She was brought back to Holmes manor to recover much to her surprise, but Mrs. Holmes, or Violet as she insisted, refused to take no for an answer. She was a rather persistent and lively- when she wasn't dying- woman. She had slight eccentricities but nothing very noticeable like Sherlock. Violet and Sherrin both insisted she stayed the week at least despite her protests.

She had taken to having psychology conversations with Averay, intellectual conversation with Sherrin, humanitarian conversations with Violet, small talk with Angie, whom was a rather quiet woman, and would often play with Wennell. Litwin would often pop up making some snarky remark while Sirett loved talking crime with Jen. Mycroft, who often visited, would often be ignored by Jen… until one day that she was quite bored and found herself walking through the manor and stopped to looking at an artfully done family portrait.

"It was painted not long before Enola died," Mycroft told her making her jump; she hadn't heard him in the hall. Jen tilted her head and looked at the little girl. She looked very much like Mrs. Holmes with her long auburn hair, and her eyes that Sherlock had inherited as well.

"Was she like you?" Jen asked Mycroft, and then rephrased her sentence to ask him exactly what she wanted to know. "You and Sherlock? Reserved and a bit eccentric?"

"No," Mycroft replied looking at the painting. He looked caught up in a memory long since passed; it was rare to see either Holmes brother feeling nostalgic, but the little girl who died did that to them, and there was something deeply tragic about the fact that this little girl who effected them so deeply was now gone from this world. "Enola was observant like all Holmes, but," he paused looking at Jen as if considering something important, "she was observant in a different way. She was a bit like you."

"Me?" she asked him surprised that she could really relate to Holmes. Sometimes they just seemed like a whole other species, completely out of her reach.

"She observed emotions," Mycroft told her. "Empathic. She was compassionate and more like mummy."

"So," Jen said looking up at the portrait at the tall man next to Mrs. Holmes. The boys had inherited his dark brown nearly black hair, "the observant and the eccentricities are from your father?"

"Yes," Mycroft told her.

"Well… what was he like?" she asked curious. She wanted to know what made Sherlock Holmes tick, and perhaps while she was at it, she'll discover what makes Mycroft tick as well. Always nice to know what makes the British government work.

"Like me," Mycroft told her. "He wasn't a particularly loving man. He was very cold and logical."

"How did your mother ever survive?" Jen muttered, and she meant it. Mrs. Holmes was married to a man like Mycroft with four small Holmes running around the house causing all sorts of havoc. Lord, she did not envy her.

"It was a love/hate sort of relationship," he told her, and somehow they had started walking side-by-side, and they were talking like normal people instead of threatening each other or trying to one up each other as they often did. "Mummy and Father would often have shouting matches that would last until one gave up, or one couldn't talk."

"That's detrimental to a child's mentality," she commented, but Mycroft shook his head in disagreement.

"The Holmes can only have a love/hate relationship as we are generally insufferable creatures," Mycroft admitted. "Despite having that sort of relationship, Mother and Father's relationship was one of the strongest I've ever witnessed." Jen dwelled on the dynamics of such a relationship, but quickly shoved it to the back of her mind not wishing to analyze such a complex anomaly.

"What about Sherlock?" Jen asked him switching the subject. "If Sherrin is a bit of a mix of your mother and your father, and you're your father, and Enola was your mother, then what about Sherlock? How did his personality come into being?"

"Well," Mycroft started signaling to her that the youngest Holmes brother was the more complicated case, "to understand Sherlock, you should understand Enola. Enola was a very compassionate girl, and she would go out of her way to help strangers. Sherlock had been taught chemistry by our uncle, and Enola enjoyed watching him working so much, he continued with chemistry showing her different reactions and watching her face light up. Sherlock was… well, he was very alone at this time. Father was always away; Mother was concentrating on trying to keep us from killing ourselves; and even as a child, he never had friends as he was always- as all Holmes- a bit of a…"

"Freak?" Jen offered hollowly. She hated that word; she had heard Sherlock called it too many times for her liking, and it stung her more than it stung him, though she knew somewhere deep down it stung him as well.

