A/N: Okay, so parts of this chapter would probably look better if it were a video, rather than a story, so you might have to picture it.

Also, I weakened and copied the episode a bit (a lot), so sorry about that. So there are spoilers for THE, but I would imagine that most people reading this would have watched it. If you haven't, beware.

Charlene stepped out of the chilly building into the chillier night air, and gave a whoop of delight, jumping into the air. Finally, she had done it! She had managed to work out the ultimate case: the case of Sherlock Holmes.

She pulled out her phone and checked it. There was a text from John asking where she was, and one from Mrs Hudson asking about a problem with her phone.

Charlene dialled Mycroft's number. He answered a second later. "Charlene."

"You knew," she said without preamble.

He sighed, causing a rush of static in her ear. "You worked it out."

"You knew," she repeated.

"I'm sorry, Charlene. Really, I am."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I told you, I would have had to kill myself. As it was, all I could do was help you, a little bit at a time." Mycroft sounded older than usual, and kinder.

"How about John?" Charlene demanded.

He paused. "What about Dr Watson?"

She felt a sudden rush of anger. "He grieved for Sherlock for months. Months. And you let him! And I came all the way over from New York to see him, and was told he was dead. Do you have any idea what that feels like?"

"I do."

"Of course you do. I wasn't thinking," she said guiltily. There was a pause, then she asked, "What's he been doing all this time? Dismantling Moriarty's network?"

"There were many intricate threads woven together, with Moriarty in the middle, holding the reins. Although the spider was dead, the web still functioned."

Charlene made a note of his use of the past tense. "So what do I do now? Just keep it a secret from everybody, like you've been doing?"

"Not at all," Mycroft said surprisingly. "I think you should do exactly as you see fit. I assure you that you will have my full support in this."

"Thank you." She hung up and kept walking, staring into space. The right thing. But what was that?

o0o0o

"And that's how he did it," Charlene finished, looking around at the group to gage their reaction.

She was standing once more in Anderson's living room, at an emergency meeting of The Empty Hearse. It was the day after she had learned the truth about Sherlock's fall, the 'Reichenbach Fall' as they were now calling it.

Everybody else in the room was looking at Charlene with awe. Emma, the girl she had sat next to earlier in the week, spoke first.

"That's amazing." There were murmurs of agreement around the room.

"Yes, but we still need more solid proof," Charlene said. "That's why I came to you guys. I know I can trust you, see. And if we can find proof, then we can tell the world that Sherlock Holmes is alive!"

There was a lot of nodding and smiling, and a couple of people let out small cheers.

Anderson spoke up. "How are we going to do this, though?"

She leaned forward conspiratorially and took out her laptop. "Let me show you."

o0o0o

Over the next few days, Charlene and The Empty Hearse got to work, along with John and Greg and some members of the homeless network. Mycroft helped remotely from the manor, contacting the necessary important people to make everything happen.

"The mission is to make people believe the seemingly impossible.

First step: subliminal messaging."

Graffiti started popping up around London anonymously. The tags arrived in the dead of night, and whenever they were cleaned off, another tag appeared in the same place the next night.

'#notdead'

'#Sherlocklives'

'#Sherlockisalive'

'#hatdetectivealive'

Every time, it was the same yellow spray paint. Strangely enough, it bore a striking resemblance to the paint used for the smiley face on the wall of 221B.

After a while, the media started to notice the graffiti. The first one to write about it was Kitty Reilly, famous for writing the first accusatory article about Sherlock Holmes.

Newspapers picked up the story, and soon everybody was speculating what it could mean, this strange graffiti about a dead detective that most had forgotten about. The reports dropped off after a while, but the graffiti remained.

Some of the major London department stores had specials on various items of clothing, such as Belstaff coats and deerstalker hats. Nobody seemed to notice this, but sales in both increased rapidly.

Meanwhile, there were rumours people walking around London dressed as Sherlock Holmes, in particular one woman who seemed to be everywhere. She was in the background of location news reports, she was at the front of crowds at events; she was everywhere. Her identity, however, was unknown until one Friday, when D.I. Lestrade called a press conference.

"While this is happening, I need you all to go behind the scenes. There's only so much the Homeless Network can do."

Emma Wilson waited until the guard had gone past, then slipped out of the closet. She stole along the white and darted into a room just as another guard rounded the corner.

Once inside, she wasted no time in flicking the light on and pulling the USB drive out of her pocket and plugging it into the computer, wiggling the mouse to wake up the monitor. Within two minutes she had downloaded all the files she needed, and slipped the USB back into her pocket and left, turning the light out on her way. The monitor remained glowing in the darkness, throwing the room into an eerie blue light.

Once outside the building, Emma took out her phone and sent a swift text: 'Mindcrime is go'.

"Then we take our evidence, and go in for the kill."

In the police station, there was an empty room filled with chairs. Up the front, there was a table with three chairs and microphones.

Media reporters and photographers started to filter into the room, with cameras and microphones and other devices. The front rows filled up first, and soon the room was full of noise and bustle as people chatted and exchanged jokes.

A door at the front of the room opened and Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade walked in, flanked by Sergeant Sally Donovan and another woman, dressed in a long coat and blue scarf. Her collar was turned up, and she surveyed the room calmly before sitting down on one of the chairs.

