Note: I just want to go ahead and apologize for 2 things in this chapter. 1) Messing around with historical figures in relation to this 'verse, and 2) how extremely silly the jokes are here. So very, very silly. You'll know what I mean.

Even before she was born, Andromeda Marie Holmes was the polar opposite of her older brother. Unlike Abby, who had been the product of a tumultuous pregnancy and premature birth, Andromeda's delivery seemed to set a standard for the philosophy she would adopt as she lived out the rest of her life: that absolutely everything must be on her own terms, up to and including being 'fashionably late'.

She was due to be born around 30 October, which had John dreading a birth on Hallowe'en. But 01 November came and nothing. A few more days passed, which had John fearing a birth on Bonfire Night. But again, nothing. Finally, in the very early hours of 07 November, John went into labour. He'd never been happier to be in pain; being overdue had completely dried up his patience to the point that he was threatening to start charging the baby rent.

The labour felt much longer than it had with Abby, partially because John now knew what the signs meant, but also because Andromeda was a scant ten ounces shy of weighing twice as much as her brother had at his birth. As uncomfortable as it was, it wasn't without its plus sides. With the risk of catastrophic complications being negligible at the very most, she passed her health evaluation with flying colours and was cleared to leave the hospital as soon as John had rested up a bit. It was a far cry from the long three week stay Abby had needed in order to thrive in the outside world.

Then there was the fact that, as she'd stayed put longer, there was no last minute rush to come up with a name for her, even if on a very technical level one could argue that that wasn't quite true. The middle name Sherlock and John had settled on wound up being scrapped purely on the basis that their daughter was born precisely 150 years after Marie Skłodowska. John was familiar with her most well-known achievement, the discovery of radium, but mostly because schools often focused on the achievements of the element's co-founder, her husband Pierre, as a role model for young Omegas. But given that Sherlock spent a good portion of the labour recounting the achievements of the original Marie, and that as soon as Andromeda was born they now had their own Alpha girl to contend with, the name seemed quite fitting.

Although her middle name changed, her first name stuck, and not just because they had already grown attached to it. While that was certainly true, it was also because they'd actively sought it out. All because John and Sherlock had approached Mrs. Hudson to gauge her opinion on naming their daughter after her only to have the elderly woman balk at the idea.

"I'm flattered, but in my family, you only gave a baby another person's name once they'd already used up their share of it," she had said. "I may be a bit creaky, but I haven't even got one foot in the grave yet! Besides, Martha – not exactly a stand-out name, is it?"

In compromise, they asked her for a list of her favourite names, which John later read to Sherlock with increasing bafflement. "Esmeralda, Octavia, Anastasia, Serenity, Amethyst… wow, I think Mrs. Hudson really likes flowery romance novels," John said.

"That isn't obvious?" Sherlock saw John shake his head, and he sighed dramatically. "Pay closer attention to the way she applies her rouge on special occasions. It is the colour and contour of someone with a crippling addiction to yellowed Regency paperbacks, typically with at least one scene of an Omega swooning on a fainting sofa and/or an Alpha gazing at said swooning protagonist with – quote – 'smouldering eyes' while loosening his or her cravat."

John just shook his head and continued reading, "Thalia, and… Andromeda. She underlined that last one and wrote a little 'Very lovely!' next to it."

Sherlock took a sharp breath and proceeded to separate the wheat from the chaff. "One: green stone, also Spanish. No. Two: traditionally given to an eighth child. Inaccurate. No. Three: assassinated royalty. No. Four: given her lineage, the meaning of that name is very likely to become inaccurate at best and ironic at worst. No. Five: another rock, this time purple. No. Six: ah, one of the Muses. Mummy would have approved, but you already struck down that notion quite some time ago. No. Seven…" He paused for a moment, lowering his brow in thought. "Latinized Greek. Likely loose etymological meaning becomes 'she who has bravery in her mind'."

"Oh, I like that. That's good," John said. "Unless you've got any serious objections, I think that's the keeper. It's got a good meaning, got a nice ring to it, looks to be Mrs. Hudson's favourite from her list… as long as you don't go around giving her a swelled head saying the Andromeda Galaxy is named after her."

"The what?"

"Right. Never mind."