"Yes," Mycroft said in agreement making it clear as well that he hated the word too. "Enola was both his sister and his friend. She was someone he could watch and take care of, and someone who would stay at his side. He was very caring and loving toward her."

"I think you can see a shadow of that with Lucy," Jen told him recalling that he actually wasn't too bad with the girl as if he was digging up old skills and characteristics he thought where long since gone but were simply rusty.

"I believe you are right," he told her before continuing his story. "There was a rather deranged man, Louis Reddern, who lived in the outskirts of town, Enola was determined to befriend him… it was her last act. He killed her, and Sherlock was never the same. He solved the murder with the skills he's always had though they've been developing."

"So that's when he decided to become a detective?" she asked trying to piece together the consulting detective's story. It was one with as many twists and turns as her own.

"No," Mycroft replied with a frown. "He solved one other case after that, but with Enola gone, no one listened to him. It was only by lying did the police actually investigate Reddern. Sherlock claimed he saw his sister go there when he didn't. He gave up after that. He was in a dark place for a long time. He started cocaine, and he lost all hope; he was very alone."

"Something changed though," Jen commented not seeing this as the man she knew today; the man she knew today had his bouts of up and downs, but he was never simply given up. It just was not in his nature. "He got his life together."

"Something did change," Mycroft mused with just a flicker of smile, "he met someone who, like Enola, could tell when a person was in pain and would do anything and say anything to pull them away from feelings of loneliness and pain. They understood what he felt in a way no else could."

"Who?" Jen asked with a frown.

"You," Mycroft replied simply earning him a surprised face from Jen, who did not know what he meant. She didn't know Sherlock all that well in school, just those three incidents.

"Me?" Jen asked. "Oh no, I didn't-"

"You did," Mycroft told her. "Maybe you didn't know the profound impact it had on Sherlock, but whatever you said to him gave him some sort of hope. It was that moment he chose to become a consulting detective."

"Advising…," she muttered before she laughed. "I told him he could be anything an advising detective… I never thought… Did I really do so much?"

"You defended him and showed him a compassion that few people are capable of, Ginevra," he told her. "Loneliness-"

"Is a bitch," she finished nodding, perhaps not the most elegant way, but the most accurate she could think of. She understood that to someone who felt as lonely as Sherlock her words of encouragement were something dear.

"I seek an answer from you now," Mycroft told her as he paused at the bottom of the main stairwell. She paused to face him seeing the sudden seriousness in his expression. "Why do you insist on keeping contact with my brother?"

"He's my friend," she told him but then frowned unsure if that was the proper term. "Or… I think we're friends. Bit complicated between us to tell the truth."

"What I mean is what do you intend?"

"If you're asking if I love your brother, the answer is no," she told him. "I mean…-" Her face flushed pink, "there was a time in secondary school when I had a crush on Sherlock. I mean… he was just so brilliant, and it was sexy, and it's still sexy, but…"

"Sherlock's too… mentally unfit for a relationship," Mycroft finished. She shook her head.

"Oh, no… that's not it… it's just everyone I love leaves me, and I don't want your brother to leave me," Jen told him as if it was the most rational thing in the world. "So I tell myself I don't care about him, so that when he does leave… I'll be expecting it, and any love I feel for him won't be existent, because I've convinced myself I don't care. It'll soften the blow."

"I see," Mycroft said before he nodded seeming satisfied. "Have a good night, Ginevra," he said making to the door.

"Mr. Holmes," she called.

"Yes?"

"You can rest assured though… that if Sherlock was in trouble, and he refused to admit that he's in over his head, I would go to you first," she told him. "He cares about you just as you about him even if you don't think so."

