Author's Note: Hi guys, how's it going? Thanks for the wonderful feedback last chapter. I really enjoy you all theorising about what's going on in Mycroft's head – like I love it. I really love reading peoples thoughts. As for this chapter… It was one of those ones where it was like "It kind of has to happen now, doesn't it?" Because let's face it, her clothes are getting uncomfortable and time is moving and I couldn't just not do this chapter…. I'm really not as articulate when I type normally as opposed to fiction writing, am I? You should read my academic writing – it's a whole different person again. Anyway… I really hope you like it. 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 People Noticed She Was Pregnant

It started mostly with older secretaries. Women who have had a child or two or three in their lifetime and know what a pregnant woman looks like, even one trying to conceal her growing bump. Maybe even especially one trying to conceal her growing bump.

She'd go to offices with Mycroft and do the usual stand around on her phone while waiting for him to finish his business. The secretaries would ask her if she needed to sit down. Anthea would blink, give them a vacant smile and say no thank you.

"You're ankles aren't swelling yet?" One woman who looked in her sixties that Anthea had known since she started this job had said with a knowing smile. "Pretty soon you'll be taking an opportunity you can to sit." Anthea kept her vacant smile on her face and turned back to her phone. She said nothing, not wanting to confirm or deny it. The secretary had dropped it then. She knew Mycroft Holmes' no named assistant better than to push. She was a sweet woman but Anthea has had to chew her out at least three times over the years for prying or for not being organised.

Then the impromptu meeting had begun to stretch and take longer than expected. A ten minute visit was about to reach thirty minutes transforming it into an extended meeting and Anthea was beginning to feel it. The world had begun to shake around her a little and the light that fell onto objects gave them a strange patchy grow. Anthea closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, hoping to clear her brain, or sight, or whatever. Feeling dizzy on her feet for too long wasn't a problem on weekends and days off but on work days it was happening increasingly.

"You should sit down." Anthea heard the secretary's voice. She opened her eyes to find the woman looking at her from her desk. Her eyebrows were raised in concern but again she knew better than to fuss over the shadowy woman in front of her, possibly pregnant or not. Anthea took in a hitched breath as she thought of dismissing the woman again but her desk appeared to be moving in Anthea's sight. So Anthea silently nodded and moved herself over to one of the two small blue armchairs in the room. She lowered herself slowly into in, taking in a deep breath as she finally sat down. "You need something sugary to eat." The older woman said. She stood up from her desk. "I think I have half a bar of chocolate in the fridge, I'll get it for you." Once again Anthea was going to argue. She was going to say something to the woman about not being fragile and did she look like she needed help doing anything? Then she found she didn't have the mental energy.

"Thanks." Anthea murmured as the woman disappeared into the kitchenette door across from Anthea.

The woman came back into the room and handed Anthea half a Kit Kat still in its wrapper. Anthea took it gingerly.

"Thank you." She said quietly again as she took it.

"You're welcome." The woman said. Anthea snapped off one of the bars and bit into it as the woman sat down at her desk once more. "You can still be intimidating and look after yourself." She offered the advice to Anthea with her smile in place. Anthea lowered her head and tried not to laugh but a single scoff like noise escaped her lips. Was she so transparent? I guess when these people had known her so long they know her motivations. Anthea looked back up with a coy smile.

"Maybe a man can." Anthea teased. The woman exhaled through her nose shakily in a silent giggle. Trying to hide her merriment the woman looked like a twisted version of the Cheshire Cat.

"Any man worth his weight knows a woman isn't worth angering." She said. Anthea's smile grew as she took another bite of the Kit Kat.

"Any woman worth her weight isn't worth angering, you mean." She added once she'd swallowed her mouthful of chocolate. The woman's cat like grin came out in full force.

The next was an American CIA agent, much to Anthea's chagrin. Despite Mycroft's wonderful relationship with the American agencies, especially the CIA, Anthea had quite the contentious relationships with them. They had started off on the wrong foot and it had never improved. Naturally then she was anything but delighted when she was sent with a flash drive to the CIA plane on the tarmac to deliver the information before the Americans returned home. If they weren't leaving within the hour Anthea would have taken her time just to spite them.

Anthea boarded the plane, exchanged some pleasantries necessary for Mycroft's sake and handed over the flash drive. The man pocketed it and then patted his breast pocket like it now held a treasured family heirloom. Anthea rolled her eyes. The man looked at her and cleared her throat.

"Wouldn't expect them to send a lady in your condition to deal with us." The agent said. Anthea looked sharply into his eyes. "I think they would send Carol or someone who can protect themselves." Anthea scoffed and sneered at the man.

