Once, when Rosie was very small, she was taken to the Baby Circus with her daycare. The Baby Circus was a cheap little kiddy attraction with a few children-safe games and a little mirror room; the perfect place for a bored caretaker to plop down her group of babies and get some peace and quiet.

Rosie, then two years old, had waddled into the little mirror room and laughed at the sight of so many other Rosies surrounding her. She liked mirrors. Every morning Daddy John would make funny faces at her in the bathroom mirror as he put little rainbow bands in her hair. Sometimes Uncle Sherlock did, too. Rosie made herself a few silly faces on her own.

It was that moment when a little punk kid, a five-year-old called Rocky, had thrown a bunch of rocks into the little room. Those rocks smashed the glass and the whole place seemed so be breaking apart with Rosie inside it- a situation that could have been utterly traumatizing had she been old enough to remember it later on in life.

That was what she felt like now. As if her life was shattering, shards of previous dreams falling, everything crashing to pieces around her. It was as if she'd been living in a little mirror room of her own, until the truth had broken the glass and everything caved in to reveal an outside world much harsher and stranger than she'd thought.

John was still rooted to the spot, staring at the image of his dead wife on the TV screen. It was Sherlock who stepped forwards, placing a reassuring hand on John's shoulder and shaking him from his horrified stupor.

John reached out for his daughter. "Rosie-"

Rosie dodged his arm, swiping angrily at her eyes.

"Don't you DARE." She hissed, glaring at him. "Don't you DARE try comfort me."

John's arm froze in midair, a look of deep hurt farming on his face.

"Rosie?" he asked, pain in his voice.

Rosie violently dragged her sleeve across her eyes, trying to discourage her tears from falling. Still they spilt over, hot and pumping, fueled by sadness and confusion and horror and fury.

"Why didn't you tell me there was a video?" she said quietly. "Why didn't you just show it to me?"

Sherlock and John looked at eachother, and it was hard to tell which man seemed more at loss for words.

"We thought that you weren't ready." John said finally. "We were going to-"

Rosie snapped.

"MY MOTHER IS DEAD! I HAVEN'T HEARD HER VOICE SINCE I WAS A BABY! I KNOW HER FACE FROM PHOTOGRAPHS! I THOUGHT THOSE WERE THE ONLY RECORDS OF HER AND NOW I FIGURE OUT THERE WAS A WAY FOR ME TO KNOW HER VOICE ALL ALONG AND YOU HID IT FROM ME BECAUSE I WASN'T READY?!"

She could see John trembling and Sherlock's hand slipping down to meet John's, palms holding eachother comfortingly. This made Rosie even madder.

"I HAVE NO MUM!" she yelled. "I HAVE NO MUM AND ALL I HAVE IS YOU TWO! I GUESS THAT'S FINE FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU'VE GOT EACHOTHER BUT I'VE GOT NO-ONE! NOT YOU! I COULDN'T TRUST YOU! YOU KEPT MY MOTHER'S VOICE FROM ME FOR TEN YEARS! MY MOTHER IS DEAD. SHE GOT SHOT. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT FEELS LIKE? I DON'T THINK SO!"

John and Sherlock were both paralyzed to their spot, staring at Rosie while she cried tears of rage.

"YOU SEE? I'M ALONE! ALONE! NOBODY THOUGHT IT WAS WRONG TO HIDE A MOTHER'S VOICE FROM HER ORPHANED CHILD?! THAT WAS OKAY WITH YOU? DAD, I'M STARTING TO THINK YOU DON'T CARE AT ALL! NOT ABOUT ME OR ABOUT MUM!"

It was that moment when Rosie knew she'd gone too far. John buried his face in his hands and she could see him start silently shaking, tears dripping through his fingers.

Rosie started shaking too as she realized what she'd just said.

Sherlock embraced John, wrapping his arms around him.

"That's enough, Rosie!" he said roughly, back to her.

Rosie heaved a sob. "Sherlock. I'm sorry. Please. I didn't mean it-"

Sherlock turned to her, a look of deep misery and disappointment on his face.

"Rosie, you just said things that have been thought by your father, at himself, hundreds of times for the past few years. All those things are thoughts that should never even pass through his mind, let alone through his own daughter's lips."

She couldn't breathe, watching her dad cry. This was her fault. She just said horrible things that might make John feel he was worthless and a bad father. And he wasn't, he wasn't. She'd made a terrible mistake.

Rosie turned on her heels and fled the flat.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

Her footsteps on the staircase sounded like her heartbeat, loud and uneven and scared. Sherlock shouted something behind her but she just sped up, barreling through the door and out into Baker Street.

Rosie couldn't just stay on the sidewalk; within moments Sherlock would swoop downstairs and cart her back to 221B. So she ran to the first place she could think of.

The graveyard.

She'd been there several times before. Usually Mrs. Hudson was the one who took her, and once it had been Molly; Sherlock and John, for some reason, could never set foot in the pace without looking sorrowful and wanting to leave.

It was lucky Rosie was a clever girl with a clear memory of the way she had to go. She ran it, lungs burning, legs aching.

It took Rosie seventeen minutes to get to the graveyard. She was so tired when she did that she rested for a little while on an empty wooden bench before searching for Mary's grave. There wasn't anybody else around. She was alone.

Rosie located her mother's grave with ease. She'd already visited a few times, and the red tombstone was hard to miss.

The name carved in the stone read MARY ELIZABETH WATSON. Rosie couldn't understand that; didn't John think Mary would have preferred to be buried with her real name and not a fake?

Instead of ruminating about that decision, she settled down on the hard earth before the grave and stroked the stone, running her fingers over the indented letters of Mary's name.

"Mum." Rosie whispered, as if Mary could hear her. "Mum, I've made a terrible mistake. I yelled some horrible stuff at Dad and said he doesn't care about us. That's not true, is it? Dad really does care, right? Oh, Mum, I don't know a thing about you. Until today I didn't even know your voice. How did you die, Mum? Why won't Dad or Sherlock tell me?"

She breathed deeply.

"Dad's crying." She kept talking to the grave, feeling closer to her mother than ever. "He's crying awfully because I told him he didn't care. And Sherlock seemed so pale and dreadfully shocked when I was talking. Was he there when you died, Mum? Why does your name always make Dad and Sherlock look towards eachother?"

For a moment, it was as if Mary Watson had returned to life and put her hands on her grieving daughter's shoulders.

"I can't really tell you, my darling." She voice seemed to echo in Rosie's ears. "But I promise it was all for you. You'll know it all, soon enough."

Rosie raised her head and the illusion shattered. Mary was not there; she would never be. She was dead and gone and Rosie would never see her again.

Rosie wiped away her tears. This whole shenanigan was ridiculous. She'd go right back home now and apologize to John and Sherlock and never press them about Mary until they were ready to tell her.

Just then, something caught her eye. A black, marble tombstone, standing apart from the other graves. Rosie had keen eyesight, which was why the grave attracted her immediate attention. She read the name and instantly urged to make sure she was wrong about it.

Rosie got up, brushed the mud off her jeans, and slowly walked towards the gravestone. Her heart pounded as she pleaded for her sight to have been wrong.

But she wasn't. Because the black was carved with the same name she'd read from a afar and heard thousands of times in her lifetime.

SHERLOCK HOLMES.