"Thank you, Ginevra. It's noted." Mycroft left her with his mind wheeling from his conversation with her. A slight smile fell on his face hoping his brother would not push her away. She was simply too valuable to his future to throw away.

Sometimes he was so like a child, she thought watching as he laid face down on the couch in the Holmes Manor's sitting room sulking in the way he always did when bored. He finished his case and was dragged back to the Manor by John, who insisted on checking upon her, leaving Sherlock with nothing of interest to do but be stuck up in a house he long since abandoned.

"What's wrong with him?" Sirett asked staring at her uncle and then at Jen and John who were watching something mind numbing on the telly.

"Bored," Sherlock shouted, the first words in hours. He turned over to look at the ceiling. "This place is hatefully peaceful," he spat making John shake his head.

"Then make it interesting," Jen called over her shoulder.

"And how do you propose I do that?" he asked. Jen seemed to think on this for a moment before she hopped over the couch to Sirett and started whispering plans in her ear. She laughed.

"I love it," she grinned clapping her hands together. "I'll just go," she pointed the door before running off.

"What did you say to her?" Sherlock demanded getting up and confronting her, but she just grinned up at him.

"Wait for ten more minutes," she ordered shoving him back on the couch.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I had an idea," she told him before she threw herself back next to John to continue watching crap television for the next ten minutes until a piercing scream sent Sherlock running to the entrance hall. John and Jen followed him.

"What did he do?" John muttered to her.

"Life-sized Cluedo," she explained as they entered the hall to see Litwin on the floor covered in what they hoped was fake blood. Lucy was standing over him making him laugh and ruining the effect, but it still got the point across just fine.

"This was your idea," Sherlock asked clearly unimpressed.

"What's wrong, Sherlock? You scared you're going to lose to me?" she asked with a mischievous smile. "I'm your competition."

"Hardly competition," he said finally playing along. "So life-sized Cluedo, then? I have to find out who, what, and where?"

"That's right," Sirett told him. "I think it's a brilliant idea. I made sure it simulated a real crime scene, and we decided to add a few things."

"The victim can do it- suicide- as can a gang; it can be more than one person," Jen told him. "The weapons can be also feet- which symbolize accident, hands- by which I mean any physical attack, electricity, drowning, or starvation. It can be any room and any person in this house, and at the end, you have to give a motive from the following: jealousy, drug-induced, revenge, depression, mental disorder, fight or flight, accident, orders, self-defense, or hit-man. Sound good?"

"It's passable," he murmured making her laugh.

"Let's get started then," she said, and suddenly, there was a flurry of activity as Sherlock was already throwing out ideas at John. "Would you like to be my assistant, Sirett?" Jen asked her making the girl laugh understanding that Jen wasn't taking it seriously.

"Some tea, mum?"

"Oh, yes please," she said getting down on her knees. "Hey Litwin, how's it going?"

"You know," the supposed corpse said, "if someone told me I would be a corpse today, I would have thought them to be threatening me." Jen laughed.

"So you want to tell me how you died?"

"Man, I don't know," he told her making her laugh again as Sherlock ran off with John apparently onto something as Sirett came back with tea for Lucy, Jen, the body, and herself.

"The dead is rising!" Jen shouted as Litwin sat up making them laugh.

"Are you even going to try?" Sirett asked her.

"It was mainly to prevent Sherlock from getting into one of his moods," she admitted. "They're dreadful, aren't they?"

"I hate them," Lucy told her crinkling her nose making Jen smile at her. Jen looked Litwin up and down trying to deduce like Sherlock Holmes, but of course, she saw nothing. Without the mental state of the victim and the murderer being how they were at the time, she could tell you nothing about the supposed murder. "When will you be home?" Lucy asked interrupting Jen's thoughts.

"In a few days, dear," she replied looking up to the little girl who was watching her with a rather intense stare. She wondered if she had learned that from Sherlock; how unfortunate.

"Why can't you come home now?" she whined. "You seem fine to me."

