John
They eventually head down to the kitchen after a long and stimulating shower that turned Sherlock into a boneless mush. Regrettably John's own prick was not up for reciprocation but sucking Sherlock off made him feeling particularly smug. As did the idea of settling the girls in a room of their own for the night. Then they would definitely get a chance to make up and even the score.
John can't stop grinning at Sherlock, who grins back as their arms brush before their fingers link together. It's how they walk into the kitchen where Mr Holmes is juggling feeding Katie and Josie with one spoon from one bowl. He's fairly successful at it too, turning it into a game and allowing the girls to munch on banana pieces in between.
It's such an endearing picture that it takes a chocked out sob for John to register that they aren't the only ones in the room. By the stove that's covered with pans and sizzling meats and mushrooms is Mrs Hudson. She looks at him and Sherlock like someone who just won a lottery looks like at their winning coupon.
How she got there and why she got there John has no idea but it isn't really important and he simply beams at her. She's been rotting for it ever since John climbed up the stairs of 221b for the first time.
She hugs and kisses them both before she briefly separates them to wrap them in individual hugs. And while she's hugging Sherlock John looks at Mr Holmes. The older man smiles at him simply before he returns to feeding the girls. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe it just is, John realises as he looks at Sherlock. He doesn't know what his face does but whatever it does makes Mrs Hudson hug him again before she returns to the stove while gesturing at him and Sherlock to take their seats.
They do. Side by side, John on Sherlock's left, their hands finding each other under the table. John kind of wants to give the girls a kiss to greet them but he knows better than to disturb feeding of the little beats. There will be a time for that, and many other things, after breakfast.
The breakfast is full English because Mrs Hudson always goes out of her way to cook something effective when she's happy. When she finally sits down to eat she starts talking about what to make for lunch.
John looks sideways at Sherlock who doesn't even blink at that. Perhaps it didn't register with him, perhaps it did and it got accepted as the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is. A breakfast with the family. Not the whole family, John quickly reminds himself because two people who should be here are missing. One of them temporarily, the other permanently. John doesn't particularly care for Mycroft at the best of times and this isn't one of them, for Mycroft at very least. But John isn't going to breath a word about it until Sherlock would decide to address it. Not when he's trying to feed Josie with some of the eggs from his plater and beaming at his little girl before he repeats the process with Katie, who blessedly doesn't spit it out or throws it at Sherlock, or anyone else.
The breakfast gets eaten and the plates get cleaned after it, by Sherlock and John, per Sherlock's insistence curiously enough. Supposedly because he knows his mother's storing system and because Mrs Hudson cooked it.
It's only after Sherlock puts the last plate away when John realises that Mr Holmes is missing from the kitchen.
"Stepped outside to make a call," says Mrs Hudson without tearing her eyes from the girls.
They're cleaned up and settled in their chairs, which gives John an excuse to greet them with a soft kiss to the top of their heads. That in turn prompts both of them to extend their hands to him.
Eventually he winds up in the armchair with both of them on his knees as they exchange plushies every twenty seconds or so with Sherlock perched on the nearby chair, completely enthralled by the picture in front of him. John could get used to being looked at like that and the only thing that would be better than that would be trading places with Sherlock so he could look his fill.
That's when Mr Holmes walks in with a laptop under his arm and a phone by his ear. He places the former on the table and opens it as he says, "You're absolutely sure about that?"
Either his finger slips by accident as he tries to straighten it up by his ear or he does that deliberately but the call ends on speaker moments after he asked his question.
"I don't know how familiar you're with inner IDs of the office but all the numbers you gave me are coming back to the spyware attributed to agent 007/77/01/06, code name Lazarus, in an operation called East Wind," says a voice that sounds distinctly male. "All that I'm seeing is that it since had been redacted to the point that it's nothing but a file full of blanks."
"But you have something?" asks Mr Holmes firmly. "You wouldn't have called back if you didn't."
"It's what I don't have that bothers me," replies the man. "What I have is numbers that refer me to all the personnel present that day on the airport. 023/71/04/23 refers me to a military ID of a retired army captain. Aside of those two I managed to find the pilots, the guy loading the equipment. I also hazard a guess that 007/70/04/01 is Lazarus's handler. But that's it. I'm good but I'm not that good."
"Just give me the numbers," says Mr Holmes.
"008/70/04/01 and 033/63/09/13," he receives. "Those two don't link me to any personnel files. The latter is particularly perplexing because the number crops up as far back as 1991. And I'm unauthorised to access any… wait," there's a long pause. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
"Eddie!" Mr Holmes chides the man.
"033 is Lazarus," says the man, Eddie.
From the corner of his eye John can see Sherlock shaking his head and pointing at himself.
"The original Lazarus I mean," says Eddie after a moment. "Which is very perplexing," he adds. "But guess who was his handler?"
"Voldemort," Mr Holmes says grimly.
"That's how you call him now?" asks Eddie curiously. "Well, if the shoe fits."
"It does," Mr Holmes interrupts curtly.
