John
The arrival of one William Sherlock Scott Sigerson gets in the way of watching the last video courtesy of his grandmother. He's taller than he had been in the last video John seen him and his riot of curls has been cropped into a boyish haircut.
He doesn't object to being practically yanked into the house and doesn't protest when Mr Holmes removes his dirty jacket without a single word. He's gentle but efficiently quick and doesn't as much as bat an eye when Billy pulls down his thick and dirty trousers revealing blue tights, he even catches him when Billy stumbles when his shoes get caught in the trousers legs.
Well, he's an experienced father if a bit dumbfounded great-grandfather. He also recovers mite faster than John or Sherlock do from the shock of what feels like practically summoning the child to their current doorstep and helps Billy up to wash his hands in the sink.
Their chitchat is minimal and limited to offering soap and towel and Billy thanking Mr Holmes for each before he turns around in the chair he was kneeling to wash his hands to look at the adults curiously.
Out of the three of them he fixates his gaze the longest on Sherlock which isn't really surprising considering Sherlock's striking semblance to the adult the boy knows and trusts. And Sherlock who never had a problem with winning a stare down with anyone wavers under the scrutiny. But only very slightly.
"Are you hungry Billy?" he offers.
Well, at least he didn't start with pictures of beheadings or maggots or anything murder related. John was very glad to not be a part of that interesting conversation with his wife's more distant friend. Last he heard something about Archie the boy grew out of the gruesome phase into being obsessed with cars.
As it turns out Billy is hungry which is relatively typical for a five years old and he's delighted by Mr Holmes's offer to grill sandwiches from yesterday's dinner. Grilled cheese it's what gets him talking how his Nana almost always grills sandwiches with tomatoes for lunch.
Mr Holmes is doing the questioning, keeping it casual and at kid's level.
How he got there?
Pepe drove him. Told him to approach the house very carefully. Hence crawling through the entire garden which explains how he managed to get so dirty.
Who is Pepe?
Nana's very good friend. No clarification whether Pepe is a man or a woman. Pepe is Pepe and they only thing they get told about Pepe is that Pepe will come back later but now left to pick up some things.
The things part makes John regret leaving his gun behind in London but then he decides that if Pepe is Sherrinford's very good friend then it's highly likely that some of their, unidentifiable by Billy, things might be guns.
Where's his Nana?
At a location that Billy doesn't specify other than it's far away from England. Helping Uncle Mindcroft which might be deliberate name or a linguistic distortion of a five years old whose mind seems to be further ahead than the sentences that leave his mouth between bites of the first batch of grilled sandwiches.
Where do they live with Nana?
That question comes from Sherlock and earns him a simple, 'in London'. 'Duh' isn't added to that but John can hear it being unsaid. Because where else they should be living.
Where's his Mummy?
It's a question from Mr Holmes and gets him a simple answer that Mum is in Towers Hamlet Cemetery Park. It's an unemotional answer, Billy doesn't sound sad when he says it, it's a simple fact. Then he adds that she got very sick after he was born and died. Then he gets sad when says that Daddy died too, in the late spring.
His grief over that is palpable but quite predictably lacks the rawness of a fresh grief. It transfers into unequivocal adoration as soon as he reminds himself, and consequently them, that he always had and will have his Nana.
What Nana does for a living?
She certainly paints an awful lot and restores other people's paintings. She also likes to tell funny stories about paintings going missing. She also yells at Uncle Microphone a lot, usually on the phone.
Does he see Uncle Microwave often?
That one is also Sherlock's, asked with a cheeky smile that implies that somewhere in his mind he's compiling a list of nouns and nonsensical words he could use to call Mycroft with. Provided that Mycroft will survive the family reunion. Uncle Microwave goes great with Billy, as a name to describe him, not as much as a person. Mostly because his visits make Nana angry.
Then it's Billy's turn to ask questions. He's perceptive enough to recognise Mr Holmes as his great-grandfather and is greatly interested in how he would like to be called. He doesn't really wait for an answer or believes that Mr Holmes needs to think about that before he fixates on Sherlock and asks if he would mind being called Uncle Lock.
The look of shock on Sherlock's face is so funny that it's worth the glower thrown John's way as soon as he recovers. Sherlock appears to mind being Uncle Lock very much and informs a slightly sheepish looking Billy that he was named William Sherlock Scott Holmes and that if he can't make it through Sherlock from start to finish then he might call him Will.