"I need to be away from Baker Street for a bit; it exhausts me," she replied standing with tea in hand. "Let's go check out the rooms in the manor to look for clues, yeah? Body, you have to stay here. Sirett, feel free to come."

"Ugh," Litwin complained falling backing into the fake blood as Jen, holding Lucy's hand, lead the way up the stairs.

It was a good two hours before Sherlock called them back downstairs claiming to have figured it out. They head back down to gather around the body.

"Ginny, you killed Litwin," he accused making her gasp rather dramatically in surprise at the accusation.

"Did I?" she asked Sirett.

"Let him finish. Where, with what, and why?" Sirett demanded of her uncle.

"In the sitting room, with a gun, because her mental disorder," he told her simply.

"No," Sirett replied. "You're right about the where, but everything else is wrong."

"What?" Sherlock rounded on her. "I am not wrong."

"Yes, you are," she told him.

"Oh! Oh! I know," Jen said knowing why he was wrong. She was just guessing based on instinct. "Because it wasn't just me that killed him; Sherlock helped." Sirett laughed and nodded.

"Which means two weapons and two reasons. Go." Sherlock leaned down at Litwin, who was trying to remain still. He turned the boy over making him chuckle as he complied.

"A knife as well," Sherlock told Sirett.

"Right, but why? What happened?"

"I…," Sherlock seemed puzzled by the motive unsure about why he and Ginny would conspire to kill someone in this make-believe world. He looked at Litwin again. "Litwin attacked Ginny… so self-defense, and I shot him… in revenge…," he muttered though he was completely unsure at this point.

"That's about right," Sirett nodded.

"Child's play," he told her standing from the body making Ginny roll her eyes at him.

"Well, that killed two hours," she told him with a sigh.

"Bored," Sherlock told her making her laugh.

"Yeah, let's go find something to stimulate your brain," she told him heading back to the sitting room. That something ended up being chess, which he usually didn't play, but he found Ginny to be an interesting opponent with her erratic seemingly random moves.

"That makes absolutely no sense," he accused her making her smile at him as she moved her rook.

"I'm going to do it anyway," she told him still smiling at him.

"But then I can so easily put you in check," he told her.

"Can you?" she teased him as he made his next move with certainty. She looked at the chessboard unsure what she wanted to be her next move. "How have you been getting along without me?" she muttered still focuses on the board.

"It's been too quiet," he informed her. "There's no one to shout at. John gets tired of me and runs away for a while leaving me to the hateful silence. You should just come back already." She finally made her move making him frown as he looked at the board. "That makes no sense!" he shouted at her again making her grin.

"I don't make sense," she replied.

"No, you're an irritating enigma," he informed her looking at the board trying to make sense of her strategy or lack thereof. "Have you been enjoying the manor as much as I detest it?"

"Now, now, Sherlock," she told him quietly as he made his next move, and her turn began, "you should be grateful for what you have. You were born with a silver spoon in your mother; I was only born, because my mother's a whore. You have a good family, and you have many great opportunities. You were given the best education money could buy, and despite your spats, your family really loves you."

"Did you love your family?" he asked her suddenly as she made her next annoyingly illogical move. "You speak of them as if they were a burden on you."

"I loved my family very much, but we… broke apart due to unfortunate circumstances," she told him with a sigh. "It's caused bad blood between us. Peter and I are the closest as nothing has come between us."

"The murders don't bother you?" he questioned as he made his next move. She wasn't the least bit surprised that Sherlock had discovered what her brother had done.

"No," she told him. "My brother could not help being a murderer any more than you could help being a consulting detective. He's wrong in the head, and I cannot hold that against him when I am so very wrong as well."

"You have not gone about killing people," he reminded her.

"Oh?" she questioned as she moved her queen from her spot. "What about Connor?"

"Self-defense doesn't count."

"You and I both know that me killing him was far more than self-defense," she told him with a frown.

