Sherlock
He can't bring himself to look at Daddy. It was too good to be true, a living grandson as a counterweight to a dead granddaughter. He should have expected that, after all, the boy, man really was an army man and that isn't exactly the safest occupation on the planet.
And this site and videos that hide behind photographs are not meant to be happy. No, they're a damning evidence of Mycroft's, and to certain degree also Sherrinford's faults. They are meant to expose secrets and betrayals, they aren't meant to be commemoration of happy memories.
There are only two photographs of Rosamunde Marie Vernet left on the site. Not a lot and too much at the same time. Mary, Siobhan Moran, the woman that killed his daughter, that manipulated John into a marriage that was held together not by the bonds of love but that of duty to an innocent child that had been, most likely by complete accident, brought into this world. She was right under his nose the entire time and he didn't see it, chose not to see it because she used to make John happy.
He looks at John and he doesn't look happy. He looks furious but it's a contained fury because John is a man of duty. He will blow up eventually but he sees what Sherlock does and it's more evidence. More reasons to get pissed off.
The second to last photograph also hides a video. It shows a room that's big enough for the camera to not cover the view from wall to wall. In the foreground there's a couch, a sectional one that curves towards left side of the screen. The coffee table in front of it is made of warm cherry wood and looks more square than rectangular. There's a wine bottle on it and two wine glasses in which there's enough residue left for Sherlock to see that the wine was red.
Sherrinford is pacing behind the section of the couch that's directly in front of the camera but he isn't alone. There's another woman, also dark-haired and like him dressed completely in black. She's seated about in the middle of the other section, turned towards Sherrinford, with her right leg crossed over left knee.
"Idiots," Sherrinford huffs at some point, still pacing.
"People in general or just your brothers?" asks the other woman.
Her voice registers with Sherlock and he doesn't really need to see her face to recognise her. It's Janine, Janine supposedly Hawkins, Moriarty's sister he never suspected to exist. It took him being told that the man had a sister to concede to the existence of a family resemblance.
He hadn't seen her in a year and half or so and hadn't really heard a thing from her since the arrival of a XIX century textbook on poisons, in French, that was accompanied by a small jar of lavender honey. They arrived sometime between his thirty-eight birthday and Watson's dramatic arrival along with a small thank you card.
Janine in the video as far as he can tell had changed minimally, her hair is mite shorter, still wavy but barely touching her shoulders rather than reaching shoulder-blades.
"Both," Sherrinford replies gruffly. "I don't care about people though."
"You know that quote that numerous people attribute to Goebbels? The one that says if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it for long enough people will eventual start to believe it?" asks Janine. "It's not working."
"Not on you," Sherrinford concedes sourly.
"Never really had," says Janine simply.
"Not even when beloved older brother…" starts Sherrinford.
"That you're capable of saying that shows both how unhinged you are and how good I'm at manipulating the narrative," Janine interrupts him sourly. "Jimmy always had been a psychopath," she adds, "and not a particularly smart one regardless of what he believed into. If he actually was a genius he would be able to devise and carry out a plan to murder his bully without a collateral damage."
"Sorry," mutters Sherrinford as he resumes pacing.
"You have nothing to be sorry for," says Janine, her tone turning much lighter. "You weren't the one who invented Moriarty or had aspiration to become one. That's on a lot of long dead people, including my deranged grandfather who believed that just because Moriarty was our family name meant that the title should be ours."
"Well, one of my ancestors is responsible for that," replies Sherrinford gruffly.
"And the murder castle," Janine quips.
"That wasn't one of my ancestors," Sherrinford points out. "Just because quite a lot of dogs are called Skip doesn't mean that every Skip is responsible for what another did."
"And in that vein I would like to remind you that you aren't your brother. Neither you're responsible for looking out for him even after he went out of his way to almost get your younger brother murdered, twice, and actually succeeded at getting your only son murdered," Janine replies calmly.
