One need not be a chamber to be haunted, one need not be a house.

The brain has corridors surpassing material place.

~Emily Dickinson

Sherlock

He doesn't mean to blurt it out but he doesn't know how to answer Daddy's question either without divulging some part of it. As expected, because it's Daddy, it's enough for him and rather than keep his mouth shut he keeps talking. He even calls him stupid, John too, for a reason Sherlock cannot understand.

And suddenly as much as he loves Daddy he just wants to get away from here. After all, he had done what he came here for and Daddy can handle informing Mummy. Granted it will end with her coming after him for not telling her in person. But he can deal with it when it will happen.

So he latches on the distraction that John offers in the form of invoking Mycroft's name and the weirdest thing of all, he finds himself defending the bugger. But he owes Mycroft as much. Mycroft didn't push him into drugs and he had done everything he could do to help him, sometimes with Sherlock's permission and sometimes without it.

Then the truth just slips out of his mouth even though it was the only thing he wanted to still keep away from his parents. Not out of malice, but out of kindness. Because they didn't see it when it started. Because they didn't know until the shit really hit the fan after V…

He doesn't blame them though. It wasn't their fault, they did everything to help him. It wasn't their fault that nothing they tried worked. Only the drugs helped and the problem eventually went away.

Until now, he realises when he feels his left hand tremble and he knows what will be coming next even though it was ages since he felt it last time. The pain.

He retreats out of the room in hurry, using Josie as an excuse. He manages to close the door of his old bedroom behind himself just as the cramp hits with the full force.

The pain is nearly blinding, as it always has been when it happened and he finds himself sliding down against the door to the floor, clutching at his left wrist. It hurts so badly that he has to grit his teeth to keep himself from screaming because he doesn't want to wake the girls.

Why are you back? He thinks furiously. Why the hell you came back?

'I can answer that,' someone says and it's not a voice he heard before.

Weirdly though, it seems a bit familiar to his ears. But only once he realises that it's his own voice he can summon to the forefront of his mind the image of his deceased older brother.

Sherrinford is sitting cross-legged on the bed. His longish hair are falling around his face, his eyes are closed and his hands are resting on his knees.

'But then again you already know the answer, don't you?' he asks simply. 'Puberty is a bitch,' he shrugs. 'It tends to dredge up a lot of issues and when it hit you had a lot of them. Stuff you couldn't remember, stuff your hormonal brain tried to push to the surface.'

'Post-traumatic stress disorder presenting itself as an intermittent tremor that was often accompanied by a psychosomatic pain,' he realises.

'Weirdly enough it kept manifesting the most when you were using your preferred coping mechanism which was playing the violin. You found solace in the violin but your brain tried to keep you from pulling up walls,' Sherrinford agrees. 'And what specialists you and our parents avoided like a plague when you started knocking on their doors?'

'Psychiatrist and psychologists,' answers Sherlock.

But it doesn't make sense. If his problem with his left hand was a physical manifestation of PTSD then why it's back now. He tells his brother the same thing.

'Because you aren't done,' says Sherrinford simply. 'Me and Rosie aren't the only ghosts of your past, Sherlock. There's another one and he wants to be freed too. Ain't that curious though?' he asks.

'What?' Sherlock asks.

'Why your left hand?' asks Sherrinford.

'Because I'm a violinist and for one the dominant hand isn't as important as the not dominant one. The other sets the tune. You can't play violin one handed, not well at the very least,' he replies.

'Bollocks,' Sherrinford snorts.

'You didn't play,' Sherlock retorts.

'Are you sure?' asks Sherrinford pointedly. 'The thing is, brother mine, you know a square root of jackshit about who I was when I was alive. What you have is photographs of me and Daddy's memories. That's it,' he shrugs. 'The only reason why you are capable of summoning me at all is because you have seen the photographs. Even now your mind is trying to fill the blanks by giving me your voice while trying to divorce your speech pattern from mine. It's not even doing a very good job.'

'So you're me?' whispers Sherlock.

'Or I'm you," Sherrinford shrugs. 'How would you know, Sherlock?' he pauses. 'The only physical proof of your own existence as a separate human being are the evaluations of your mental capabilities from before the fire. How is that, that a child that only ticks of several boxes on Asperger's tests prior to the traumatic event after it occurred ticks all the boxes?'