Billy's brief amazement over being named after Sherlock gets drowned in Sherlock's swift assurance that Billy can call John Uncle John but if he isn't feeling okay with that he might call John Uncle Hamish.
John wants to throttle him for that but that urge passes moments later when Billy says that he's fine with Uncle John. Then Sherlock's admits that both Mr Holmes and John served in the army like his father had.
That diverts Billy's attention for a little while bringing up a barrage of questions where they served, how long they served and why they stopped. John, mindful of the boy losing his father to being fatally shot, glazes over his own injury as the reason of his discharge.
Then Mrs Hudson comes in with the girls which brings a new influx of questions. Billy immediately learns that she isn't his great-grandmother but if he wants to he might call her Nana. But that flies over his head when he fixates on Josie and excitedly calls her Jojo.
Mrs Hudson, the seasoned handler of the multiplying Holmes (even if some of them don't go by that surname) recovers immediately from the brief shock and puts both girls in Billy's lap. The chair he's sitting in has sturdy armrest so it's safe for the girls and it delights Billy.
Getting anything out of him after that is difficult but their mutual delight makes up for that. Katie and Josie are enthralled by Billy just as much as Billy is enthralled with them. He manages to admit between fits of giggles that Nana picked Jojo on Wednesday from a very distant friend of hers and brought her home with her until she would be able to sort out her family situation.
As far as they manage to establish Billy is unaware of the family connection between himself and Josephine. He accepts that she's Sherlock's baby (broadly speaking) and doesn't even blink when first Josie and then Katie call Sherlock Mama.
The feeding of girls derails the conversation altogether and only Sherlock's unbelievably fast reflex saves the laptop from being drowned in milk. It also prevents them from watching the last video until eventually all children retire to the sitting room to watch TV with Mrs Hudson. The girls are a bit too young for that but with Billy in the house they can't exactly watch what his Nana had been up to loud enough for him to hear it.
The last video takes place in the kitchen. The camera is in the same place it had been in the last video it took place there. For a little while it shows Sherrinford back where she stood in the confrontation with Mycroft over her son. She's standing on the right side of the island, both hands placed on the countertop as she's looking at something that from the angle looks like photographs. Further down on the countertop is standing an open bottle of wine and a solitary wine glass.
She doesn't react at all when in the distance door open and footsteps start to approach her. John is less capable of differentiating other people's footsteps than Sherlock but he can tell the difference between distinct clicks on high heels from other shoes.
Therefore he isn't that really surprised when Janine comes into view. Like in the last video she's dressed in black, knee-length coat opened and then removed to reveal a fitting black dress. Around her neck is tied a flimsy looking grey scarf with silver streaks in it.
It's the scarf that gives John a brief pause. He remembers it and he remembers Janine with it too. Hair tied up, big dark glasses covering her eyes that only got removed from her face when she came up to him to say condolences.
It's the video from after Mary's funeral.
"How it was?" Sherrinford asks without raising her head.
"Bloody awful," Janine answers simply. "It was a funeral," she adds as focuses on the photographs that Sherrinford is watching. "Any particular reason you're watching that? It's an open and shut case."
"Exactly," Sherrinford mutters.
"Both of your brothers and five if not six NSY officers were in that room," Janine adds.
"Exactly," Sherrinford repeats.
"They all seen the same thing," Janine says. "You read the reports."
"Yes, I did," Sherrinford confirms before she finally looks up at Janine. "A cornered traitor to the crown aiming a gun at my brother and an international assassin heroically jumping in front of a bullet meant for him who bleeds out within two minutes."
"Yes, because that's what happened," Janine confirms. "Your brothers can attest to that."
"I'm sure they can," says Sherrinford simply. "Coroner's report," she adds gesturing towards a file that lies next to the bottle.
"It was an open and shut case so complete autopsy wasn't needed," says Janine as she reaches for the file. "You only have a cause of death which is hypovolemic shock caused by gunshot wound to the chest. Bullet lodged itself in the liver. Singed by Doctor M. Hooper."
"The same Doctor M. Hooper that preformed Sherlock's autopsy," Sherrinford points out. "And considering that my younger brother is very much alive four years after he pitched himself from a tall building I'm disinclined to believe any report signed by Doctor Hooper," she adds ironically. "Let's focus on the bullet. Preliminary autopsy claims that the bullet was still inside the body, right?" she asks.
"Right," Janine confirms. "Your point being?"
"What is that then?" asks Sherrinford as she picks up one of the photographs and with the way she holds it up it's impossible to tell what's on it.