"The difference between your brother and mine," says Sherrinford sourly. "Is that my brother, both of them actually, are geniuses. So am I and it had been certified. And being a genius has quite a lot of perks," he stops pacing as he turns towards Janine before he adds, "it also has drawbacks. One of them is the unyielding need to constantly reassess one's abilities. That's the frailty of genius, it needs an audience. But the other and more dangerous drawback is what happens when you're aware of the extent of your abilities and your limits. That's when you stop looking for an audience, stop needing criticism and that's exactly where you can become the victim of your own hubris."
"And in some cases you land in French jail for that," concluded Janine. "Or you stumble into the path of a psychopath that has enough of being under your older brother's thumb and fuck yourself in the process."
"Case in point," replies Sherrinford with a snort. "Which is the only reason why you aren't helping me to hide Mycroft's body."
"Yet," coughs Janine. "Now tell Aunt Nina what's bugging you."
"That's not your actual name," Sherrinford points out. "It's Niamh."
"My father was an Ulster man, proud Protestant was he. My mother was a Catholic girl, from County Cork was she," Janine starts in a mocking tone.
"Both of your parents were Catholics from Dublin that moved to Belfast and worked for IRA," Sherrinford cuts her off. "And if I'll start humming that bloody song, please shot me, the gun is in the kitchen island."
"Did it work though?" asks Janine cheekily.
"Well enough to recall what happened the last time your brother heard that one," replies Sherrinford grimly. "And if that was an attempt to make me take a leaf out of his book then it didn't work."
"It was worth a try," says Janine simply as she leans back. "And since we're on the subject of brothers. There's one thing that bugs me about yours."
"Just one?" Sherrinford asks ironically.
"It's less them and more you kind of peculiarity," adds Janine. "How is that after twenty odd years of being a woman, of identifying yourself as one you still classify yourself as a brother rather than a sister?"
That stops Sherrinford from pacing to stare at Janine with surprised look on his, well technically hers face.
"I'm nearly fifty-two years old," he, she says finally. "And in spite of spending more than half of that time identifying as a woman and undergoing physical transition into one doesn't mean that I'm keen to erase the years that came before that. My life didn't start with transition, it started at birth. I was born a man and for forty-five years I was someone's older brother. I can even stretch out that period to forty-eight years by accounting the first miscarriage. I've had four brothers and one sister…"
That statement is surprising but not enough for Sherlock to stop the video and ask Daddy for clarification. And chances are that Sherrinford might do that for him.
"Mycroft, Sherlock and the little one make three," Janine interrupts him, her. "What about other two?"
"Stillbirths," Sherrinford replies sourly. "Victims of the seventies trend to erase children like them from the family history by not giving them names or graves if they didn't qualify for one. They technically didn't but our therapist believed that we would be able to process that grief more thoroughly if we gave them an identity. Both occurred between Mycroft and Sherlock. The first when Mycroft was about three and a half and invested in the idea of being an older brother," he, she pauses briefly. "It was rough on him, very rough. I got by with minimal counselling but Mycroft didn't get out of therapy for years. Granted he would have gotten out faster if Aunt Big Mouth didn't bring out the miscarriage that occurred between Oswald and Benedict," he, she pauses again. "Circumstances of that one in turn fucked me up. I was twelve, it was Christmas, Daddy was stranded overseas and we were snowed in and in the middle of a bloody snowstorm. It was a premature home birth of a dead baby that I had to help delivering him while actively trying to prevent my already traumatised younger brother from entering the room and seeing the dead baby. Then Sherlock happened, literary out of the blue, a surprise pregnancy that occurred too early after the stillbirth to not be considered as risky and he suppressed everybody's expectations by arriving roughly on time, completely health and not the girl everybody expected him to be."
That's quite informative and he glances at Daddy, who watches Sherrinford intently with a grim expression. One of many things to be addressed later on then.
"Well, that explains nearly pathological obsession with micromanaging his life," says Janine pensively.
