Archive of Our Own

Work Text

This is a list of characters who are referenced and appear in this story.

Brittanus, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: They/Them, Title: Khan, Speciality: , Description: 1st generation augment. Created by the British government. A Khan.

Chin Singh, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Alpha, Title: , Speciality: , Description: Pretended to Soo-lin Yao onboard the Bakerstreet for reasons. Has a pleasant Alpha scent. Works for the 23rd Alignment of the Breen.

Dr. Saxon, Race: Human, Beta, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: Doctor, Speciality: Genetics, Description: Head of the British Augument program. Mycroft's father.

Euros, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Title: , Speciality: , Description: Sherlock's sister. A powerful telepath with genetic material from multiple telepathic races.

Godwin, Race: Human, Beta, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: Sergeant Major, Speciality: Security and training, Description: Head of the British Augment training program

Grendel, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Alpha, Title: , Speciality: , Description: 1st generation augment. Created by the British government.

Harry Watson, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Alpha, Title: , Speciality: Actor, Description: John Watson's twin. Originally, an Omega, but as a young teen she took illegal (as in they were not prescribed by a doctor) supplements to switch to an Alpha and chose to identify as female.

Johanna Marcus, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Title: Doctor, Speciality: Physics, Description: Grand-daughter of Carol Marcus, daughter of David Marcus.

John Watson, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Omega, Title: Cadet, Doctor, Civilian, Captain, Speciality: Medicine, Description: One of our main characters. Child of a theater family. Can trace his augmentations to 3 nation states: British, India, and America. Wants to be a doctor as a result of childhood illnesses and his father's stories about problems in the colony worlds. Same stories influenced his desire to join Starfleet. Has a naturally attractive scent. Is married to Sherlock.

Kuvalaas, Race: Klingon, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: , Speciality: Engineer, Description: Father killed by Romulans. Works at a shipyard making ships with Stonn.

Lwaxana Troi, Race: Betazed, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Title: Ambassador, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed", Speciality: , Description:

M'Kalla, Race: Caitan, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: Cadet, Speciality: Not stated, Description: Shared a coital encounter with John Watson and quit starfleet to become a poet thereafter.

M'Press, Race: Caitan, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: , Speciality: Security, Description:

Martha Hudson, Race: Betazed, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Title: Lt. Cmdr, 1st officer, Speciality: Mechanical Eng, Description: Plays up being sweet old thing, but actually quite dangerous. Was an instructor at Starfleet Academy and was pulled back into active service after the Borg/Wolf 359. Formerly a Section 31 agent, but retired to non active status after she went through the Betazed change of life.

Meiying, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Alpha, Title: Khan, Speciality: , Description: 1st generation augment. Created by the American government. Former Khan. Also styled herself Empress of the Americas. Plays musical instruments. Did wetwork as a super soldier for the American government in the 80s.

Mr. Brown, Race: Human, Beta, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: Administrator, Speciality: , Description: Administrator of errr... the Baskerville research facility. Yes, I named 2 things Baskerville.

Mycroft II, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Alpha, Title: , Speciality: , Description: Sherlock's older sibling. Has a pleasantly appealing Alpha scent and a slight greenish tinge to his skin.

Mycroft I, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Omega, Title: , Speciality: , Description: 2nd generation augment. Son of Brittany. Remained on earth when Brittanus left. Joins forces with Anthea, Billy's sister, to form an Augment underground to save Augments from death and slavery. Is a key reason Augments aren't wiped out during WWII.

Noonian Singh, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Alpha, Title: Khan, Speciality: , Description: 1st generation augment. Created by the Indian government. The first Khan, and the reason they use that name, to rise up and seize power.

Sally Donovan, Race: Human, Beta, Sex&Gender: She/Her, Title: Chief Security Officer, Ltd, Speciality: Security, Description: Previously posted on the USS Bozeman and caught in a timeloop for 80 years. Has a family history with Britannus. Her father was Thomas Harewood, who betrayed Starfleet/Section 31 in exchange for a cure for an illness his infant daughter (Sally) was suffering from. Sally's mother changed their names and moved them after everything went down with Britannus. Sally has come to an irascible respect for Sherlock.

Sestre, Race: Vulcan, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: , Speciality: 5 in Below Decks., Description: Son of Stonn and T'Hais. Spends formative years on the Bakerstreet.

Stonn, Race: Vulcan, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: Lieutenant, Speciality: , Description: Pre-Starfleet, worked as an engineer in New Gol Shipyards. His parents were T'Pring (still alive) and Skin (died on Vulcan in this timeline). When Wolf 359 occured, he already had 3 kids (as required by Vulcan law to expand the population), he was able to fulfill a lifelong dream and join Starfleet. His youngest child is a five year old son. He's 120. He remembers when Vulcan died (100 years ago). He was off-planet on a trip with his mother, T'Pring.

Thomas Harewood, Race: Human, Beta, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: , Speciality: , Description: Sally Donovan's fatHer

Trelane, Race: Q, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Title: , Speciality: , Description: Member of the Q continum. Omniscient and Omnipotent. A romantic.

Tristan Iseult, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: not stated, Title: , Speciality: , Description: One of John and Sherlock's kids. Err... one of the ones they raise themselves.

William Scott Sherlock Holmes, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: He/Him, Alpha, Title: Professor, Lt. Cmdr, Cmdr, Speciality: ExoBiology, Space based species, Engineer, really all the things, Description: One of our main characters. Mysterious background. Claims to be from Taurus IV, which suffered a disaster that destroyed their computer infrastructure. Son of the 3 remaining Khans. How 3? Science! Has a pleasantly appealing Alpha scent. Married to John Watson.

Yvain Laudine, Race: Human, Augment, Sex&Gender: not stated, Title: , Speciality: , Description: One of John and Sherlock's kids. Err... one of the ones they raise themselves.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

He did not rewatch the images of the Botany Bay breaking free of the bounds of Earth like a maudlin teen. For one, he'd look perfectly ridiculous in white and black makeup and he had not the inclination to dress all in black. Second, it had been a long time since he'd been the Gothically inclined teen, who watched his mother leave the planet. Their last words an argument over something petty.

He knew all the reasons that Mummy had launched without him. He'd lived through the fall of the empires. Mummy had discussed and planned with him what to do if such a thing occurred. He knew that not a single child of the next generation had been taken.

Those were facts. Rational. Calculating.

He knew the reasons.

"Mummy!" A confusion of motion. A spark of electricity from a metal probe in Mummy's chest. Their body thrashing. Still struggling. Men in black uniforms holding Mummy down, while Doctor Saxon injected Mummy with something (a sedative). His own body being tightly held while he reached and wailed for his mother.

Being lifted and carried away to sit cold, hungry in a overly bright room. Alone.

How it had felt when Mummy came for him. Lifted him up. Held him tight. Ran.

He could list the reasons.

He did not.

Rationally, he understood the odds had been too high. Irrationally, he sometimes wondered if they had simply shot three rockets into space and chosen to disappear. Hid away. Without him.

Perhaps that was why when one of his sources indicated that Mummy had been captured by Colonel Green, he immediately set to burning through any number of resources to reach them before it was too late.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The Bakerstreet's immediate future as space pirates went something like this.

The door closed on the Captain's - Captains' - Who the Fuck Knew - Ready Room and the idiots forgot to turn on the Privacy shielding before having glad you're not dead - back from the dead - possibly a clone of yourself - sex.

Not a problem.

Sort of.

Sally had solved for this problem about six months after the idiots had gotten married. She turned the switch on the Bridge privacy shielding, turned on some classical music, which had Meiying head bobbing and waving her arm around in some sort of obscure hand gesture holding up her thumb, index finger and pinkie.

Elise Watson pursed her lips. "Metallica's S&M, interesting choice."

Hudson said, "Thank you dear, that will be a nice distraction."

Sally herded their guests off the bridge before they started a
sexagenarian
dance party.

She lost track of Holmes' brother, Mycroft, right off. He hared off of the lift to send a communication to Cardassia, which as long as he made sure the provisional Cardassian government didn't turn them in exchange for more systems back, she grudgingly decided that was fine. She had M'Press tail him, but fine.

It did mean that she ended up walking next to the fucking arsehold who'd convinced her father to set off a bomb in Section 31, killing himself and forty other people, and derailed her life, but fine.

Brittanus was older than she'd always imagined. Hell of a lot more lines on their face. Silver hair. In her head, Brittanus remained in their thirties, which made no fucking sense. But there it was.

After some blessed silence, Brittanus fucked it up by saying, "You're Harewood's daughter." They said it as a statement, not a question.

Sally slowed her pace. "How do you know?"

Brittanus' lips curled in a way that was a lot more like Holmes than Sally wanted to admit and said in a plumy if frostbitten tone,  "Shall I list the thirty-one characteristics that you have in common with him?"

Brittanus had the same little twitch Holmes got around his left eye when he got off balance too.

Fuck if she cared if Brittanus was on edge. "Fuck no. He died doing your dirty work before I met him." Donovan lifted her chin.

Meiying came up next to them, still holding that big arse weapon, which was a problem given she was her. "Who the fuck is Harewood?"

"Another ghost," said Brittanus.

Doctor Marcus said in their little corridor cluster, "It was the man who Brittanus convinced to blow up the Kelvin Memorial."

"That was a cover. It was a Section 31 base," added Elise, because she seemed to have swallowed every fact there was to know about the Khans and that had been before she'd realized they were in-laws.  "But that was a hundred years ago. Donovan, did Brittanus call you Harewood's daughter? How is that possible?" She looked annoyed, "How could John not have mentioned that there was another primary source?"

"Okay...for fuck's sake," Meiying turned to Sally. "Is there a bar on this ship or what?"

"No," said Sally repressively. Dourly. No fucking way-ily.

"Well, that's going to have to change right the fuck up," said Meiying. "For now the galley will have to do." Somehow Meiying ended up leading the way to the galley and ordered a round of beer and snacks from the replicators before Sally could round the relatives back up again.

She gave up as Elise and Marcus shoved a few tables together.

To be fair, Sally was a bit off balance herself what with having decided to throw career and life out an airlock.

"Oh, but that's not real beer," protested Elise. "I'm sure John has something real in his and Sherlock's quarters. We could just pop on over and help ourselves."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, we're not raiding our kids' room for alcohol," said Meiying. She took a swig from a brown beer bottle that was dewy with refrigeration. "This tastes better than Coors let me tell you, or..." she shuddered, "Grainbelt. Now that was some skunky ass beer. Okay, now," she pointed the neck of the bottle at Brittanus, "Who was Harewood and what does he have to do with Donny Vannigans here?"

"I believe the answer is evident from what I've already said," said Brittanus, crossing their arms.

"And the name's Donovan. Or Lieutenant Commander," said Sally, before remembering she'd just chucked that last bit. From Meiying's smirk, she hadn't forgotten any of a thing.

Marcus sat down gingerly near Brittanus with a cup of tea and immediately launched into a low voiced discussion of blah, blah physics.

Sally ordered a gin and tonic, because she was going to need something stronger than a beer. Sat down as far away from Brittanus as possible. Drank a mouthful of her drink. Pointed at herself. "I was caught in a time loop for eighty years on the my first assignment in Starfleet, because causality is a bitch. My last name, before my mum had to change it was Harewood, because some bastard," she raised her voice, "convinced my dad to betray everything he believed in and blew up a Starfleet research station. So don't fucking ask me if I want to know how I look like him or anything about him."

She slammed her drink down on the table. Breathing fast. Suddenly hot. Wanting to drag her the mass of curling black hair that she got from her fucking father off her neck.

Elise poured a bottle of beer into a pint glass with a look of distaste. She wrapped both hands around the glass. Presumably to warm it up, because for whatever reason Meiying had ordered ice cold beers.

Meiying leaned back in her chair, shaking the table, causing her beer bottle to topple off the table. Sally caught it before it fell and shattered on the floor.

"Nice reflexes," said Meiying taking the bottle out of Sally's hand in a limber swing of her arm that betrayed her complete control over her chair's tilt. "Your dad traded a cure for your life. You got a little something extra with it. Now you're stuck with a bit of that bastard across the table in you too."

"Yes," ground out Sally.

"Sucks," said Meiying. She tossed a nut at Brittanus, who batted it away without looking away from Marcus. Studiously ignoring them as they weren't fucking there. As if she wasn't fucking furious.

They sat in silence for a long moment. Drinking. Or at the other end of the table, talking physics.

"Hard decision for a parent," said Elise. Sipping her beer thoughtfully. "I'd trade my own life for Harry or John's. That would be easy. But to trade the lives of others. Friends. People I knew." She shook her head. "Hard." Tapped the side of her glass. "Admittedly Section 31, so we'll never know what else they were getting up to. Well, some of us know perfectly well." She slid a look at Brittanus and warmed her beer.

Brittanus sat very stiff in their chair. Suddenly met her eyes. "Your father waited to carry out his end of the agreement until he had confirmation I had carried out mine. That the cure worked. It was, by the way, somewhat more complicated than a simple transfusion. It was necessary to remake certain aspects of your immune system." Brittanus looked so much like Holmes it was uncanny, and yet nothing like him. Holmes would have stormed up and down by this point. Brittanus just sat there. Compressing it all in.

Black holes did that.

"That's not accurate either," said Marcus softly. She looked down at her tea cup held clasped between her hands. "Harewood waited until after he sent my great-grandfather a warning about you." She seemed to find that tea pretty fucking fascinating. "Grandmother talked about it sometimes. She couldn't remember what she'd had for lunch, but she remembered every moment of you killing her father."

Not a lot of question as to who you was in this context.

"We could discuss that," said Brittanus. "Or we can go back to discussing the formula I first postulated while creating weapons for your great-grandfather as he planned to make the first strike in a war with the Klingons." Cold and calm. Like vacuum.

Sally wasn't so angry she couldn't recognize a slap back. Was ready to boil over.

"Sometimes," Meiying tossed a nut in the air and ate it out of the air as it fell with an overdone snap of her jaws, "I think about what would have happened if it had been my ship that Marcus found. Not like I could make weapons. Would I have just gone along with the flow of being what I was made to be? A killer for my government. Any government, because they were forty other programs out there churning us out. Or gone fuck it. Blown us all up the first chance I got. That would have been so fucking punk."

Sally chewed on all that and a handful of nuts, and fuck if her G&T wasn't done for. Seemed the time to get another. Order some pizza along with her next G&T, because if she wasn't getting shite faced, she'd best do it with some grease in her belly.

She'd just put down the lot when Meiying pushed aside her empty beer bottle and opened another with a quick slap against the side of the table.

"Hey," said Sally, who wasn't about to let the galley get trashed by an ancient tyrant.

"Chill. Once we get a bar onboard, we'll be replicating furniture once a night."

"We're not adding a bar," said Sally firmly.

"Did someone say bar?" asked Thompson from Exobio. "Maybe something with wood paneling. Darts. Fake fireplace. Pot of curry going on Sunday mornings for the morning after."

"I said bar, not pub," said Meiying.

"We're not having either," said Sally. She eyed Thompson. "You did hear the announcement that we're taking off with the ship, right? Dropping folks off on Cardassia. And off to a life of… I don't know."

"Piracy," said Meiying with a grin.

"Not piracy," said Sally.

"Err…" said Thompson looking at their group. "Yeah, I'm just a tech. Joined Starfleet because I wanted to visit new worlds. Spent two years working weapons systems as a 'temporary' engineering tech." He air quoted, "I heard that we're going to run our own scientific enterprise. More time on planets. Less time surveying space routes. I'm in for that."

"That's what you took from the announcement," said Sally.

"Yeah, that's what we all heard Hudson say. So um… put it up on Bakerchat, but I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of yeses for a pub or bar. Whatever you want to call it."

Meiying raised her beer bottle at Thompson. "There you go. One vote for a bar. I'm a Merican. Empress of it even. I'm all over voting."

Sally caught the look Brittanus gave Meiying. Hardly an expression at all. Still somehow fond. The sort of look it took years to build up to. Sort of look that made Sally wonder just where Meiying had gotten that big arse weapon in the first place.

Mycroft showed up with M'Press in tow. Because why not. "I've contacted Garak and let him know our change of plans." He stood there eating his fucking heart out looking down at his mum. "If you're still amenable to my plan. Using Genesis technology to restore the damage the Dominion did to Cardassia."

"Amenable, yes. You have had a..." Brittanus frowned, said very slowly, "A good idea." Passing words like passing kidney stones.

Meiying choked on her beer. Elise smiled brilliantly, and Mycroft looked utterly gobsmacked.

Brittanus stood up and placed a hand on Mycroft's shoulder. "We should go over the particulars." They looked at Marcus, who was clutching their tea again. "You could come with us."

Marcus discarded her tea in an instant. "Yes. This has been my family's life's work." She flinched, as she said it.

But Brittanus said, "Such has not been mine, but perhaps it is time it began to be." They left. M'Press hopefully providing some form of security.

Which left Sally with Elise and Meiying.

"We're not building a bar or pub!" she said laying down the law. That was just going to have to be that.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The immediate future of the Bakerstreet may also have gone something like this.

Meiying stood around in the circle jerk that remained after Noonian and the others took off pretty much negating the entire reason she'd shown up to rescue them.

Then her son went into the next room with her son-in-law, big red scar on John's neck indicating that they were going to be grandparents for the kagillionth time. Which fine. Awesome. Not really how she'd seen all this playing out, but whatever.

She stood there holding Big Brunhilde over her shoulder and half a dozen other weapons when she met the first officer's eyes.

A spook knew a spook.

Betazed, which had Meiying tensing for half a second, before she could get an album earworm, Queensrÿche's

Operation: Mindcrime,

playing in her head. Hudson, said, "The music people play in their heads to keep a telepath out can tell a great deal."

Meiying smiled easily. She'd been smiling easily all her life. While all inside she was roiling with the first track, "I Remember Now." While she was roiling with what exactly had she done with her life. Run. Run. Run. Seemed like she'd been running for Uncle Sam. Then for herself. Actually running off planet. Running all over creation to the planet back. Now where was she? Back to square one. On the run.

Meiying could shrug that off as if it was all no big. Allowed herself to be herded off the bridge by Donovan. Letting the rest of album play out. Dicked around with Donovan about putting a bar on the Bakerstreet mainly to be a dick. Particularly if she really was the daughter of the Section 31 spook Brittanus had used to cover their escape.

Fuck it, Meiying was petty and she owned that.

But the idea hung around like its own ear worm.

She told Elise, "I changed my mind, let's raid our kids' rooms for alcohol." With Elise leading the charge, she could drift along in her wake, thinking. The numbing properties of alcohol were largely theoretical for her, but drinking had been bonding people since Oook, the cave woman, first saw buzzed birds flying around on fermented fruit and decided to liven up family dinner.

Probably.

Also meant she got entry into John and Sherlock's quarters and she hadn't lifted a finger to do it.

Hudson was there waiting. She said, "Donovan, be a dear and head back to the bridge. I've got this."

Which meant it was time to deploy Floyd's

Darkside of the Moon

.

"You're telling me more and more," said Hudson.

"I'm a classical music fan," said Meiying. Meiying examined the room. Took a dram of the scotch that Elise found on a shelf with a tisk of her tongue.

Well used cooking supplies. John's. Violin case. Sherlock's Also signs of plenty of handling. Spent a good few moments staring at that. Sip of whiskey, but didn't open the case to check the state of the violin.

Well handled wooden box. Shook her head. Thing had been sitting here all along. Keys to the Breen kingdom. Now just an empty box.

Checked out some kinetic art. Not unlike the stuff Sherlock used to build with Brittanus when he was little. Brittanus always claimed it was to teach the kids' engineering concepts, but Meiying had her doubts, given how much Brittanus had gotten into it. Sherlock and Chin too for that matter. All looked pretty Rube Goldberg to Meiying, but what did she know. Uncle Sam had wanted a super soldier, not a super scientist. Course, she suspected the UK hadn't really been aiming for Brittanus either.