"That's," Janine breaths out. "Are you sure?"
"Then there's that," adds Sherrinford as she picks another photograph. "Does it look like a bloodied bullet to you? Because it looks like one to me. You know, the bullet that's supposed to be inside of Mary Watson's body?"
"Jesus Christ," Janine breaths out. "Does it mean?"
"It would seem so," says Sherrinford grimly as she puts down both photographs and picks up the phone.
"Where's Billy?" Janine asks while Sherrinford is texting.
"Running ESO dungeons with Pepe and trying very hard not to rub into people's faces that a five years old is capable of learning the complicated bosses mechanics," replies Sherrinford without tearing her eyes from the phone.
"ESO?" Janine asks.
"An online multiplayer fantasy game," Sherrinford replies. "It's a thing they do together and one that makes him happy. He's mite too young for spending so much time on the computer but everything is a marked improvement from the zombie state after Johnny," she adds. "I sent a text to Mycroft's secret phone asking whether or not he's going to tell our brother and Doctor Watson that Mary is alive or should I. Now I'm expecting my phone to go ring-ding-ding under a minute so I can yell at him."
The phone rings thirty-five seconds later and Sherrinford puts Mycroft on speaker but doesn't give him a chance to say a word.
"You miserable sack of rat droppings," she starts raving into the phone. "You banoffee cake bloated chimpanzee. You two-faced and four-arsed hypocrite how the fuck you dare to give me shit over how I handle our baby brother's drug problem while you push him down the downward spiral. I fucking hope that he used your fucking credit card to buy himself enough drugs to sustain all of the Columbian drug lords."
By then she's out of breath and Mycroft can get a word in.
"What you're talking about?" he asks.
"What the hell you think I'm talking about?" Sherrinford growls at the phone. "The sad, unfortunate and very fake passing of one Mary Watson. One that led to dissolution of all contact between our baby brother and the Doctor. I'm sure that your artificial eyes showed you that they hadn't been in contact since the aquarium with the exception of one visit that left our brother so gutted that he hit all of his dealers within one afternoon before he holed himself up in his flat."
John's throat closes slightly. He'd done that to Sherlock. He deliberately and cruelly pushed him away. Mary and Mycroft might have given him an excuse to waver but it was John who pushed him away and into drugs.
In the video there's more yelling, in French, a language which John knows at a tourist level as long as someone takes time to say everything slowly. Sherrinford isn't slow, she's absurdly fast and when John looks at Sherlock and the small smirk on his face he decides that she had to supply Sherlock with a load of insults for Mycroft.
Sherrinford's final huff however is in English and contained to a single word, "Why?"
"Musgrave," Mycroft admits and his voice is barely audible.
It causes an involuntary shudder in Sherrinford which might or might not be responsible for her hanging the call before dropping the phone on the counter and leaning heavily against the counter.
"What does it mean?" asks Janine hesitantly.
Sherrinford takes her time to answer, first pouring herself a glass of wine and downing it in about five gulps. Once the empty wine glass is put back on the countertop she leans forward on her hands.
"A lot of things," she admits finally. "And none of them are good."
"But what it means exactly?" presses Janine.
"At the very core," starts Sherrinford grimly, "it's an ultimate betrayal of the most profound magnitude. Something from which there's no return to how things were. It happened to me, for the refusal to entertain the aging ghost master and humiliating him in front of his superiors. Mycroft," she pauses briefly, "grew up to be his favourite and eventual replacement, but I was…"
"The perfect material for Moriarty," finishes Janine. "The honour which you refused, adamantly and repeatedly."
"And stupidly to the wrong kind of people," adds Sherrinford. "I should have told my parents but I saw how being shunned away for the seeming mésalliance hurt Mummy and I was fairly certain if I told Daddy about it he would go ballistic. I didn't want to be the source of a rift, not if I could handle it myself as I stupidly believed."
"The fire…" starts Janine.
"The arson," Sherrinford corrects her flatly. "It was an evening of too many coincidences," she adds with a snort. "It was a coincidence that the fire started on Friday evening after my parents departed for a weekend visit. The weekend that Uncle Rudolph's favourite nephew was supposed to spend away with a friend. It was a coincidence that my car broke down. It was also a coincidence that the sitter was a regular one and notorious for her tendency to not actually sit on her charges when her boyfriend was around and he coincidentally was even if he was supposed to be at work that evening. It was also a coincidence that he was training to become an electrician. It was also a coincidence that on that day he received one thousand pounds from his great-grandaunt."