"Don't flatter yourself." She hissed. "I haven't seen you in two years, I've put on weight." The man's face dropped. He didn't apologise but he didn't have to by how red his face turned.

Anthea walked out of the plane with the darkest simper on her face.

The next one was a fleeting moment. Had Anthea been looking away she would have missed it entirely.

Mycroft was in a meeting with Lady Smallwood. When the door to the inner sanctum crack open, indicating her departure, Anthea stood up to politely say goodbye to her. She was their greatest ally when it came to the Rudy problem so they were doing all they could to keep her happy. Showing extra respect was a good subtle way to do this.

"Are you leaving now?" Anthea asked as both the Lady and Mycroft emerged from the door.

"Yes I am." She said as she turned to talk to Anthea as she spoke to her. Then she looked at Anthea's loose fitting clothes, an uncommon choice of clothing. Then she looked at Mycroft. Mycroft immediate looked to the group and pushed his lips together. She continued to watch Mycroft for at least ten more seconds. She knew, and Mycroft had revealed way too much information than he should have just by avoiding her gaze. Anthea carefully held onto her pleasant expression.

"It was nice to see you again." Anthea said, hoping to pull Lady Smallwood's attention back to topic. It worked at least a little. She looked at Anthea's abdomen before looking up at Anthea's face.

"I already thanked Mycroft for his time and I should thank you too, given how you are both too busy to organise such quick conferences with the rest of our mutual colleagues." It wasn't spiteful. It was more like someone who was in on the joke and enjoying. Anthea crinkled her nose.

"We appreciate our friends here." The personal assistant said. The Lady cracked a small smile at Anthea.

"May I walk you out, Alicia?" Mycroft stepped forward, outstretching on arm towards the door. He was trying to get her out. She knew he was, but she let him anyway.

"Thank you Mycroft." She said. The genius hurriedly escorted her out of the room. Anthea sat back down in a bit of a cold sweat.

She knew she had to tell them at some point. It wasn't written as a rule anywhere but the etiquette would be to make a small announcement. She didn't expect to do it this way. Anthea was called down to bring a missing file down to the P-A-L-L meeting currently taking place downstairs. Just P-A-L-L, no James, and certainly no Rudy. So she found the file and headed down with haste.

She entered the meeting room silently and discretely handed to file to Mycroft. He looked up at her and smile fleetingly and falsely as he took it.

"While you're here Miss," Porlock spoke to Anthea, catching her by surprise. She was usually allowed to slip in and out like a spectre. Anthea looked at him, blank faced. "We have a question or two, do you mind?" He asked. All four members of the powerful group had matching neutral faces. Anthea looked at Mycroft hoping for some sign of what she should do. He tilted his head faintly and nodded. Anthea swallowed nothing and nodded at Porlock.

"I don't mind." She said. She straightened her clothes and pulled her jacket closer to her as she walked around the meeting table to be within line of sight for all four of them. They all had their hands folded together on the desk. It could unnerve the best of them.

"We would like to give you an opportunity to make an announcement before we ask you for the information." Porlock continued to speak. How had he been chosen to be the interrogator? Had they planned this? Had Mycroft said nothing to them that might make this unnecessary? She looked at him again. He had his work expression on and all walls and barriers were up. A quick scan of the group showed that only the Lady of the group showed any sign of being empathetic of the situation they had shoved Anthea in – you could tell by the pained expression in her eyes when Porluck spoke. Anthea cocked her head to the side and glared at Porlock.

"Are you asking me if I'm pregnant?" She asked darkly. "Is this really all legal?" Though she knew this group well enough to know that legality was not an issue. None of them had an answer for her. They continued to watch her. So Anthea rolled her eyes and huffed. "Yes, I am." She said, placing her own mask over her face. "And I've already informed my employer, which isn't three of the four of you, so really I didn't have to tell you that." Despite her warning tones Porlock relaxed into his chair. Langdale frowned and looked over to Mycroft as if trying to put puzzle pieces together even though two or three were missing. Lady Smallwood tried to veil her sympathetic look over at Mycroft but Anthea could see through it. So no. He had done nothing to stop this happening. It seemed to her that Love knew what was going on, of course she did she was the one who had outright told Anthea she knew about the relationship which means she'd probably worked out that they were back together. Langdale was clearly missing pieces but had his suspicions. Porlock made it unclear if he knew or not, but either way he did not seem to mind.

"May I ask…?" Langdale began, turning from Mycroft to Anthea.

"No." Anthea glared at him, knowing he was about to ask about the child's paternity. "My personal life is of no importance to you. Did you not get that by the assumed identity?" Mycroft looked down and scratched the side of his nose. He was most likely stopping himself from expressing any enjoyment or amusement he got from the exchange.