But perhaps it was for the best that Sherlock wouldn't be able to fill his daughter's head with space-related lies. After all, it wouldn't be very long at all before others got caught in her orbit, and not even her uncle or father were safe from her particular ways.

The best two examples of this phenomenon happened within a week of each other.

In the four years that had passed since her birth, Andromeda – or Andy as John had immediately taken to calling her – had grown from a chubby, blue eyed, bald baby into a thin, grey eyed, strawberry blonde little girl. At first John was sure the rogue ginger genes didn't come from his side, which tended to favour ashier blonds or lighter browns. But then he remembered the (often pretty ribald) stories he'd heard about the Scottish grandfather who had passed away when Harry was still an only child.

He was content with this explanation until one particular afternoon. John was off from work, Abby was at school, and Sherlock had a case that – according to his increasingly ecstatic texts – had him investigating a severed leg found clogging a pipe in a sewage treatment plant. John planned on scouring him in disinfectant before allowing him into the flat, and the leg wasn't allowed within a mile radius. It was just he and Andy in the flat, and as she was down for her nap, John was ready for a moment or two of peace to himself. He unfolded his paper and relaxed in his chair.

And then Mycroft showed up.

If he had a reason for his visit, he didn't let John in on it. When John informed him that Sherlock was likely to be out for quite some time, being as wrapped up as he was in a new case's legwork (John made a mental note to keep that awful pun if the case were blog-worthy), Mycroft simply smiled mildly and said that he could wait.

A response like that required some therapeutic tea-making. John tucked his paper beneath his arm and went to the kitchen to get to work. As he waited for the water to boil, his eyes scanned for something quick to read. Though he normally skipped advice columns, the question caught his attention:

My wife and I have a son who is ginger, but she's a dark brunette and I've got brown hair. I'm a Beta and she's an Omega if that makes any difference. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but… well, he's very ginger. – Really Edgy Dad

The only thing that struck John about the answer to RED's plight was that, apparently, it took two to tango when it came to ginger hair. The recessive gene John picked up from his grandfather wasn't enough, and therefore at least one person in the long, proud Holmes lineage of dark, dark hair owed a debt to bottles of dye. John smirked.

Once the tea was ready, John set it on a tray and headed back to the living room. "I just read in the paper that both parents need to have the gene for reddish hair to have a child with –" He looked at the sitting area and nearly dropped the tray. "What on earth is going on here?"

Mycroft and Andy were sitting opposite each other, a crayon drawing of a circle with a line through it between them. On one side was a scribble of a smiling fairy, while the other side had a scribble of a frowning, fanged and horned creature. Andy had changed out of her nap clothes and into the outrageously pink and glittery fairy princess costume she had worn for Hallowe'en, and the large lavender butterfly wings attached to her back made it difficult to sit properly. Mycroft's appearance was unaltered, save for the fact that he was wearing one of the Viking helmets John had (thankfully) not seen in nearly five years.

"I am the Queen of All Fairies and Uncle Mycroft is the ambassador of the Troll Kingdom and we are having a diplamotic meeting about the border between our lands," Andy said loftily.

"Diplomatic," Mycroft corrected.

"Thank you, ambassador. We are not used to that word and our Fairy accent is strong."

John set the tray down with a bit more force than was necessary. He pointed to Andy. "You are supposed to be having a nap."

Andy's grey eyes squinted as she pulled a sour face. "We have issued a royal decree that naps are illegal."

"Oh, really?" John folded his arms over his chest. "Well, I'm the King of Baker Street, and I uphold that naps are not only legal, but mandatory. Your Kingdom-"

"Queendom!"

"Fine, Queendom, happens to be here, so what I say goes. It's like saying it's illegal for the sun to set. It's going to happen anyway."

"But the fairies and trolls are just about to go to war!"

"I think they'll be fine for another hour. Upstairs, now."

The pout on Andy's face intensified, but she slid from her seat and trudged up the stairs to the room she shared with Abby, clomping her feet as she went. John knew what was coming, so he initiated his counter maneuver. "If you slam that door, no telly for a week."

The door slid shut with a feather softness.

With that, John turned to Mycroft, who had the decency to remove the Viking helmet. "You know Sherlock hates this kind of thing."

