Author's Note: Hi guys! Thanks for understanding that I needed that time. Almost immediately I got so much work done. I needed that and it was so highly appreciated. I only have one assignment left to do now before exam study and it's only 1000 words long so it shouldn't be bad. Thanks for the nice reviews on the chapter, too. I didn't expect this chapter to be as long as it is but things just happen sometimes. Please read, review, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: Clearly I don't own Sherlock. The show is the baby of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, while Sherlock Holmes itself is the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle.

The First Time They Bought Hope A Birthday Present

Hope's birthday was coming up. That beautiful being of sunshine and love was about to be one year old. While it was exciting to be around for someone you love's first birthday it also came with the pressure of buying the first birthday present.

The first thought that came to your head was what kind of present to get? A first present was difficult. You could get something the child will enjoy now, something they won't enjoy until later, or something for the parents. If buying something for the baby it comes with added problem of it being something that the kid loves but maybe annoys parents to no end. You always hear stories of movies played repeatedly or loud toys that never stop getting played with. Furbies come to mind. Then there was also the fact that you were setting a precedent for all other presents to come. This would set whether Aunt Ali and (Uncle) Mycroft bought cool presents or boring presents. If the bought something that would make James and Jamie's life easier they might be shunted into that category for the rest of their lives.

Rosie's birthday had come and gone but Rosie had been easier. Since she was Sherlock's god daughter there was a level of distance between her and Mycroft and Anthea so that their presents weren't expected but appreciated. Anthea and Mycroft had decided, based on Sherlock and John's money, to give John a rather extravagant gift certificate to a really nice baby/child clothes store. John vehemently refused it and tried to give it back to them but they were better at refusals. Mycroft took and just resent it to John in the mail. They later got a thank you when John finally accepted. It would save John a lot of money and Mycroft was good to people who were good to him.

James was good to him but more importantly, Jamie was Anthea's dearest friend. Hope was her niece, her godchild. She was for a while the closest thing Anthea was going to have to a child in her life. This kid was important and a good precedent had to be set.

Whether Mycroft wanted to or not, Anthea had sequestered his help in this endeavour. In fact he most markedly did not want to do this and did make an audible groan but that was the only complaint he verbalised. He knew better than to argue. He'd long learned that fighting it would only make it worse. Naturally they weren't actually going to go to shops to get it. Mycroft was looking online and was going to send people to get what they chose regardless of how difficult it might be.

"So… something practical?" Mycroft asked. His laptop was on the coffee table and he was leaning forward to scroll through pages upon pages of toys. Mycroft sounded bored out of his mind but Anthea was used to that. She nodded.

"But fun, too." She added. Mycroft breath hitched and his hands paused before he let out a pained sigh and continued. "I'm trying to set a –"

"Precedence, I know." Mycroft muttered to the women sitting next to him who was practically leaning over his shoulder to see the screen. Mycroft clicked on the next page. "My Uncle had no precedence. One year I got a set of encyclopaedias, the next I got clothes I would never where." Anthea pursed her lips to stop from smiling.

"Yeah, but your uncle also hid your sister's existence from you and turned up to Christmas forgetting to wash his wife's make up from the night before off." She playfully looked down her nose at Mycroft. The man's nose twitched.

"He wasn't boring." He replied. "That's all I'm saying." Anthea laughed and ran her hand through his hair lovingly. His eyes blinked in surprise but he didn't flinch.

They came across a page full of dolls. Some of them were maybe a bit too old – like Barbies with tiny parts that shouldn't be around babies and toddlers – but some were soft and more suited to toddler play.

"What about a doll?" Anthea said. She leaned over and pointed to specific one that had looked like a Raggedy Ann styled doll. "Girls have dolls and I don't think Hope has something she loves like Patches." Already Patches was a sentient being in the house. Mycroft did his best to stop himself from scowling but his lips did press together. Prompting Anthea to respond with "What is it?"

"You're right." He said. "Girls have dolls." Anthea sat back to get a better look at Mycroft's face as she listened. "We shouldn't be forcing gender roles onto her." Anthea gave him a long look over.

"Are you telling me," She began slowly. "That I'm not allowed to buy my niece anything related to being a girl?"

"Of course I'm not." Mycroft rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying that until she demonstrates interest in such things we should encourage other behaviours. I'm sure she gets enough of that from her mother."

"And I'm sure James treats her like a boy enough, too." Anthea retorted. Mycroft closed his eyes for a second.

"They can do whatever they want."

A pause.

Anthea folded her arms across her chest.

"If you think I'm not buying Margot girls toys you're out of your mind." She said. Mycroft nodded.

"No, I wouldn't stop you. With our own daughter we can buy her a doll one week and… what's something masculine?" Anthea rubbed her forehead.

"A car?" She answered lowering her hand to her lap heavily.