Fair number of promo posters for the Watson family troop. Now that she was in situ, she asked, "Why'd you keep the name Watson, after the blowout over your husband being a mass murderer?" Old habits for keeping folks off balance and all that.

Hudson gave her a bit of a look, but Elise, old trooper, wasn't phased. She said, "Because it's my name too." She eyed Meiying. "Why did you want to retake Earth? Why go to so much effort."

Meiying sipped her beer. "Never wanted to leave in the first place. Don't get me wrong. Betas are assholes, who can't be trusted farther than an eight year old me could throw them, but..." she shrugged. "It was fun."

"And now," said Hudson. Whether she wasn't playing the music loudly enough or not, Hudson said, "Sherlock has very few memories about you. After he recovered from his injury. This could be an opportunity to fix that."

Meiying decided fuck it, and took the violin out of its case and gave some gut a pluck. "Do you know where Sherlock learned to play."

"I believe he said his brother, Mycroft, insisted he learn," said Elise. "Odd. In that Mycroft is himself is not particularly musical." Which was an understatement given Mycroft's level of tin ear.

Meiying grunted. Had another sip of whiskey. "I'll have to thank him." She'd lost out on the opportunity to be the one to reintroduce Sherlock to music after what happened on Breen.

Build new memories after everything was lost.

Had - she had to admit - freaked out more than a little. Contracted and run moment she could.

Supposed, looking around the cozy little room, markings on one wall to cut a door for an extra room, that this time she could try not to punk out and fuck off. Fuck up. See about sticking around.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The immediate future of the Bakerstreet also went something like this.

Sherlock languidly walked back to his quarters. John wedded to his side. His heart. Entangled. Stopping frequently to press kisses to each other's mouths. Exchange breath for breath. Heart beat for heart beat. Not that John could hear that, but Sherlock could.

What he couldn't hear was that their quarters had been invaded. He simultaneously wanted to hide behind John and shove John behind him.

Which John handily took care of by angrily stomping forward and saying, "Mum! You drank all the fifteen year old."

"It's not as if you can have any of it dear," said Elise, who got up somewhat unsteadily and kissed Sherlock on the cheek. "But we needed to celebrate. Sherlock is alive." Another slightly wobbly kiss on the cheek. "And you… you…" Elise hugged John. Smothered his face in kisses. "You're pregnant."

"Yes," said John, somewhat muffled against his mother's neck. "I wasn't going to say anything until…" It hung in the air. Until they'd made it past the first trimester. Until they could be certain they'd live. The fear John must have had knowing that children were that much less likely to survive when the alpha was not around to reinforce their scent. Modern medicine notwithstanding.

Sherlock found himself needing the comfort of John's scent. Huddled against John's back. Curled around him. Which had John huffing. "A little air."

Elise lurched back into a chair. Raised a glass. "To the baby. I'm sure now that Sherlock is here to nest with you, it'll all be fine."

It suddenly struck Sherlock that John actually was pregnant. That they were doing this. That Sherlock had no idea what he was doing. That he was going to do something wrong. Experiment with the babies. He had a sudden image of a giant swinging hammer for some reason. But right in front of him was an expert in raising Watsons.

"Stay," he said.

Elise listed forward and put her elbow on the table. "Yes. I want to be here when… when."

"No, I mean stay. We're no longer in Starfleet." He looked at Hudson to be sure the message had been sent.

"Oh, yes, we are very much out of Starfleet and heading down the most obscure routes to…" she hiccuped, "Bother. We're heading down the most obscure routes to Cardassia." She hiccuped again and went to get herself some water from the replicator.

"Elise, you should stay on the ship and… we could transport the entire troop." They'd done that once already. Ages ago. "We could transport you on a tour." He wasn't sure of what, but he was sure he'd think of something.

That's when Second Father lurched out of the shadows, which Sherlock was sure hadn't been in the room that morning. Glass with a finger of scotch in her hands. "You could tour the Breen worlds. They've never seen live Human theater. Live their lives in armor."

Hudson hiccuped.

Elise frowned. "That's… that's awful. We need to… yes." She nodded her head. A strand of hair coming out of her already precarious bun. She rested her head down on the table. "Yes."

Red alerts went off in Sherlock's mind. Because he and John had only had first sex of the day. At this rate, Elise would sleep on the couch and John wouldn't want to and… "Come on," said Second Father, putting an arm under Elise's shoulder. Lifting to her feet. "You can sleep, but you can't sleep here."

Sherlock looked at Second Father gratefully.

Father Meiying, much younger, running ahead of him in green fatigues. Turning around. Running backwards. "Come on squirts. Get some lead out. Last one back is a little stinker." Victor pelting by her. Chin not much behind. Father Meiying holding back. Leaning down. "Billy-bobber, all you have to do is beat I-Chaya."

But I-Chaya couldn't possibly be the little stinker. He was wonderful and smelled like warm musky love. William hung back so I-Chaya could win. Although, it was difficult, because I-Chaya didn't want to leave him.

Father Meiying stood at the back door near the showers. Stared at him as he came in. "Okay. A little weird. Kinda not what I was going for." Nodding. "But cool."

Blinking at Second Father. At Father Meiying.

She shifted Elise on her shoulder. "What?"

"I remembered something. From before Breen. From when I was younger."

Father Meiying nodded, just as she had decades ago. "Cool beans. Okay, come on, Elise. Let's get some water in you before you're hating life."

The door swished closed behind an equally wobbly Hudson. Leaving them alone.

John wrapped his arm around Sherlock. Another kiss to his cheek. "Want to tell me about it?"

"Not just yet." Sherlock bent to inhale John's scent blooming from his reddening marks. "In a little while."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The immediate future of the Breen went more like this.

"You need to stop thinking such lascivious thoughts about me," said Ambassador Troi. Her garments even more spectacular than they had been the day before.

But then, so were Noonian's. He'd donned a green and gold brocade tunic. His turban was decorated with a ruby only slightly smaller than the gems currently nestled above the ambassador's well supported chest.

She rested a hand on his arm. "It's making it hard for me to concentrate on negotiating."

He rather doubted that. Everything about her was designed to simultaneously put someone across the table from her at ease and slightly off balance. In response, he stepped back, removed the hand from his arm and kissed it. The feather from his turban brush the glittering arm of her sleeve. He released her hand. "Now just think if your arm had been bare."

Behind him, Chin shifted uncomfortably. She'd decided not to wear armor today and every muscle and sinew screamed her discomfort. The Firsts weren't much better, but they had been true to their commitment to bring their infants to the proceedings. As much as they looked uncomfortable, they were also constantly at the motions of feeding, changing, and holding the next generation.

Not all of them were Noonian's grandchildren. For all of their numbers, Sherlock and John's children were a fraction of the overall population. But a significant number of those present, since Firsts and their creches often waited to attempt children until after their tenure in order to avoid the appearance of favoring themselves over others.

"How sad," said Troi. She gave him an enigmatic look. "You're thinking very loudly."

"Perhaps I'm attempting to elicit sympathy from the most empathetic woman in the room." Much of his negotiations over the decades had been with Breen. People who cut themselves off from life. Or himself in armor providing instructions to Mycroft. It felt good to act in this capacity again. To dress as himself and be. The delicate dance of interpersonal relationships and policy.

Again, Chin shifted uncomfortably behind him. She had many gifts. But this particular role had never been one of them. Preferring machinery to people.

So it was no surprise that she told him that night, "I'm heading back to Beta Aurigae. I only came because of Sherlock. I'm not even sure why I stayed here. You obviously don't need me."

Noonian - diplomat - struggled to find the right words to urge her that she was wrong.

Chin, awkward teen, "But Father Noonian, why did they do that? It makes no sense. If they died, then they try again later."

Chin dutifully listening to his instructions.

Chin flinching from the louder variations of Noonian's battles for position with the other Khans.

Spin.

"That's not true."

Her smile was weary. "What for?" All he could dredge up was that Sherlock would be terrible at this too. For that matter Mei and Brit had no taste for it.

Spin.

Watching from the second floor landing as Mshindi Victorious easily convinced William and Chin to slip out the back door of the palace for an adventure in the woods. As if they had not spent all the day studying and exercising.

Trailed them to ensure they was no troubles.

Spin.

"Anyway, they'll need me on Beta Aurigae. Maybe Breen Prime. Billy contacted me to say that some of the Breen are thinking of moving back to their old world. Setting up a first city in the valley near where the first Breen city was built."

Noonian very much wanted to ask Chin to stay.

Spin.

Noonian said to his second in command, Vrishana, "It will be better for them if we go." His tone not betraying the urgency of the decision.

Vrishana's children were several years older than his own. She said, "I know. Still, it feels wrong. Even if we're facing death, we should take them with us."

Spin.

Noonian had hoped to rebuild what he had neglected, but perhaps his hopes were nothing in comparison to the way he'd continue to trample as an elephant over what Chin needed. "That would be a fine adventure." Being him, could not help but see her slight flinch and knew that once more he had erred. Diplomat, warrior, he did not know what to do, but to retreat.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The immediate future of Cardassia went something like this.

After a week of harvesting grain the valley beyond what had been Lakarian City was empty of all but stubbled yellow stalks. The bins full of grain had been distributed as well as Garak could with the inefficient help of the provisional government.

Naturally Gul Natat tried to claim control of the grain, but had been subverted by said grain already having been distributed to those who needed to eat it.

Elim was thus presented with a bit of a choice when Mycroft contacted him. He could, of course, trade Brittanus once again to the Federation. Or make a new move to trade Brittanus to the Romulans in exchange for more of their own territory back. But he rather suspected such a decision would be rather detrimental to his own long term emotional well being.

There was, additionally, that empty field. Until anyone did anything so useful as provide replicators, food was an ongoing issue. Additionally, the Cardassian Union had over the last century or so had not made many allies within their territories. Strip mining planets and using the native populations in forced labor camps did not make for long term declarations of friendship. Offers of assistance when a power was brought low.

As a result of his short, and yet evocative conversation with Brittanus, Elim knew that they were a difficult person. Arrogant. Suspicious. With little patience for fools or ignorance. Believing that the ends justifies the means. In short, they would have made an excellent Cardassian.

Elim looked out at the stubbled field and went to examine the lists he'd already begun making. The first was a list of locations on Cardassia and other worlds that could reasonably be transformed using Genesis technology. The second was a list of young individuals, whose talents were somewhat wasted on Cardassia.

The Bakerstreet would need some supplemental crew after all.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The somewhat further future of the Federation went something like this.

Indra Ghanav came out of stasis in a hospital room. She felt a dull pain all through her abdomen. She felt down wildly for the rounded curve of her belly, but found nothing but loose skin. Her husband, Tosha held her hand. "It's okay. It's okay. We were able to save her. We were able to save both of you." He was crying. She was crying.

She didn't recognize the doctor, a Human Augment, but she recognized the smile on his face. The feeling when he said, "It's okay Ms. Ghanav. We were able to bring you out of stasis, just fine, use the First Mother's transporter to transfer your child to a Uterine replicator, before we focused on helping you heal." The doctor patted his hand on a square object, and she took in the details of the gleaming machine next to him. He turned on a monitor and she could see out a small curling shape. Growing. Alive. A miracle.

She looked at Tosha. "Where are we?"

He was still crying. "When we got to the hospital, they said your kidneys were failing. Your liver. The pregnancy was…"

"I remember going into stasis," said Indra slowly. Although, her memory was a blurred jumble of pain.

Tosha said, "I… had heard that Ambassador Noonian Singh," Tosha wasn't an Augment, but he was from the district where Khan Noonian Singh had first come to power, "insisted that one of the terms of the San Francisco accords was that the Breen bases would be converted to hospitals with Breen medical staff, but I never thought…" He smiled through his tears. "We're at such a hospital." He tilted his head to the Doctor, who was respectfully keeping his distance while they spoke. "Doctor Ivasha is a Breen."

She laughed. How could she not. She had a little Augment in her DNA. Nothing more than three percent, but something. What had once been a base used to attack the Federation was now in use saving its citizens. She said, "We're not naming our child Noonian."

"No, but," he put his hand over hers, "maybe Gita Song."

She laced her fingers with his. "Maybe."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The future also went something like this.

Eishi watched the actors move about the stage. Depicting some fantastical moment from Human history. Her own history, she supposed. It seemed so far removed from Breen history as to be utterly alien.

There was singing. Dancing. Lovers. Fighters. A king cast off. A new nation founded. Stories told.

All without masks or armor. Eishi looked at them, looked at the First Mother and First Father sitting equally unmasked in the audience.

Eishi had a pilot's license. She knew how to fly garbage scows, admittedly. She wanted to be a part of something like what she was seeing.

She waited until the First Mother had had time to interact with those of his progeny who had been brought to the performance. Once that was done, she went to the First Mother and First Mother, got down on one knee, hands cupped in supplication. "How do I join your crew?"

The First Mother's twin, still clothed as Alexander Hamilton, laughed. "What another one? John, you need to stop coming to see our performances."

"Never mind her," said the First Mother. "What can you do?"

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It even went a little like this.

Her mother thought Lal was crazy for doing this. Throwing away two years at the Academy to fly off for no reason.

Every reason.

The moment the truth about the Breen had come out. Seeing a figure from the past, problematic - and why did she always have to qualify her heroes as problematic when Normals never did - signing a new peace treaty with the rest of the Breen during the San Francisco peace accords. The moment she'd known there was a place she had always been looking for and it wasn't in Starfleet.

Lal didn't quite know what she'd find among the Breen. Ended up on a crowded ship full of Augments all headed to Beta Aurigae. More Augments with fancy degrees than she'd known existed. Kept hearing snippets.

"I'll be able to research without people questioning if I want to take over the planet."

A sing songed, "No more, with great abilities comes great ambition just because I want to be recognized for my work."

"No more, I'm sorry but we think you're not quite right for this project. By which they mean anyone but an Augment."

"I feel like I'm going to Wakanda."

Lal hadn't even made it to her third year at the Academy. She wasn't anything. But somehow she ended up in a room with one of the Augment Originals, as people were calling them. She recognized him from one of the books about the Khans she'd devoured on the trip there, Grendel. He was an old man. She looked him straight in the eyes and said, "I want to join the Bakerstreet."

He said, "To the point." Laughed softly to himself. "I don't know that they want to hear from me, but I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, let me go over information on available spaces. I'll be your host." There was a sort of bewildered look on his face. "There's so many of you coming. If we'd only known all we had to do was let you know we were here.."

Lal shrugged. "I mean, I'm not giving up my Federation citizenship or anything, but…" Lal shrugged. "I want to see what it'd be like not to be alone in a crowd."
 
It went like all of that and quite a bit more.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

John looked around the Jolly Roger, which John had to admit was one of - fine the only decent idea from Meiying.

The woman was a menace. He did have a basic understanding that she was trying to make up for utter failure as a father by getting to know Sherlock now, which mostly was very awkward to watch. But he really didn't understand the reasoning behind why she'd tagged the hull of the saucer with two giant Anarchy symbols, an order arrow and a Ouroboros, which gave the saucer a surprised face. At least until she'd encouraged some of their more impressionable crew to tag their marks as well. The exterior of the Bakerstreet looked like an ally in a particularly seedy, if artistic, neighborhood. Which fine, did actually match the interior.

Although, after talking to her, Hunter said that certain aspects of North American history before, during, and after the Khanate period made slightly more sense.

But the Jolly Roger was fine pub.

Meiying poured a fine pint. Put on an open mike once a week. A few of the crew were trying their hands at brewing. Although, the replicators still had a place. Not that John could have replicated or real.

He said wistfully, "I miss beer. Scotch. Fruity drinks with the little umbrella."

"You could have chosen to grow the kid in one of those," Harry waved a chip at him, "machine things. Technical term. Then you could poison yourself all you want." She bit into the chip, but thankfully had nothing stronger than ginger ale to drink.

John put his hand protectively over the curve of his belly. "Four more months."

"And at least three months after that. That's how long it took me to get a good cheat stockpile with twins," said his mum, "Although non-alcoholic beer can be good for breastfeeding. Everything all natural." She sighed. "I don't know if I like the idea of artificial pregnancies when it's not medically required."

John was not restarting that discussion with his mum, who had opinions about how the greater number of her grandchildren had been gestated.

His husband, co-captain - because John was not giving up medicine to captain all the time thanks very much - love of his life sat next to him, smiling softly into the middle distance, which meant a visit to the mind palace.

Sherlock had a lot of sorting to do since he'd been… cloned. Reborn. John wasn't sure quite how to categorize a new body being created from an old dead body through Genesis energy, and then stuffed full of memories by a psychic sister.

John drank his glass of non-alcoholic ginger beer. Watched the new crew they'd picked up along the way. Cardassian orphans. Caitian warrior-bards. A few Terran Augments.  Andorians geneticists. Breen looking to join the 23rd Alignment medical research fleet, which was their current designation. Sometimes. When it wasn't the Watson family putting on plays in the cargo bay for very excited Breen.

Really, John did need to stop attending performances.

He was considering giving into his craving for pickles mixed with peanut butter when Sherlock opened his eyes and said, "I just remember running an obstacle course with Chin and I-Chaya." His expression darkened. "And Victor."

Access to Sherlock's childhood memories hadn't been immediate. Possibly a function of the phenomenon of childhood amnesia as much as Sherlock's brain learning to handle the restored mental pathways. John wondered what it would have been like if Sherlock had remembered Victor without already knowing that if he'd lived, he'd have turned into a sociopathic prick. More of a sociopathic prick.

Sherlock also had a certain amount of filtering to do given Mycroft had used his own memories of I-Chaya, transformed into Redbeard, to help Sherlock recover from his coma. There was still an inland sea in the basement of Sherlock's memory palace, but it was filling in with islands.

Sherlock leaned closer, his scent if anything more comforting now that John was pregnant. "We were in the woods behind the palace."

"Because, of course, there was a palace, Prince Sherly," muttered Harry, and got a kick to her calf from John, and a shake of the head from Mum.

"There was an obstacle course that Father Meiying set up. Victor and Chin had gone on ahead. I didn't care. I had jumped over the fire pit and slid under the giant swinging hammer. I-Chaya was right behind me as the hammer swung blocking my view. I believe Victor pushed him. I went back to help I-Chaya." John made a mental note not to let Meiying design their children's play area. "Sherlock reflexively moved his hands as if petting something. "I-Chaya's fur was smooth on the surface and yet coarse. With a soft undercoat nearer his skin." Sherlock smiled. All fragile wonder. "He licked my face while I checked him for injuries." He tilted his head. "Chin came back to check on me. Of course, Victor won. Oh… oh… that was what Mother was arguing with Father Meiying about in the portrait hall." Sherlock had remembered that last week. Yet another argument between his parents.

But to confirm, John said, "The time where you hid in the library with I-Chaya or the time your HeLa cell cultures contaminated one of your experiments."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Neither of those are particularly descriptive, John."

John might have gotten a lecture on precision, but just then, he felt it. A decided kick. Not a flutter. Not quiver. A definite kick.

"Did you feel them? What should I do?" asked Sherlock, wide eyed. Harry snorted and went to get another ginger beer. His mum went to talk to their new Breen Propmaster. Left them alone in a crowd.

John took Sherlock's hands and placed them over his belly. Smiled at his silly git.

Sherlock took it one step further by getting on his knees on the hard floor and humming against John's belly. John stroked Sherlock's soft curling hair as Sherlock hummed to their little footie players.