'You had Asperger Syndrome?' asks Sherlock.

'Well, Mummy has a mild form of AS and even though Mycroft wasn't officially diagnosed, he does possess some characteristics. I'm not saying that he has AS but even to you he always felt like he was tethering on the brink of the scope,' answers Sherrinford.

'No,' Sherlock denies. 'I know who I am.'

'Do you?' asks Sherrinford. 'Ask Daddy about the violin. Ask him about insomnia. Ask him about cigarettes. You already know about chemistry and geology…'

'I hate astronomy,' Sherlock interjects.

'But you do appreciate the beauty of the stars,' says Sherrinford simply.

'I don't have to know astronomy to do that,' he objects firmly.

'No, but someone taught you that, didn't they?' asks Sherrinford.

'I know who I am,' repeats Sherlock.

'The only thing you know beyond a shadow of a doubt was that due to my untimely demise my paths had never crossed with John Watson,' says Sherrinford with a shrug. 'You know the man who is hopelessly and irrevocably in love with John Watson. The man you just left with your father, you know. The man who knows that you're in love with your best friend.'

'Bugger,' mumbles Sherlock, more to himself than to the lingering image of his deceased brother.

He dismisses image of Sherrinford and starts standing up just as Josie starts stirring in her sleep.

He could take her out of the crib and bring her downstairs, get John into changing her while he would have a stern talk with Daddy about the subject of his eternal devotion to John.

But in spite of stirring in her sleep Josie is still asleep and he doesn't want to wake her. If he brought her downstairs he most certainly would have to wake her. So he sighs and gently picks her up from the crib. Changing the nappy doesn't take a lot of time and blessedly Josie sleeps through it without waking up and once done he returns her into the crib she continues sleeping. Just as he adjusts the covers around the girls he hears the vibrations of his phone.

Hoping that it's Mycroft, finally, he picks it up from the nightstand quickly but as he looks at the display he realises that it's Mrs Hudson.

He frowns at the screen. She doesn't call, him at the very least. With others she can spend hours on the phone but him she texts since she learned how to use texting because he almost never answers when called but he always reads the texts (as long as they don't start with 'Hi'). She knows that and she's calling him now. Something had to happen.

He picks up the call and says, "Hudders. What's wrong?"

In the distance he can hear the sound of water pouring into a cup. Coffee express, he realises.

"Sherlock?" she asks. "Oh, thank God," she sighs. "I've been calling John for a while but he isn't picking up," she explains.

Sherlock looks at John's phone and tries to wake it. The screen however remains dark.

"Battery died," he replies. "What happened?"

"I was hoodwinked," she huffs. "I still can't believe their nerve, Sherlock. When I will find them I will throttle them."

"Start from the beginning," he tells her.

She sighs and takes a deep breath before she does, "Shortly after three I got a call from my niece that Margaret, my sister had a heart-attack. She claimed that it was a bad one and while that girl was always prone to colourising and blowing things out of proportion I wasn't planning to risk this being the first instance when she didn't."

"So you called John and left Baker Street," he finishes. "And your sister?"

"I drove down to Southampton and immediately headed over to the hospital to which she was taken. Imagine my surprise when – after I started asking about her and where she was – I was informed that the only Margaret Martin they have in the system was a sixteen years old girl with a broken leg and not a seventy-five years old woman with a heart-attack," she says and huffs angrily. "I asked them to double check but the result was the same. I tried calling Monica but she wasn't answering so I started calling the hospitals in the area but the only thing I eventually learned was that the only other Margaret Martin that was admitted to another hospital within last forty-eight hours was a toddler with a very nasty ear infection. I kept calling Monica and her husband in between but all the calls keep going straight to voicemail."

"So you went to your sister's place to check upon her," he says.

"Obviously," she practically snorts. "Found the house locked, their car in the garage. I waited a while to see if they would return. I would probably sit there through the rest of the afternoon until morning if I didn't run into one of their neighbours who takes care of their house when they leave occasionally. She told me that yesterday the whole family left for a cruise to Spain. Apparently Monica won some contest or something but the tickets were only viable for the ship that was leaving Southampton yesterday afternoon. It wasn't a huge problem for them, Monica and her husband work from home and could afford taking vacation at such a short notice…"

"Could have been a rouse," he suggests.