"A toy car the next week." Anthea shrugged. It made sense and she didn't want to argue about it right now. It was sweet he cared about such things anyway.

"Fine. No doll." She said. Mycroft breathed through his nose and looked at Anthea like she wasn't quite understanding his point. She was agreeing with him, wasn't that enough? He was used to people not understanding his point.

They returned to scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. They tried a few different store sites. Anthea and Mycroft as a pair took everything very serious. If they were going to do something they were going to do it well.

"Oh!" Anthea peeped up. She looked at all the different playdoh related toys that had appeared on the page. "Playdoh!" She looked at Mycroft. "She's getting about the right age to play with that..? Supervised… right?" Mycroft looked baffled and shrugged. This is when being an older sibling was supposed to come in handy but to be fair he probably had no clue what a non-genius baby development looked like.

"I suppose…" Mycroft murmured.

"Let's get one of these big playdoh activity sets! All little kids dream of those." For once she was feeling like a mum that actually understood kids. Mycroft pursed his lips and hummed.

"It encourages creativity and exploration." He said. "I think it's suitable." He said.

"Then let's get it." Anthea said. They exchanged a quietly proud look before choosing one of the models. And then Mycroft leaned back.

"But given our financials, is it enough?" He asked. Anthea tucked a curl behind her ear. "I technically spent more on Rosamund." Anthea bit her bottom lip. That was something to think about…

"Should we get something else then?" She asked. Mycroft sighed – tired and almost annoyed at himself for pointing this out – and nodded.

They went back to searching.

As they searched they came across a great many toddler toys. Some of them they considered – like one of those things that changed shape as the baby's skill at walking developed (Anthea had no clue what they were or if they had a name) – but overall none of them felt appropriate for a memorable gift. That would be forgotten by the time she was three.

There were older toys and stuff too, stuff she would appreciate later like musical related things. Mini keyboards and glockenspiels were put in the 'maybe' pile. There was a dress up box that came into serious consideration but when they decided it could be replaced with a nice blanket box or something that blended in better with adult furnishing they decided against it. James and Jamie's house was nice, it didn't need to be too kid-ified.

At one point Mycroft scrolled past a beautiful dolls house. It was one of those double storied Victorian looking masterpieces that opened from the front to reveal all of the rooms. The ones that all little girls were jealous of. Anthea wasn't even that into dolls – preferring to make belief in books and in playing games with real people – and she was always a little envious when she saw them. She never told her mum she liked them, of course. It was one of those things that went so against your character that you were even embarrassed to tell your parents so you went on longing in silence. So when she saw one on the page Anthea inhaled sharply.

"What?" Mycroft said. Anthea hadn't even noticed her breath was audible. She pursed her lips and shook her head once.

"Nothing."

Gender roles.

Mycroft kept scrolling.

Eventually they came across a brightly coloured small table labelled 'activity table'. It had two matching tiny sized chairs to go with it. On each side was a hidden compartment or tray to put crayons, markers, paints in, and all those sorts of things. Paper, scissors, anything for the child's chosen activities. Anthea scratched the tip of her very nose and hummed thoughtfully. Mycroft nodded as if he knew exactly what that hum meant.

"It's certainly nothing inspired but does go well with the current gift." Mycroft thought out loud. "An activity and a specific location to do the activity on, keeping James and Jamie's house relatively clean with such a messy task."

"And it's good for other things like drawing and painting. We'd been encouraging learning which is your shtick." Anthea said. Mycroft's brows furrowed. He gave Anthea an accusatory look.

"Being a genius means that encouraging learning is my shtick?" Mycroft sneered the last words. Anthea, nose crinkled and grinning, nodded. "I'd think not abiding stupidity was closer to my shtick." He said. Anthea laughed with her whole being.

"And that's why encouraging the girls to learn is an extension to that." She explained joyously. Mycroft's eyebrow climbed up his forehead.

"The girls?" He repeated her choice of words slowly and carefully.

"Rosie, Hope, and Margot." Anthea explained slowly, for once talking to Mycroft like he was the idiot. He rolled those lovely deep blue eyes of his looking positively fed up.

"Remind me why I'm still here, again? When I had a chance to get away from all this?" He said. Anthea, still very much enjoying this, lightly pushed Mycroft. He let her push affect him more than it normally would, slouching against the side of the couch.

"Are we getting the table or not?" She said.

"Obviously." Mycroft retorted. Anthea scoffed and pushed him again. They both smiled.

Mycroft came home from work the next day just as Anthea had finished feeding Margot. He appeared in their daughter's doorway while Anthea was still sitting in the rocking chair holding Margot. He leaned his shoulder against the doorway and watched Anthea and Margot with that look of contemplation.