"Instead," Porlock leaned forward once more. "Allow me to offer congratulations on behalf of all of us." He smiled. It was their practiced fake smile, but it was a smile. "Being a parent is one of the greatest things to happen to me and I am sure you'll agree with me." Anthea's defences lowered a little, as did her posture as she exhaled.

"Thank you." She accepted the words graciously.

"Will you be returning to work afterwards?" Lady Smallwood asked.

"Of course." Anthea immediately answered. "I love my job, even if I have to cut down my hours a little."

"I'm sure your employer will be accommodating." The Lady's spoke with the smile she was hiding, as if in on a secret.

"We'll discuss it later." Mycroft, ice walls still in place, answered stonily, flicking his wrist in a way to wave off the topic. Anthea felt cold water run down her spine. He had no intention of telling them, did he? Was he making an extra show to act disinterested in front of them? Who was he proving the point to? It didn't matter who, it rubbed Anthea the wrong way. She was in no mind to deal with his hot and cold behaviour right now and this whole mess was nothing but arctic.

"May I leave now?" Anthea asked the group in a cool tones to match this group's general outwards appearances. They all looked to one another and then in unison looked at Anthea.

"You may." Mycroft answered.

"Thank you." Anthea barked bitterly and walked out of the room.

Mycroft had been making such progress and then he goes and does something like that. He had no intentions of telling them himself that he was going to have a child. Perhaps those were his true feelings and she was seeing into some of his behaviour. Either way she hated to be left out in the cold by herself like that.

Anthea verbally jumped on Mycroft the moment he stepped back into the office. Call it pregnancy hormones but she had been sitting at her desk stewing in the negative feelings. She had her arms crossed, leaning on her desk, glaring at the genius at the door.

"You don't plan to tell them it's yours, do you?" She jeered. Mycroft scoffed as he put his umbrella in the stand.

"No." He said. "Why should I?" She could that he was reconstructing some of his mental walls right in front of her to mentally protect himself from his blasted feelings.

"I don't know." Anthea hummed sarcastically. "Maybe because I might have to bring in my baby one day and it's probably going to look a bit like you."

"Let them think what they want." Mycroft's lip lifted in a small snarl of derision. "I couldn't care less."

"Yeah, I'm really starting to understand that about you." Anthea nodded vigorously. Steel eyes clasped onto her.

"What?" He asked in disbelief. Anthea shrugged.

"Let people think what they want." She repeated. "You're good at stringing people along." Mycroft took a deep breath and he looked away with exasperation.

"Anthea." He breathed. "You're not people." Anthea shrugged again but this time with a little less energy.

"Then I don't know why you'd let me take all that. You could have just said your assistant was pregnant and not presented me to the stone face brigade."

"There a certain ways we do things." He said, stepping forward. "I've rebuilt a great deal of the trust they have in me by showing them what a disaster it is without me. I can't argue and throw my influence around until I make sure I have that control firmly back in my grasp." Anthea sighed. She lowered her head and rubbed her forehead. What annoyed her right now was that was totally understandable to her. She had become so completely involved in this dark twisted world that that explanation made a lot of sense. She knew the power struggles and games and knew how Mycroft operated. She knew the Ice Man lived here and not the man she truly cared for. Alice didn't live here either, or rather she normally wouldn't.

"Yeah…" She nodded. She looked up and nodded again. "Okay. I get it." She rolled her eyes.

"And yet you're still radiating with annoyance." Mycroft looked her carefully in her eyes. Anthea licked her lips and looked at her computer screen, unable to hold those icy eyes.

"I just need to not talk to you unless it's about work for a few hours." She spoke to her screen. "It'll let me think I'm punishing you but give me time to accept that I know that's a good excuse."

"I don't understand." Mycroft hummed.

"I don't either, but it's what I want to do." Anthea still spoke to her screen.

"Alright then…" Mycroft hummed in confusion, slowly turning and walking towards his door. "Please let my next meeting right in." He said before disappearing into the inner sanctum.

Oh God, were they both insane? Wasn't she supposed to be the sane one?

Mycroft used the rarely touched intercom to request Anthea to come into his office. Since she was requested she didn't knock, she just let herself in. As expected Mycroft was waiting for her. He wore a far more pleasant expression on his face now than he had at the meeting with P-A-L-L.

"Yes, sir?" Anthea asked not far from the doorway.

"Please," Mycroft gestured to her usual seat with an open palm. "Have a seat." Anthea did so. She crossed her ankles and tucked them in under the chair and sat leaning forward. The next person to speak was Mycroft a minute later. "It has been two hours. Two is an accurate representation of a couple." Anthea looked down at her lap and silently laughed. What a Holmes thing to do and say.