"Good Lord," Janine whispers and John finds himself agreeing with her as he hits pause and glances at Sherlock and Mr Holmes.
Sherlock is quiet and has this distant look in his eyes that tells John that he's far away in the confines of his mind. Likely looking for anything that would confirm the presence of arsonist. John puts his right hand on Sherlock's left arm as his gaze slides over to Mr Holmes. The older man looks thunderous and is clutching tightly on the armrests of his chair.
"Play it," they both whisper over each other a moment later.
"One thousand pounds," says Sherrinford lividly. "That's how much Sherlock and Rosie's lives were worth, Janine. Both fuckers were lucky that they were dead when I discovered that," she adds furiously. "But that wasn't before he managed to legally kill me and placed me in a facility that he controlled where every request I made to contact my parents was met with a string of lies. He was careful enough to not lie in excess personally, allowing me to draw my own conclusions and being constantly sorry for what I'm going through. And I was going through hell, Janine. Physical and psychological hell. I lost months to fading in and out of medical coma and I woke up to a world where my youngest siblings were dead. A world where my parents couldn't stand the sight of me so much that not even once they visited while I was in coma. They hadn't visited me when I woke up either. Neither they ever came to rehab in which I was recovering or the psychiatric hospital."
"And your uncle was there to reaffirm your suspicions," says Janine gently.
"Convincingly," mutters Sherrinford. "Constantly," she adds. "And I ran into Mycroft by accident when that twice rudy bastard had a stroke that eventually killed him. He told me the truth," she pauses briefly. "That our parents believed me to be dead. How Sherlock made it out and how he was afterwards," she adds softly. "He took me to Rosie's real grave, not that bogus and empty thing that I visited whenever I was out. The one that reaffirmed my belief in…" she doesn't finish.
"And he didn't say a word to your parents," says Janine softly. "Did he?"
"If he had we would have never met, Janine," says Sherrinford softly. "And I can't even put all of the blame on Mycroft. I played my part in that as well. I made the decisions that seemed right at the time. Sherlock's mental wellbeing came first and the depths of his denial…" she pauses to breath in and slowly breath out. "The fire wasn't the only thing he'd forgotten. I gave Mycroft a couple of trigger words Sherlock's reaction to which would allow him to gauge his mental condition."
"And they didn't trigger anything," Janine concludes.
"That's when I knew for certain," says Sherrinford with a heavy sigh. "Not that back then I was the paragon of mental stability mind you," she adds. "I had a severe case of PTSD, gender identity disorder with accompanying dysmorphobia and three unsuccessful suicide attempts behind me at that point. And that's without touching the hornet nest that was the affair with my nurse. Gloria Scott was a good friend but I'm not going to deny that a good nurse and caretaker shouldn't get into an affair with her patient, let alone become pregnant from that. I loved Johnny, I still do but in a world where everything would have worked as it was supposed to he would have never been born."
"So you stayed away," says Janine. "Allowed Mycroft to manipulate you into the mess with Irene. Because it was better for everyone."
"It wasn't better for everyone," admits Sherrinford. "Hindsight has a tendency of turning people into geniuses, Janine," she adds sourly. "And turning geniuses into idiots at times," she says and snorts. "We were all idiots who in their arrogance thought that they knew best. We didn't," she sighs.
"The drug problem," mutters Janine.
"Amongst other things," replies Sherrinford sourly. "A subject on which Mycroft and I had vastly differing opinions," she adds with a grimace. "He always saw it as a form of rebellion, a way of acting out. I saw it for what it was, a form of escapism and a way to numb the physical and psychological pain. Mycroft's stance is common in people who never had been subjected to debilitating pain…"
"Unlike you," interjects Janine.
"Unlike me," Sherrinford agrees. "He never had to walk the very fine line between a high-dependence to painkillers and addiction to thereof. I balanced on it for years after the fire. And then kidnapping happened…" she says with a heavy sigh. "I was in a much better position than our parents because Mycroft summoned me to London the moment Sherlock and that poor girl escaped their captors. And he was too focused, along with the girl's father, a high-ranking and respected police officer on covering up a murder committed in self-defence by a traumatised teenager in the midst of a drug-induced psychosis. It wasn't that any court would be able to convict him if the truth came out but…" she shrugs.
"Better safe rather than sorry," Janine interjects.