John looked up, tears in his eyes to find Mum taking a quick vid of them. She wasn't the only one. Meiying, M'Press, and a few Breen were being utter voyeurs again, but John didn't care. He stroked his humming husband while they both felt their children making themselves known.

Eventually, Sherlock resumed his seat. Finished moving around the beer Mieying had put in front of him when they'd arrived. John finished his buttered chicken. When not entirely out of the blue, Sherlock said, "We should get a sehlat. As a pet. For the children."

John laughed, "Sherlock, we're on a starship. We can't get a sehlat. They weigh almost two hundred kilos. They need space to run." Sherlock pouted and turned those eyes of his on John, but John had seen that look before. "Sherlock, we're going to have enough on our hands with two infants without adding an utterly enormous pet to the mix."

Sherlock sighed. "I suppose." Still, he looked wistful.

Harry snickered. "You're getting a pet."

John glared at her. "Now don't you start."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Sehlat, their Maine Coon kitten, purred as Sherlock rhythmically groomed his soft striped fur. A weekly task that reminded him more and more of similar activities grooming I-Chaya as those memories came back to him.

The cat was quite small currently. Harry had said he'd become enormous when she'd given him the gift, which was perhaps relative. He was also nocturnal, which was fortunate, because so was Sherlock.

After their most recent adventure on a hollow generation ship, Sherlock was far too keyed up to sleep. Felt compelled to review the events of the previous week. At an earlier point in his life, he'd have been part of the initial boarding party. Would have - possibly - been held hostage. Would even then have immediately rushed into danger, but now held back just that extra moment to consider the options. Found the solution in the giant elphantesque statue.

Whether that was a result of preparing to be a parent or no longer having quite the same level of brain damage was questionable. His neural pathways would always be non-typical.

The immediate rush of memories was slowing down. There were memories he would never recover. That was fine. Childhood memories were often lost as the brain rewired during the teen years.

There were pathways that his mind, trained through a lifetime as an adult, would never naturally take.

He considered the memories he did have of Mummy. Of his fathers. As if they had occured to another person. In a sense they had. Even so, they were recoloring his perceptions.

Sehlat purred.

John snored slightly. He was sleeping. Not entirely well. The mound of his belly moving as their children moved around inside him. They'd gotten more active as they progressed into the third trimester. As impatient and eager as their parents.

He whispered to them, "I can't wait to meet you."

"Soon. Mmm… come to bed," murmured John.

Sherlock was more than happy to settle Sehlat on his normal perch and slide into bed. Wrap his arm around John and massage a message to the little ones. Breath John's comfortingly steady scent, steady heart beat. Slip into a dream of running in a field with I-Chaya, who was also Sehlat grown to the size of a tiger.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Harry lay on her side, sweat cooling on her skin. Asked the question "So... do you think this is going to turn into a regular thing?"

Sally pushed herself up on one arm. "Could. Would it bother you if it did?"

"No, this could be... no I could learn to like this."

"Learn," said Sally dryly. Bristling with all the defenses they both had.

Harry sighed. "Stop my foolish mouth with kisses. I do like this."

Sally settled back down. "Okay, then," said Sally. "Then you could maybe stay over. See if we can get through a night's sleep without shanking each other."

"Okay," said Harry nodding. Relaxing into the pillow. Into whatever this might be.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Sometimes the room felt so tight and everything closing in, Meiying wondered why she was sticking around.

Sure her image was up on screens for a hot second, but it was a big galaxy and one human looked like any other to most species.

Sometimes she looked at Sherlock sitting next to John and told herself very sternly to go over there and have a fucking convo with him. Shoot the shit. Whatever.

Course then she did and he looked at her like she was… an alien or something.

Sometimes Meiying wondered on a scale of idiot, how big of an idiot she'd been most of her life.

Probably pretty high. Course, most people were idiots. Self centered assholes.

Back in the day, having left Earth not exactly happily, it had been easy for Brittanus to sell her on the idea of going back. Building a space empire. Running ops. When anything she did seemed to be a complete fuck up with the kids.

Not exactly Little Boy Blue and the Man on the Moon, but she'd mostly peaced out after the blowout on Breen.

She looked at the study schedule Brittanus and Noonian had laid out, which unlike any of their own childhoods growing up actually scheduled in time for things like chilling out and play. Not that they were labeled that, but it was obvious.

Wracked her brain for something to suggest. Teaching them to play craps was probably not going to be on the books. "They should learn to play a musical instrument. It can't be all science and tactical crap all the time."

Almost fell out of her chair when Noonian actually agreed with her. Brittanus - as typical - hadn't seen the point, but had gone along after Noonian worked at convincing them.

Door chimed.

Meiying yelled, "Open!"

When it did, Sherlock was standing there holding a small black case. He asked, "Do you still play?"

"Do I still play. Yeah." Meiying had replicated her old Fender strat, after having to abandon Billie XVII on Earth. Billie XVIII had as badass a sound.

He held up the violin case. "I would be interested in playing music with you." That orange cat of his streaked past his legs and into her quarters.

"Come on in." Meiying flipped on the privacy shield, because she was a bitch and a half, but noise complaints in the middle of the night were still a thing on a pirate ship. Meiying tuned Billie XVIII to give herself a moment to think. "Did you remember something?"

Sherlock stopped, pausing with the rosin cake in one hand and the bow in the other. "You were showing Chin and I to play chords on small guitars."

"Banjos. I had this…" Meiying snorted at herself, "I had this idea about getting you two to play the dueling banjos song from Deliverance, because… well, everyone's an asshole, but I like to make it an art."

Sherlock gave her a long look. "Should I recognize the reference?"

"Probably best if you don't." She tuned Billie XVIII. Strummed a chord. "Figured out names for the twins yet? Because I say Rotten Bastard and Little Stinker are great names."

Sherlock responded by putting his bow under his jaw and made a cat screech. Other than that cat of his was more of a sack of purring mellow than a screecher. It started up a chatty enough conversation with Sherlock though.

Meiying responded to them both with a rising riff on metal strings. Trying to think how to put into sound what had always come out half assed in words.

Not that Sherlock recognized the Devil Went Down to Georgia, but he caught the melody and threw it back. Playing violin like the Devil looking for a soul.

Scratch that. She was the devil. She made her strings yowl, just to hear Sherlock give a sweet response.

They were still playing when John's voice came over the coms. "Sherlock, it's now."

By all rights, they should have hit an anomaly and John had to birth the babies in a lift. But no such. All right and good in sickbay.

Meiying spent the next several hours pacing. Swearing. Being sworn at by John's sister.

Finally, the privacy shield dropped. Sherlock holding a bundle, while another squashed looking baby was splat on John's chest..

Some spy Meiying was, she couldn't pry out the names Sherlock and John had decided on.

Still, for the first time in a really long time, she found herself coming up with a melody for a lullaby rather than a punk anthem.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Brittanus glared at the Romulans sprawled unconscious around them.

Johanna whimpered, "What just happened."

"Did you forget," said Brittanus, crouching down by the leader of the team, "that I am the weapon?"

The Romulan groaned, but given the level of pupil dilation, it was unlikely that they had heard and understood what Brittanus had said.

"What just happened?" repeated Johanna.

"I believe," said Elim, picking some dust off his sleeves, which had gone flying when Brittanus had broken a table on the largest of the Romulans, "that the Star Empire, dissatisfied with the number of systems already in their possession, tried to add to that number by stealing one or both of you. And then, and allow me to compliment your technique Brittanus, they were defeated by an elderly scientist."

Brittanus snorted.

"Pardon me, leader and scientist. As a story it's quite good," said Elim. "A frail old being, three hundred and fifty years if they are a day. But the Romulans were so weak were they that they fell like stalks of wheat before that personage's blows." He paused, "Or you're an unstoppable killing machine, even if elderly. It's really hard to decide which is the better story." He turned to Mycroft. "What do you think? Brittanus is your mother. You should have a say."

Mycroft, however, had his habitual look of concern. "Mother, perhaps we should go back to Breen space, where it's safer."

If they scuttled back, Brittanus knew themself enough to know that they could only fall back on old ways. Had spent too many years in bunkers. Had lost too much to caution. To fear. To loss itself.

They would not allow empires interested in secrets to unsettle them. Then they caught the slight glance Mycroft gave Elim and knew the ruse.

"I do not need to see Sherlock or his children. They are better off without the sight of me."

"You're avoiding going to see them," said Mycroft, shifting tactics.

"I'm doing good works," said Brittanus dryly. Tapped on their auto transporter and sent the Romulans to the Federation embassy, because Elim did have a point about stories. "There is a great deal of work to be done on refining the energy. Creating better patterns." Brittanus tried to imagine each time they created something, Saxon and the other ghosts were buried farther. Deeper. It wasn't quite true, what with the occasional attack by interested galactic powers, but it was certainly more calming than any plan to regain Earth had ever brought.

In any case, as they saw the fine faint lines form at the edges of Mycroft's eyes, they knew that the most pivotal moment of their life would come soon. Had no idea they felt about that.

"It's perfected," said Mycroft. Coming closer. "We've revived Cardassia Prime and a dozen worlds more. We could go back to Breen space. Meet with Sherlock on the Bakerstreet. See the twins. They're having a hundred day celebration in a few weeks."

Brittanus looked at Mycroft. Let the truth express itself on their face. "They do not wish to see me. I would be the ghost at the feast." They reached out and took Mycroft's steady hand. "This was a good idea. Thank you." The words were hard. Rusty. Oiled only in their current practice.

After many repetitions, Mycroft did not look surprised to hear this said. Didn't push.

Even had Elim there to say, "And the translation of good in Brittanus speak is fantastic. Magnificent. More fabulous than a coat of Adeberon feathers." He gestured with his hands to indicate the ruff of collars such feathers might form.

Brittanus shook their head. There was still work to be done. Reparations to make. Ghosts to keep from crawling out of their graves.

Even if attack squads would keep coming out of the woodwork.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Tristan Iseult was crawling. Not to be outdone, Yvain Laudine was attempting to climb the walls of their largely baby proofed quarters. Sehlat was surprisingly a large help in that he didn't know he was a cat, and kept herding the children away from high places. Or at least licking their faces until they turned in a different direction.

That had been particularly fortunate the previous afternoon, when they'd encountered the ancient memorial that reprogrammed Julian into an alien version of Mary Poppins with very different ideas about childcare than was Human standard.

Sherlock scooped up Yvain and Tristain. Bouncing them on separate knees. "Who's my baby child, baby, baby child." He stopped with a thump and then started it up again.

This could - and had - go on for hours.

For someone who hated repetition, Sherlock was very good at it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The drums of war had quieted.

In their place was a steady beat of negotiations. Affairs of state.

He told himself that the idea for the Breen hospitals had come from the tide of missionaries setting up hospitals in the land of his youth, exchanging healing for souls. The powerful granted assistance. The weak must accept it.

Lwaxana laughed at him. "Why do you insist on lying to yourself like that?"

"I am not lying," he said with all the dignity of a man wearing his lover's robe, which was decorated with both feathers and sequins.

She sniffed, having discarded both her wig and clothing, and ate another spoonful of honeyed yogurt. "You remembered how good it felt to found hospitals. That first one, in what was it called, Mumbai. When you were young. That's why you did it." She ate another bitre. "Really, you must try some of this. It's utterly delicious." She leaned across the small table and fed him a bite.

Affairs of state.

Affairs.

Lwaxana was… Betazed biology had been quite a revelation. Certainly a partner who knew him utterly. Pierced every pretension not with a sharp look, but a battering ram of words drawn not from what he said, but what was thought.

"Perhaps, I suggested it because I was bedazzled by your beauty."

Which earned him a foot slid up his calf. "Perhaps." Followed by laughter. It was difficult to be superior with someone who laughed. He hoped that Euros was laughing just then.

He'd given her little to laugh about. "Stop that," said Lwaxana. "A beautiful woman is sharing her breakfast with you."

Hubris could not survive such determined joy. Nor anger fester. Provided he was honest with himself.

A lover who could sit with him and discuss the experience of losing a child. Also, the experience of a grown child, who was utterly unlike themself. Often seeming a stranger for all that they could share thoughts.

So it went.

Ambassador Noonian Singh had a ring to it, but he found himself stumbling with his children. Had left little space for bruised shins in the past. Styled as Khan. General. Father.

Titles that had not helped him.

"You're worried you'll make more mistakes," said Lwaxana. She slid her arms around him. "I never worry about that. It's pointless. They're often the best part. Now, let's pick a perfect gown for me to tell my daughter, Deana, we're involved. I'm thinking something that plunges all the way to my navel."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"No!" shouted Tristan and burst into tears.

Sherlock tried to determine what could possibly be objectionable about a bath.

"Are you two?" asked John. "Is that your problem. Are you two years old?"

Tristain wailed, which set off Yvain.

Sherlock did the only thing he could think to do. He picked up his violin and played a short piece. Within moments they were smiling. Laughing. Happy to be cuddled and washed of the sticky explosion of lunch.

"They were just tired," said John, after the children had been laid down for a nap in their room. He rested his head against Sherlock's shoulder. "You know, when they nap, they can sleep through an explosion."

"Is that so," said Sherlock already removing his right shoe with the toe of the other. "I couldn't possibly have observed that." Freed of footwear, he skimmed his hands up under John's shirt, the better to remove it.

"You're eager," said John, shimmying out of his trousers.

"We only have an hour or so, and I want," Sherlock bent to lightly lick John's right nipple. Then gave some attention to the left. "To make the most of what time we have."

They made love with half an ear to the sound of soft snoring over the child monitor.

Pausing once to shove Sehlat off their bed and out the door. Exchanged sweaty, "Love you." Gasped, "You!" and the rapid groans of the time constrained. Sighing in each others arms. Slick in the shower to wash each other with water and tender caresses.

When they went to wake the children up, they found Tristan had climbed out of his big kid bed and into Yvain's. Sehlat had joined the pile. All three were snuggling each other. Noses in soft orange fur. All three of them purring.

Sherlock wrapped his arm around John and stood there for long moments recording the moment for his memory palace.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Genesis was her life's work.

Hers.

Her father's. His mother before that.

A Marcus family legacy. One meant to overwrite the one that had come before. Come to resolution. Time to let it go.

Johanna had not been bred in a… a… she was not used to being attacked. The kidnap attempts were simply too much. And there was already an entire world that Brittanus had made over. The Breen homeworld. A place that she could spend her life studying.

She stayed behind on Breen Prime during the next Meiosis. No need for fanfare. No need.

Felt as if she'd come home. Even if that home was a new world.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

To be sure there was every reason to visit Kyat III. The Cardassians had pulled every natural resource they could from Kyat III. It was also true that after the Meiosis on Breen it was on the Bakerstreet's route.

It was equally true that after Mother spent another Meiosis holed up training the latest group of Augment geneticists to create the next generation, and not talking with Sherlock, Mycroft was not looking forward to another year of Mother pretending badly that the distance didn't weigh on them.

But when he'd planned for an opportunity for Mother to interact with at least two of their grandchildren, he hadn't really considered himself in the mix, or that the Bakerstreet was part exploratory vessel, part theater, and part bizarre anomaly magnet.

As he gave Garak a panicked look after he'd determined a method to remove the giant rabbits, that particular individual snorted. "You are the Analyst, new and improved."

Which didn't help him with the twenty or so excited actors, some of whom were by some way of thinking his distant relatives, and appeared to be determined to interact with him in very loud declamatory tones.

Garak sighed, smiled broadly, and stepped into the horde. "This most recent adventure reminds me of the occasion when I was…"

Mycroft did not stay to hear what lie or truth Garak chose to tell. He slipped away to their quarters, which given the sheer number of people on the ship were shared with Mother. To be confronted with the sight and sound of a three year old saying, "But why?"

His mother, Khan, former despot of Europe, and would be galactic empire builder, said, "There is no atmosphere to conduct heat away from an object. Look closely at the monitor." Yvain looked at the monitor, while Tristan hugged a misshapen doll. "But why isn't there mospeer?"

"Atmosphere," said Mother.

Mycroft escaped before the science lesson progressed further. He'd seen Mother spend hours going down the rabbit hole of, "But why?" with his younger siblings. Provided the question was about science. Questions about motivations. Mummy's life on Earth had more heated answers. Or cold silence.

With his quarters forming no escape, Mycroft made his way to Sherlock's favorite point on the ship. Mycroft had to admit the observation deck was soothing. Infinite space putting all things in perspective.

There was someone already there. Elise Watson was sitting in a fairly comfortable looking chair and writing on pad. She smiled at him. "There's room for two. Computer, add comfortable chair, Elise Watson program twenty-three." An identical chair appeared. The sort of device that would swallow up anyone who sat in it. She looked at him. "Ah, no sorry. Make that forty-two."

A far less comfortable looking origami creation appeared. It was, he had to admit - not that he did verbally - a far better idea of his preferences. He threaded himself into it and examined the universe. The sound of Elise's heartbeat a counterpoint to the thrum of the engines. He said, "No questions about the original Mycroft. Certainly the rest of your...clan are quite clamorous."

Elise looked at him steadily. Her gaze reminding him of her son's. "What's your earliest memory?"

Mycroft considered. His mind palace a steady structure with well ordered rooms. The earliest memory was simple to find. "I asked my mother what they were doing."

"And that was?"

"Attempting to create my younger siblings. I didn't learn why until later." A laden statement, to say the least.

"Well, there you go. An older sibling from your first memory. Nothing like that other fellow." She smiled and turned off her tablet. "I won't pretend that I have not absolutely hounded your mother for details, but… I imagine you have more questions than answers." Her expression was understanding.

They looked into darkness streaked with stars.

After a time, Mycroft found himself saying, "Mummy never speaks of him. Even less about our father. Except..." Words he didn't want to share. Not just then. But then because the void required it, he said, "He was one of the lead scientists on the project." Something Elise must already know if she'd had any success in her research. More success than Mycroft. He'd learned not to ask questions of that sort. Science. Why the sky was black or blue. Certainly. Why even Mother wanted to regain Earth. Possibly. But the past may as well have had a large sign marked, "Do not enter."

They sat in silence for a long time. Stars streaking past until hunger required its due. After that, he noticed his many times removed relatives slash in-laws were a good deal more restrained in their questions, which was a minor miracle akin to reviving a planet from the brink of ruin.

Near the end of the journey, Elise stopped by his quarters. This time clear of children, who Mummy was off explaining something or other to. Elise said, "I have something for you. I know you find our family a bit much." He didn't contradict her.

She gave him a data cube. Old. Very old. Ancient liquid crystal storage such as Mother's first ships had used. "It's an old family heirloom. As I understand, it belonged to the Analyst. I already asked, and John and Harry were fine with my giving you this. I thought you could use some sort of connection that didn't have to go through… other channels."

She left him there. It sat silent and dark on the desk. What it contained a mystery. No doubt something banal.

Technology was not beyond his purview. He was not the engineer that Sherlock was or Chin. Or for that matter Mother, but it was an interesting puzzle.

In the end, it was Elim who figured out the encryption. "I have some skill in that area."

What was inside was a series of messages. They began, "It is by some strange conceit that I record these. Perhaps they will find their way to you, Mycroft. Perhaps not. Perhaps Mother," and here the Mycroft with the grey hair and lined face paused, "you'll get this. But I like to think they will." Messages in a bottle. One brother to another. One Mycroft to another. Alike. Unalike. Some fragmented. In some ways, giving him more questions than aught. But treasured.

He had to wonder if Elise had even known what she'd had. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

He didn't share them with Mummy just yet. Soon. For just then, he held them to himself. Shards of memory.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The first time there had been a chime at the door, the visitor had been John himself. Both twins in tow. A cheery, "You've kept up your end of things." Was then introduced to Tristan and Yvain. On later visits, the children were accompanied by Elise, who was relentless with questions. On this occasion, Harry with whom they'd established a sort of frosty detente, accompanied the children.