"That's the weirdest part," she sighs. "The contest wasn't a rouse. After I found a payphone and called her from it, it turned out that they were really on a ship that was sailing to Malaga, the whole family. Monica, Neil, Margaret and the kids. I placated her with some lie about having trouble with my phone."

"Are you sure that you were calling the same number?" he asks pointedly.

"Sherlock, I have a bad hip, not a bad eyesight. Where do you think I found the number I used to call Monica from the payphone?" she sighs in exasperation. "I just don't understand who could possibly use such an elaborate rouse to get me out of the house. Especially with you and John at Baker Street…"

"We aren't at Baker Street," he tells her. "We're in Sussex and we're intending to stay the whole weekend there," he clarifies.

Provided that I won't run away from here before the weekend ends, he thinks to himself.

"Are you heading back to London?" he asks.

"Yes, I'm at a service station just outside of Camberley. I had to stop for coffee," she answers.

Her admission makes him feel uneasy. He knows that she's more than capable of taking care of herself, he had seen her in action before. She might be a bit rusty but her admission that he wasn't her first smackhead is true. When he first met her she had excellent reflexes and could outrun him easily (not that at the time it was a very hard thing to do). She's also an excellent actress that could con CIA's supposedly highly trained agents into believing that she was nothing more than a scared and snivelling old lady. Had that idiot been alone at the time, odds were pretty high that rather than holding her at the gunpoint he would have found himself being hold at a gunpoint until Sherlock's return.

She's capable but also returning to an empty house at Baker Street after someone went through great lengths to draw her away from it.

Mycroft? Doesn't exactly make sense. Then who and to what end?

No, she definitely shouldn't be there alone, he decides. As much as they squabble and snipe at each other on occasion she's the first person in his adult life that accepted him unconditionally and looked after him when he didn't want to return home with his metaphorical tail between his legs. She's the Mummy he always wanted Mummy to be because as much as he loves Mummy he sees her faults, one of which was not being able to accept that he was an adult and capable of making his own decisions. Hudders isn't like that, she had done enough of bad decisions herself to know that things don't always work out and that people aren't ideal. He always loved her for that.

"What would you say to a change in the direction?" he asks. "It might extend your drive considerably but…" he hangs his voice.

He doesn't say it because he doesn't have to say it.

"Where to?" she asks because she gets it.

"Just outside southern border of Crowborough, Sussex there's this little thing called Stone Cross. Driving west from the main crossing there you will turn into Redbridge Lane. Once you leave the crossing you will drive by few houses on that road and a copse of trees on both sides of the road. Once the copse ends you will see fields on both sides of the road. It's the only house on the left side of the road but the gate is behind a sharp left turn in the road and you might miss it," he explains. "Call me when you will get to Stone Cross and I will direct you from there."

"Does it have any distinct characteristics?" she asks.

"It's bloody red. Painted, not brick. My mother remodelled it so it has no distinct style. It looks like a former cottage that kept expanding in every direction until it stopped looking like a cottage and started to look like pfft," he replies. "It was supposed to be L-shaped but somehow the architect had failed to achieve that. Either way it can't be missed."

"Then I won't miss it," she says. "What about the owners? Normal people aren't keen on receiving visitors that late."

"Well, the owners aren't normal people," he shrugs. "They're my parents," he admits, "for that reason alone they will accept every guest I will let in."

"You brought John to your parents?" she asks and her tone tethers dangerously close to excitement.

"And Rosie too," he says because he doesn't want to get into explaining how Rosie turned into Katie and then Josie to her over the phone.

"Oh, Sherlock," she sighs heavily.

"We both needed a change of scenery," he says simply. "Rosie might benefit from fresh country air even though it mostly smells vile."

"Of course it does," she agrees. "You hardly ever leave London so the fresh air is a vile thing for you. I will see you soon."

"Please, try to not get arrested for speeding," he sighs.

"Bye, I have a coffee to finish and satnav to set," she replies. "I hate this thing," she adds before she disconnects.