"I don't micromanage his life," Sherrinford protests. "That's on Mycroft," he, she adds with a snort. "What I do is what I always have been doing. Putting his physical and psychological wellbeing before my own. And yes, at times I make a pretty appalling bloody job of it but I'm still doing better than Mycroft."
"You're dead and Mycroft in so far is not and in the vein of that," says Janine briskly. "Do you need me for something? Like say seducing your very gay younger brother for information on one Siobhan Moran."
"Tempting but no," Sherrinford replies with a grimace. "As far as I can tell Sherlock doesn't suspect that you're more than a formerly well situated friend of one supposed Mary Morstan and believes that she duped you just like she duped him and his doctor. It's imperative to their continued safety that they will continue to believe in that narrative for as long as it can be afforded which considering her last stunt shouldn't be for too long."
"Was he at very least smart enough to make a copy of the files?" asks Janine pointedly. "You know something that can be stolen."
He was and that copy hadn't been stolen. It's still in the flat somewhere.
"He was," Sherrinford says simply. "But you and I won't be breaking into anything to get that," he, she adds with a shark like smile at the end. "As things stand I knew that after the aborted exile Mycroft will focus every camera he can on Baker Street and he will have a conniption if he would be able to catch me within three blocks radius of Sherlock's or Doctor's lodgings."
"So you utilised Pepe," says Janine briskly. "Porn?" she quips.
"Mycroft watches Sherlock's porn," replies Sherrinford with a grimace. "Used to at the very least and for quite some time. Bitched about it quite a lot to because gay porn makes him very uncomfortable," he, she adds briskly before smirking. "And then he had to give himself up in a conversation with Sherlock because Sherlock went from his usual preferences of what constitutes as normal gay sex into hard core BDSM gay sex overnight for a couple of weeks."
Listening to that conversation would have been quite embarrassing if not for the developments of the other night. As things stand he allows himself a small smirk and continues to watch without interruptions.
"Not porn then," says Janine pensively. "If I had to take a stab in the dark," she adds pensively. "Something that has to do with the doctor. Not blog though, that hadn't been updated since the wedding. The doctor unlike that lying cunt isn't a very devoted Facebook poster but he has a lot of friends from his army days that tag him in their photos. Am I right?"
"Dead on," Sherrinford replies.
That in turn is embarrassing. Because how good Sherrinford's hacker must be to slip a spyware on one of his computers and while Sherlock isn't pathologically obsessed about running spyware detecting programs on each and single one of them before and after every use he still does that periodically.
That's got to be one hell of a virus and made by one hell of a hacker. Most likely the same hacker that put Moriarty's face on every screen in the country. Hacking into a couple of computers that worked on the same Wi-Fi? Easy as pie.
"And did you learn something interesting?" asks Janine.
"That Mycroft's council is cleaning house," replies Sherrinford sourly. "It seems that the usefulness of their mole had ran out around the same time as it was decided that Siobhan's little pet project grew too uncontrolled. Don't ask me why they waited six years to smoke them out though."
"Do you know who it is?" asks Janine. "I do know some of Siobhan's associates."
"Vivian Norbury," Sherrinford answers. "Secretary of Lady Elizabeth Smallwood. Considerably older than her, old enough to be nearing retirement age. Intelligent but not charismatic enough to build a career of her own in politics. But not intelligent enough to realise that that particular crowd is a bunch of distrustful twats that hardly trust themselves, let alone the others with their actions."
"And when she's set to retire?" asks Janine pensively.
"December," comes the answer. "Mycroft passed AJ's file through her desk and bitched around his inability to arrest Mary Watson on Sherlock's insistence loud enough for her to hear. That's how AJ got in the country and how he got out. Siobhan called him a greedy bastard and I always believed that he was a stupid, greedy bastard."
"That's a bold statement," Janine says with a hum.
