There'd never really been any question, not for Sherlock and certainly not for Mycroft, Sherrinford was staying at 221B with them. After Lestrade had left, Mycroft had extracted his mobile and begun to systematically rearrange things at 221B, temporarily, of course. Two well-appointed Queen Anne's chairs had been delivered to the flat against Sherlock's wishes. Sherlock's sofa had been banished to 221C and replaced with a much nicer pull-out sofa with fat plush comfortable pillows. The bed in John's room had been removed and replaced with a trundle-bed and Mycroft was by all appearances preparing for the long haul.

When it became obvious that jet-lag was getting the better of her, Sherlock had risen, gripped his sister by the elbow and carefully propelled her into his bedroom. He ignored her protests, disregarded Mycroft's glare entirely and closed the door firmly. Moving her to the edge of the bed, he stepped over to his dresser and extracted one of his dressing gowns. Handing it to her, he said softly, "We're missing something, Sherrinford. Sooner or later, one of us is going to piece it together. It's obvious that you're exhausted and that simply won't do. You need to rest."

She sat down on the mattress, eyes firmly on the floor, "Sherly, you and Myc, you've both been so very kind and…" her shoulders slumped, "I hurt you both so very badly."

He crouched down, his long fingers tipping her chin up so he could look her in the eyes, "There are so many questions and no time for them." He studied her for a moment, "Just answer one, how long?" When she stared at him, he asked again, "After the bombing, how long before you regained consciousness? How long before you could make your own decisions?"

Long elegant fingers twisted the dressing gown in her hands, eyes distant, looking off into the past "I was told that I was in a coma for fifteen months. It was almost two years before I regained any semblance of truly being awake."

He nodded, his hands coming to rest on her forearms, "Even had you come home as soon as you awoke, it would have been far too late. No," he reassured her, "if you hurt us, it was only by your absence and was not a choice of your own making."

Black lashes veiling her eyes, her voice low, "Mummy did what she thought best to protect me."

Whatever warmth she saw in her brother's face was erased by that statement; in that instant a very different man than the one she'd known crouched before her. She'd heard others describe him as cold – the type of harsh cold that burns in its fury. Concern for him had her reaching out to touch his face, he flinched away for a moment – he stopped pulling away when he saw the hurt and regret in her eyes. He rose, bending over to place a kiss on her brow as she'd done to him so many times when he was a boy. "It will keep until this particular case is over." The corner of his mouth curved ever so slightly, the merest trace of a smile as he quoted her own words to her, words she'd spoken over him a thousand times as a child, "Rest well, darling. Sleep makes angels of us all."

Returning to the living area, he sat off in the corner with the silence in the flat was eating at him, he longed to take his violin in hand and let the music eat away at the chaos in his thoughts but that was impossible. Never had his flat, his home, been so full – it was distracting. Molly was taking advantage of the lull by watching crap telly in John's room whereas Anthea had taken possession of the table in the living area and converted it into some slimmed down form of her desk. Mycroft had merely quirked a brow, shrugged and taken the seat opposite her – Sherlock expected that they were trying to find records of Moriarty from Sherrinford's time in the office.

Knees tucked up under his chin, he pondered their next course of action, his gaze levelled at some piece of equipment in the kitchen when he heard the door to 221B fly open. He was half prepared to stand when he recognized Lestrade's footfalls as he thundered up the stair and burst into the flat.

"Where's Sherrin?" he demanded as he scanned the flat.

"Asleep. What's happened?"

Lestrade smirked at him, "Might just be that I've figured part of this out." Sherlock leaned forward as Mycroft swivelled in his chair to turn his attention fully to Lestrade, "We've only been asking half the question - Why now?"

"The other?" Mycroft asked

Striding into the flat, Lestrade sat down in one of the new chairs, "What changed?" When Sherlock stared at him, Lestrade said, "Bloody geniuses, the lot of you, and you don't get it. To be fair, I didn't get it either and then Donovan asked me what changed and I saw it."