Whispers started up around the room in a small flurry of activity, then everybody became silent again. Greg cleared his throat nervously before addressing the assembled crowd. "Hello there. Thank you for coming to this conference today about the late great detective Sherlock Holmes.

"First of all, I'd like to introduce you to Miss Charlene Holmes, the twin sister of the deceased." There was a flurry of flashes and pictures, then the room settled down again. "Charlene has lived in America for most of her life, but returned to Britain to help us solve this case," Greg continued, sticking to the story they had planned.

"It was in fact her who proved that Sherlock Holmes was innocent of all charges relating to James Moriarty." He raised a hand for silence, as several people had started to talk and take more photos. "I'll hand the stage over to her now."

Charlene smiled pleasantly at the crowd, and spoke in a clear voice. "Good afternoon. I'm Charlene Holmes, as you've heard already. First, I'll tell you what happened, the morning Sherlock Holmes died."

She described in detail the rooftop conversation between Sherlock and Moriarty, then played the recording for the media, including the phone call to John. A few people raised their hands, but Sally told them, "Wait, there's more." She was looking at Charlene with an expression of reluctant admiration on her face.

Charlene smiled faintly. "Thank you, Sergeant Donovan. Yes, there is more. You see, what happened after Sherlock made that phone call is not what you think happened. In reality, it was much more planned, more intricate than that."

She pulled out Mycroft's phone, and brought up the conversation with Sherlock. Her actions were shown on a screen above her head so that the audience could read the last texts sent and received. There was one from Sherlock, about ten minutes before he jumped, that read 'Lazarus'. A few minutes later, there was a reply: 'Lazarus is go'.

"You see," Charlene said, drawing everybody's attention away from the screen, "my brother was a genius. He knew that Moriarty would want him to die, and he didn't particularly want to die, so he took steps to prevent this. These steps were in fact an intricately designed plan, implemented with great care and rather a lot of help from his good friends, the Homeless Network.

"I'll take you through it step by step. Moriarty shot himself in the mouth, thinking it would force Sherlock's hand and make him kill himself. But as I said, he and Mycroft had predicted this, and had come up with a set of thirteen ways to escape this fate. I won't bore you with the details of all of them. He chose the plan called Lazarus, hence the text.

"The thing about homeless people is that they're very good at going unnoticed. While John Watson was in the taxi on the way to the hospital, twenty-five carefully selected people were assembling, ready to help Sherlock." The screen above her head changed to an aerial view of the area in question, with annotations that Charlene herself had added. She continued her narrative, pointing out where the people had each been stationed. She showed how they had managed to get a large airbag at the next to the hospital just in time for Sherlock to fall onto it, then get out of the way.

She showed, using a screen capture of Molly's activity history at work, how she had edited the records of the man they had used as a corpse. She explained that the man was one of Moriarty's men who had outlived his purpose. She went on to talk about how the cyclist had knocked John down at exactly the right time, so they could switch the dead body for Sherlock without John noticing a thing. The fall had also served to confuse John somewhat, and blur his vision. She supplemented with evidence in the form of CCTV surveillance from the hospital at the time.

Then Charlene put a hand in her pocket and brought out a small ball, holding it up for everyone to see. "One small squash ball. Sherlock used one of these to temporarily halt his pulse, by putting it under his arm like so," she demonstrated by nestling the ball in her armpit, "and carefully applying pressure to it."

By the time Charlene had finished her presentation, everybody in the room was staring at her wide-eyed. There was a moment of silence after she finished speaking, then a sudden cacophony of noise as several reporters spoke at once.

Greg held his hand up for silence. "One at a time, please." He called on the first reporter.

"Peter Johnson, Daily Mail," he introduced himself. "Were you the unidentified woman who jumped off St Bart's Hospital earlier this year?"

She smiled faintly. "Yes, I was. Long story, we won't go into it now. Next?"

A familiar woman raised her hand. "Kitty Reilly, freelance. Can I ask, how did Sherlock Holmes know that John Watson was going to stay in that exact position? How did he know he wouldn't move?"

"That's easy," Charlene said. "Sherlock told John not to move, and John trusted him absolutely. So he didn't move."

The next reporter stood up. "Gerald Lambert, Sun. How about the sniper aiming at John Watson? Surely, from his position, he could see the airbag?"

Charlene smiled again. "My brother – Mycroft, I mean – rang him up and invited him to reconsider. He joined our side, as it were."

"All right, last question," Greg said, cutting in. "You, sir?"

"Paul Sheriff, Telegraph. If Sherlock Holmes is alive, where is he now? Will he come back?"

She pursed her lips. "I am currently unaware of his whereabouts, I only know that he is in another country. Somewhere far away. And I also know that if he does come back, then that will be a great day for Great Britain."

Greg took charge and closed the conference. He, Charlene, and Sally Donovan all stood up and headed toward the exit.

At the last moment, Charlene turned and scanned the faces in the crowd. Her eyes found John, sitting in the back. She raised one eyebrow slightly, a question. He nodded in response, and offered a smile.

Charlene turned back and followed Greg through the door into the police station, grinning to herself.