Yvain was without fear. Fearless enough to throw themself at Brittanus and expect to be caught. How not when their parents were so loving. Expressed love without fear of injury. No, that was not quite right, but close enough.

Tristan was shy. Quiet.

But it was Tristan who said, "Love," after Brittanus had demonstrated the proper, if rudimentary, way to draw a cat. Their cat.

At first Brittanus had thought they were referring to the drawing. "The drawing is barely adequate." They had deliberately left out details to make it easier for small children to replicate.

But Tristan insisted with a cheek to shoulder motion that reminded Brittanus achingly of Euros, "No you."

Yvain, not to be out done, kissed Brittanus' cheek, which felt warm. Hot.

Much like the burning forest fire blazing in their chest. The roar in their ears. The sudden desire to be attacked by Romulans or Klingons so that they could defend these children from them. The corollary.

"Mummy!" Mycroft crying. Their arms, reaching out, even as God tazed them. Saxon standing bleeding, but not broken enough, reaching for a sedative. They'd broken the wrong arm.

Brittanus pushed the memory away. By calling on the pattern of the Genesis formula. Memories were not what was needed. Although it had been many years, centuries even, Brittanus knew what was called for. "And I…" exposed, tender, terrifying,

the rockets leaving Earth orbit, bottled words unspoken

, "care very much for both of you." Considered the vulnerability of space. Exposure.

Harry put down their tablet, and swept up Yvain in a hug. Whirling him in circles. "Your Grandma Brittanus means I love you too."

Over the sound of Yvain's giggles, Tristain whispered, "Sehlat can't either. S'ok." Brittanus soon received a lapful of a remarkably calm cat. "Here." Tristain picked up Brittanus hand and pulled it over Sehlat's fur until the creature was purring. A surprisingly calming sound.

Leading Brittanus to explain that Augments contained cat genetics. Which led to Yvain's oft asked question, "Why?"

There had been a time such a question would have filled Brittanus with rage. To be tamped down lest it leak out.

It always leaked out.

Even forest fires died off eventually.

Eventually the rains came. Looking into a wide open expression, Brittanus dragged a slow hand through soft fur. "Wouldn't you want to be like Sehlat if you could?"

For once an answer didn't elicit another question, but instead a solid affirmative from both twins.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Their miracle hadn't happened. Again.

She and Billy still came up wanting.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to move from Beta Aurigae to Breen Prime. But it had seemed like an opportunity to start over somewhere completely new. Sometimes, Chin looked at the mountains that had once been locked in snow and had trouble grasping that her mother had remade this world. Removed the radiation. The ice and snow. The place where Victor had died.

Not that it was a paradise. Far too many nasty creatures for that.

A lot of hard work, even for an advanced society. Perhaps especially for an advanced society.

Maybe Billy hadn't been able to become pregnant because of stress. Or some lingering something in the air. Or maybe it was because Chin was an Augment… Original.

She didn't want to propose what she did. "We may have to face using a uterine replicator to conceive."

Billy sighed and pushed aside his plate. "Everyone here thought we were crazy for attempting a biological solution. At least we're close to completing the parenting degree."

"At least," agreed Chin.

On one side, there were the Breen, who took parenting courses as a matter of… course. On the other, there had been a steady river of Augments from all over the Federation coming to Breen space, who thought the whole thing unbelievably bizarre. Abrogation of civil somethings.

Chin couldn't imagine what Breen Prime would look like a century from now, but it was sure to be an odd blend.

Although, the Firsts had assured the Auberj on the Southern Continent that they wouldn't discuss immigration between the continents until the first Auberj generation were adults and reproductively active.

She was thinking about that when Sherlock contacted her with an idea. She talked about it with Billy that night. Billy agreed, "A voyage would be a chance for you to get to know him better. Now that he has more memories of your childhood."

Chin brushed back her hair. "Perhaps I could invite Mycroft."

Billy looked at her.

"What?" asked Chin.

"You realize that if Mycroft goes with you, he'll invite your mother. And if your mother goes, and Meiying is living on the ship, and half the time they're transporting the Watsons' troop around, then Noonian will want to go too. With your um… Lwaxana. Do you want to spend that much time with that many of your relatives on a spaceship?"

Chin smiled weakly. "You could come with us."

Billy kissed her cheek. "I love you very much. No. And," he looked into her eyes, "you didn't answer my question. Is that what you want?"

Chin thought about it. Thought about starting a new family with Billy. Thought about all the gaps and raw spots in her relationships with her siblings. Parents. However it went, she needed to do this. Maybe.

"I'll let Sherlock know when I'm available." said Chin. Determined. Decisive. Terrified. "I'm sure it'll be fun."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"Never, ever, ever again," said John.

"You've said that already," said Sherlock with a jaundiced look. "You know I hate repetition."

"It's really worth repeating," said John. He wasn't entirely certain what had possessed them to think that a short little trip by Earth – under cloak given the ship was still technically stolen – with two five years olds, three formly megalomaniacal grandparents, a Betazed Step-something, Harry, John's mum on theatrical overdrive, Chin, Elim and Mycroft was an even remotely good idea.

Actually, Mum and Meiying got on reasonably well after years of on and off proximity, but several attempts at dinner had been a cross of passive aggressive and overly direct comments by Lwaxana. To be honest, John had no idea how the woman pulled off being a diplomat.

He was still contemplating the previous evening, when they came into Earth orbit.

"Captains," said Hunter. "I'm reading a massive craft in stationary orbit over the west coast of North America." She brought it up on the screen. A long cylindrical ship that dwarfed space stations, much less, any ship in the fleet, filled the monitor. Out of one end, a sphere had detached, which was emitting a beam of broad beam of energy at the Pacific Ocean.

"I've got energy readings failing across the planet. Anything that is hit by that beam is going dark," said Donovan.

Sherlock got up and went to his science station. "Increasing levels of atmospheric ionization. Rises in temperature," said Sherlock. Darkening clouds rapidly formed over the Pacific, soon spreading over the land masses on both sides. "At least eight tropical storms forming in a band over the equator. John," he looked up, "at this rate they'll be each be Category Five hurricanes within a matter of hours."

Several System defense ships started attack runs at the ship, and went dark. Hit by a variation of the beam that was roiling the planet.

No surprise, the Lunar base fired on the ship, but the energy just fizzled as it reached the ship. Photon torpedos simply bounced off its surface.

John was puzzling at what they could add to mix when Donovan said, "I'm reading a buildup of Genesis energy from the Lunar base." She looked alarmed. "I think they're planning on firing on the ship."

At John's look, Sherlock shook his head. Not a surprise. He'd mostly avoided looking or listening to his mother discuss Genesis energy.

John tapped the com. "Brittanus to the bridge. We need your expertise." He had to figure that would bring them running.

Hudson said, "The beam from the ship is some kind of broadcast. The universal translator can't get a fix on what it's trying tell us."

"Whatever they're trying to say," said Donovan, "they're massively fucking up the planet."

Hudson put the broadcast on the bridge coms. A horrible sound that woke up even Yvain and Tristan from their naps in the Ready Room, which was saying something. Hudson turned down the volume.

"The beam is directed at the oceans," said Sherlock, tapping a control. The sound shifted to a lilting haunting melody that echoed around the bridge just as Brittanus arrived.

They said, "Since I don't expect historical recordings of humpback whales to be the reason you've requested my presence, what do you require from me?"

"Genesis energy building up on Lunar base aimed at," Donovan pointed at the ship on screen, "that."

"Aren't you going to tell me I should have studied Genesis energy so I wouldn't have to ask for your help?" asked Sherlock.

"Why? If you had then you wouldn't be asking for my help now." Brittanus studied the readout. "It's a localized surge. At that level, it shouldn't affect the lunar surface or the Earth. If that's what you wanted to know."

"Yeah, pretty much," said John.

"A humpback whale song," said Sherlock, having, it seemed, moved on. He picked up Tristan and Yvain. "Humpback whales."

"Humpback Whales!" shouted Yvain.

Tristan burst into tears.

"Humpback whales are good," repeated Sherlock slowly.

"But, but… they're gone," sobbed Tristain.

Sherlock's brows knitted. "I… think I remember it. There was a book your grandmother gave me when I was young. It was paper wasn't it? A physical book with pictures."

"Yes, you appreciated tactile things," said Brittanus, cool as ever. They glanced down at the children. "Perhaps given the energy build up the children should return to the Ready Room or you should change the monitor display."

Sherlock nodded. "Yes. Come on. I'll show you some pictures of whales." He carried the children back into the ready room, which left them waiting for the beam to fall.

Into that tense wait, Mycroft and Elim joined them on the bridge. Mycroft had the look of a man who was half afraid he'd find WWIV on the bridge. Tension easing as soon as he saw that Brittanus was focused on a science station. Elim, strolled past him, and tilted his head. "Interesting choice of melody and display."

"That ship is sending a message to humpback whales, a mammalian species that once swam in Earth's oceans," said Hunter. She added, "Humpback whales went extinct during WWIII."

Ensign Ademola sighed and twisted some hair around their finger. "How sad. That ship came here to send a message and there is no one here to receive it."

John glanced at Brittanus.

"I will note," said Brittanus stiffly, "we were not the ones who drove the humpbacks to extinction. Nor the rest of the cetaceans. Nor the monarch butterflies. Not most of the earth invertebrate."

Mycroft tensed again. "I'm sure no one meant…"

John cut him off. "I wanted to know the situation on the moon."

Brittanus eased slightly. "They'll be firing in thirty seconds. Readings still within range for minimal damage."

Hunter expanded the view to encompass the moon. The ship shrinking in size if not influence. A white beam of light shot out of the lunar base hitting the ship. Dissipating to nothing on the ship's surface.

"So, that's new," said John.

"Interesting," said Brittanus. An actual smile creeping over their face. "Every weapon has a corollary."

"Yeah, and what's yours," said Donovan.

"You," said Brittanus not looking up from their monitor. "The mass of humanity, which with no response to the ship's call, will soon be eradicated by the rising storms."

"Unpleasant to say the least," said Elim. "Can you beam anyone up?"

Hudson shook her head at John's look. "The transporters wouldn't be able to get through the effects of the signal that ship is emitting."

"Even if we could," said Hunter, and she didn't say that at most they could save a few thousand running back and forth to the moon at sublight. Using every compression trick.

John was about to give the order to try on the far side of the planet when Sherlock burst out of the ready room with two very excited toddlers. "We should travel back to when there were still humpbacks singing in the ocean and bring them back. It's the simplest solution."

John got the pleasure of seeing Brittanus visibly start at that, which must be a first.

Really it wasn't any crazier than anything else they'd ever done. He and Sherlock strapped Tristan and Yvain into the padded child seats Sherlock had installed below the command couch.

Hunter asked, "Should we really be taking the um…" she nodded her head at Brittanus, "to the time before they took over the planet?"

Hudson said, "Category two hurricanes are making landfall in South East Asia. Central America. Western Africa. New storm systems are forming." Which pretty much decided things.

"There's no time," said John. "Sherlock, do the honors."

Sherlock glanced at Brittanus who spread their hands wide. "I defer to the expert."

So with a delighted laugh, Sherlock made the calculation.

A minute later, they were whiplashing around the sun and into the past.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In the monitor, the Earth displayed as it had once been. Polluted. Acid rain. Hole in the ozone layer. Warming oceans.

Knew that the most pivotal moment of their life was about to occur. Had felt it with growing surety. From the moment the fine lines appeared on the edges of Mycroft's eyes.

It must be soon.

Even more apparent now that the method of it had been revealed.

To cover their agitation, they examined the method by which Sherlock had catapulted them back in time. Elegant. Not only brilliant, but there was a certain wit to the equation. They said, "More than adequate. The cloak is also quite fine."

Sherlock looked back over his shoulder and glared at Brittanus.

Elim cleared his throat and said, "What your mother means is that it is utterly amazing and brilliant that you could calculate how to travel in time after a moment's thought. They're completely overwhelmed with pride."

Brittanus looked at Elim gratefully. "Yes, that is what I said."

Sherlock looked at Brittanus carefully. "Oh. That… clarifies things."

Elim sighed. "I'm considering taking up a career as a translator. Taking tiny tidbits and filling in the actual compliment." He clapped his hands. "Now how do we go about getting some whales. Also, what is a whale? Other that a mammal that likes to swim. Also, what is a mammal?"

Hunter tapped some controls. The image of a humpback whale filled the monitor. "That's a whale."

"Not so bad," said Elim going closer.

The children kicked at their chairs restlessly, and how not, but John leaned down and quieted them.

Hunter said, "And that's a Human next to a whale." The screen updated with the image of a tiny human in scuba gear next to a whale."

"Ah," said Elim taking in the size of the whale. "Problematic."

Yvain giggled.

The com chirped. Stonn said, "Captain, we have a problem down in Engineering. The dilithium crystal matrix cracked during the journey."

Brittanus looked at Sherlock. Wanting to give him a chance to say, "That's simple. We need to acquire some fissionable material and refuse the matrix at the molecular level using a phased recursion process."

Nodded their appreciation of Sherlock's quick understanding of the solution.

"And now your mother is beaming with pride," said Elim.

John looked alarmed. "We're not making a nuclear anything on board this ship."

"No," Donovan glared further at Brittanus, "We're not."

Hunter said, "There were sources of nuclear material on Earth. Nuclear power plants. Nuclear weapons. We could obtain energy from those. Do the repairs on site."

There had been no nuclear power stations near Baskerville base. Brittanus looked at Mycroft and thought, "This is the moment he's deciding to go find me. To see for himself." They'd known about the recordings Elise had given him for some time. Had not asked to listen to them or mentioned them.

They halfway wanted to tell him not to go.

Halfway didn't want him to see what he'd see.

Completely did not want to be alone while everything was happening. They went to kneel next to their grandchildren and told them facts about whales.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The idea came to him as soon as they arrived in the past. Certainly not something he'd have ever sought out.

His other father was alive in this time. Not Spock. The one whose genetics Mother done their best to root out. The other Mycroft was alive in this time as well. Young to be sure, but alive. He must be given that it was only four years until Mother took over Britain.

He would never again have an opportunity like this.

He didn't want to know.

The foundation of his entire life was based on knowing the worst of everything.

If he knew, perhaps he could understand.

All he needed to do was go down to the planet. He could set up an auto routine. Automatic transport back to the ship after a suitable duration of time. An afternoon should be enough. More than enough. He replicated the appropriate clothing. Money from the era. Injected himself with a subcutaneous transponder.

When he arrived in the Transporter Room Forest, far less used than Transporter Room Cloud, Elim was there.

Mycroft said, "Don't try to stop me."

"Why would I try to stop you from being who you are. I merely wish I could go with you, but," Elim glanced down at himself, "A Cardassian might stand out in pre-First Contract Earth."

Mycroft said, "You would never stand out in a crowd. But would instead be able to stand right next to your target at any time."

"You say the sweetest things. I realize you automated transport, but… let me know when you're ready to return. Now, tell me what supplies you're bringing."

Mycroft felt as if his suit was packed with items as it was, but Elim sighed. "Oh, that'll never do."

It was the work of minutes, and the suit Elim provided him did fit better and carried yet a larger array of things. When they were done. Mycroft got on the transporter pad.

Elim transported him down to the city of Exeter in Cornwall, England, before Mycroft could think more about it and decide it was a bad idea
.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Beam down went fine. M'Press giggled when they came in wearing military fatigues from the era, but wouldn't say why. So, Sally had to assume the answer was the same as it always was. Porn.

Which was a fuck of a way to start a mission.

Sally asked Hunter, "Are you sure they just… kept nuclear facilities in major population centers?" It sounded ridiculous. Dangerous. Stupid.

"The naval bases up and down the Pacific coast were home bases to the American fleet, which included nuclear vessels," said Hunter adjusting her Lieutenant Commander's uniform. Neither one of them were as young as they'd once been. They'd had a good deal of discussion around what rank made the most sense given their age.

They beamed down into the perimeter of the base in Alameda. Finding something as large as a naval facility in this era wasn't exactly hard. Finding where a nuclear sub was parked was a little harder. But they could always try again at another base if there wasn't one there.

Hunter approached a young man in a Lieutenant's uniform. "Excuse me, could you tell me where the nuclear vessel is docked?" He stared at her.

Sally tensed. There was nothing in the question that should have tipped him off, but his expression filled with suspicion. "Ma'am, where are you stationed?"

"We just transferred here from Okinawa," said Hunter, which Sally hoped actually had a naval base.

The Lieutenant said, "No you didn't," and pulled a projectile weapon, aiming it at the two of them.

"We absolutely did," said Sally, trying and failing to mimic Hunter's accent. Possibly failing given the way Hunter winced.

"What's going on here, Carver," said a burly looking Human with Lieutenant Commander's insignia.

"Caught these peacenik's trying to stage another protest, sir," said the Lieutenant. "Look at how they're dressed. Claimed to have been stationed in Okinawa. Two female Lieutenant Commanders." He said that last as if it were impossible.

"Yeah, and everyone knows you keep a most fuckable chart," laughed the other man. He looked them over, and Sally considered saying something. Didn't. "I don't know what costume shop you got your uniforms from, but breaking into a military base is a crime under Section 1382 of Title 18." He said, "Good work, Carver."

They had gathered a little crowd. Too many to simply beam out. Hunter tried again. "Sir, we are officers of the US Navy." Moving slightly to hide the contents of the bag Sally was holding. Sally tapped the side of the com in the signal that the contents - dilithium crystals and some very advanced future tech - were to be beamed out.

The Lieutenant said, "What's the regulation around proper procedure during a VBSS."

Since neither of them knew what the fuck a VBSS was, hard to answer. But Hunter said very loudly, giving some sort of cover to the sound a beam out, "It's clearly and obviously a part of section 42, Title 2."

The wrong answer. But it had been a shot in the dark. With a light bag that was very soon confiscated, they were taken to a stockade. The Lieutenant said, "Next time, you might want to imitate nurses instead of pretending to be in the military."

Sally did not punch him, but it was a near thing.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Based on Mummy's descriptions, Mycroft had always imagined the Baskerville Research Institute was a vast complex in the middle of an immense howling wilderness. Tall mountains. Dense forests. That the underground facilities were forty stories deep. That the site itself was filled with a labyrinth of buildings.

What he found - after he mastered the primitive land transport - was a wilderness that could be reasonably be crossed in less than an hour by that land transport. As he approached Baskerville, he found a series of rolling hills outside of a small town.

At the perimeter of the Baskerville Research Institute, there was a long high fence. Some barbed wire, but nothing a slash of a laser cutter couldn't eliminate, which he had to remind himself did not exist. But still, cutting implements were not a modern invention.

There was a thorough guard at the guard station, to be sure, but the station was not the massive gate between prison and liberty, he'd envisioned.

He was greeted by Administrator Brown. An ordinary enough looking man. Not at all the arbiter of life and death he'd expected. After the perfunctory greetings, Mycroft let him in know in the cool tones of long practice that unnamed persons in Home Office had sent him to inspect and see that everything was it should be.

He had, as it happened, played that role many times for Mummy and the other Khans. He had to admit, he was glad of the suit. The fit was perfect. Certainly, Brown in his ill fitting brown suit melted before him and agreed that if the Home Office was not pleased, then Mycroft must be granted a tour.

"I would like to meet the other head personnel on site." His heart was pounding. He knew it was. He had met Spock with less trepidation. But then Spock was a man of honor. Integrity.

Mycroft clasped his left hand firmly in his right behind his back and waited.

Sergeant Major Godwin, the head of the training program, came in first. Glared at Mycroft with unconcealed dislike. Mycroft reminded himself that he was dulling his own scent below Beta Human perception.

