Author's Note: This is my first time writing for Sherlock so please forgive me if it's a bit off. I find myself in love with Anthea and Mycroft and needed to write some stuff for the so this is what happened – a series of one shots that interconnect telling a story of sorts between them. I hope you enjoy it! So please, if you want more don't be afraid to review.

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

The First Time She Met Him

Alice, her name was Alice back then. She was working in a low level job for an unimportant government department and it was going to go nowhere.

She turned up to work that day – not looking her best – in the same jacket from yesterday and a shirt out of the ironing pile that was piling up. Her best friend from home – Jamie – was visiting London for the week which meant some jobs were being neglected in favour of spending time with the girl, including going out last night where Jamie and Alice got hit on by every second man. Jamie had been Alice's roommate at boarding school and after Alice's parents had died in a car accident in their final year she was the closest thing Alice had to family. She hadn't thought much about going out until the earlier hours of the morning with Jamie – not when she could do her job in her sleep and nothing important ever happened.

That's why she was surprised when she walked into her tiny office to see her boss pacing with a file in his hand. Frowning at the presence of the annoying man who usually left her to her own devices, she walked past him and sat her bag on her desk.

"Ah, Alice there you are." The beady little man sounded exasperated. "I've been waiting for an hour for you to get here." He was stressed – way more than usual – he had sweated through the underarms of his shirt and work had just begun. Alice looked at her phone.

"I'm here the time I usually get here." She fought the urge to say it sarcastically even if she knew it would go over his head. He waved her off.

"Listen, we got a very important job this morning." He stepped closer to her, lowering his voice. He appeared, by the light shaking of the file in his hands, he was scared. "A job from high up." A pause. "Very high up." Alice tilted her head – she was intrigued.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, some big wigs are looking for a breech in security that appears to be happening in a bunch of government branches. They're asking everyone to search for strange or reoccurring – authorised or unauthorised – visitors to the offices at any time on the dates in this file." Alice sighed, another video surveillance job, even if it were from high up.

"Why are you telling me?" She asked. "I just keep maintenance and upgrades on our technology. If it was from high up wouldn't you want to do it yourself?" He scowled in response – clearly wishing he'd did it himself.

"They asked for our most observant and detailed employee to do it." He rolled his eyes and Alice fought the scowl that threatened to cover her own face. "Normally I would want to do it myself but the orders are from a department I'd rather not disobey and you." He sighed. "You're good at noticing things." He held out the file begrudgingly and she accepted it.

It was true, Alice was good at noticing things. She called it people watching. A drama teacher in high school had once asked the class as homework to go out in public and make up life stories for people just by looking at them and the relationship they had with the people they were with. She and Jamie had started off by having a laugh at it – making up fantastical and hilarious ideas for their life stories – but as the weekend went on Alice found herself trying to get details right by looking carefully at their clothes and their facial expressions, and even their walk. After they started getting really detailed, Jamie would pretend to be taking a survey for school and go up to ask questions about what job they had and how many people lived in their residence – simple survey questions to see how close Alice was. She didn't have anywhere near a hundred perfect success rate but she was right more often than not and the pair had gotten a kick out of it. She couldn't help but smile smugly that this hobby had gotten her an advantage over her boss.

"You're to be done by tonight." Her boss said, not yet letting go of the file. "There is a number in there – apparently – that you are to text when completed and they will give you the address to take your findings to."

"Yes I can read the file, thankyou." Alice, tugged on the file.

"Don't disappoint us." And he finally let go of the file.

She had finished review the footage by 10pm and unfortunately – for all her time and effort – had found nothing too out of the ordinary. Still, she noted every person who was not normally meant to be there at that time – including herself last week when she got all the way home to realise she had left her keys in the office. If this were for some high up people it was best not to leave yourself of lest cause suspicion. She texted Jamie to tell her she was running late – apologized, and then texted the number with a blank text. It responded with a location a phrase the other person would say first to identify himself - the moon will be full soon – and one for her – yes, and the light will show all. She picked up everything she needed, closed down the office, and headed out to reach the meeting point within the hour.

She'd been waiting in the car park, leaning on the hood of her car stifling yawns, behind this very specific, very non-descript building for quite some time when a man began to approach her. This man was clearly not the person she was supposed to be meeting, however, everything about him screamed it. He was blonde with scruffy hair sticking up at all angles, and dark eyes with equally dark circles under them. He'd been wearing a tanned leather jack with work pale jeans and old sneakers. It wasn't his appearance that tipped her off – these people could have sent a person looking like that for the lack of suspicion – it was everything else. He kept his head down low, his hands were in the pockets in his jacket where she suspected a firearm was. His feet were scuffing the ground and it felt like he was apprehensive. Alice eyed him suspiciously as she fought the urge to walk away from him – holding her ground.

"Hey." He said as he approached her, not quite making eye contact with her. She looked him up and down trying to commit all his features to memory.

"Hi." She kept her voice low and steady. He cleared his throat.

"I believe you have some information for me." Both of them keeping their faces neutral.

"Do I?" She said quietly, tilting her head curiously, brown hair falling in her face. "What makes you think that?"

"My office gave you a file this morning." He was getting closer and closer to looking at her eyes. From this angle she could tell he hadn't shaved that day.

"They gave me a file, did they, to me specifically?" She held her cool as she watched his hands in his pocket shift. She was going to try and delay him – try to hold off until whoever was supposed to get here got here.

"Well, yeah. I think." That was a slip up if she had ever heard one.