"Well, Voldemort handled Lazarus through multiple operations. The earliest is Solomon which started in 1991 and still remains to be concluded. Can't see objectives though but I see a link to one of the targets that I know had been a mobster from the territory of what today we're calling Serbia. In 1993 started one called Euros that concluded in 2002 with Lazarus's arrests and imprisonment. Then there's something called Moron that started in late 2006 and concluded in 2010, also late in the year. That's the last I see of elusive Lazarus before that name gets resurrected by Harry Potter."
"Who?" whispers Sherlock.
"Shite," there's a sudden yelp from the other end. "We have backup generators, this shit is supposed to be working."
"Eddie!" says Mr Holmes.
"Right," Eddie shakes himself off. "I might be in trouble. But I've got you a name. Rosamunde Marie Vernet. Lazarus had to be in that up to the ears. I have to go."
"Try to not get arrested for treason," whispers Mr Holmes.
Sherlock reaches for the laptop at the same time as Mrs Hudson reaches for the girls.
"We will be in the living room," she says. "Leave you a bit of peace."
She goes, Mr Holmes goes after her, but only to close the door to the living room and he reaches Sherlock just as John stands by his side. Sherlock is already typing the name into search engine.
Curiously enough there's only one result, going by the graphics it's an in memoriam page. It loads all black and demands a registration of all things to get the password. Which Sherlock does, fingers flying over the keyboard and typing in his email. It pings on both their phones simultaneously as it had a habit of doing in the past. Registration had to generate a password which Sherlock is already typing into password window.
Nothing happens which makes him frown at the screen for a second or two before he generates another. It sends the same password. Sherlock types that one too, trice in every possible combination with Mr Holmes hovering over his shoulder.
It doesn't work and as Sherlock generates the password for the third time John checks on Sherlock's email on his own phone.
The email is inconspicuous in every version. It thanks the registering person for registering on the in memoriam site for Rosamunde Marie Vernet and asks to type the password into log in window.
The password is the same every time, a nonsensical string of letters that reads: mbfyp.33
The email pings again and again as Sherlock generates it a couple more times before giving into a frustrated growl before he turns the keyboard to Mr Holmes and tells him to do it himself. Which the older man does, a couple of times before he turns the laptop back to Sherlock. Who gives into resending registration email causing both their phones to go off with the distinctive ping. Once, twice, trice.
When it does for the fifth time, still giving the same password John gives up. Sherlock will figure it out, eventually. Or already have because he hears him typing as John looks around the kitchen for a distraction. Another frustrated growl reaches his ears just as his eyes fix on the book on the cabinet by the armchair.
My Baby First Year glistens on the cover.
mbfyp.33
Surely it wouldn't be that simple, he thinks as he reaches for it. He opens it and goes to page 33. It contains only one photograph. It's of a little Mycroft scowling at the camera. He's all dressed up in a school uniform, definitely unhappy, highly likely it's a first day at school kind of photograph.
It also doesn't contain a single word that could be considered a password. Unless Mycroft is a password. But living with Sherlock had taught him that things are hardly ever that simple.
So he places the album gently on the table and removes the photograph from its holding place before he turns it over. On the back of the photograph scribbled in barely visible pencil is:
IreneNorton
John says it at loud and Sherlock, bless him, is already typing it into the password part of the log in. It works, interestingly enough.
John returns to the table and stands by Sherlock's left arm just as Sherlock scrolls down to the bottom of the short written tribute to Rosamunde Marie Vernet. The words are the nonsensical drivel that one writes on similar pages. A friend gone to soon. Meeting a tragic end in suspicious circumstances.
The only suspicious thing to John about it is the distinctive lack of details. As far as he can see there's no mentions of an age of the woman or something concrete about her passing. Not a date, not a cause of death.
However there's a link that goes to what appears to be album page. Sherlock opens the first one and is already clicking on the link leading to the next one when something catches John's eye.
He tells Sherlock to go back and thankfully Sherlock does. John stares at it, trying to remember what caught his attention.
Rosamunde Marie Vernet is, most likely was, a woman of not a conventional beauty. Her hair is blonde, bottle blonde he quickly realises noting her eyebrows which are impeccable but dark in colour. She's also bloody pink. She's wearing pink tinted glasses that cover and distort the colour of her eyes. She's wearing pink on her blouse. Her lipstick is also bloody pink.
John blinks, then looks at Sherlock before he looks back at the screen. He looks past the distractions, like Sherlock tried to teach him for years, ignores the pink and concentrates on what he can see.
What he can see is a strong semblance to the man he loves in the shape of that woman's eyes. Her nose is similar too, maybe a little shorter but of the eerily similar shape. But it's her lips that make him gasp softly. They're exactly the same. Same length in relation to her face, with the same cupid's bow upper lip.
"It's impossible," whispers Mr Holmes as he leans heavily on the back of the chair before him.
It takes Sherlock a moment to find his voice and say softly, "I have found that when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
He's of course right. He nearly always is. On the surface it's impossible that this woman, grown woman, in her thirties, probably late thirties going by the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes is a man that allegedly didn't survive a house fire in his early twenties.
Except the image on the screen doesn't change, neither do similarities.
Sherrinford Holmes is looking at them from the screen.