He was followed by the Head of the Science division, Doctor Saxon, a tall and thin man with silvering hair that had once been ginger. Blue eyes, not unlike the ones that looked out of his own mirror, looked at him intelligently enough. The flesh around one eye was puffy and blackened. There were several bruises on his right temple. His left arm was in a cast and sling. When Mycroft's eyes flickered over it, Brown chuckled nervously. "Nothing to be concerned about. Just a little incident."

"Ha," said Godwin. "Little bitch could have killed the good doctor if one of my guys hadn't been there to give her a good taze and enough tranquilizer to take down a horse." He looked over at Saxon. "She does not like you." He sneered. "Put your hand in the biscuit bin one too many times there."

"Merely agitated. Nothing to be concerned about," said Saxon with a smooth smile that Mycroft recognized with a sick feeling. "I miscalculated on an experiment and paid the price."

Brown hastened to say, "I assure you, our subjects are completely under control here. We've already experienced considerable success in the field."

"I'm not here to discuss field operations," said Mycroft hastily. "I'm here to discuss your operations here."

"Tip top. Everyone who comes out of my training knows the game," said Godwin.

His first moment of concern was when he was taken to some sort of old metal hanger to see a display of the subject's skill breaking boards and fighting each other. He saw several of them glance sharply at him, no doubt discerning the subtle signature of his scent, but none of them gave him away. He recognized many of them. Adults into children.

None of them were Mother.

Fortunately, neither in his role enforcing his Mother's interests, nor in his current role would he be expected to express pleasure. He made notations in Vulcan on a paper tablet that he'd acquired in Exeter and looked grim.

Ms. Juteland, a simply horrendous harpy of a woman, offered to have a teen demonstrate seduction techniques on him, which he declined with a notation to his pad. He couldn't fail to hear Godwin's snicker and knew that others had not necessarily declined.

"I am here for the complete tour of the science facilities," and in his role as Home Office, he insisted that Saxon be his guide.

He was taken through one or two sublevels, which while large, was no labyrinth. Not a maze of corridors that went on forever.

There was a small nursery painted a dull green. Saxon said, "Previous to this generation, we had to hire women from outside the UK to act as surrogates. Easier to keep tight lips if they don't speak the language. However, with the current generation, we hope to become self sufficient. A few snafus along the way, but I think we've got it down."

Mycroft forced himself not to stare at the tiny version of himself. A toddler staring in great concentration at a set of blocks. The only child to have such a toy.

"Ah, you've spotted our star pupil." Saxon smiled thinly. "Lacking some of the physical abilities of some of our subjects, but more than making up for in mental discipline. I'm thinking maybe it's about time I sent him off somewhere a little more enriching for his mind."

Mycroft looked at himself, studiously ignoring Saxon, despite at least fourteen indicators he was aware they were there. Of a recent trauma. He knelt down and asked, "What are you building?"

The other Mycroft didn't answer. Solemn. Focused. Flinching slightly as Saxon said, "Answer our guest."

Mycroft felt suddenly ill stood up and drawled, "Did you use your own DNA in creating him?" as a distraction so the first Mycroft wouldn't have to speak. Wanted to tell him that it wouldn't be long. It couldn't be long. Not for the timing to work.

Saxon narrowed his eyes. "That's a serious accusation. I would never taint the experiment."

Mycroft looked his biological parent in the eyes and observed. He had seen what he'd come to see. All he had to do was endure the rest of the tour.

He was taken through a few more rooms. Came to a locked door.

Saxon smiled slowly at him. "Here, let me show you another of our subjects." He opened the door with alacrity. A faint tremor in his non-dominant hand. Mycroft knew before the door opened, what he'd find.

His mother, strapped down to a table. Naked. Young. So very young. Sweat streaming down their face despite the chill. Wrists raw. An intravenous drip of some clear fluid going into their right arm. They shouted and shook the table as soon as they saw Saxon, who said, "If you have any doubts about how deadly our subjects are, here is one of our best example, Mr. Holmes." He looked down fondly at Mummy. "I made the mistake of making this one my little pet, and as you see, I have paid a bit of a price." Saxon tapped the side of the metal bed with his cast.

Mummy snapped their teeth at it, eyes wild and crazed. Their scent was off. Not Juvenile heat, which would have been a rich heavy scent. Something faintly sickly. Mycroft asked, "Have you given... this subject hallucinogens?"

"Brown wanted to have this subject put down after," Saxon waved at his arm, "or relegated to parts production, but as I said, she was always a bit of a pet of mine. I think with the right dose, I'll get her eating out my hand again." His look at Mummy was possessive. Acquisitive.

For the first time in his life, Mycroft thought, "I am the son of a dragon," and he did not mean Mummy.

He also didn't think.

He shot Saxon with his phaser. Stun, more's the pity.

He considered Mummy and their regenerative abilities. He considered the adrenalin that Elim had insisted he bring. He removed the drip of whatever poison was being given Mummy and prepared the hypo. But Mummy twisted and turned on the bed trying to pull away from as he tried to administer it. Terrified.

He said very firmly, "It's Mycroft. You can trust me." He rubbed his silk square against his neck and held it to Mummy's nose. There would be subtle differences in his scent. Vulcan genetics could do that, but it was enough.

They breathed once, stared at him wide eyed, and slumped, which allowed him to administer the dose. Within moments, their expression cleared.

Comprehension bloomed and with it cognition. They were so young. But all they said was, "I have a great deal of questions."

Mycroft unstrapped Mummy. "I don't know if I should answer them."

Mummy held the square to their nose. "That is fair." They swung off the table and knelt down to grip Saxon's head.

"No, you can't..." Mycroft held up his hands. Wanting to say why they couldn't, but didn't. Years of life on the run lay ahead of Mummy. Until the final decision to seize power. Seize it and keep going. Years away.

Mummy looked at him coolly. "Very well." They turned around and lifted their hair, which was down to their mid shoulders. "There's a tracker in the base of my neck. You'll need to cut it out."

"Or I could do this," said Mycroft, suddenly, somewhat wildly thinking that this was where curiosity had gotten him. He pulled a small tricorder out of one of the many pockets Elim had insisted he'd need, set the signal to full and shorted out the primitive thing in Mummy's neck. "It's dead." He swiftly put the tricorder away before Mummy caught more than a glimpse.

Mummy stared at him. Eyes measuring and so old in such a young face. "We'll need to get someone."

"Mycroft?"

Mummy looked at him blankly.

"Your son, Mycroft."

"Recursive," said Mummy, "Since you are… not exactly he."

"Not exactly," said Mycroft.

"Yes, Mycroft then, but…" their expression was almost pleading, "we can't leave the others here."

Mycroft said, knowing he'd regret it, "Fine, but…" he looked down at Saxon, "we'll need to figure out what to do with… him."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Since the first order of business was to communicate with the whales, they did a quick survey of the telepaths on board. According to Elim, Mycroft was out of commission with a migraine. Lwaxana could read the minds of non-telepathic races, but couldn't communicate. Which left Stonn, now that Sestre had finally headed off to university on Vulcan before the trip.

Stonn beamed down with a knitted cap covering his ears, since surgically altering his ears for such a short mission seemed a bit much. Thankfully, he knew how to swim due to some fairly arcane, if at this point useful, Starfleet customs regarding physical training. The anti-grav unit sewn into the lining of Stonn's pea green jacket would help too given this era was woefully short on useful prosthetics.

John sat with the kids up on the large cement stairs overlooking the bay enclosure onto the open ocean where the frankly enormous looking juvenile humpbacks were held. Got to see a feeding. Not incidentally, he was trying to get some food into the twins, or rather twin.

Yvain, having eaten their lunch, was proving an excellent distraction to the various families braving the cold sea breeze by running up and down the stairs while singing songs from the old classic, Little Mermaid, which John was regretting showing the kids now that he'd had to watch it several hundred times. With people looking at their admittedly adorable kid, Sherlock easily pitched Stonn out of his old fashioned wheelchair and into the water.

The far more difficult project was getting food into Tristan, who never hungry. Regarded food as a nuisance or a chore worse than cleaning their room, which since John was aware of the caloric needs of a growing Augment child, made every meal that extra bit of fun.

With the sound of the waves covering the splash, it took longer than John might have thought for people to notice Stonn in the tidepool, and even when they did, Brittanus did a surprisingly good job of shouting, "Careful. Don't hurt my friend. He's a veteran. He injured himself fighting for his country," and generally getting in everyone's way. It was true enough. Also true Stonn had injured himself fighting the Dominion forces Brittanus had allied with and enabled. Light years and centuries away.

John's comm chirped. Since he was far enough from the other families, he answered. "Yes."

"I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news," said Hudson. "Donovan and Hunter were captured on their mission. But no worries. They were able to beam out the proto inductor before capture and the subcutaneous transponders were not discovered. So there's been no technological contamination of the past. We're working on a plan to get them out."

John pointed at the chicken fingers - a food substance he didn't really want to think too much about - and pointed at Tristan, their picky little eater, and mimed eating a couple bites. "Good. See if Chin can help with locating another source of nuclear energy. We can't wait while you get Donovan and Hunter out. We need the warp drives repaired in two days if we're going to take advantage of the whales at the aquarium."

"Yes, dear," was Hudson's placid reply, which meant she was already on it.

Which left John to tell Tristan. "You have to eat at least one."

Yvain had now transitioned to racing up and down the stairs pretending to be something that roared a great deal and scattering seagulls that were trying to steal food left behind by families watching the Stonn drama. Which given what seagulls did when scattered, possibly wasn't helpful. "Yvain, stop that and come here. Tristan, please eat."

"I'm saving their food," shouted Yvain.

Tristan's eyes filled with tears. Feelings always close to the surface. "But, but… I'm sorry. I'm not hungry. I'm sorry."

"I'm not upset," said John, trying not to sound irritated and possibly failing, "But you need to eat. You didn't want the pizza or the hot dogs, so we got you this."  He did have to wonder if Sherlock had been like this as a child and then thought, "His mum is right here. I could ask."

Down in the enclosure, Stonn had finished his mind meld and was not resisting being hauled out of the water by the aquarium staff. Sherlock helped him back in his wheelchair, while the Aquarium staff waved their arms about.

Brittanus climbed up the stairs. "It would appear they wish us to leave."

"No surprise," said John. "Tristan. Would you rather have a food packet?" At Tristan's nod, he asked, "Grape or Cherry?" For the longest time, Tristan'd had only wanted milk at meal times, and had an incredibly narrow palate, and was possibly the only child ever who didn't like ice cream. Even now they would rather have nutrient goo rather than regular food. Plus, the amount of cheese quesadillas John had made for Tristan to pick at did not bear thinking about.

Tristan nodded solemnly. Tears running down their face. Their, "Yes, please, grape," was incredibly faint. Voice wobbly with unhappiness.

John caught Brittanus' expression. A little lost. Soft. John thought, "Or I could just observe their reactions." John got out a food packet out of the back of the stroller. Really, until he'd had kids, he never would have thought just how much stuff had to be hauled around to take them anywhere. Tristan sucked on the grape flavored nutrient ooze, but wanted to walk rather than sit in the stroller. They joined Sherlock and a very wet Stonn outside the aquarium.

After purchasing beach towels with colorful images of sea creatures, John said, "Were you able to communicate?"

"Yes, but there's a problem," said Stonn. Because, of course there was a problem.

Then seeing another problem, John raised his voice, "Yvain, get back here. Do not cross the street without us." At Yvain's pleading look, he added, "Yes, the seagull has a chip in its mouth. It's fine."

Brittanus said, "Perhaps I could take the children to look at the tic tac toe playing chicken," which was certainly not something John had ever expected to come out of the mouth of any Khan.

Brittanus guided the children to a small alcove where there was indeed a chicken that would play tic-tac-toe for money. Because everything seemed to require money in this era.

Children distracted, Stonn gave them his report. "The reason I spent so long in the pool is I needed to communicate with both whales. However, their story was the same. When they were both very young, they became separated from their mothers and ended up beached onshore."

"How young?" asked John.

"Young enough that they were still reliant on their mother's milk." Stonn dabbed at his face with a Little Mermaid towel.

"Younger than eleven months then," said Sherlock.

Stonn nodded quickly wringing out his hat, before placing the sopping thing back on. "They may have difficulty assisting us or for that matter surviving in the wild if released. They have a limited understanding of what adult whales know. When I placed the song from the alien probe in their minds, they were not familiar with it."

John grimaced. "Anyway, however smart they are, I wouldn't exactly send children to negotiate with foreign diplomats if they were..." He didn't finish the raised in a cage by aliens statement.

On cue, Brittanus returned with their own two children, glum at having been defeated by a chicken.

"Aren't we going to save the whales?" asked Tristan, their little worrier, looking very worried.

"We're here to save the whales," said John firmly. "Saving the whales is what we're going to do."

Brittanus snapped their fingers and said, "The Auberj."

"What about," said John, before Sherlock cut him off in excitement.

"Yes, yes. Of course, I should have thought about it before."

"Great, what about the Auberj?" asked John.

"That could work," said Stonn, discarding the hat and wrapping a towel decorated with a surfer around his head like a turban.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" shouted Yvain. "Are the Auberjs going to save the whales?"

"Not exactly," said Sherlock crouching down to look at their children face to face, "But we can use the same method we used to save thousands of the Auberj in the holodeck and the transporter buffer to transport a large number of adult whales."

"But what about George and Gracie?" asked Tristan. "Aren't we going to save them. Stonn said they won't survive. That means they'll die." Another wave of tears was in the offing.

"We'll take them with us too," said John, hoping he wasn't lying to his kids. Hoping they wouldn't be just taking the juveniles to the future to die. One step at a time.

"We'll need to add a considerable amount of computer storage for their higher processes," said Stonn.

Brittanus looked unconcerned. "More difficult to come by here in the past, but not impossible." After a long slow moment. "I could help."

Seeing the expression on Sherlock's face, the twin's wide eyes, John felt something heavy and tight in his chest. Then because it was important to get details from Sherlock, John said, "So, what are we talking about doing?"

"We'd want members of multiple pods to be able to support some level of genetic diversity," said Sherlock bopping Yvain's nose with a long index finger, making them giggle.

"That's not what I asked," said John, he felt fairly patiently. He took the empty food packet from Tristan after determining it was in fact empty. Tristan sometimes palpated the packet to make it look like it had lost contents, but was actually half full. "What do we need to do?"

Stonn said, "We can transport a suitable subsection of the Monterey bay into our holodeck, with the whales physical forms stored as compressed holograms at a fraction of their current size. Transport their intelligences in our transporter buffers provided we add a minimum of a thousand yottabytes of storage."

Brittanus frowned. "With a modified version of the compression algorithm Sherlock developed for your holographic doctor we could bring that down to zettabytes. A reliable enough design."

"Which means fantastic in Brittanus speak," said John with an eye on Sherlock.

"Yes, thank you," said Brittanus in a brisk tone. "That is what I meant.

"Will we save all the whales?" asked Tristan. "We need to save all the whales. They're mammals." They were clutching

Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

against their chest. John had purchased it when they paid for lunch. Food and educational materials costing money was still mind boggling to John. At this rate, they were almost entirely out of money. He wished he'd replicated more before they left the ship.

"Uh…" said John, who wasn't entirely certain which whales had gone extinct, and which ones hadn't. Beyond a vague memory of a long ago lecture in one of Sherlock's classes on the disappearance of keystone species and how genetic bottlenecks reduced species' ability to handle shifts in climate or resources. He was pretty sure there had been a discussion of whales.

For one thing, he didn't want to cause the very bottleneck that might have caused an extinction event by taking too many.

Brittanus knelt down. "They are not only mammals, but they are cetaceans."

Tristan's eyes got rounder and held out the book. "Show me." Brittanus duly took the book and leafed to a page. Then simply sat on the ground in the middle of the sidewalk. Seemingly unconcerned about the people streaming around them. But then, they wouldn't care about something that trivial.

John smiled at a passer by. "So, okay, so you want to grab some random section of water."

"I'm certain any sensors that Sherlock has augmented can adequately detect whales," said Brittanus serenely. As if Sherlock wasn't right there getting actual complements. As if it was absolutely normal to say, "Tristan. Yvain. Here. Cetacean. Additionally, Humpback whales are Mysticeti. That means that despite their vast size, they have no teeth." Brittanus bared their teeth and snapped their jaws, making the children giggle. "They consume nothing but tiny plankton and krill. No larger than this." He pointed to an image. "Which in turn feed in nutrient rich cold water, such as the canyon in the Monterey bay."

Which was very educational, but still not quite what John was going for. "So, we find whales, transport them to the future without explaining what's going on, and expect them to… what? Talk to the giant spaceship and save the planet?" asked John dubiously.

"Is that bad?" asked Sherlock, looking up.

"That's kidnapping members of a sentient race," said John with a glance at Brittanus, "so, um… yes. It's wrong to just grab sentient beings for your own benefit. And it's not as if we can drop Stonn into the open ocean to communicate."

"It would be inadvisable," said Stonn. "Also, I do not have enough information to calibrate the universal translator. If that would even be possible given the nature of the language."

"Perhaps we should focus on the storage arrays," said Brittanus, looking very nonchalant. Very. "Those will take time to produce. I know precisely who we need to speak with in this era. While that is being done, we can consider how to bridge the communication gap." They looked John in the eyes.

John couldn't bring himself to trust that nonchalance. "Can't we just replicate it?"

"John, we can replicate some items, but not everything," said Sherlock.

"John, I am from this era," said Brittanus, "I do know a bit more than was passed onto the future as to who invented what and when for the incipient information revolution."

John pinched the bridge of his nose. They'd said they'd take George and Gracie, so they were taking George and Gracie, feral whale children that they were, which meant they only had a couple of days. Which meant they needed to have the storage arrays in just a couple of days. Which meant they needed help.

John looked at Sherlock, who was muttering about something to Tristan. "Let's take the kids." Primarily because they served as a good reminder to Brittanus what the future already held. A future that needed to stay roughly as it was.

"Of course," said Sherlock. "It's a wonderful learning opportunity."

"Off to wherever it is we need to go," said John.

Which it turned out was less than a hundred miles north of where they were. Hardly worth the beam up to beam down. Except for the part where the kids really needed a nap. Plus, colorful towels aside, Stonn wanted to get a change of clothes, and get back to engine repairs and out of the primitive wheelchair.

Also, they needed to replicate more money.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Somewhere in England, even now Mycroft was changing everything. Soon their first born child would be swept up in their arms.

Warm. Soft infant scent. Burning blaze in their chest. "Never going to let you go."

A child they'd left behind without saying what they'd most wanted to say. Now, finally, they were in a position to leave a message in a bottle. The thought was a burr scratching at the walls of their mind.

"Are you sure this is the place?" asked John. Perhaps distracted by the towering redwood trees surrounding the building, larger than any blue whale. Their massive trunks seeming to say they had been there first and would be there long after.

"Deer. Mummy. Daddy. I smell deer," shouted Yvain. They pointed at the brush and had to be restrained from running towards the mammals, hidden by the brush, contentedly devoured poison oak.

"Black-tailed deer. They secrete pheromones from their lower legs," said Sherlock absently. "It's how they say hello."

When Sherlock was that age, Brittanus had given fuller explanations. Discussing the range habits. How to track them. Fear driving them to stuff Sherlock's mind with information. Not knowing which fact that would enable his survival. But perhaps this was better with Yvain and Tristan inhaling deeply and wanting to go closer, which inevitably led to the deer heading to the deeper woods, which led to tears as to why the deer were gone.

At an earlier point in their life, Brittanus would have said that it was because the deer knew predators when they scented them, but then, when Sherlock was their age, Brittanus had wanted to ensure he understood how to hunt. To survive. Predator, not prey.