He puts the phone on the bed and sighs heavily as he fixates on the wall above the crib.

Who would have wanted to draw her away from Baker Street with such an elaborate rouse? Could it be the not dead members of Mic Na Héireann? Whatever Daisy prepared for them she couldn't have gotten all of them. Gangs don't operate like that, they have leaders, lieutenants and roachers. But if it's them how they managed to find him and Baker Street so quickly?

There's also the matter of Hudders' phone and why it couldn't reach her niece's phone. She could make other calls from it but not this one.

Spyware? If so, then whose?

Frank Hudson had been dead for ages and all of his lieutenants were serving at the very minimum twenty-five to life in prison. Well, aside of those that were sentenced to death and executed within three years of him. But what about the regular members? Several of them got into a stand-off with Miami PD and aside of one that had been shot in the spine they were all dead. Some others attached themselves to other cartels in the area, a few traded their secrets for their freedom and position of informants for Miami PD. But eventually nearly all of the members of Hudson's cartel were either dead or incarcerated. He checked it with Miami PD personally day after that CIA idiot with his cronies broke into Baker Street.

So, Mic Na Héireann or remains of Moriarty's network? He removed big players from the board, people that worked with Moriarty but he didn't always have a chance to take care of simple soldiers. No, he left that to local police force or Interpol.

Mic Na Héireann or Moriarty's network.

Mic Na Héireann would have a lot of against Daisy but how they managed to figure out that she was his daughter so fast. Mary? Strike that, Moran. She was playing a long game against John and she killed the only DI who knew about Daisy's identity. She intended to kill Daisy after she helped her dispatch the top members of Mic Na Héireann, that much was evident from the shot the incapacitated Daisy but she made a mistake by not making the first shot the headshot.

Like when she shot him.

She was very good at what she did. She effectively deceived him and John both, even convinced them that she died when she hadn't. And Mycroft was up to his ears in that mess.

Mycroft had an unlimited access to the top British spyware that could remotely control smartphones. He knew that from the autopsy, he saw it in action. But why Mycroft needed to remove Mrs Hudson from Baker Street? Mycroft would have figured within seconds that if Mrs Hudson left the premises of Baker Street while Sherlock was still recovering from his recent drug binge and the hellish detox that followed it, then she wouldn't do it without contacting someone who would take over watching him.

Maybe he needed them both in the same place. But why? He wasn't answering their calls and no one followed them in London, let alone outside of it.

But if it wasn't Mycroft…

Then it surges to the forefront of his mind. Pressure points. Moriarty knew them, as did Magnussen. Moriarty knew that by painting the targets on John, Hudders and Greg he could manipulate Sherlock into following him to his grave. Except Sherlock and Mycroft were prepared for that eventuality back then. They forgot it with Magnussen though. Or had they? He and Mycroft had a plan on how Magnussen should be handled but they underestimated the man.

Because Sherlock was Mycroft's pressure point, Sherlock's was John and John's was Mary. By owning Mary Magnussen nearly brought them all to their knees and that's why he had to die.

But Sherlock wasn't Mycroft's only pressure point. Because as much as Mycroft grumbled about ordinariness of their parents he did his best to remove them from Magnussen's reach until their presence in England became a part of the plan that was supposed to bring him down. Then there was Daisy. Mycroft knew about Daisy and Josie and had to go through great lengths to keep them out of Magnussen's reach too.

He couldn't do that alone, could he? Someone else other than Mycroft had to know about Daisy, someone had to help him keep her from Magnussen's radar. Mar… Moran knew too but she found her own way to learn about Daisy.

John was convinced that Daisy's death was part of Moran's vendetta against him but unlike Magnussen who liked to own people Moran wanted to break John. She used her fake death to drive a wedge between him and John and she almost bloody succeeded. Having done that she moved on Daisy and she found her pressure point in Mic Na Héireann, MacNamara's continued existence and Josie's safety. And by agreeing to help her remove the threat to Josie's safety she gained Daisy's trust.

A reverse of Magnussen with her own twist. Had it worked as she intended it to. Sacrificing her life for Sherlock was supposed to drive wedge between Sherlock and John. Killing Daisy and finding a way to put her existence on Sherlock's radar was supposed to drive a wedge between Sherlock and Mycroft. Effectively separating the three of them.