"John, if I had to keep from doing everything my little brother hates about me, I don't think I would even be afforded the luxury of breathing. Besides, he engaged in much wilder bouts of make-believe when he was her age."

"It's not the make-believe; it's you subtly grooming her to become your political heir."

"'Subtly'?" Mycroft arched a single eyebrow, a smug smile tugging at his lips. "Is that really how he describes it?"

"Not my word choice, I assure you. That is purely John's improvisation, though otherwise the statement is accurate."

John turned to the voice. There was Sherlock, standing just outside the open door and looking surprisingly clean for someone who'd spent much of the day surrounded by waste. He held a black airtight bag, and John's stomach dropped when he recognized its shape. "Jesus Christ, Sherlock, tell me that isn't the leg."

"How else am I to discern the nature of its severance without experimenting on it? I was taking it to my setup in 221C when I heard the tell-tale sound of a bag of pompous hot air in my home."

John gaped at him a moment before he shut his eyes tight and shook his head. "Just… for the love of God, go drop that thing off before anything else happens. The last thing Andy needs is to overhear her father and uncle arguing only to find a severed human leg – which has been soaking in sewage! - in the flat if she comes down to investigate."

Thankfully, Sherlock obliged. John wasn't interested in hearing yet another Holmes fraternal squabble, so he went upstairs to check on Andy, who had fallen into a sulky sleep with her bum in the air and her wings still on. He tidied up the room a bit, mostly removing the pony toys that had been thrown to Abby's side of the room. They vexed the boy so.

When he went back downstairs, Sherlock and Mycroft were gone. He assumed Sherlock had gone to subject a filthy leg to a bevy of esoteric experiments, and making a non-Diogenes-related conclusion about Mycroft's activities or whereabouts was a stab in the dark at the best of times. John also couldn't even begin to guess who won this last argument, if the word 'won' could apply to anything Sherlock and Mycroft did in relation to each other.

Though later that year, on Andy's fifth birthday, Mycroft would present her with an elaborate series of dollhouses which suspiciously resembled Whitehall, and Andy would proclaim her undying adoration of them before Sherlock could plot a way to "accidentally" smash them with an axe. If Mycroft's satisfied look was anything to go by, then he certainly won that round.

Three days after Mycroft's visit, Sherlock solved the case of the leg. Two days after that and he was teetering on the precipice of boredom. Though he had become less wantonly destructive and dangerous now that he was a father, he was still prone to becoming fidgety and manic in the downtime between cases. On one hand, it often manifested in many unusual projects with the children, like the anatomically accurate replica of the human small intestine made entirely out of taffy. But stability was such an important need for children, especially ones as young as Abby and Andy, and the question of whether or not a bored Sherlock was capable of providing it was always at the forefront of John's mind.

But John had hours at the surgery which couldn't be shrugged off, as a flu making the rounds had left it quite understaffed. So that morning, on his way to take Abby to school and himself to work, he asked Mrs. Hudson to keep an eye or ear out in case things got out of hand.

When his shift ended, he dashed into a Tesco to pick up a few things they needed in the flat, but made sure to make it quick. As he was just preparing to checkout, he received a couple of strange text messages.

Hullo, dear. At Mrs. Turner's for a bit. Abby is in my flat. Don't worry, the door is locked. Sherlock and Andy were a dream all day. – M. Turner

This is Mrs. Hudson by the way. – M. Turner

Slightly confused, John made his way home. Instead of heading straight for B, he headed for Mrs. Hudson's flat. Once there, he knocked on the door with his free hand and said, "Abby? It's me. What's going on?" He heard the lock click and the latch slide. The door opened, revealing Abby, who was still in his school uniform. "Why are you here?"

"Andy's watching the programme," Abby said. He shuddered. "There's a marathon. It started just after Dad and Andy got me from school. I had to come to Gran's to escape it."

John sighed. "Is that all? I was worried, you know."

"I couldn't be in my room. Andy sings along with all the songs so loudly. I'd still have to hear it!"

"I just don't know why you're so irritated by it. It's just a cartoon. Besides, it's got a dragon in it. You like dragons."

"I like komodo dragons. They're real and can carry over 50 stains of deadly bacteria in their saliva without getting ill themselves. That's cool." He winced in distaste for a moment before he added, "Pudgy, purple drawings aren't."