Brittanus listened as John knelt down and said, "It's because they're shy. You know how you get shy sometimes."

Tristan nodded, while Yvain hugged their twin.

Brittanus could not recall anything of the sort occurring with any of their children. But then, John and Sherlock held their children frequently.

Something to think about as they went inside PorterB Inc.

Massive beige monitors perched atop flimsy folding tables. There were the faint sounds of conversation from the warehouse beyond.

They were greeted by Tom Vishaka. He wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a very muscular mollusk, the mascot of the local university. "Hey, my uh… secretary said you um… uh… had a large order you'd like to make, but they didn't catch what it was." Vishaka had no secretary. The young persons currently peering at the edges of the glass window into the factory space looked not unlike the Beta Humans, who had squatted in the abandoned buildings where they had taken refuge after escaping Baskerville.

Brittanus was just beginning to wish they had brought Meiying, when John grinned. His entire persona shifting. A warm smile on his lips. "Yeah, we wanted to discuss it in person. Hush, hush, you understand."

"Cool," said Vishaka. "You're English." Which if Brittanus hadn't know that in ten years, Tom Vishaka's research into liquid crystal storage would innovate the field, they'd have suggested leaving. As it was, there was a certain deliciousness to their presence. An older Tom Vishaka had donated their work to the US government in exile in Australia. For the war effort.

"That we are," said John. "These are my scientific advisors. I'll let them get into the details." He looked down at the twins. "And of course, my little ones. Daycare waits for no one."

"That is so like so totally cool," said Vishaka. "Single dad. I dig it. So, what can we do for you. Because we're on it. State of the art memory storage. I know where not properly in Silicon valley, but," he nodded seriously, "we speak silicon here."

"Actually," said Brittanus, "we're more interested in your paper on five dimensional liquid crystal storage."

"Uh," said Vishaka. "You mean that thing I wrote after um… medicinally communing out with the elves in Elfland."

"Tom," said someone sharply. A short blond woman with blue tattoo of a wave on her right arm. "What my colleague means is that technology is years away from working."

Brittanus was well aware the world didn't have years. That soon enough there would be far greater concerns than communing with the woods. That even now events were unfolding that would ripple out. War was years away. But governments would grapple more and more to contain what they had created. This sylvan idyll would soon end.

Still, they placed the image of Yvain staring in fascination at the colorful poster of fractals on the wall in the guard house of their memory palace. Tristan was considerably shyer. Hiding behind John's leg. Brittanus said, "What if we were to show you how to advance past several hurdles."

"Mummy!" said Sherlock.

"Fucking-A, that is so cool," said Vishaka. "I've got an auntie who's third gender. Right on that you're like sciencing together."

"A word," said John, tightly. Just as tight was their grip on Brittanus' arm. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Getting us the memory storage we need," said Brittanus, while keeping one eye on the children, who'd decided to poke at an immense printer full of spools of green and white striped paper. "He is the inventor of the technology I'm proposing we use. He has already written the paper that is the foundation. If you'd like we can visit the local university to read it, but I was under the impression time was of the essence."

John's marvellously expressive face looked annoyed and pensive at the same time. "I don't like this. We're messing with the timeline."

"But we do need the memory storage," said Sherlock with a quick glance at Brittanus. So fast, that were Brittanus were anyone than who they were, they would have missed it.

"Ugh, fine," said John. "Yvain. Don't put that in your mouth." John removed the plastic banana slug from Yvain's grip.

Brittanus turned back to the waiting Betas. "As I was saying, if I were to provide several pointers, would you be able to construct to our design."

"Do you have money?" asked the short blond woman.

"Yes," said John with the confidence of an individual who could replicate what funds they needed. "Do you take cash? We were thinking..." he looked at Brittanus as if they had any idea about the American financial system, "A million dollars."

"Fuck yeah," said the woman. There was some shouting from the backroom. "We uh… don't guarantee that it will work."

Brittanus moved closer to Sherlock. Not quite touching. "I'm sure that whatever my son and I assist you with building will be more than adequate. But our need is quite urgent."

"It'll be effing-amazo," said Vishaka.

"Fast, will cost you," said the blond woman.

Brittanus spread their hands wide. Wondered if John was even considering what the effect of a small company in the woods suddenly having millions of dollars. How it would attract the attention of the paranoid government. Ripples in the pool.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Lwaxana said, "Stop thinking about talking to Chin and actually talk to her. I don't care if we traveled in time, Time travel notwithstanding, you came on this journey to spend time with your children. Not brood in our temporary quarters."

That she was right drove him from the room. That he was concerned had him bringing her with him.

He was joined in the lift by Meiying, who fortunately did not ask again what it was like to have sex with a telepath. Unfortunately, she thought it because Lwaxana said, "It adds an entirely different element. I know, for example, when my partner is faking it and when they aren't."

"Oh, I never fake it," said Meiying. "I'm one hundred percent grade A genuine."

Lwaxana laughed.

Fortunately, they arrived at the quarters where Chin was staying before things escallated. There they found Hudson had arrived ahead of them. Hudson said, "Ah, excellent. Just the people I wanted to see. You have experience in this era, is that correct?"

"In that we were born in this era and are currently alive, yeah," said Meiying.

"Excellent. Hunter and Donovan were captured by the local authorities while trying to obtain radioactive material to restore our dilithium crystals." She held up a small device. "We're going to need some help getting them out. We're tracking their location."

"Great work. Crack stuff," said Meiying. "Mind if I ask where they tried to get this cup of radioactive material?"

Chin flushed. "I consulted with Lieutenant Hunter. They went to the naval base in Alameda. The nuclear fleet is based out of that location."

"You poor dear," said Lwaxana, "You shouldn't be upset about how things went. You couldn't have known that they'd be captured."

"Or you know, someone could have asked the one person on the ship who actually interacted with the US Military for several decades," said Meiying dryly. "You sent two hot looking women in naval uniforms down to a base staffed by what might as well be an all male military and didn't expect that every dude was horndogging every woman on the base. They probably got nabbed in under five minutes."

"I had interactions with the US Military," said Noonian, who couldn't disagree with Meiying's criticism, but did not want Chin to feel worse than she did.

"A joint task force isn't the same thing as," started Meiying hotly, just like she always did, but was cut off by Hudson.

"Donovan was under the impression that the two of you might want to escape to the planet and use this opportunity to speed up your rise to power."

Noonian stared at her. "My rise to power required years of interaction within the Indian armed forces. A delicate balance that could not possibly have occured any sooner than it did. And what? I could warn myself of certain misalliances. Mistakes. But how would I warn all the other Khans. And nothing can change the basic math. If the overall population turned against us, which it would, because it did, we could not maintain control. Mathematics were against us."

Beside him, Meiying grinned. "She thought she was keeping me from going down to the planet? I didn't need help to get free?"

"Father Meiying, how did you get free?" asked Chin suddenly. "You never said. The history books don't say."

Noonian paused considering memories.

"And what can we learn from the campaign of Khalid ibn Walid?" Victor as always certain of his answer. Sherlock staring off into space, ignoring the lesson. Chin, silent, watching him.

Spin.

"The mongols took power, but their gains destabilized in a generation. Why?" He could see Chin knew the answer, but wouldn't' say it.

Spin.

"Stop spinning," said Lwaxana. "You're making me dizzy."

Meiying pulled down the neck of the ratty shirt she was wearing to show her cleavage. Long ago, Noonian had kissed the location of that spot. A different phase of their relationship. A passing thought that earned him a pinch to his backside from Lwaxana.

Meiying tapped a spot above her heart. "There was this sweet little nurse."

"You used her to get weapons," said Chin looking down at her hands.

"No, what? Why? She was a nurse," said Meiying. "No, I needed her to cut out the bomb over my heart and," she let go of the shirt collar, "by extension every other Augment. Took over a year, and we had to keep the stupid things with us. In case our handlers copped to it." She grinned. Rocked on her feet. "But seriously, why go for a high security target like a military base. They had such a thing as nuclear power plants. There's one in San Onofre right on the beach north of San Diego. It's got techs and guards, but nothing as secure as a base."

Noonian said quickly, "It would be a much easier target." Another squeeze from Lwaxana, "Perhaps, the three of us could go down to the planet. Obtain the materials."

Meiying added, "It could be fun. We could all go. Grab some rads. Have a cookout on the beach after."

Chin said very softly, "You both wish to go on a mission with me? Why?" Her face filled with suspicion. "Do you think I would fail?"

"Oh for fuck's sake," said Meiying.

"You should plan it," said Noonian. Simplicity. He must keep his answers short. Brief. To the point. "We were so wrapped up in grand designs. Failed to do the simple things."

"Like break into a nuclear power station in the 1980s," said Meiying.

"Hush now," said Hudson. "I, unlike Donovan, am confident that you're not about to try to take over the planet early."

"I can't speak for Meiying, but I have some familiarity with nuclear power plants," said Noonian. "An early priority of my regime was increasing our power generation to meet the needs of our population." Chin's shoulders were settling into a familiar stiff stance. He could hear the echoes of a thousand lectures he'd given over the years on methods for keeping a population contented. Stopped himself. None of that was relevant. Had never been what she needed to hear.

Meiying said, "Loads of fun."

Noonian turned to his daughter and said, "If we worked with you on details about the probable layout, I would be interested in your plan to obtain the needed materials."

Chin returned his gaze. Her shoulders softening once more. "I would like that."

Meiying said, "I'm also free for a consult on how to spring your officers from the po po."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Mycroft stared down at the donator of certain biological materials involved in his makeup for five point six seconds trying to decide what to do. Given he'd just quite possibly completely bolloxed the timeline.

"I wasn't the only Khan," said Mummy.

"Nor even the first," said Noonian. "I came before all the rest."

"I clawed my own way to power, thanks," said Meiying, who for whatever reason always had a mouthful of chewing gum in his memory palace. Despite her having given up that habit along with other less salubrious habits from the twentieth century before his younger siblings were born.

If only he had memories to delve of how Mummy escaped, but other than it had occurred, involved explosions, and that they and the other Augments spent several years on the run pursued by the British government and the officials at Baskerville, he knew very little.

"Does Saxon keep an office in this building?"

"No. It's in the same building as Browns," was the quiet reply. Even quieter, "But he does keep a set of rooms for when he… needs to stay on site overnight." They had made no move to put on Saxon's lab coat to cover their nakedness. Considering the issue, Mycroft could see why. It would be redolent of his scent. He removed his suit jacket and handed it to them wordlessly.

They took it and put it on. Breathing deeply. Gave him another long considering look. "How can you be Mycroft? And yet not? Another experiment? Does Saxon have a way to forcibly age specimens."

"We are not specimens," said Mycroft sharply. Mother stilled. Their eyes going expressionless. He softened his tone. "All you need to know is I am Mycroft and you can trust me." His mind whirred. Suppressing panic. All the ways this could go horribly wrong.

"Inertia is never the answer," said Noonian. "Always go on the attack."

Admittedly, that sort of advice had generally made him want to hide in a closet growing up.

"Is there a supply closet nearby?"

"Two doors down, but we can't leave him there. He'd be discovered even sooner than here."

"That's not my plan," said Mycroft with more authority than his lack of plan ought to afford. "In any case, they'll see Saxon walking about."

"But," they looked him up and down, "You resemble Saxon, but no one would mistake you for him."

Mycroft considered explaining, but settled on scanning Saxon's face. All the while, Mother watched intently. Observing. Coming to who knew what conclusion.

They did start slightly when Mycroft turned on the localized holo-emitters that made his face look like Saxon's. Down to tinting his hair silver. It did nothing for his hands or body, but given their general build was the same, it should do the trick. Mother's heartbeat raced. Then slowed again. They said, "You're two centimeters taller than he is."

"Do you think they'll notice?" Mycroft said wryly.

"No," Mummy looked away. "They see, but they do not observe."

"Like you building your drones in secret." Mummy had mentioned their earliest technological advances. Admittedly, given Mycroft's lack of interest in engineering it had felt like a failure at an earlier age, but he did have to wonder now if it hadn't been an attempt to connect with him. Wonder if it was an interest they'd shared with the other Mycroft.

"How did you… ha," surprise melted into acceptance on Mummy's face. "Of course, you would know."

Mycroft nodded. Took Saxon's lab coat for himself and said, "I'll be right back."

The supply closet was a treasure trove. It was the proud possessor of a laundry cart, which he liberated, along with a liberal set of items as he assembled an idea of a plan.

On his return, he handed his mother a set of clean room clothing. It wouldn't be particularly warm, but it was something.

"Clothing defines a person," said Elim. "Shapes how they want to be seen."

They were not specimens.

Mother put on the clothing, and put his jacket back on over it.

Mycroft didn't comment. Merely wrestled Saxon's limp body, which seemed all limbs in his unconscious state, into the cart. "I'm afraid you may need to ride inside the cart."

Mummy shook their head. "Simpler if I come with you." They looked at his face. "He has the authority to have me released from my bonds at any time." They glanced at the table. "The lead scientist on a project like this has considerable leeway."

Mycroft could not afford to think about that right then. What he could do was stand back as Mummy wheeled the card in front of them. Guided him to Saxon's rooms where he used Saxon's ID badge to enter.

They were pleasant enough rooms. Decorated with any number of little touches. A Queen sized bed. A table with two chairs and a high chair. Mycroft closed the curtains on a view of green hills.

Simple.

Except Mother's expression was wide open. Full of longing and fear and hope and something Mycroft couldn't identify. So, incredibly young. Little more than a child.

Who went still as Mycroft pulled Saxon out of the cart. Bound Saxon's hands. Stuffed a gag in his mouth. Shoved him unceremoniously in the closet. He felt better with a door between him and the man. Between Mummy and Saxon as well.

"Now what?" asked Mother. "What's your plan." So much hope. So much fear. Mother quietly touched a lamp fixture. Adjusted the lamp shade. "How will you get us out?"

An excellent question. Very excellent.

"Never forget kiddo, that curiosity may have killed the cat," said Meiying smacking on her gum, "But satisfaction brought him back." She winked at him sitting at his studies before going into Mummy's laboratory.

Not an entirely useful memory.

"The best strategy is indirect," said Noonian. "Go where the enemy does not expect you to be, which is more difficult in practice than you might think. This involves a good deal of misdirection."

More useful.

Mycroft had carried out any number of operations for their mother. However, more in an organizational capacity and less in a field operations way.

Still, he had the fragments of a plan. Threadbare. Lacking details and yet requiring several moving parts. Too little margin for error. It would have to be enough. He explained what they would need to do.

Simple.

After a flickered glance. Mummy went to the closet where Saxon was coming awake. Pulled out a suit and handed it to Mycroft.

Saxon groaned. Muffled shouts from around the gag. Mummy stared at him. Reached out without needing to look and turned on a small radio. Jazz music jolted into the room. Mummy closed the closet door again.

Mycroft was presented with the delicate operation of changing into Saxon's clothing. Elim would call it his persona. His skin. They fit. A little short in the legs. But they fit. Carefully removing the various items he'd brought and replacing them into various pockets in Saxon's suit.

He stalled briefly on the enormity of what he was doing. He walled that thought off. He'd already come too far.

Time to carry a threadbare plan into play.

Noonian said, "According to Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, no plan survives contact with the enemy. I've certainly found it so."

Mummy went ahead of him. Taking some of the supplies he'd brought with him. Went down to the barracks level. Where they met their first real test.

Godwin was there. He looked at Mother and said, "What is the bitch doing out of restraints?"

"I released…" he must remember Saxon's use of pronoun, "her. On my authority. I observed while our visitor was here that she was showing signs of recalcitrant behavior. I took a risk and unstrapped her to demonstrate our control of our subjects."

"And if our Head Office visitor had been killed," Godwin growled, "I would have been the one who had to cover up your fuck up. Again."

"Nothing occurred," he said icily, "As I knew would not given proper stimulus. She understands the consequences of failure," said Mycroft with what he hoped was the right level of hauteur. "Now if you don't mind, when our visitor left me to go back to Brown's office, he said he wanted a blood sample from every specimen."

Godwin's eyes widened. "Do you think they meant to shut the project down? But we've had success in the field. I know the Americans and the Russians are ahead of us, but we have a better product. They rushed them out into the field before the little pricks were ready."

"Perhaps instead of questioning me," he enunciated each syllable, but still glad of the vocal modulator, "you should see about getting every specimen down to the barracks so I can get the requested samples, and go question someone else."

"You're taking the samples yourself." Godwin's lip curled. "Of course you are. Can't keep your hands off the merchandise." His gaze flickered over Mummy. "If I find out you're the reason the project has been shut down, I will end you."

Mycroft didn't respond. Elim often said the key to a lie was to know when to stop.

Godwin glowered, but didn't declare that Mycroft was an imposter. Instead he stomped off.

It was evening. Government offices would be closing. No matter how many friends Godwin had, which Mycroft rather doubted, there would be few people about to answer the phone. Answer questions. A window of opportunity.

Especially when they realized that no one had seen their Home Office visitor leave.

"You sounded just like him," said Mummy. After some thought. "I sound like him sometimes. He leaks out." Mummy's blinked. Stilled. Lost in memory. So the inward facing haunted look was there already.

Of course.

The barracks were just as depressing as earlier. Row upon row of bunks. Teens and children assembled still faced in rows. Mycroft was fortunate this was not India or Russia, which had opted for mass production. Still, it took an achingly long time to short out the chip in the neck of each one. While getting blood samples for the benefit of the camera on the ceiling.

Mycroft knew many of them. Had grown up knowing them as adults. Time to time, he had to remind himself that to them, he looked and sounded like Saxon. Yet, he could tell from the occasional glance, his scent was throwing them off.

When he was done, he slid the tricorder, small cloth wrapped around it and all, into his lab coat. Assembled the rather primitively acquired blood samples and left Mother there.

It felt wrong, but there was nothing for it.

They had their own part to play in his ragged rug of a plan.

Of course, he was interrupted in the hallway by Brown, who said, "Godwin said our visitor was headed back to my office, but he never checked in. No one has seen the man leave the facility. There's no visuals on him leaving the re-education room."

"And that is to me, what exactly," said Mycroft, "He left the room through the door. I can't speak to any flaws in our security. That would be Godwin's provenance."

"What if," Brown lowered his voice, "he's a foreign agent. I couldn't get anyone from the Home Office to admit that they'd sent someone all day, but wouldn't say that they hadn't. Typical."

"Again, do I look like the head of security," said Mycroft. He looked down significantly at the samples and at Brown. "Fine," said Brown, "I'll get to the bottom of this."

Mycroft went to the large refrigeration unit off the main genomics lab.

Saxon had been quite proud of the samples inside. Biological roadmaps to each subject. Keyed with the modifications made to create each variation.

Mycroft placed his own samples inside. Shorted out the temperature modulator. There were be alarm in the control room as it approached room temperature, which was the point. The more technicians, tired and at the end of their day, focused on fixing the refrigerator, moving the materials to other storage systems, the better.

"The best way to move unnoticed in an environment is if everyone has something else to be concerned about," said Meiying. Works wonders.

Mycroft walked briskly. The facility seemed to grow in size. The lift taking an infinitely long time. Achingly. Not long enough. He arrived at the nursery. The attendant there grimaced as he saw him. Held out a clipboard. "I don't care who you are, you still have to sign out when you take him."

Mycroft took it. Observed, and how could he not, the series of Saxon's signature riding up the page. Hard ink strokes. He replicated it. Handed it back. Went to the next room and looked down at himself.

Not in anyway himself. That had never been him. His earliest memories were of a palace full of lush colors and soft surfaces. Ornate objects to examine. That or Mother's laboratory.

Had been small once, certainly, but not never in thin blue cotton. A number stamped on the front. Never a bare white room lit with harsh white light.