Mycroft and Sherlock shared a glance, before Mycroft asked, "Would you like me to go collect Dr. Hooper, so she might slap him a few times? It seems to work with you." At Sherlock's flat unfriendly stare, Mycroft shrugged and sighed, "Very well." He focused on Lestrade with a faint sneer, "You're speaking in circles, Gregory."

Lestrade released a frustrated sigh and then he reached into his coat, extracted some papers and handed them to Mycroft, "Before I forget, can you expedite that?" Mycroft's eyebrow arched as he glanced over the papers before he nodded and put them away. "Moriarty's image is all over the telly just as you're about to go off into exile. He decides to have his lackeys go into the morgue with a computer program that wasn't written overnight to steal unknown data. From all appearances, tries to kidnap Molly. He's ignored you for over a year, why now – what changed?" At Sherlock's blank look, Lestrade ran his hands through his hair, "How long does an international flight from Canada take to get here?"

Mycroft sat up straight, handing the papers he had been reading to Anthea, a keen look on his face, "Approximately 10 hours assuming that's a straight flight."

"Right, I checked." Lestrade smiled now, nodding to himself, "Given how careful they were to obscure her identity, your Mum wouldn't have just booked her on the first available flight out, would she?"

Sherlock's eyes widened, "Of course not," he mused, "Mummy has been ever so careful to keep Sherrinford hidden. No, she'd not choose a domestic flight – too many unknowns there. She'd need a flight she could guarantee – private or government. Government flight, I should think, given what she was – she'd have all the contacts she'd need for that. She'd have to be careful; she'd need to do it without Mycroft or Anthea being alerted. With the whole Moriarty broadcast, everything was being watched, there's no way she could arrange that sort of flight that quickly without attracting attention. She'd need a two, possibly three days."

Greg Lestrade sat forward in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees, "Exactly. That means that Sherrin was back in England before that Moriarty's stunt hit British airwaves."

Mycroft scoffed, gesturing vaguely with one hand, "You're not suggesting that Mummy is behind this."

"And you call yourself the smart one," Lestrade countered, "No, I think Moriarty's behind it all. Start to finish, it's always been Moriarty." When Mycroft went to speak, Lestrade said simply, "Back when the Moriarty thing was coming to a head, one thing always bothered me. He was a genius, a right proper evil bastard. A genius – he could have done it in a hundred ways that wouldn't have drawn attention. Even if you suppose that Sherlock was his target, it'd have been better served as a janitor – they go everywhere, have access to everything. No, he chose IT for a reason."

Sherlock's eyes fluttered closed as he sighed, "Of course, this was never about his autopsy, it was about hers." He turned to Mycroft and explained, "St. Bart's is a teaching hospital, they don't transfer data every so many years and delete it – so he joined IT and when he discovered he couldn't get what he wanted that way, he tried to charm his way to a pathologist."

"He was IT," Mycroft countered, "He was a genius with computers. He should have been able to located it on the servers."

"Nope," Sherlock said, enunciating the word carefully, "You'd think so except that about six years back, an enterprising student decided to engage in a little identity theft and made a fortune. Gave St. Bart's a bit of a black eye - all the autopsy reports and death certificates were relocated to a special server and it's in a room just outside the pathology lab."

Lestrade nodded, "Which explains why they tried to take Molly – any pathologist would have done. Our girl just happened to be on shift, bad luck for him - great luck for us."

Anthea rose, moving into the kitchen from which she returned with a mug and a plate of biscuits. Stepping over to Lestrade, she handed him cup and plate, patting him on the shoulder before sitting back down at her laptop. There she resumed typing, only to stop when she realized they were all staring at her. "What?" she demanded, "He earned that biscuit. He answered the one question and now we have a new one."

"And that is?" Mycroft asked.

"Why is he looking for a woman who's been dead for fourteen years?"

Notes:

The song for this chapter is Just the Way It Is by the Rembrandts. As always, thanks go to HeayPuckett for her work as beta, muse and cheerleader.