"It has been." She looked up with an impish smirk. "And I'm over it." Like she had promised. She scratched the tip of her nose and furrowed her brow. "I still think you could have done something or warned me, but I understand."

"Good." Mycroft nodded in satisfaction. He took a moment to fix the position of the lamp on his desk. Then another moment to move his pen to the top of the desk to lie parallel with the top of a file he had closed in front of him. "Then I believe I should tell you that Lady Smallwood already knew." Mycroft said uncertainly, looking up at Anthea with childlike innocence and concern in those eyes that could be so dark.

"About the baby?" Anthea asked. She pushed her hair out of her face and nodded. "I knew she knew. I could tell when she worked it out the other day."

"No." Mycroft corrected her. His mouth fell into a firm straight line as he chose his next words methodically. "She knew we were back together and by association that the child is mine." Anthea raised her eyebrows. She pouted her lips the way she often did when presented with new information.

"She worked out we were together," Anthea thought out loud. "I'm not surprised she worked out that we got back together too."

"No." Mycroft corrected Anthea again. "I told her, not in a professional disclosure sort of business either. I told her during a personal social interaction." His choice of words were interesting as always but Anthea did not focus on that. She was more surprised to hear he willingly told a colleague.

"Yeah?" Anthea asked. Mycroft nodded. He was looking at his desk again.

"She thought I was single and to make a long story short I told her of our reunion and how very hard I was trying not to let myself lose you again." Mycroft grimaced.

She had thought he was single? Anthea had missed that. Had she… hit on him? The woman should know him better than that. If she had then it hadn't affected her behaviour to or professional feelings for Mycroft and Anthea. A bit like when James had hit on Anthea when she was dating Tim. It was probably very similar to that, except with a confused asexual.

"It was not my finest moment," Mycroft continued. "But I'd had two or three double scotches at that point so I can at least partially blame that for my loose tongue." Mycroft had confided in someone? He had told someone that he was afraid of messing up again? Anthea leaned back in the chair. "Once again skipping to an integral part, she brought up a charity event where we were placed next to her and her late husband years ago. Apparently he was smitten by you. He told Alicia that if I ever got my head out of the theoretical world and focused on reality that you could be good for me." Mycroft raised a single eyebrow in amusement. "She said she wished she could tell him he was right." That comment from a widow was enough to make Anthea's hormonal heart ache. She couldn't empathise in the exact same way but she knew what it felt like to want to tell a departed loved one what happened or something they'd love to know. That never went away, even when the pain did there would always be so much you wanted to say to them.

"So… that's why she gave you that look in the meeting." Anthea talked softly. Mycroft looked up finally and also leaned back in his seat.

"She has known me long enough to know what my reaction might have been to the news." He hummed.

"Someone who knows you for five minutes knows that." Anthea scoffed.

"Nevertheless." Mycroft didn't even react to her words, he was still looking at her seriously. "I'm not hiding you or…. It. I'm playing the game I was groomed to play and I'm keeping my cards to my chest. Your real identity only exists to those you trust and my personal life only exists to the people I trust." Anthea thought of how she didn't know where Mycroft lived for quite a while when she first started working for him and how she had to drag it out of Walter in an emergency. She thought of suddenly one day she was asked to help with his brother when she had previously known nothing about the drug addiction or anything. Once she was trusted she was allowed into the real inner sanctum.

"I think you're paranoid and ridiculous." Anthea admitted to her boss and father of her child. "I still think you didn't have to play your game so well today." She continued. "But I really do understand where you're coming from and I respect it." She leaned forward and placed her hand on the desk, reaching as close to him as she could. Mycroft watched as she did this. "And thank you for choosing me to see all your cards." Mycroft placed his hand on top of hers. He stroked her fingers with his thumb and took a deep breath.

"I'd rather you apologise for dealing me two of the most difficult cards I could have ever been given." He said softly. Anthea crinkled up her nose.

"Not going to happen." She whispered playfully. "Sorry, sir."

Author's Note: How was it? Okay? I really hope so as I think I liked it as I wrote it… If that makes sense. Thanks to our guest reviewers; Singing Ferret, Othelia, and Guest. Thanks to all of you for being amazing and spending even a second on my silly little fanfic. I'll see you in five days!

Oh! And also! I was talking on Tumblr about doing a reader devised chapter – like a group devised performance with an auteur writing it down in a coherent form. So what they came up was that they want to see a chapter with the work people in it and for some reason they all want to see Mycroft and James train together – if Myc can be bothered :P. So now it's your guy's turn. Do you want to add ideas or how I'm supposed to make this happen? Because I'm not writing it until we all have something that makes sense so there might be quite a few chapters between it and now. I don't know… I just really want to include you guys in a thing. I want to let you all know how much I appreciate you.