"It's a perfectly sound assessment of his intelligence levels," Sherrinford replies briskly. "He's a hired gun, that alone implies that he's highly motivated by greed. He didn't led the group, Siobhan had. He resented that. He had ambitions to run a group of his own but foolishly decided to take over AGRA after disposing Siobhan instead of building a team of his own. That was his downfall, that's why he had to die and the other two had to die with him as well. Jimmy was growing more erratic under Mycroft's thumb and was circling way too close to Irene's business. Georgian ambassador was one of the council's plants and had been getting greedy too. If she hadn't been then Norbury would have been arrested for treason and AGRA would have been pulled out, replaced with normal agents instead of freelancers and they would have been left to take each other out."
"There's one thing I don't understand in this mess," says Janine slowly. "If Siobhan wasn't aware that AJ was alive then why he didn't kill her when he had a chance."
"Because he's an idiot," comes the answer. "If he actually was an intelligent individual he would be able to narrow down the list of individuals who had AGRA on speed dial within British government. Very few of those individuals live a solitary life and lack spots in their lives for parasitic barnacles. He failed to predict that Siobhan would attempt to anchor herself in the vicinity of such person. That's why he needed his memory stick."
"And by pursuing that he put himself on Sherlock's radar," concludes Janine.
"And instead of disposing the traitorous cow from the distance like he intended to do so he found himself on the wrong end of Siobhan's gun. He was smart enough to realise that considering how fast he fled the country after his altercation with Sherlock," Sherrinford adds briskly. "He most certainly still wants to kill her and knows that she wants to kill him too."
"Not to rain on your parade here," says Janine slowly. "You do know that your younger brother has the access to the same information you do and he appears to be deeply convinced that Mary Watson is someone worth risking his life for. Enough to chase her around the world to drag her home kicking and screaming."
"He will most certainly try to do that," Sherrinford agrees sourly. "But unless he has an extraordinary stroke of luck he won't be able to succeed. He's a former operative himself so he's familiar with roll of a dice movements. But the thing about dice method is that it only gives an illusion of randomness while it restricts your movements to only a couple variables. He has a list of Siobhan's AGRA aliases but it's not a complete list. He'll try his best to intercept her before the final stand but I, unlike him, know where that stand would be and I can roughly estimate when."
"Are you keen to share that information with anyone?" asks Janine pointedly.
"Anyone willing to help me permanently retire the bitch that got my son killed," offers Sherrinford darkly. "Like someone whom she trained in long distance shooting out of pure boredom. I won't beg but I'm not going to deny that I find that idea bearing a little bit of poetic justice."
"I would like to point out that your nephew got your son killed," says Janine slowly.
"And my bloody nephew wouldn't have been where my son was if someone didn't alert Irene that my idiot middle brother decided to change their never-ending game by going after Grigori," adds Sherrinford grimly. "Mycroft wasn't planning to reveal his hand even to me. Siobhan knew about Grigori and had enough audacity to make fun out of Irene into her face, well Facebook really."
"Does she know about Daisy?" asks Janine pensively.
"I'm hoping she doesn't," replies Sherrinford grimly. "I'm seeing more of her than Mycroft does and when he does he takes extreme preventive measures. I'm not really surprised that Josephine's arrival along with arrival of baby Watson had made him decide to change the game."
"But if she does?" asks Janine.
"That girl is Sherlock's daughter, Janine," says Sherrinford with a grimace. "She has his rebellious streak and more determination to not bend to anybody's will than he had when he was her age. And back then he was the most obstinate asshole you can imagine. Nothing short of kidnapping the two of them and locking them up in a heavily secured underground bunker would be able to keep her out. And even if that had a chance of working out I would give her at the maximum three weeks before she would find herself a way out."
"You're an escape artist," Janine points out. "You always had at the minimum five different exit strategies even when it was obvious that the first one would work perfectly."
"Which is exactly why I'm certain that she would be able to escape any holding place. If she's captured she would have to be monitored extensively. She would have to have access to all amenities that would give the capture an illusion of civility. She's also a terrific actress. That's like three escape routes already."