The child looked at him solemnly. Mycroft hoped that he was not breaking character when he bent down and picked him up. Walked briskly back into the front room.

The attendant's voice carried after him. "Sir, I will have to report it if you don't bring him back by bedtime." Under their breath. "Again."

Mycroft ignored her. The small warm body in his arms sitting stiffly. A soft inhale. The child's confused whimper, but no words.

Another Doctor joined them in the lift. Glanced at Mycroft and appeared to want to look anywhere but where Mycroft was standing. After an infinite amount of time, the door opened and Mycroft continued on alone.

As he reached Saxon's quarters, the door slightly ajar since he'd given the card key to Mother. He told the child, "No matter what you see, don't shout." Opened the door, and Mummy there. Waiting.

The child in his arms didn't make a sound. Not a sound. Just shook.

Mycroft barely had time to close the door before Mother exploded into motion. Scooped the other Mycroft out of his arms. Wrapping him in their arms. A dozen hard fierce kisses. "It's going to be fine. Mummy has you now. I'll never let them take you again."

He would have expected the other Mycroft to have reacted. But he was silent. Still in Mother's arms. Squirmed not to stay in their arms, to be closer, but to be put down. Looking at the pattern on the industrial carpet when that was done.

"Trauma can do that," said Sherlock.

"Also, as young as he is, he likely knows that his father is in the closet," said Elim.

Mycroft turned up the sound on the radio. He cleared his throat. Mummy looked up quickly. Tears in their eyes. "Thank you."

"We haven't pulled this off yet," said Mycroft.

"We will. You will," said Mother. They looked at the closet. "I still say we should kill him."

Mycroft couldn't say, "That's not how he dies." He couldn't say that Mummy would spend years being pursued by him and various members of the British government. That pushed more and more, they would make more and more disastrous decisions. So he said nothing.

Mummy said nothing more.

Mycroft said, "You should get some rest."

Mother glanced at the bed. A flicker of a look. "I'm not tired."

Possibly true. Possibly not. So the hours passed with little to say.

Mycroft sat next to them on the floor. Watched as the other Mycroft fell asleep where they were.

There was a visit from a frightened technician to say that there had been an issue with the refrigeration unit to whom he gave an icy command to deal with it. "Do I look like a mechanic."

A visit from Godwin, who sneered when he saw Mummy and the other Mycroft on the floor. "Get rid of the bint and your brat. We need to talk. What did you tell our visitor?"

Mycroft pulled out his phaser and stunned him. "That." Had to catch him from thumping against the wall as he fell.

"That's a very useful weapon," mused Mummy.

The other Mycroft, made a small sound. Whispered, "Is God dead?"

"No," said Mummy. "More's the pity." Mycroft added Godwin to their closet collection. Let the other Mycroft peer inside, before gently closing the door.

Just in time for a visit from Brown, who he told, "No don't know where Godwin went. He came by… ranted and left. Now if you don't mind, I need to conclude this experiment."

Brown gave him sidelong look, but left.

Mycroft turned off the holo emitter and voice modulator. "Are you ready?"

Mother looked resolved. Tired. "Yes, but I wish you would come with us." Sighed. "But I realize that would be…"

"Recursive," said Mycroft.

Mother gathered up the other Mycroft. Gave another unexpected, "Thank you," and left the room.

Mycroft headed in the other direction. Passed dozens of Augments wearing technicians' clothing.

Opted to be Saxon so far as the Men's room. Emerged as himself. With cameras on some form of lookout, eventually someone would spot him heading to the armory.

Eventually.

Godwin was, after all, not organizing events, which really was fortuitous.

When he arrived in the armory, he stunned the guards. Which then left the question of what to do with them. Stunning would be useless as a choice if he didn't do more given what was going to come next. He piled them outside the door and locked himself inside.

There were rather a lot of explosive devices. He commed Elim to request a beam out on his mark. "You're not done yet?" asked Elim. "How is it going down there?"

"About how you'd expect," said Mycroft.

"That good. I shall await your request."

Far longer than it should have taken, one of the primitive communication devices on the wall gave a harsh ring. He picked up the handset and set it down. Brown rambled on the other end about how he should give himself up, because he was surrounded.

He'd had some time to consider what he's say next. He settled on, "Interfering with God's plan and human genetics is wrong." Hung up.

Set the explosive devices to do what they naturally wanted to do, and requested that beam out.

There would be an explosion. Elim said as he arrived, "I see you left your mark."

"A distraction," he said faintly. Spent a few minutes just holding Elim before asking, "So, what has occured while I've been away?"

"Now that is a story and a half."

It was a sign of Mycroft's weariness that he didn't ask for details. He ought to look after things. Verify that he hadn't ruined everything.

Instead, he allowed Elim to guide him back to their quarters.

Slept for some dozen hours before waking. He went into the common room to find Mother sitting on the couch. Reading.

They looked up. Their expression an echo of what it had been long ago. That afternoon. "I see I can finally thank you."

"For…" said Mycroft before his brain, sludgy with sleep caught up. "You knew."

"Of course, I always knew."

Old fears rolled back in. "Is that why you made me?" He wrapped his arms around himself.

"I told you, it was because I needed to," said his Mother. Standing up. Coming over to him. Tentatively laying a hand on his shoulder. "I was reasonably sure it was you, but… transporter accident, clone, there were other options. And yet, when I said you were the first person I trusted, I always meant you." There was liquid swimming on the edges of his mother's eyes.

Which was fine. He had liquid in his own. Let loose his arms. Found them wrapping around his mother as they both inhaled each other's scent.

Found himself showing his mother the data crystal with the other Mycroft's recordings. But when he offered to play them, they said, "Maybe later. Now, let me tell you about what happened immediately after the explosion. To do so earlier was to risk recursion."

On that note, Mycroft made two strong cups of very hot Earl Grey tea.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Sehlat purred as Sherlock stroked his soft fur. He'd come to the observation room to think.

He looked down at the blue sphere of Earth. Tried to think how they could communicate with wild whales in the wide open sea. How they could possibly complete the needed storage in two days. He made complicated calculations as he tapped his feet to the sound of the waves. Ideas sailed like ships and sealing wax. Cabbage soup and kings. Boiling oceans and pigs with wings.

The sound of his own voice reading

Through the Looking Glass

to the children at bedtime.

Gradually, as if a veil was being lifted, he became aware that Euros was sitting next to him.

She didn't say anything at first. Just lay there on a gold fainting couch in a long dark blue and purple velvet dress that pooled on the floor. Fabric obscuring the view of Earth beneath them. Her bare toes peeked out from under the hem of the dress.

He had an odd feeling of deja vu. Perhaps because he remembered being younger than her. Perhaps because he'd once sat with a woman who looked just like she did in this very space years ago. Perhaps it was an echo of when they were both children. He'd recovered so much. Although, the memories of when he'd thought his name was Yellow beard would likely always be a blurr.

She reached over and feathered her fingers over his cheek. Her fingers were cold. "I didn't give that memory back. It's… a bad recording anyway."

In many ways, Sherlock regarded William's memories as those of a stranger. Applicable to him. Informing certain views, but ultimately those of another person. The person he was had matured without those memories. Or perhaps he was something in between. New again.

"I can hear your thoughts skittering like pebbles on a beach in the waves." Euros slid her feet further out from under her dress. Swung around to face him. "I heard you coming here. I heard you needing my help. I think… if you want whales, I could help. I wouldn't… we could be reverse pirates or un-whalers."

He looked at her somewhat dubiously. "How did you get to this time? On this ship?"

She shrugged, one shoulder close to her cheek. "You're silly. I read how to get back in time in your head the first time I came to the Bakerstreet. Gomtuu did it easily. Trelane could have done it for me anyway, but I asked him to let me do this on my own. He's sweet like that." She fluttered her fingers. "And I'm not exactly on your ship. Anyway, I'd like," she coiled a strand of hair around her finger, "for us to save whales together. I could even help with George and Gracie. Sort of. I don't know how to survive in the sea, but I think I know how they feel. We could... " she nibbled on the end of a strand of hair, "do you think Chin would try to kill me if we brought her along?"

As he understood it, Chin was working with Hudson on the problem with the dilithium crystals, which was an excellent use of her technical abilities and quite possibly good for her relationship with their fathers. He asked, "Can't you tell?"

"Not really. I can read minds. Not the future," said Euros, with her toes poking out from under her dress, and there were little gems affixed to each big toe. "Except for the part where it's actually our history. You know, more kinds of whales died off than just humpbacks. We could save other kinds of whales. If you've got storage. You'll need that. Grey whales like to roam." Her right foot came out a little farther and he could see that there were little painted whales on the big toes with gems. The gems were the eyes of a tiny blue whale. "Blue whales didn't mean to get so big, it's just… the Megalodons were gone and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe. It's an echo in their frequency."

He stared at the gems. He said, absently, "We only need humpback whales."

"Minke whales like to swim really fast." She swished her gemed toes over the floor. Over the Earth. "Orcas like surfing and playing and chat, chat, chatting. They're really large dophins, but they want to go and they're ever so friendly. Well, when they aren't trying to eat umm… well… um… We could bring sperm whales even though they're cranky. Not just when a nasty ship attacks them, and they just get so mad." She slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead. Smiled.

She held up a small flat object. It wasn't the book they'd purchased for the children. It was older. More battered.

Big Blue

. The book Mother had given him when he was very small. It was also somehow a copy of

Moby Dick

, which he'd given to Mycroft years ago. "Belugas are white whales."

"Beluga and Minke whales survived into the future," he said mulishly. He looked up from her swishing feet. "Are you influencing my mind?"

"Because you really want to save things that went away. Mummy remembered that like it was yesterday when we were little. All the things that weren't there anymore." She smiled at him sweetly.

"You didn't answer my question."

"No, I'm not influencing you. I learned my lesson. Controlling people leads to brain damage. Listening doesn't. Talking very quietly doesn't. Please, I kind of… already told them to meet us and where… so I hope you say yes. Not all the whales. Not all of them want to come. Not all of them can, but um… I showed them what's coming and kind of a lot think that maybe skipping that is a really good idea."

Sehlat purred and the Bakerstreet hummed in the background. While below the blue and white and brown Earth hung in the vastness of space. Sherlock couldn't help but think, "We are the bottleneck. We're the reason they go extinct."

"No," said Euros. "A little bit. But you're going to need a bigger storage system." Euros wrinkled her nose. "Mummy may need to use Genesis to recreate krill though. They aren't that complicated, but a lot is standing on their shoulders. So to speak. And squid." She giggled. "Release the kraken." She nibbled on her lower lip. "I got us a ship. You should come see it."

"I've seen Gomtuu." Admittedly, only momentarily and he had many questions about a creature that could survive in space.

"Not Gomtuu. A sailing ship with pretty white sails and it can go ever so nicely across the waves. We'll need it so the whales can gather in the deep blue sea. I… uh… got here before you. I don't have a replicator, but it's easy to get money in Vegas. So I bought a very nice ship, because I knew you were coming and we could save whales. I'll give you my number in case you want… you know… to go on an adventure with me."

At which point, she turned into a flutter of butterflies.

At which point, Sherlock woke up entangled around John.

A dream.

Nevertheless, Sherlock disentangled himself and tapped the number, "36.6116° N, 121.8955 into a nearby tablet and zoomed in. At that spot, that very spot, a three masted schooner was docked in the Monterey harbor. Someone, hard to say who at that magnification, waved a flag with a monarch butterfly on it. So perhaps it was clear after all.

Sherlock shook John awake. "John. We need to save the whales."

John blinked awake, blearily. "We're already doing that."

"Euros found for us and she's contacted whales." Sherlock wasn't quite ready to say how many whales. "She's directing the ones that want to come to a specific location. And she found a three masted schooner for us to sail with the whales."

"Uh… why?"

"So we can give the whales an object to gather around while we prepare to beam them up. Something for George and Gracie to follow. She found a beautiful ship. Like the ones in the inland sea below my memory palace. Like pirates used to sail"

John sighed. Rubbing sleep from his eyes. "We'll need to find someone to watch the children. I'm not taking them on a sailing ship until I know what kind of lavatory it has. And someone has to keep working on the data storage. How much do we need? Never mind. Tell your mother."

Mummy would be happy to work on it and watch the children. Although, as he considered it, they would need someone to watch Mummy.

Also, they really were going to need quite a lot of storage, which now that he was awake, he was aware that his dream calculations for completing it were a bit gibberish.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Bad enough that she'd been nabbed by old time Humans. People so blase about an intrusion, they'd been shunted off as a nuisance. She wasn't even questioned.

She and Hunter spent the night in the Oakland jail for trespassing. Had to be bailed out by Hudson and Meiying, who peeled off wadded up and crumpled green bills and handed them to the clerk with shite eating grin. "My friends are very sorry and they'll never to anything like this again."

"Right, until the next protest," said the clerk. "Just make sure they make their court date."

Worse, Sally was stuck on Brittanus watching duty.

Hudson overrode her when she protested. "The Khans are not attempting to take over in the past. They do not need to help themselves. But someone ought to stay with Brittanus while the storage arrays are built. And help watch the twins."

Hunter said, "Not it."

Sally grimaced, but figured if the storage was going to be done in time, they needed to work the problem. And someone did need to watch Brittanus. "Why the twins."

A question she repeated to Brittanus.

"They want to see black tailed deer," said Brittanus, as if that was an answer that made any sense. "And have yet to understand that while they may heal from poison oak, but they are not resistant to it."

"You're going to push them into poison oak," said Sally repulsed.

Brittanus looked at her as if she was an idiot. "They're children. I will tell them to stay away from the poison oak. They will see deer. They will run into the poison oak. I will tell them not to touch what has touched poison oak. They will immediately touch those places. It is how that works. Except," they looked down. "Mycroft. He always understood danger"

Which begged the question of where Mycroft had gotten off to. But when she asked, Garak said, "He's catching up on his sleep.  Time travel did not agree with him." Which was fine. He probably would have let Mummy dearest get away with murder anyway.

Back down to the planet to kick it in a warehouse that appeared to be full to the brim of laughing college students, a tatooed blond who told them, "Three weeks and you're lucky," and Brittanus working on speeding things up, because apparently now they were fine with fucking with the timeline, because wasn't that a fucking great idea.

Sally did have to admit that Brittanus was right about the poison oak. Tristan seemed to learn the lesson, but Yvain came in three more times with their clothes covered in the stuff. Each time, Brittanus changed their clothes a hell of a lot more patiently than she would have expected. Washed Yvain off.

Still, something was off. She pulled Brittanus outside on the railed staircase and had it out. "Why are we really here? You've told them what to do. They know it. They're building it. Too slowly. For some reason that means Holmes and Watson are fucking off on a sailing ship. Yet here we are."

"I have," Brittanus considered a very tall tree, "another reason for coming down to the planet."

"I knew it. You want to break yourself out of wherever you are. Take over."

"No," said Brittanus, with a cool look, "That is not it at all. But… as you may be aware, I left Earth very suddenly."

"Yeah, we tossed your sorry arse off the planet."

"I ran out of time to decrease the odds. Decided it would be best to leave. Safest for Mycroft and the others. But… I have long regretted not saying goodbye."

"So you want to track your kid down and say, what, sorry I'm going to abandon you in a little over a decade."

"He's two. So, no. He wouldn't understand. Has much to recover from in any case." Mummy looked down. "Elise Watson has spent a considerable amount of time questioning me about Mycroft. The Analyst. I have, as it happens, also questioned her. I have determined how and when to leave a message for him. An older him."

"You can't tell him anything about the future," said Sally, feeling very… very.

"He already knows time travel is possible. He met Sherlock and John when you went to the past before. I simply want to leave my son a message. I suspect, he had reason to doubt my love over the years." Brittanus said all of this looking off at a big fucking tree.

And wasn't that a kick. Hearing that word out of that mouth.

Sally had the brief thought that she was in the same boat as Brittanus. Sort of. Her dad was out there in the future.

As if they'd heard her thoughts, Brittanus said, "I could encode a similar communication for your father. I could even ensure its left within materials I know would eventually be captured along with me by Section 31."

She squashed that thought. "No." She tapped the railing and willed Brittanus to look at her. "If my message was the reason he decided to help you, I couldn't live with that."

Brittanus' expression didn't change. But their tone softened. "Your father loved you very much. I understood that kind of love. That's why I approached him. Once I knew Section 31 had turned down his request to requisition my talents."

They looked at each other a long moment. Big trees all around them being big.

"Fine," said Sally, feeling herself for an idiot. "You can record your message, but I want to know what's in it and how you'll deliver it."

"A virus designed to circumvent my own security, of course," said Brittanus. "And as to content, it will be brief. As it must be."

When she heard it, Sally thought, "Fucking son of a bitch." Thought it. Said it. Brittanus looked at her and said, "It's already happened. It's always what happened. If it helps any, with or without me, the other Khans would have taken over the planet. But with me, at least some were able to leave it."

Sally chewed on that while college students made future storage and played loud music inside a thin walled building with practically no heat. "Fuck it," said Sally, sitting down and took a good long look at the fucking enormous trees making their own drizzle out of fog.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Beam down went fine. M'Press giggled when they came in wearing skin suits and carrying surfboards, but wouldn't say why. So Meiying had to assume the answer was the same as it always was. Porn and poetry.

Which was a fuck of a way to start a mission. Had to hope she hadn't gotten rusty.

They'd recruited Harry and Elise, because they could actually act and wouldn't try to overthink things.

Meiying would have preferred to have gone on the actual mission with Chin, but two parents was probably one parent too many to look over Chin's shoulders. So she elected herself for distraction number two.

When they beamed down, it was the middle of the night, stateside, but the beach wasn't empty. There were scattered surfers taking advantage of the full moon to catch some surf. Blue black waves washed against the beach. A long yellow trail of the half moon. Given the fuck ass poor radiation shielding at the plant, which as Meiying recalled, had something to do with a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel being installed backwards by some moron, the mission shouldn't be that hard.

They put their long boards in the water and paddled out through the waves out in front of the sea wall. Her ass twitched looking at the lights of the plant. Just sitting by the beach. In a tectonically active area of the continent. Where any sort of giant wave could just slam right into it and spread nuclear waste up the coast.

Noonian and Chin slipped off their boards, while Meiying roped them together. Swam them back to shore where distraction number two was going to come into play. A kickass bonfire party at the beach after dark. A few of the Human recruits from the Bakerstreet were being directed to build the wood pile by Lwaxana and Hudson. But they waited to let Meiying to set fire to the thing.

Good thing. Neither of them had the first idea about how to set fire to things without a phaser. But fortunately, Meiying had remembered lighter fluid and a Bic lighter.

A stock pile of booze, and pretty soon, they had one or ten late night surfers drifting over to the blaze.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Harry walked next to her mum along the long open stretch of road. Harry could hear the sea pulling away from the beach in a rattling roar. Only to tumble back and crash upon the sand. The sound of their footsteps on the pavement was a faint sound by comparison. The orange yellow glow of the lights from nuclear power plant grew larger as they approached. Structures looking less less like a Borg cube the closer they came. "Do you think is what John feels like before a mission?" asked Harry.

"It's certainly how I feel before an improv performance," said Mum. As they approached the guard station that led into the nuclear power plant, Mum whispered, "Show time." She walked up to the guard station. Added a few dollops of plummyness to her voice. "Hello, there. I say there, hello."

"This is restricted property, Ma'am," said a tall Human with short bristly black hair.

"Oh, trust me, I'd rather be anywhere but here. But my daughter would insist on California for our holiday and with expenses so tight after Reginald ran off with that floozy."

"Mother!" said Harry. Drawing on every aggrieved feeling she'd ever had to punctuate that one word.

