"Are you sure you want me to do this?" Sherlock asked Mary Watson, as she and John stood facing him as he sat at his atop at the table in 221B's main room. "I'm not sure finding out the truth has ever made anyone any happier."
"I want to know," Mary said, "I want to know who was so interesting that she caught my husband's eye. I mean, I could understand if it was while I was away, but before-" Mary had an excellent poker face, but this was the closest Sherlock had ever seen her to actually breaking down. John didn't look much better in his own way, gaze averted. John knew he was right to tell Mary about Elizabeth, the woman he was texting behind his wife's back, especially since, a few weeks earlier, Mary's life had only been spared at the aquarium due to the chance jamming of Norbury's pistol. Stil, that didn't make him feel less miserable dealing with the fallout. As Sherlock's gaze flicked from Mary to John, he saw his best friend give a near imperceptible nod of acquiescence.
"Alright then."
Normally, detective work was harder than this, but in this case, Sherlock mostly just needed to hack the appropriate CCTV feed histories for the locations and times John specified, while the Watsons sat in a silence only broken as John got up to make tea.
The first few shots of Elizabeth were fairly inconclusive, with her form mostly, if not entirely, blocked from view. However, as the image on a few dates and times cleared up, Sherlock slowly paled as he looked at various repeated encounters.
As she saw Sherlock go still, Mary peered over his shoulder at the woman John was speaking with in the frame.
"Is that her?" Mary stood aside for John to take a glimpse. He nodded. "So what's it about her, John? Sherlock?"
Sherlock had picked up his phone as she spoke, pressing only a couple buttons before lifting the phone to his ear as he said, "The same thing that always attracts him." Whoever he had called obviously picked up, since he demanded, "Get over here."
"So what, you think I'm a serial philanderer now?" John asked, starting to get angry at Sherlock's assessment of the situation. He turned to Mary, "This was a one-off," he pleaded, as tears started to dot his eyes, "You have to believe me. It won't happen again, I promise."
"Your phone," Sherlock demanded.
John's attention snapped to him. "What?"
"Your phone." Sherlock's hand was already outstretched as John fumbled in his pockets. As soon as John handed it over, Sherlock began opening and copying down all the texts John had exchanged with the mystery woman.
With Sherlock being reticent about any more information, the unhappy couple stepped away to sit down. The sounds of the scratching of handwriting and the barking of a dog outside faded into the background, John's attention only coming back when he heard his friend put the pen down, looking up just in time to see Sherlock open the back of his phone, remove the SIM card and snap it in half before proceeding to destroy the rest of the phone over John's loud protests.
"I hope you didn't call me so urgently out because of some petty squabble, brother mine. Some of us do have to keep a schedule," Mycroft's smug voice dripped around the room.
Sherlock disengaged from his- disagreement with John, handing over the remnant of the destroyed mobile, as he gestured for Mycroft to sit in front of the laptop as Sherlock had previously.
Mycroft sat down, questioning, "What menial crime have you been commissioned to solve for-" he cut off abruptly, as he focused on the image in front of him. Sherlock bent around him to press "Play" on the video footage, before stepping away to make more tea as Mycroft reviewed the rest of the clips. When Sherlock brought the tea tray back from the kitchen, Mycroft had sat back in the chair with a stricken look on his face.
Beginning to grasp that there may be more going on than just marital cheating, John and Mary watched in tense silence as Sherlock set the tray down near his brother, starting to pour.
"It's her, isn't it?" Sherlock murmured.
Mycroft nodded. "How did you know? I thought you had-"
Sherlock nodded. "Serbia. Apparently, one can run deep enough into one's own mind to remember the supposedly forgotten in circumstances like that. Once I remembered her and Victor and everything that happened, it was child's play for my mind palace to extrapolate what she would look like grown when I saw the footage of her and John."
"You hid it well."
"I didn't want you to worry." Sherlock paused as Mycroft looked up in surprise at that revelation. "It was Uncle Rudy's plan? Telling people she was-"
Mycroft nodded again. Sherlock stepped away to hand tea cups to the Watsons. He stepped back in order to give Mycroft his own, then stopped and walked back into the kitchen. As Sherlock rattled in a cupboard, Mycroft took a teacup and sat in the plaid chair. John was surprised to see Sherlock come back into view with a bottle of whiskey in hand. The brunette poured a measure of the liquor into his own tea before silently proffering the bottle to his brother.
"Do you really think we should?" Mycroft asked.
"How much of a difference do you think one will make against her?"
Mycroft thought for a moment, then acquiesced.
"So… she's out," Sherlock began.
"Apparently."
"This is not good."
"No," Mycroft shook his head.
"What do we do now?"
Mycroft lifted his eyebrows and flattened his lips into a straight line. "I haven't the faintest."
Thoroughly tired of being kept out of the conversation, John finally spoke up. "So who is she that she's making the mighty Holmes brothers drink and scratch their heads?" John immediately wished he hadn't asked as Sherlock's haunted gaze turned on him, making the hair on the back of his neck stand in readiness.
"The East Wind."
Author's note: Comments welcome! What did you think? What did you think of the Holmes brothers' reactions to finding out Eurus is out? I had debated with Mycroft's last line being either, "I haven't the faintest" and "I haven't the foggiest." Now that you've seen one version written into the story, which do you think is a more in-character line for Mycroft to say?
Minor edits and new story summary made 3/17/21 after suggestions from my friend GoodShipSherlollipop. Thank you!
I don't own any of the characters, and I don't make any money from this work.