"You think?" she asked and he looked up to her eyes. He was getting agitated. Still she kept going. "Did you or your office ask for me specifically?" His eyes narrow.

"You ask a lot of questions for someone who could easily be replaced." He spat at her, again his pocket shifting. She fought the urge to back away.

"And you have a lot of uncertainty for someone whose file was full of very specific details." And that's when the gun was pulled out and held it to her face. She had gone a step too far. Swallowing hard, looking down the barrel of a gun, Alice still held her ground.

"Look sweetheart, just give me the file, alright?" She frowned, grip tightening on the full file.

"No." He laughed.

"No? I've got a gun held to your head. Why would you say no?"

"Because you didn't say the secret password?" What a time to be funny, Alice, really.

"What?" he said in disbelief, searching her eyes, trying to work out how this young girl had such nerve.

"I can only give this to someone with the secret password. I take my work very seriously." She smiled. If Alice learnt anything about herself tonight it was that she dealt with pressure in odd ways – such as cracking sly jokes.

"Oh come off it, what secret password?"

"The moon will soon be full." A voice came from just outside the building. Both Alice and the man's head whipped to the side to see a man in a dark black suit holding a gun. He couldn't be much older than Alice himself and looked straight out of a spy movie.

"Yes, and the light will show all."

A high security group had been called in not long after that moment and everything had been dealt with rather swiftly. The blonde had been taken away and the spy looking man had taken the file. Alice, though she had not experienced any physical harm, had found herself being fussed over by a group of what she figured were authorised paramedics. That's when she found herself being approached by one of the most interesting men she would ever meet in her entire life.

He was standing near the paramedics, car, leaning on a black umbrella. He was wearing a grey three piece suit with a blue silk tie, and a brown overcoat. His grey eyes were piercing and appeared to take in everything around him, there was a level of confidence and intimidation about him that seemed to cause the paramedics to work faster. He looked upon her and smiled – clearly fake as it did not quite meet those very intelligent eyes. The smile alone fascinated her.

"Miss Clarke." He said, walking closer to her. His voice wearing a mask similar to the one she guessed he was wearing over his features. "I wanted to apologize for the mess you've found yourself in this evening, I'm sure you had better plans." She smiled at him, locked in by those fiercely smart eyes.

"It was no problem, sir." He looked her up and down once, taking his time to look her over. It was not the way men usually looked her up and down – not to take her in aesthetically – but to observe her, the way her drama teacher had asked people to do.

"I trust that Mr. Warrick has taken your statement from you?" His tone was so professional and perhaps a tint of boredom on the tip of it – as if this were entirely inconvenient.

"Yes, sir."

"And I trust you told him everything that you remember?" Alice frowned, he noticed it, eyebrow quirking ever so slightly.

"I told him everything sir, and I can tell you that I'm not under shock or so stressed out by the situation that I would have forgotten or exaggerated anything. I told him everything exactly as it happened." The mask his features were wearing shifted slightly as he looked Alice over again, this time taking more care, taking more in, deducing her.

"That's very reassuring Miss Clarke, thank you." He turned to leave.

"Sorry to make you come out here, sir." He stopped and turned to face her again, curiosity sparking in those grey eyes. He stepped back, umbrella in front of him and both hands clasped on top of it.

"How do you know it's not my job to be out here?" He wasn't shocked, he was curious. Alice's smile widened slightly, for some reason very pleased to have caught the attention of the intriguing man.

"Your clothes mostly, particularly you overcoat… and your smile." She said with a shrugged. There was silence for a moment.

"Please, elaborate."

"Well I guess it was your suit first. It's really nice, like expensive nice, more than most of these people could afford. This and the way everyone seems to be scuttling around you means you're more important than them." He raised his eyebrows in slight amusement as his eyes quickly flashed to the people running around the place. "As for your overcoat – it doesn't match the rest of your clothes. You're very well put together and I don't think someone like you would leave the house with a brown overcoat wearing grey and blue, unless it was the first jacket you saw on your way out." He appeared very amused.

"And the smile?" She smiled, slightly embarrassed.

"Even though you have a certain level of authority about you and I'm sure you could scare the wits out of anyone there was something… gentle about your smile." If she had known him as she would in later years, she would have seen him being taken slightly aback by this. "I haven't come across many people with gentle smiles being security in the government. Not this high up. However, it doesn't reach your eyes. People in jobs like ours," meaning hers and everyone else there. "Don't need to cover emotions or fake them." And you look like the type whose eyes sparkle when they smile she thought but didn't dare say. He looked her face over again, lips fighting off a smile.

"Very well done, Miss Clarke." He shifted the umbrella. "And do you want to know what I can tell by looking at you?" She fought the urge to gulp. "I can tell that while you are good at your job, you do not enjoy it or find it challenging – hence why you had no problem being out at a nightclub until… three in the morning. However, you risked your life because someone somewhere had informed you that this information – of which you found boring to do – was important to someone else. Why?" Oh he was better than she had ever wanted to be at this. She shrugged, unsure as to what her reasoning was herself.

"I like to see my work through." He softly chucked and reached into his pocket, handing her a card with only a mobile number on it.

"Go to work for the rest of the week, Miss Clarke, enjoy the mundane tasks and let this adrenaline wear off. On Friday, if you feel like your ambition is not larger than your ability, text that number." She stared at the card as he began to walk away. "Oh and by the way," She looked up to see him looking over his shoulder at her. "Apologize to your… old friend for my holding you."

He was good.