"Hi, Daddy." Anthea said. She was stroking Margot's little head. The dear little baby was fighting the urge to fall asleep and Anthea was trying to encourage it. Mycroft looked down to his feet and cleared his throat. He was probably trying to stop himself from smiling which is why when he looked back up he still had that contemplative look plastered on. "Are you just here to watch?" Anthea teased. Mycroft rested the side of his head against the doorway.

"While at work today I was thinking about somethings you said." He mused. Anthea crinkled her nose. She says a lot of things.

"You're going to have to be more specific." She said.

"Two things." Mycroft said and then paused as if that alone was some sort of clarification. Anthea rose her eyebrows, silently asking for more. "How you wish to, for lack of a better word, spoil your niece on her birthdays and you wish to start that now." Mycroft looked at his fingernails which lead to noticing his sleeves weren't even and he tugged on them.

Margot made a babbling noise and Anthea gasped at her like she said something scandalous. Mycroft's mouth twitched into a half smile.

"I considered our gifts and while they are substantial to a child it might not be magnificent enough to be 'spoil' worthy." Mycroft continued. Anthea thought the same; a table isn't really exciting. It was a table. James and Jamie might consider it too much but it's won't light up Hope's eyes. Yet… Anthea shrugged.

"It's a baby. It's hard. We don't get babies." She offered a lopsided smile.

Margot cooed. She was reminding Anthea that she did in fact get babies enough to have one now. Anthea liked to think of it as learning on the job.

"Sorry 'Got, its true." She said. Margot's blue eyes blinked innocently. Anthea resisted the urge to chuckle and just stroked her head again. Mycroft made a conscious effort to ignore the nickname and only give a few affronted blinks.

"While that is indeed true, my dear," He said. "I was also thinking about what you said about large doll houses." Anthea nodded. "Now that would be memorable for perhaps all of Hope's childhood." It was funny how disconnected he could sound even talking about such a personal thing. Anthea started to see that this was a long road for what could be a short trip.

"What are you trying to tell me, Mycroft?" She said. Mycroft pressed his hands together, watching them carefully as he next spoke.

"I bought the doll house." He said only faintly regretful.

Anthea's initial reaction was excitement. She sat tall in the rocking chair and her eyes light up – like they wanted for the birthday girl herself. That Hope was getting that doll house was like a childhood dream of Anthea's fulfilled vicariously. She would love it. Jamie would love it. It would be in her room for years and years and her mum and dad would tell her who gave it to her. Anthea loved that idea. It strengthened the bond between Jamie's family and Anthea. It was great. It made Anthea quite blissful actually.

And then she remembered who bought it and why. It wasn't from any sort of pressure from Anthea. Mr. Gender roles had gone and bought this all on his own with no further discussion on the topic. Why? Because Anthea wanted to. Yeah, okay, that might have a bit of an effect. But what was more important was that he also wanted to start a tradition of buying Hope great presents. He hated birthdays, particularly his own, and he wouldn't give anyone out of his loved ones the time of day on their birthdays. So what was it?

Anthea began laughing quietly. Sleepy Margot's attention was caught by her mother laughing silently above her smiling from ear to ear. The baby found it fascinating. Mycroft on the other hand did not. His brows furrowed and he grew cold.

"What?" He demanded from the door. Anthea looked at him with loving (and highly amused) eyes, warmth radiating from her and keeping the cold at bay.

"You love Hope." She said fondly. Mycroft's brow furrowed deeper.

"I wouldn't go that far." He quarrelled. Anthea hummed in disagreement, shaking her head.

"You totally do."

"No." Mycroft squared his shoulders. "I love you and therefore care for her."

"No." Anthea sung. "You love me and you like James so you care for Jamie." She tilted her head. "You love Hope." Mycroft rolled his eyes and kept them on the roof.

"Alice, she's simply my daughter's cousin."

"This began before Margot was born." Anthea corrected further. "You love Hope like Sherlock loves Rosie." Mycroft scoffed.

"Now that is too far, my dear." He held his index finger up. "I don't think I love anyone as much as Sherlock loves Rosamund."

A pause.

Anthea smirked.

"Really?" She asked sarcastically. Mycroft held her eyes and she could see hesitation in those steel orbs. The walls were melting from her warmth. Then those blue orbs drifted down to the baby in Anthea's arms.

Mycroft stormed down the hallway.

Anthea laughed hard.

Margot thought it was amazing and reached out to try and touch her mother's smile.

Author's Note: What did you think? I liked it because it was one of those times I got to elaborate on something mentioned briefly on Anthea's blog years ago. Our dear little J^2 baby is almost one. Her birthday will be next chapter. Let me know what you thought of this chapter. Thanks to the guest reviewers last chapter; Marie, and Observant Potato. Thanks to all my reviewers. I expect the next chapter to take the standard 5 days but in case this last assignment does distract me then it'll be 6 at the most!