"Go to bed. You must be tired."

Sher slept through the entire day and the following night. It was a haunted sleep, after she woke up entirely, Mycroft told her she woke up several times. She couldn't remember any of it, but she knew he was there all along, judging by the black circles under his eyes and the troubled look they had. She knew he called down the fears she couldn't recall now. And she knew he must be tired.

"It will be good for you, Mycroft. You should really get some sleep." She said, trying again to convince him to sleep.

"I can't." He said, and she could hear in his voice all he didn't say, all the reasons he couldn't sleep, he probably hadn't slept since that dinner at the seafood restaurant.

"I'll be fine." She said. "I'm with Sherlock, and John will come over soon as well."

"Are you okay?" He asked, changing the subject abruptly.

"Well, I can still tell you that four hundred and forty eight times four hundred and forty seven is two hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty six." Sher said, intentionally ignoring his question.

"That is not what I asked." Mycroft replied.

"I know," she sighed, "but I'm not yet ready to answer the question you asked. Is that fine?"

Mycroft smiled a sad smile at her. "Nothing you will say or do could ever be anything other than fine, Dear. I thought you know that."

Sher hadn't replied to this note of his. Instead, she got out of the bed, grabbed his hand and forced him onto it, even though he only got as far as sitting. "Go to sleep." She said. "When you get up, we'll have the time to talk of anything you'd like."

She watched him as he drifted into sleep, and an old memory popped not her mind. She was seven, maybe eight, and her mother was under the influence. She knew that if Mycroft found out, they'd have to move, and she didn't want to. It was in a small town in the Netherlands, they've been there for nearly a year and it was the longest she could ever recall being anywhere. She started having friends and for the first time in years she finally felt like a regular girl.

So instead of calling the doctor or going to one of her neighbors as she was instructed to do in that situation, Sher held her mother by the arm and led her to bed. When her mom woke up the next morning, she knew nothing of the events of that night, but it stayed in Sher's mind long after the secret was revealed and they moved away.

She never told anyone.

Now, standing in the kitchen and watching Sherlock's miserable attempts to make dinner, Sher remembered the event she was suppressing for a dozen years. She entered the kitchen and took the pan out of Sherlock's hand. A black mark was on it. Judging by the empty shells in the garbage bin, she figured he somehow managed to burn an omelet.

"Have you never cooked?" She asked him.

"I'm not usually hungry." He said. "I only eat when other people make food for themselves."

Sher smiled and opened the fridge.

"Is that a severed head?" She asked.

"An experiment." Sherlock answered.

Sher looked behind it and found some vegetables. She threw away the bad ones and was left with just enough to make a salad. She began cutting it to small pieces, as her mom used to do on her better days.

"How was she like?" Sherlock asked. "Your mother."

Sher focused all her attention at her salad, yet she still answered./

"Don't you remember?" She replied to his question with one of her own.

"I don't remember much of the time I was with her."

"She was... beautiful. Even when she was stoned out, she still looked beautiful."

"But how was she?" He asked again, knowing she intentionally ignored his question.

"She was funny. And smart. She was one of the people who drew all the attention in the room, without trying to." Sher smiled at the memory before the smile turned to a frown. "On her good days. On her bad days... she was not there. She didn't eat anything. She slept for days. Sometimes I came to her room and she just lay there, staring at the ceiling not responding."

Sher stared through the air, seeing something that wasn't there. When Sherlock reached out a hand and touched her shoulder, she jumped and cut her finger. Blood started flowing, staining the table and the vegetables on it.

"Damn, that hurts." She cried out and Sherlock immediately got her a towel.

"Put it on the wound." He said, and disappeared. A moment later he returned with a band aid and a brown bottle. "I'm going to disinfect it, and it's going to hurt, okay?"

She nodded and though she was ready for the pain that was coming, she took a deep breath and suddenly it was all she could think of.

"Let's do math," he said, seeing her pain. "One thousand, three hundred and five times two hundred and thirty six."

Sher thought through the pain, and it was no longer as bad. Soon enough, she was all in the calculation.

"Three hundred and seven thousand," she said slowly, "nine hundred and eighty." She looked up and saw Sherlock cleaning the table.

"Let's just assume you're right, shall we?" He asked.

She looked at her hand, no longer bleeding. She then looked at the vegetables Sherlock was throwing away.

"I guess its takeaway night." He said, and Sher burst into laughter.