"Connor deserved what was coming to him," Sherlock told her darkly.

"Does anyone deserve death?" she questioned. "Or perhaps everyone does." He made his move allowing her to consider hers.

"It is closer to everyone than no one," he assured her making her eyes dart up to his.

"Or perhaps death shouldn't be considered punishment. It is wrong to do so," she informed him.

"How so?"

"Life is hard, and letting them move away from it is sort of a reward. Should we not let everyone live to allow for greater suffering?" she asked. "Or perhaps that is too cruel?"

"You're getting into philosophy, Ginny, so I hardly think it matters," he told her with a smile as he put her in check. "All philosophy is contradictory and is therefore void."

"You don't like philosophy," she noted.

"It's usually logical thoughts that are then contradicted. It rather tiresome," he admitted. "It's made of assumption and opinions. There's no real use for it."

"Yes, but then it asks the questions like but what use is there for anything if we all die in the end?" she told him being rather cheeky with him as she moved herself out of check.

"Useless information," he informed her as he followed her king.

"Fine let's go to cold hard facts then. I want you to tell me about Enola," she ordered making him pause and look up at her with his hand still on his knight.

"Why?" he asked not wanting to drag up the subject any more than it had to be.

"I want to know what makes you, you," she told him with a sigh. "I find you interesting, Sherlock." He paused to consider her statement.

"If I tell you about Enola, I want you to tell me more about Christopher Black," he told her making her light smile turn to a deeply set frown.

"Why?"

"Call it curiosity," he told her though it seemed more important than that. She thought about his request and felt a pang as her thoughts drifted on the man she once knew.

"I can't," she admitted.

"Then, I refuse to discuss my sister with you," he replied as she managed to put him in a check. "What?" he asked surprised by the turn of events. He looked over the chessboard to see she had rightfully defeated him with no more options.

"Check," she told him quietly. He looked up to realize he had opened old wounds by bringing up her former lover, and he didn't know why but seeing her hurting because of another man made his entire body clench in some sort of anger. He didn't like it; he hated the feeling and wanted it to go away.

"Sherrin?" she questioned as they sat across from each other outside on the veranda as they often did. Angie was out with Averay and Wennell, and Jen sought him out to ask him a few things that were still unclear. She knew he would be honest with her as he always was.

"What is it?" he asked her sipping his tea as he watched her.

"I have a few obscure question, and… I don't want questions asked as to why I want the answer. Will you answer them?" she asked taking a sip of her own tea. Sherrin nodded allowing her to start her inquiry. "What happened to your father?"

"He died in a plane crash on his way back home from France when I was twenty-one and Sherlock just ten," Sherrin replied though he didn't seem bothered by the question of his deceased father. She imagined they weren't very close; from what she heard, he wasn't the sort of man one got close to even when it came to his own children.

"What did he do for a living?"

"Same as me," he admitted. "He invested in property and trades. We come from money, and he just built on top of the money." Jen nodded.

"Has Sherlock ever been in a relationship?"

"No."

"What about Mycroft?"

"N-… Well," Sherrin remarked thinking on this, "there's a woman. We call her Mycroft's Bane, and although there's never been any sort of relationship, and he acts as though he detests her, I know that he loves her."

"But he's never acted on it?"

"Well," Sherrin sighed, "it's a bit complicated. When they met, she was prostitute."

"Okay, you can't start a story with that. Start from the beginning," Jen demanded making Sherrin chuckle as he started his story over.

"They met when Mycroft was twenty-one, and she was seventeen," Sherrin told her. "They met when Sherlock, getting into trouble even at fourteen, collapsed unconscious at her feet while she was working on the streets. She brought him to a hospital nearby claiming she was his cousin. Mycroft got the call that Sherlock was admitted and went straight there. They met, and he found himself fascinated by her. She's very ambiguous. One second she's this creature dripping in sin, and the next she's a saint. She often calls him UM, umbrella man, as when they first met it was raining, and he was caring an umbrella. Never changed after that. They had a few deals and arrangements after, nothing of the sexual nature. He would ask her to find Sherlock for him, or he would ask for information on the criminal activity in London. It was all very innocent."