Her mother rounded on her. "Well, I'm not the one who wanted to rent a vehicle with no roof. Drive it along an empty beach. As if we don't have beaches in England. We have plenty of beaches. Perfectly good beaches. We could have gone to Brighton."

"Cold beaches," said Harry, who actually did wish she'd chosen a slightly less flimsy dress for her part.

"Do you call this warm!" said Mother, who chose that comment to undo the scarf around her head, which left her hair free to whip around in the cool breeze coming in from the sea.

"It's not my fault the automobile broke down," said Harry. "Can't we just…"

Mother said, "And another thing." She went into a litany of complaints about bugs in her teeth and the cost of the holiday now that her imaginary husband had run off with his secretary and was now living it up in Barbados, which Harry thought might be cribbed from something, but for the life of her she couldn't remember what.

Harry could hear the guard calling on additional assistance. A loud reply, "I'm monitoring a situation on the south wall."

"Well, send someone. There's two British ladies down here and they're about to get into it."

The guard was joined by another, who certainly wasn't paying attention to anything but the drama occuring at the guard station. Both of them trying to get a word in edgewise to offer to call a tow truck for their non-existent vehicle.

Harry found she was having fun. An intimate performance for two. She hoped the mission inside the station was going as well. That Sally didn't end up getting into anything watching John's murder-in-law. That John was doing fine with the whales. That alls well that ended well.

For good measure, she threw in a loud complaint about John's piano lessons. Because she was never going to let that die.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

She slipped off the board and into the inky black water of the Pacific. Even through the insulation of the suit around her, she could feel the numbing cold on her face and braided hair. A few powerful and highly motivated strokes of her arms found her on the bare strip of shore in front of the sea wall.

She glanced at Father Noonian, who was smiling at her in the moonlight. She'd have preferred a moonless night, but it wasn't as if the facility they were entering wasn't lit. Didn't still have a skeleton crew.

She just had to hope that everyone else was being sufficiently distracting.

She jumped up to the top of the sea wall easily. Father led the way through the buildings. They ducked into dark corners a time or two, as individuals working the night shift at the station made their way from area to area. The security was primitive. Key codes. No biometrics. Nothing she couldn't hack.

When they came to reactor, Chin attached the proto inductor to the weakest point in the lead shielding while Father Noonian monitored for intruders. It would be a long slow process to gather materials.

She found herself starting when Father Noonian murmured, "We have not spoken much since the peace accords were signed."

"I… it's been very busy on Breen." Chin had come on this trip to have such moments. Not precisely this moment, of course, but moments. Watched the inductor tick up a percent. Not enough to begin the cycle to resolidify the dilithium crystals, but enough for her to have something to look at.

"I realize that I may have lost the right to say this, but I am proud of you. You're doing what we should have done all along," said Father Noonian.

"What?" Chin looked up sharply. Awkwardly crouched up against a primitive containment field. Feeling as if both she and it might explode if the wrong step were taken.

Father Noonian sat down on the cold cement next to her. The virsana pose.

She found herself resettling herself to mimic him. Wanting to take back the movement a moment later, but unable to see how she could without appearing even more foolish.

He rested his hand, warm and reassuring on her shoulder, "You are doing exactly what we failed to do. Look forward to creating something new. We looked back and here we are."

Chin felt something squeeze her chest. She tamped the feeling down. "It's only possible because of what Mother did." Chin would never be capable of that kind of brilliance or insight. Creating new technologies whole cloth. Never understand all of what Mother talked about.

"But you are the one building on it." His hand was still warm. His scent comforting every instinct in her wanting her to reach over to him. Every thought resisting. So they knelt there. A buzzing electric light at the far corner of the room. The sound of the sea muffled by the cement around them.

Waiting as the inductor gathered radiation to rebind shattered crystals into something that could warp space to allow them to travel faster than light. To regain the future. To go home.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

As she'd suspected, more than a few of the surfers were marines from Camp Pendleton just to the north. Rounded out by crew up from the Naval and Coast Guard bases in San Diego. Nice beach. Decent waves. Remote enough that there weren't onsite guards to enforce the no visitors after dark sign.

As she'd suspected, Lwaxana and Hudson put on a good beach party. They'd brought good booze. Meiying talked shop with some Jarheads. Felt an old familiar skin slip on. Familiar ways of thinking. Talking. Wouldn't take much to get the Jarheads into starting a brawl with the Squids and the Puddle Pirates. Liquor flowing, she could already see the lines of action. The fissures to tap. All on mission. Bigger the brawl, the safer the onsite team would be.

Hudson murmured to her, "That is the type of thinking that got you where you are." Her eyes were hard to see in the dark. Saw true enough. It was too easy for an old dog to fall into old tricks.

Lwaxana said less quietly, "You're not allowed to get anyone killed." Which certainly got everyone's attention.

Hudson stood up unsteadily on the soft sand. She addressed the crowd of muscle bound young men. "I bet that Meiying here can flip any man here."

"Grandma," said one of the Jarheads dubiously.

"She does have a lot of grandchildren," said Lwaxana somewhat enviously.

Meiying rolled her head. Cracked her knuckles. Not that she really needed to limber up. "I know Kung Fu." Which was true, if not the only form of martial art she'd been trained in.

Hudson pulled a bottle from a backpack. "This bottle of scotch says she can take any of you down."

After a lot of laughing, and conversation, Jarhead looked at the sand. "Soft enough here, but I'm not carrying you out if you break something grandma."

She grinned. Had him on the sand in three moves. She looked down at him. Offered him her hand. "Did you break anything?"

The next kid had moves, but nothing on her.

When she had a Coastie in a headlock, he tapped out. Asked, "Who are you?"

She'd forgotten how much fun something like this could be. "The sole owner of this bottle of scotch." Felt a sudden pang wondering just what would happen to these kids four years on when she seized power. What happened to this beach, because she'd wiped Camp Pendleton off the map.

Sally's worries be damned. She wanted to go find herself and say, "Don't do it. Just leave it alone."

Lwaxana said, "While all this testosterone is lovely, it's far past time for someone to serenaded me."

Meiying laughed. "I didn't bring my guitar."

Hudson pulled a small object out from the box of supplies. "Will this do?"

Meiying snorted at the little thing. "Hey, kids. Any of you want to duel some banjos."

Turned out more than one of their new friends knew how to pick out a few chords.

They were messing around with the Banana Boat song when Chin and Noonian showed up. They pinged Harry and Elise to let them know to stop arguing.

The mission was technically over, but Meiying patted the bit of sand next to her. Chin sat down gingerly. Noonian slightly farther down. That crazy ass kneel of his that looked like it should dislocated a few joints in his hips. Lwaxana laughed. "Not really."

Meiying said, "So, um… do you still remember how to play one of these?" She tapped the side of the banjo.

"Not very well," said Chin. Prickly.

Which ordinarily might have Meiying decide to fuck it. Instead she handed over the bottle of scotch and a cup. "I'm only passable." A Coastie was on the other side of the fire belting out the not entirely accurate lyrics of the House of the Rising Sun. "Do you want to play with me?"

Chin nodded slightly. They played banjos on the beach until the power plant finally called the Park Rangers to kick them out.

They declined rides from the assorted military. "Afraid, you can't get us where we're going," said Meiying. Walked until they were out of view. Beamed back to the ship, sandy and salty and feeling good.

"Best mission ever," said Meiying.

"It went incredibly well," said Noonian. "Chin, your plan was excellent."

"No one killed anyone," said Hudson.

"What do you mean?" asked Lwaxana. "This outfit is dead." She flipped a hand at the ridiculous thing she'd decided was beach wear.

Meiying winked at Noonian to let him know Lwaxana was his problem. Said to Chin, "Come on, kiddo. Why don't you bunk in my quarters tonight. In the morning, I'm make pancakes."

Chin looked at her dubiously, but followed.

In the morning, Meiying succeeded in failing to cook pancakes, while her daughter grew increasingly surprised. Then actually laughed when Meiying burned herself contemplating the charcoal that was breakfast.

"Replicator it is." Meiying made a mean replicated stack of pancakes.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

They beamed down to the surface of a eighteen hundreds three masted sailing ship, the Golden Fleece. A clipper. A schooner. A frigate. John had no idea. It was ridiculously small and was the sort of thing Humans had once used to cross vast oceans using just the power of the wind.

This was probably changing history. Unless the whales had always been taken, which maybe was part of why they went extinct in which case John's head hurt.

Sherlock, on the other hand, was having a grand old time running around on the sailing ship with his sister, which just made John smile.

Sherlock had - somewhere along the way with all the scenarios and simulations - had learned to sail. There were also, fortunately, enough people on the Bakerstreet who enjoyed crewing old sailing simulations to fill out the crew. Not all of them Human, but on the Golden Fleece, they were a bit of a world apart.

John enjoyed the sensation of just being a ship's doctor again, because Ensign Woods would immediately break his arm, and have to sit out for the next hour while the stimulator encouraged the bone to reknit.

The ship wasn't the only sailing ship out in the wide curve of the bay. There were dozens of white masted sailing ships sailing back and forth, which to John's mind was a bit of a hazard, but no one seemed to be running into each other just yet. Two Coast Guard Cutters had set off from the Aquarium each burdened with a whale in a sling.

The Golden Fleece followed along with the rest of the motley fleet. They had to keep their distance, but Sherlock didn't seem too worried about losing track of the whales. But then, Euros could hear thoughts light years away. A little water and some miles wouldn't be a problem.

There was a flash of light from the first cutter, and the sling released on one side and a whale was released into the open water. John could just hear people were cheering from the nearest boat. Their own crew were watching from the deck. Sherlock was halfway up the rigging doing his best old time movie impression. John squinted up at him and smiled fondly.

He asked Euros, "Where are the whales headed?" He could have looked at a sensor, but this was faster.

Euros pointed off to sea. "I told them there's a humpback whale pod that way. They can just about hear them." She shook her head. "The people at the aquarium have no idea how lost," she sang a couple of wavering notes, "they are." She looked at him. "George and Gracie are not their actual names you know."

Sherlock landed on the deck with a heavy thud. "Of course not." He took his place at the the massive wheel, looking lovely and wind blown, and the love of John's life.

After he had an actual sanitary unit beamed down to the ship, John had Tristan and Yvain beam over for an afternoon of sailing after the whales. They soon left the other ships behind. Until it was just them and what John assumed was some sort of scientific vessel of the period monitoring the whales.

"If we're going to start collecting whales, we kind of need to lose the other boat."

Euros smiled serenely. "After dark, I'll have George and Gracie," she looked at him significantly, "come near our ship and you can short them out." She shrugged. "They're just not that complicated."

John knocked on wood.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Euros was having a marvelous time. Sol star putting a bloom on her face until she put on her queenly bonnet. Wind in her face was no match for the ribbons holding the thoughts around her to a quiet murmur.

Wonderful.

Sherlock raced up up and down the mast. He was a pirate about to steal some whales. He didn't think she was a queen. He knew she was his sister, which was fine.

Mummy had finished installing the storage arrays on the Bakerstreet. Joined them on the ship with the twins. Father Noonian talked to her about whales.

Meiying lurked about and wasn't mean.

Mycroft joined them sometime on the second day. Which was marvelous. Even if he was a little sad. She squeezed his hand and showed him whales.

She took the bonnet off time to time. To make herself known. To sing a song of the future. Of clean seas and safety.

Well, except for all the things that swam in the sea, because the future wasn't exactly safe. It wasn't even without its share of stupidity. But they were all working on making things better.

Put her bonnet on and waited to see.

And on the third day, Chin came down. They stood there. Face to face. Euros fiddled with the ribbons of her bonnet, but didn't take it off, because that would be cheating. She chewed on her lower lip. Chin hadn't tried to kill her last time she'd seen her.

But that wasn't quite what Euros wanted. What she wanted was warm wiry arms around her. Squeezing her tight. The scent of her sister while the wild ocean bobbed their little wind driven ship over the waves.

It took a few days, but it turned out the best way to get that was to ask.

Trelane maybe shouldn't have made fireworks, but that was because he was silly.

They sailed across the sea. Sometimes rough. Sometimes smooth. Going to the place where pods of whales who wanted to come were gathering. Euros did her best to help Dappled dorsal, formerly known as George, and Fringed Fluke, formerly known as Gracie, fit in. But they'd never really regain what they'd lost. But this could be pretty good too.

Finally, they came to the place far from people. The place where there were waiting and wandering whales. All sorts and so many of them. Certainly not all the whales, but more than a few.

All of them eager to go to a place where the ocean was only as dangerous as an ocean could be, which was dangerous enough.

They waited until the sun set and the stars came out and all around the boat breaching whales played in the water, she took off her bonnet and sent the song of going. Of farewell to those who would remain.

"That's all that's coming," she told Sherlock's John. With a kiss for Sherlock and a kiss for Chin, and even one for Mycroft who was looking bit less sad, if more sun burnt, she called Gomtuu to take her home.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

He looked at his children. Talking amongst themselves and thought, "It's good."
Lwaxana curved her arm around him. Brit was speaking with Mei. Ideas about a possible weapon or shield or… possibly something about a flaming guitar. The sound of waves made it hard to overhear.

"It's good," said Lwaxana. Echoing his own thought and how not.

One by one, the whales were beamed up, until it was time that they themselves to go.

Since they couldn't leave the boat behind as a menace to shipping, with some reluctance, they set a charge to blow the hull. But just as Sherlock was about to give the command, they were standing on the bridge of the Bakerstreet.

Trelane took a deep bow and tossed Sherlock a small object, which he caught. A ship's model, which Noonian rather suspected was the Golden Fleece. Euros' love had a sense of humor. "I also removed the bomb with which you would have scuttled this fine lady. Now then, off to attend my own lady and heart." With a wink of light, Trelane was gone.

John cleared his throat. "Okay, people, all stations. Hunter, take us home." Noonian went to the ready room, which was tracked full of sand.

Mei looking suspiciously relaxed said with utter sincerity, "I have no idea how all that got there."

Noonian looked around  the ready room and caught sight of Lwaxana, half in and half out of a fairly ostentatious bathing suit, also looking very relaxed, next to Brit, whose eyes were closed. Their hands clasped as if in prayer. Their thinking pose. By the curve of their lips, they were reliving happy memories it would seem.

Noonian laughed and took his place to return to the future.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"As headquarters go, I realize that it's not particularly predisposing, but I assure you it's quite secure," said Mycroft ushering his new compatriots into one of Mummy's remaining safe houses. A bunker below Churchill's War Rooms, if with rather more technology and stability should a direct bomb blast fall upon it during WWIII than in WWII.

Known only to a few. It should be secure from Colonel Green, at least for now.

Mycroft hadn't been there in years. Not since Mummy had left. He could still scent lingering traces of them in the air.

Anthea shrugged. Very much into her own thoughts. Given that their mission to Colonel Green's fortress had resulted not in a rescue, but her brother and nephew's deaths. Possibly transport to the future. He hadn't the surety to say.

She said quietly. "It's fine."

Mycroft was not such a one as to be fooled by that kind of assurance. He'd seen quiet rage before. Grown up with it.

"You should get some rest," he told Anthea. "There's a room where you can sleep down at the end of the corridor."

She met his gaze. A forest fire in her eyes. "I doubt I'll be able to sleep."

"If you sleep, when you are rested I can share details about our next operation. But," Mycroft pointed down the hall, "only when you're rested."

He'd been alone a long time.

Desperately needed time with his own thoughts now.

"Where should I doss down?" asked Ti, the other survivor of their rescue. "In here or somewhere else?" She smiled far more happily than might be expected of an individual who had had an arm removed for the crime of being an Augment. But then, she betrayed her origin in hundreds of ways. The indentation around at the sides of her head, by her mouth, and eyes. All commensurate with someone who had worn something habitually for years. A lack of eye contact. As if she was from a culture with no customs regarding eye contact. The stilted speech patterns. The rather extraordinary ease with which she accepted the technology around her.

Given his recent encounter, Mycroft suspected an operative from the future. Perhaps one in which the air had been rendered too toxic to move about above ground without shielding.

And yet, his brother from the future had had no such marks. Sherlock. John. They might yet survive. There was yet cause for hope.

Ti shifted restlessly. "I guess, I'll just..." Mycroft waved wearily the opposite direction from the direction he'd sent Anthea.

When he was alone, he set to checking the systems. Verifying that all the security perimeters were in place. Sending signals to operatives in other locations that all was well.

An amber light turned on at his touch. A message was waiting. Unexpected, but not impossible.

He turned it on and waited. His highest expectation was for some long lost operative command before London fell to the Beta humans.

But instead was faced with an image his mother. Old now. Far older than they'd been on Earth. Far older than they would be had they simply slipped away. Sent rockets into orbit with no one in them. A gravity well in their eyes escaping their lashes. "Mycroft, at the time I'm recording this you are two years old. Even now, I am escaping with you across the moors. God and your father in pursuit. I'm setting this to display after you encountered Sherlock. So the idea of time travel shouldn't be too odd. Are even possibly aware that I used the chimeric cells in my body to create a clone. I wish you could meet him. You're alike and you're different."

They paused. Shook their head.

"But then, whether you remember him or not, you did meet him. He carried you out of the nursery. Brought you to me. Helped us all escape. What came after… those were my mistakes. I thought about telling you, but… always stopped and then it was too late."

They reached out to touch the screen. Mycroft reached out too. Fingers touching glass. Across decades.

"I never imagined that when your brother came into the past and saved us that I would be returning to the past as well. That I would have an opportunity to send you a message."

A long sigh. A twitch at Mummy's left eye that had once meant memories were tugging at their sleeve, but they did not fade into silence. Caressed a finger on the screen.

"Perhaps you've worried over the years that our last words to each other were in anger. Perhaps not. It's been a thorn in my memory. Pluck it out. Know that I loved you then and I Iove you now. That the only reason I left you behind is I wasn't sure that we would survive. That with all the risks, that I had confidence in you. I could not say those words adequately before. You were... correct when you called me cold and controlling. Sometimes cruel. It has taken some practice," a slight smile, "to speak as I am now. But having been taught it is important to say, I shall say it again. I love you and wish nothing but good for you."

The message cut off.

Leaving Mycroft smiling in the dim room. Hand against a dark screen.

He didn't need to hit play to see it again, but he did anyway.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Thomas tried to imagine what message, he could possibly leave for his daughter, but there were no words beyond, "I love you. I would do anything for you." He told his wife to pass that along as well she could.

Knowing that what lay ahead would be hard.

But Sally would be alive to live through it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

One moment they were in the past. The Earth blue and white. The next they flew over a world covered in storms. John gave the order. "Beam our guests down."

The effect wasn't immediate. The ship's computers were holding a lot of whales, but gradually, the massive ship must have gotten the signal they were looking for, because they stopped hitting the ocean with an energy beam.

The storm clouds didn't immediately clear. In John's experience, they generally didn't. But soon the atmosphere was clear enough to show the seas.

"Humpback," said Sherlock in a very serious tone, while helping Tristan and Yvain stand on the command couch. The main monitor showed whales swimming in – to them – future seas, while their children giggled.

There was nothing for it but to take the whole family down in 221B to Monterey harbor to go look at the whales. The whole family. It made for a packed shuttle.

In any case, Brittanus needed to fill the bay with krill and plankton and other things for their recent passengers to eat.

John had promised himself never again, but really, looking at how excited his children were, how happy Sherlock was, promises like that were made to be broken.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

M'Kalla had been a victim once.

A victim of desire. A victim of his own decisions.

Now, he stood proudly and let the ambilyre go silent. Waited for the crowd to react to this conclusion of the tale of the Voyages of the Bakerstreet. As well he knew them.

It was not an end. Of course. There could never be an end for a tale outside of time. An end of sorts then. An end to this song then.

He took a bow.