"Or maybe you can try the civilised route," offers Janine dryly. "You know, sitting her down and telling her that for their safety they need to be moved into a secure location."
"That would have to be monitored too which adds into that human factor and we're talking about people that spy on other people for money. Additionally, assuming that it would have worked it would require a shift in resources. I don't trust Siobhan to not monitor Mycroft's resources and certain ways of communication," adds Sherrinford.
"Well, if I was Siobhan I would have shot you already," Janine mutters.
"It might look like tempting idea but she also knows that I'm an escape artist. She gains nothing from my death except a giant bull's eye on her back. I'm a thorn in Mycroft's side but a thorn that spent decades at trying to fix his mistakes. And then there's the Swan Song."
"Why don't you trigger than now?" asks Janine pensively.
"Because I really want to shot that bitch in the head," Sherrinford replies darkly.
"Fine then," says Janine after a moment. "Where and when do you want me and Kristy?"
"Tbilisi," Sherrinford replies quickly. "In about five weeks by my estimations. Most likely six but five to err on the safe side. I already booked ourselves a couple of rooms in Siobhan's favourite hotels."
"Well, then I need to brush up my Georgian," comes the reply.
And then the screen goes dark.
It's John this time who initialises the decryption of the final photograph. Sherlock looks at him and interestingly enough doesn't find him as angry as he had been after the last video.
"Why not?" slips out of Sherlock's mouth on its own volition.
"Why not what?" asks John as he pauses the video.
"Why aren't you angry?" Sherlock clarifies.
"I still bloody am," John replies with a snort. "But I'm starting to see the bigger picture here. This site, this videos," he gestures at the screen. "It's a deliberate exposure of what she wants us to see, Sherlock. We aren't getting irrelevant bits along with relevant ones. She's a grifter, a con artist and their modus operandi is misdirection. You were capable of predicting where I will be in three weeks while drugged out of your mind. Now imagine in your place someone with a clear mind and equal levels of determination to get a certain group of people into one place on an exact time."
He does and it makes a disturbing amount of sense. Daisy's death triggered something, some sort of a plan that could have already been in place before she died but could have been altered to accommodate her death.
His baby granddaughter had found herself in his flat a day after her mother died with a bag of baby necessities and her goodbye letter. Mrs Hudson who was supposed to look after him that morning had been summoned away by a distressing family emergency that turned out to be a hoax. Lestrade and Molly's schedules could have been accessed on computers and were fixed enough to predict that Mrs Hudson would summon John to stay with Sherlock in her place.
Daisy's flat used to be John's old bedsit and John would be able to recognise that, get Sherlock there and tear one of the many masks from his wife's face. The evidence in Daisy's flat could have been left by her but it could have been left by anyone.
Then there was Mycroft, Sherlock's usual source of not easily obtained information, consistently unavailable through the entire day. And where emotionally compromised Sherlock would go with distressing news? Back home to alert his parents to the drastic changes in his life and it was highly likely that he would insist on taking John along with him.
Mummy wasn't here and he just now remembers that he didn't ask why or when she will get back. Did the plan accounted for that?
"It's a siege," Daddy mutters. "Something is going on and someone, Sherrinford I'm guessing went of his, hers way to put us here."
"There's a couple people missing," Sherlock adds quickly. "Mummy."
"Her goddaughter's daughter wedding in Edinburgh," Daddy replies. "Most likely if she isn't driving home already. And knowing Mal," he hesitates, "I'm inclined to believe that she decided to handle one crisis at a time and is still in Edinburgh."
"Have you told her about Josie?" asks John quickly.
"I had before the call dropped and I wasn't able to reach her afterwards," Daddy replies.
"Have you tried again?" asks Sherlock.
"And then there's Billy," John asks. "Where's he?"
His question is followed by a knock on the kitchen door that has them jumping from their seats and hurrying towards the door. It's Daddy who yanks them open and on the doorstep, looking like he crawled his way to the door through the entire garden is Billy.
"Hello," he says briskly. "Can I come in?"