they were serving tea from one of the servants Robbie had waiting on him. "I imagine you are here to ask about my sister."
"Yes, tell us about Ursa," Sherlock told him, almost mocking him. "Tell us how you don't have two sisters but three. I imagine I would ignore the third's existence if she was a hell-bent psychopath too." Robbie paused from sipping his tea and set it gently on the saucer. He felt his body twitch in annoyance.
"You think Ursa is another sister?" Robbie asked him confused and disappointed. He suspected Holmes didn't want to acknowledge the truth forcing out false deductions.
"I don't think; I know," Sherlock inform her pacing back and forth. He was so close to a solution that he could taste it. He would expose Raine Aigle, and he would find Jen. Moriarty's game was in shambles; a game to turn family against each other. Ursa would be locked up in jail, and Jen would be home where she belongs. "It all makes senses, doesn't it? She refers to Ginny as Gina; she looks like the image of your mother! She knows what makes her tick and pushes on it; it just screams family, sisters."
"No," Robbie denied firmly.
"No?" Sherlock laughed. "Stop protecting her! Raine Aigle is Regina Adler in French; she was named after your mother, and simply altered it to hid her identity! I'm right; I know the truth!"
"No, you don't!" Robbie shouted standing frustrated with his supposed knowledge. Sherlock had to know. "You're far from the truth!"
"Then what is the truth?!" Sherlock demanded. "I'm trying to save, Ginny, and you're stopping me! Why!?"
"Because she can't be saved! She's already dead!" Robbie shouted, and the two of them stared at each other silent. Silence fell flat.
"What do you mean?" John asked. "She's already dead?"
"Sherlock, it's right in front of you," Robbie told him pleading. He needed to see for himself the obvious truth. He could not simply tell Sherlock; he had to see it, or he would deny it. The sympathy in Robbie's eyes was clear. Sherlock was never meant to know; according to Mycroft, it could destroy him, but there was nothing more that could be done. "You are right that Raine Aigle was taken from Regina Adler, and you are right that Raine Aigle is the image of our mother, but there is another who would use Regina Adler's name and another who looks like Regina Alder. She is a woman, who has been destroyed by a childhood she could never have; it warped her, twisted her, and Moriarty pushed on those weaknesses. He pushed until she broke. There is a woman, who no matter what she does, loves even those that wrong her. There's only one person, who can hate my sister as much as Raine Aigle does, and you know that. The blackouts, the violent behavior that is just too intense to be BPD, the switch in personality. Sherlock, you've been denying the obvious for so long. You know who Raine Aigle is; it's obvious."
The obvious. He stood in Jen's room in the mind palace watching what made Ginevra Lorraine so strange. One minute she was peaceful, funny, kind, and the next she was something like Peter. But it couldn't be, he mused. It had to be, another part of him said. You know that. Only one person could hate Jen as much as Raine Aigle did.
"A secret not even you knew," he uttered staring at Jen as she stood in front of him in the green sweater that had long since been destroyed. "You wouldn't."
"You were scared to know," she told him. "We talked about everything, Sherlock. We talked about my childhood, my wishes, my lovers. You sought comfort in me; I sought to be with you even all that you are. I loved you for all your flaws, and I gave you something you thought you could never have. I gave you love, and I gave you a touch of humanity you didn't have. But there's a problem; I'm just a ghost, and you've known that since the beginning. The day we met, you knew what I was, but you tossed that information out once your heart realized what you wanted. How could you love a ghost? What does that make you?" He put a hand on her cheek. She smiled at him sadly as she cupped his hand.
"Not you," he breathed. "Not Ginny," he uttered. Like a puzzle, everything fell into place; everything became clearer, and it became a darker place. He felt cold, and he could feel a pit ripping through his stomach to leave a hole. He was at a lose; he didn't know what to do.
"Yes, her," Robbie confirmed as an echo in the mind palace.
"Wait," John said stopping them confused, not understanding how they went from talking about sisters to something else entirely, "what are you saying?"
"Say it," Jen uttered in the mind palace. "You can't save me if you can't admit it."
"I can't," he answered her sure of his limitation. "Don't you understand. Even if you live, even if I save you, it could kill you, and if it doesn't kill you, you won't be who I love. Who I love will be gone."
"Who you love never existed, Sherlock. I'm sorry, but it's true. Say it," she demanded again. "You have to."
"Sherlock? What's going on?" John asked him.
"Why? Why does it have to be this way?" he demanded frustrated grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. "I loved you. I could never love another. Why did you have to be-"
"Because you chose me," she answered. "You wanted me despite always knowing what I was. All lives end; all hearts are broken, and all things come to an end including us."
"We never got a beginning," he told her quietly.
"I know," she whispered, "but who's fault is that? If I had my way, you would be mine every hour of every day, and I would have you begging for mercy every night." She laughed. "But those are things I can't have, and neither can you."
"Ginny," he uttered, "I don't even know who you are."
"I know," she told him, "but it's time. Say it, Sherlock," she whispered touching his cheek. "You have to." He felt tears slipping down his eyes as he felt her room in his mind palace start to change. The light bulbs shattered, and Jen as he knew her started to disappear from his sights as another figure, a figure he didn't know, began to skulk around. It would be the last time Sherlock Holmes would ever see the woman who called herself Jen. She was no more as he realized that Jen never existed. Jen like Ursa was just a fabrication of a mind pushed too far. She was nothing more than a ghost.
"Sherlock?" John asked again seeing his friend crying was at terrifying sight.
"Ursa doesn't exist," he told him quickly wiping of the tears as the hand holding his heart applied pressure. So, this was a broken heart. "Ursa and Ginny are the same person; they're both ghosts."
A/N: Whoa. Why am I early? Well, this chapter and the next chapter is super short, and if I stare at this chapter any longer, I'm going to chicken out and decide they really are sisters, so I need to post it at once.
Hey, hey, yeah some of you were right! That's right! So I heard some mention of fight club in there, but actually, while I was writing this story I was reading Shutter Island, which is just a great book/movie. One of the best book adaptions I've seen. And this is the end of part two. We'll have something of a prologue to part three next.
I want to make it absolutely crystal clear. In a way, Jen never existed either. She was created by Ginevra Lorraine just as Ursa was. They are both figures that exist as a defense mechanism. We'll get to see who exactly Ginevra Lorraine is, and how this all started, but of course, we'll have to a wait just a tad bit longer for that.
Thanks to Reviewers: TinkerbellxO, hannahhobnob, zare . downey . okumura, and TragicBlossoms (yes, you were right. =D) See you all Saturday!