But what she had against Mycroft? Mycroft was a very complicated pressure point for Sherlock. Their relationship as adults was always strained by Mycroft's need to control Sherlock and his decisions which Sherlock vehemently resented. But they did work together when a threat against the other showed up. At the same time they could go for weeks, at times even months, without speaking to each other.

Josie, Daisy, Mycroft, Sherlock, John, Mary and Katie. Take a Holmes from the Holmeses and a Watson from the Watsons. Mary's and Daisy's deaths were supposed to divide them and make them easier targets. Could Moran alone be so elaborate in her revenge? She was very meticulous and had to be insanely patient to execute her revenge on John. But what Daisy's death was supposed to mean for John on the grand scale of things?

To remind him about the man he killed? She tried that with Sherlock and it didn't work as she intended it to. John completely missed the clue because he had no reason to connect the dots. He was too pissed off with Mary and too worried about Sherlock's health to dig into similarities between Sherlock's wound and Sebastian Moran's death.

The same bullet that was pulled from DI Hughes body matched the one that was pulled from Sherlock. They didn't get their hands on a ballistic report on the bullet that killed Daisy but he could bet that it too would match. If once is an incident, twice is a coincidence (which at the time went over John's head) then what the third time means?

In serial murders it forms a pattern. In revenge sche…

What if Daisy didn't have a chance to kill Moran? What if Moran walked away? What if the ballistic report found its way to Sherlock and he realised that the bullet that killed his daughter came from the same gun that nearly killed him while he and John were estranged. Would he be able to convince John that Mary killed Daisy? Would John believe him?

Regardless of the answers to what ifs and could have beens there's one thing that's certain, someone is playing a game with them, turning them into pawns and he cannot see the whole board.

Not without Mycroft. Not without John. Not without Mycroft and John together.

'Welcome to the final problem,' Moriarty's voice whispers into his ear.

'You're fucking dead and have been for years,' he chides him and tries to dismiss him but Moriarty is right there, leaning against the crib.

'Am I?' Moriarty asks.

'Definitely,' he fumes.

'You know what's your problem with Moriarty, brother mine?' Sherrinford asks as he walks towards Moriarty. 'You still see him as a singular, sick but highly intelligent man.'

'If you're planning to suggest that Moriarty is a woman that happens to be our baby sister that somehow survived the fire you can bugger off this very second,' he snorts.

'I didn't say that,' Sherrinford shrugs and looks Moriarty dead in the eyes. 'Bugger off, Dick.'

'My name is Jim Moriarty,' Moriarty spits.

'It bloody isn't,' says Sherrinford simply. 'Your name is Richard Brook, you're a bloody actor albeit a very talented one,' he snorts. 'But that's all you are, Dick. An actor, a pawn in a game, your own game because you know it. James Moriarty is not a person, it's a concept. Always had been, from the very beginning and it had started long before you soiled your first nappy, Dick. Maintaining peace in the country, even in the universe, is always about balance. Between good and evil, order and disorder. Someone has to be bad so someone else has to be good. The only way to maintain the balance is keeping a tight control over everything.'

'You're starting to sound like a fortune cookie,' Moriarty snorts.

'At the very least I'm real,' says Sherrinford simply. 'In a sense that as a human being I existed. I never lost my identity, you had. But that was the price you paid for an unlimited access to everything you wanted and you always wanted to prove that you're worth more.'

'Oh, do bugger off,' Moriarty groans.

'You heard it before, Sherlock,' says Sherrinford as he turns to him. 'You heard it from me, the story of Professor James Moriarty, the brilliant mathematician that became the crime mogul towards the last decades of Victorian era. The devil that British government at the time maintained to control what, when, where and how foreign spies could get their hands on. You also heard the story of another man, the one who dared to oppose his existence and he paid for it with his life and his own identity. Do you remember now?'

He shakes his head.

'Whose names you carry, Sherlock?" asks Sherrinford calmly.

'Grandma Sherlock's and her first and last husbands,' he answers.

'A coincidence,' Sherrinford snorts. 'Try again.'