"Until it wasn't," Jen laughed knowing where this was going.

"Until it wasn't," Sherrin agreed. "I don't know if he paid her or if they were in an actual relationship, but they spent a lot of time together."

"Why does he detest her then?"

"From what I understand, she up and left London one day without a word. Didn't come back for ten years," Sherrin told her. "When she did come back, she told Mycroft she needed an out from her life of shame and sin, so she ran, and she was sorry. They spent more time together, and… eventually, he woke up one day with her gone and the data from his computer wiped and uploaded on a disk she sold to the highest bidder. Her name in the crime rings skyrocketed because of it, but the next time Mycroft saw her was in handcuffs, and it was not pretty. I wasn't there, but from what I've heard, there was a lot of angry, hateful words exchanged mostly by Mycroft. He left her crying, broken, but she broke him first. She's been trying to make it up to him since. On Christmas every year, she makes a homemade cake for him, hand wraps it, and leaves it on his door step."

"Do you think he'll forgive her?" Jen asked curious about the woman and Mycroft. She didn't imagine him to be the kind to fall over a woman, but perhaps that was another life time ago before this mysterious woman had broken him into the ways of the cold world.

"I think he already has, but refuses to admit it to himself." Sherrin paused. "You know why he carries that damn umbrella everywhere? Because she hates when he doesn't have it; she met him with umbrella in hand. That was the first thing she saw when she met him, and to her, he'll always be ah… what was it she said, 'her knight with a back umbrella.'"

"I'd like to meet her," Jen said with a smile. "She sounds interesting."

"Maybe you will," Sherrin told her. "Sherlock has and so have I. She pops up from time to time. Rather amusing to see her flirt with Mycroft."

"What's her name?"

"In the criminal world, she's known as Scarlett Montreal. But her real name is-"

"Eleanora Moore," she finished with a laugh. "Small world."

"You know of her?" he asked surprised.

"I've had dealing with Elea," Jen told him. "We've um… teamed up more than once. She's actually a rather kind woman. Devious and sadistic at times, but she's also the most loyal woman I have ever met. The woman would go to hell and back for her comrades even if she doesn't like you. Elea saved my life once. I was shot in the stomach, and instead of leaving me there, she dragged my body out of the building and back to Shadow. She came to my funeral though she knows I'm alive. Interesting…" Jen took a sip of her tea as she thought of her next question.

"May I ask you a question?" he asked. She nodded. "You will be careful with Sherlock, won't you? I mean… He doesn't have many friends, and I think if one was to break that connection-"

"Sherrin, you don't have to worry about that," she told him. "Sherlock has seen me at my worst, and he didn't run. That generally means a long friendship no matter what. I'll be around as long as he wants me around and sometimes even when he doesn't want me around."

"So, you're the loyal type?"

"Always," she told him.

"Thank you," he said, "for taking care of him."

"Thank John."

"I did," he said, "and John informed me to also thank you, so I am. Thank you."

"My pleasure," she replied with a smile as she sipped her tea again and switched the conversation to something more light, but her mind continued to stray to the Holmes family and their complex lives. She wondered what she got herself mixed up in.

A/N: This is a chapter for the sake of a chapter. There's nothing really relevant to any sort of plot, I know. There's simply information for information's sake, and events for the hell of it. If anything, it's more of a character study of Sherlock and, well, the entire Holmes family really. Perhaps the one thing that is decently relevant for future plot is actually Mycroft's story as of course we'll get to meet Eleanora Moore (much later). I may or may not write a spin off for it depending on how up to it I feel.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! See you in a week! Thanks to reviewers: neko and 252020. Review please!