"Well, if that's all, I'll let you know when all the nasty pinkness and pudgy dragons have gone. You have to promise to lock the door again and only open it for me or your gran."

As John turned to leave, Abby exclaimed, "Wait! You don't know how serious this is!"

"Oh? Explain it then."

"Dad's watching it with her."

John groaned. Sherlock was insufferable over the subject of television, and pitting it against Andy's favourite show – a cartoon unabashedly for little girls – could only end in disaster. "Oh, God. I hope he's not ruining it for her."

"No. No, it's so much worse than that." Abby took a deep breath. "I think he likes it."

John tried not to laugh, but he couldn't hold in an amused snort, which turned into full-fledged laughter. When he was finally able to communicate through the giggles, he said, "Sorry, but I doubt that very much. Not a lot of crimes to be solved in My Li-"

"Don't say the name!" Abby shut his eyes tight and clasped his hands over his ears. "Please, I hear enough about it from Andy as it is. Just… call it the programme."

"Fine. There's not a lot in the programme to keep your father interested, from what I can tell."

"Go see for yourself, then. I warned you!" With that, Abby closed the door, and John heard the lock click back into place and the latch slide to its original position.

John shook his head, amused by the theatrics. He made his way to 221B. When he opened the door, he was greeted to the sound of Andy's favourite cartoon, untarnished by any angry complaints from Sherlock.

In fact, Sherlock sat in his chair, facing the television with a contemplative look on his face. Andy sat on his lap, lightly swinging her legs in time with the music as she sang along with the theme tune. "Do you know you're all my very best frieeenndss?"

Pleasantly surprised, John opened his mouth to announce his presence, but Andy spoke up before he could. "Daddy, why do you like Twilight best?"

"I understand her desire to prove her assertions correct and appreciate her scientific principles, even if she did concede to Pinkie Pie's irrational extra-sensory perception. Had she remained on the case, I'm certain she would have reached a rational conclusion."

"Mm, I suppose. But Rarity's the best. She's a proper lady and her dresses are pretty."

"At least we agree that there's something inherently superior about unicorns," Sherlock said. He frowned and continued, "But they really ought to switch Applejack and Rainbow Dash's elements. As it stands, it's a jarring logical inconsistency. Applejack is objectively more loyal, and Rainbow Dash objectively more honest."

Andy nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! I've thought that for ages!"

John blinked several times before backed out of the doorway. Dazed, he returned to Mrs. Hudson's flat and gave the door a distracted knock. "It's me again."

Abby unlocked the door again and appraised the look on John's face. He opened the door wider, inviting him in. "I told you."

Once the door closed behind him, John dropped the grocery bags unceremoniously. "I'm still not sure what I just saw," he murmured.

Abby sighed. "Our family's got two of them now. I wish I were old enough to drink."

"Me too." John shook his head slightly. "Wait, I mean, too bad. No drinking."

Unfortunately for Abby, Sherlock appeared to enjoy the programme enough that he advocated they all watch it as a family, which made their son pull a face that looked like he'd been told every single Christmas for the rest of his life was cancelled. It got to the point that John began to believe that the only reason why Sherlock's enthusiasm wasn't quite that of Andy's (who was beyond overjoyed to have company watching with her, even if half of the audience was technically captive) was due to a very particular episode.

"The hat!" Sherlock hissed when he saw it. "People in the colonies are somehow under the impression that I smoked a pipe over cigarettes, yet they accurately represent the hat?"

"First of all, it's not 'the colonies' anymore, Sherlock – hasn't been for well over 200 years. Second, I doubt they can show cigarettes in children's cartoons, though they can get away with bubble pipes. But more importantly, at least they got something right about you, even if it's a thing you hate," John said. He frowned. "I'm hardly just a lowly assistant who asks silly questions with obvious answers."

"No, I'm inclined to agree with at least part of that."

Andy, too elated to care about the argument, simply kept nudging her older brother. "Abby! Abby! Our daddy and papa are so famous that even the ponies know who they are! Isn't that wonderful?"

Abby sat slumped, mortified, looking as if he'd like nothing more than to find a nice, deep hole to bury himself in for the rest of his life.