'The universe is rarely so lazy,' he counters.

'Yes, but you do remember Grandma Sherlock, brother mine,' Sherrinford shrugs. 'Also you're sounding like Mycroft. Try harder. Who named you, Sherlock?'

'Grandma Sherlock,' he answers.

'After?' Sherrinford presses.

'I already told you,' Sherlock snarls.

'As did I,' Sherrinford shrugs. 'William Sherlock Scott...'

And suddenly it comes. The smell of salt in the air. The whoosh that waves make when they hit the sand. Two hands holding his, bigger hands, his brother's and his grandmother's hands.

Then he sees the tombstone. It's about one meter high, maybe higher, he's a child here so his measurements might be off. But the top of the tombstone doesn't tower over him, that's certain. Then the engraving on the tombstone materialises in front of his eyes:

HERE LIE THE EARTHLY REMAINS OF ONE

WILLIAM S. S. WATSON

Born 6th January 1854

Died 6th February 1919

THE BEST AND BRAVEST MAN

WHO LOST HIS LIFE AND NAME

FOR THE TRUTH THAT TRIED

TO KILL HIM TWICE BEFORE HE

CAUGHT A BLOODY FLU THAT

KILLED HIM FOR GOOD. MAY

THE TRUTH FINALLY SET YOU

FREE OUR BELOVED FRIEND.

TO SHERLOCK HOLMES

JHW, JCW & SVW

"Who was he?" he remembers asking as he turns to Grandma Sherlock.

"My father's dearest and most beloved friend," she answers softly. "Back in the day it was called a brother in everything but blood. That's why when he lost his own he took my father's name," she sighs. "Poor bugger. All his life he fought for the truth and that was how they repaid him, by denying him his own identity and the proof of his existence," she adds lividly. "They reduced him to nothing but a figment of one's idiot imagination, bastards."

"She means her father's rightful spouse, Billy, in spite of two legally wedded wives," says Sherrinford.

"Oh, hush you," she chides him. "The walls have ears."

"Then we're in luck that the nearest walls would make an awful lot of noise if someone tried to listen to us," replies Sherrinford. "Also since 1967 what happens between two men above the age of twenty-one behind the walls in private is no longer punished by law."

"Oh, Sherry, if it was only that simple," she sighs. "Most probably I won't live long enough to see the day when their vows that were exchanged in private could be spoken in public, infront of God and the witnesses. But I hope that you will and hopefully before you would live to my age," she adds fondly.

"So what was his name?" he asks her because at the time it was the only thing that bothered him.

"William Sherlock Scott Holmes," she answers.

Suddenly he hears the door opening and the memory starts to dissolve in front of his eyes. The sound of waves diminishes and changes to two distinctive breathing patterns coming from the crib in front of him. There's also a different one and the sound of closing the door.

So he turns in the direction of the door and spots John. He looks awful, pale and wide-eyed, as if someone dropped on him something horrible.

He probably did, he realises and he wants to slap himself as he stands up. He should have come back downstairs as fast as possible after he stopped talking with Hudders.

"John, what did he tell you? You look like hell," he says even if these words break his heart.

"Because I'm in hell," John says softly. "One I made for myself because in all the instances that mattered I chose a coward's way out. I never should have," he pauses and as sees that Sherlock is about to interrupt him he adds. "Please let me finish, Sherlock and then you can talk."

Sherlock nods slowly albeit he isn't sure to what he's agreeing. Because if it is what he thinks it is then he doesn't want to hear it. He just can't. He's too tired, weighed down by the avalanche of issues, problems and mysteries that surround him. It's the worst possible time to hear that while John is touched by his sentiment he doesn't return it.

Suddenly he can't stand maintain eye contact with John so he looks down at the bed, contemplating whatever or not he should sit down for it. He bloody deserves is. Except he isn't a Victorian maiden and he won't faint at the news that John will never love him more than as a friend.

So, he chooses to stand, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders, head held up high. Staring at John's mouth like a man that's about to be executed stares into the barrel of a gun knowing that the words that will leave it will pierce his heart.

John too straightens his spine, squares his shoulders before he takes a deep breath.

Here it comes, Sherlock Holmes, here it comes.