"And that fucker very much deserved what Sherlock had done to him. The murder got pinned on his comrades, comrades met their end in a shot out with the police," she reveals grimly.
"Were you successful, in locating him?" asks Janine just as Mr Holmes does, phrased a bit differently.
Sherlock's 'I don't know' almost drowns out Sherrinford's, "Yes."
Sherlock's brows shot to his hairline at that before he frowns deeply.
"Not that he made it particularly easy, mind you," adds Sherrinford. "Traumatised and psychotic he was still a genius at the height of paranoia. To which I was adding by constantly changing disguises. I saw what happened to his captor and I really didn't want to be on the receiving end of that. For a malnourished twig he was extraordinary strong and a vicious. So I tried softer approach," she pauses. "It almost worked until I got into my stupid head the idea to try and keep him from scoring."
John who is still watching Sherlock sees him mouth something. It's short and soundless and he swallows thickly immediately after that.
"That didn't work out," Sherrinford continues. "So I had to return to disguises and careful observation from the distance. It allowed me to learn his habits. He was pathologically paranoid about sharing needles but not about sharing drugs, especially if he could trade them off for food or clothes. And back then he was sheltering that poor girl so he needed food more than he needed drugs."
"And the downside of sharing was that you actually had to share," says Janine slowly.
"I tried faking when I could get away with it or sending other people his way but yeah," she pauses for a sigh. "I did occasionally score what was on the table. Mostly heroin. My downfall was that unlike Sherlock who actually lived on the streets or ever changing squats I had a residence to which I occasionally returned. A residence from which Mycroft's minion tracked me to one of Sherlock's squats where she witnessed both of us shooting up and laughing our arses off over tying bows on the tourniquets."
"And Mycroft had found you both," concludes Janine.
"Not until the next day," says Sherrinford grimly. "She did leave to alert Mycroft of the development and so did we. We got pulled away from there by some homeless friend that Sherlock made and his flame. They moved us to a different dosshouse a new one which wasn't about to be raided by cops. Had they left us there…" she pauses for a sigh. "Point is they didn't and we woke up in a different location after losing a substantial chunk of the day and back then…" from the corner of his eye John can see her shrugging. "I was just as much of a drug-addict as he was, we both wanted to score and I had money, we separated, I returned to my lair, got the money out, got drugs, got caught by Mycroft. I tried to argue that I was working on it meanwhile Sherlock scored and scored big and with no one to share…" she pauses again.
"He overdosed," Janine supplies.
"He had," agrees Sherrinford. "I had no leg to stand on with Mycroft, not with a positive drug test and threats to ship me off to a rehab in France. Which eventually happened and our argument went for long enough…" she pauses once more and sighs heavily. "Mycroft adamantly refused to believe that by the careful and methodical weaning Sherlock from high dosage I was increasing his periods of clarity. So he went with ham-fisted approach of enforced detox, for both of us. I came out of it already on a plane to France and on a merry way to the enforced rehab while Sherlock managed to pull a runner before Mycroft managed to find a facility for him in England and that was the last anyone had seen of him for over six months."
"How long you've been clean?" asks Janine pensively.
"Nineteen years come Christmas, of personally administered illicit substances minus the periods for very highly monitored recoveries from various surgeries," replies Sherrinford grimly.
"And what Musgrave has to do with that?" asks Janine simply.
"Betrayal," says Sherrinford quietly. "One that already started when we were in Georgia. I made a point of looking into people who had a very high potential of being Siobhan's lieutenants. Someone had been taking them out through the last couple of months, slowly and methodically in a pattern that's eerily familiar to the travelling pattern of Irene's favourite drug smuggling ring, a group of highly versatile individuals."
"They're taking each other out," whispers Janine.
"And they will take out anyone that will get caught in the middle," adds Sherrinford grimly before she pours herself a glass of wine. "Which is why I already hate what needs to happen next."
"What needs to happen next?" Janine asks hesitantly.
"Instead of finding a way to clean up Siobhan's mess that has Mycroft's fat fingers all over it I need to ensure that neither Sherlock nor the doctor would be able to notice the inconsistences in Mary Watson's passing," says Sherrinford gravely as she pours the wine into the glass.
"And the only way to do that…" starts Janine.
"Is pulling both of them down and apart instead of up and together," adds Sherrinford before she swiftly downs the wine glass.
"How?" Janine asks.
"I will figure something out," replies Sherrinford. "I always do."
With that the screen goes dark and Sherlock bolts out from his chair. He's already out of the door by the time John stands up.