Wonderful story. I really liked it. Reads alive and with interest.

If I were you I'd be tickled silly that your Mary's background is close to the background they used for mary on the tv series.

OMG! This was so freakin' awesome! I love your Mary, she is perfect for our boys. I can't wait to read the sequel. I really hate I have to quit and go to bed, got work in the morning. Wait a sequel, Dr. Who specials on BBC America. I can sleep when I am dead!

Very, very nice! :-)

MLC I DISAGREE AND DID NOT LIKE THINGS.

Just kidding. I hope nobody gave you grief on this, because I really enjoyed it :)

Lovely expository epilogue with some really striking imagery. And d'aww, this is just lovely, especially (as per the books) the affection that they both hold for Sherlock. Really lovely work here xx

I'm really liking the idea of BAMF!Anthea. It's a shame to waste a character like that otherwise- I mean, she acts useless but she can't be, because I can't see Mycroft tolerating useless people. And I like that you've diverted away from the drama of the chapter before. At this point I'm confused about the time-line because of its jumping from "before" to "later" and back again, but that could also be the time it is right now :p

"Piss pour" - "piss-poor."

Oooh we had a super mindmeld on the Moran thing, and you didn't tell me :D

BAMF!Anthea. I love it.

PMSL the note on the door was priceless. Loved it :D The ending was full of d'aww, though I *personally* could have stood for it being longer, perhaps its own st- I mean, chapter? ;) Lovely work x

As a stylistic thing, I'd perhaps put the stage directions ("earlier that day" etc) in italics or underlined or something to separate it from the main body of your text, just to allay confusion. :) Poor Lestrade, never able to keep up... and wow, that's one hell of an ending! You do realise I can't leave it here even though it's half-past one in the morning, right? RIGHT? :p

So... surprise review :D

"Sarah was too relieved..." d'aww. I don't like it when fics bash Sarah. I liked her.

"being alive, was replaced..." no need for a comma here :) I hope you wrote the "full-blown" row, incidentally... deleted scene? Plz? :D

"He was just that nice." This sort of gave me the creeps and is justified with the AMAZING wham line "just before you killed them all." Holy crud, that's remarkable stuff!

"Wait," said Mycroft "We don't know what his plans are and we don't know if he knows that we have been informed about his identity. We need to proceed with caution in order to apprehend him." - A couple of missing commas here, but I was so delighted to see Mycroft baaaaaaaack. I love him.

"Inplace" I think the site ate your gap. :)

"They exploded"- I really like the succession of lines here.

"tookasteptoward"- Site ate several gaps :)

At this point I'd consider joining some of the short lines together to make paragraphs of varying lengths, just for variety, but that's me, not the whole world ;) And I am going to love you forever if there's BAMF!Mycroft in this...!

I absolutely promise I will get around to all of these soon. *Shame shame shame*

"The day's not over yet." LOL. GO, JOHN.

"Still too raw and new." Yeah, go easy, Mycroft, you git.

"John was stunned..." a perfectly good reaction, but I felt like this paragraph really just told us how John felt, rather than showing him feeling it :)

"Hunting down hit men?" I love how this is basically canon already ;)

"Neutralized"- I love this expression.

"Gonna" seems very American (Canadian? :p ) to me, but YMMV.

"Use me." This is why John is awesome. Plus a few other reasons :p I love how strongly Sherlock protests, though the capital letter and bold was a little intrusive.

"He answered it" Missed a full stop here :)

"Regards too" Regards to :)

"Indeed," said Mycroft - Missed a full stop here :)

Lestrade's reaction was HILARIOUS. And so very in character. I'd take out the comma before "bloody", but it's awesome. Well done x

That entire first chapter is absolutely magnificent, comparing the (false) idea of John being ordinary to all the magnificent and extraordinary things the man did over two seasons... (and that isn't all of them!)

I love that when Mycroft gets punched, Sherlock is amused.

"Mycroft looked at Sherlock..." while both Holmes boys do have a more stiff and formal dialogue style than, say, John or Lestrade, I did think both of them were a little *too* stiff in these coming lines, perhaps. In-universe, they do use contractions and the occasional piece of slang like "okay."

"Or the horrible way..." This is really interesting. I'm not sure if Mycroft is trying to grind Sherlock's gears or whether this pity for JOhn is real.

"several hours later"- if this were mine, I'd either take these tags out entirely, or I'd format them so they look different from the body of your text.

I was at first going to protest that the reveal of Sherlock was done so casually and in the middle of a sentence, but reading it twice, I like it! It's exactly how such a scenario would play out. *Without* the dramatic music and everything :D

I absolutely LOVE that John can and does scan Sherlock- and the things that he scans him for, all of which aren't just being a know-it-all; they're for the sake of his mental and physical health. Oh, John.

Slight nitpick: the dialogue here, while excellent, would be a *metric tonne* more effective with proper punctuation- capital letters at the beginning of every sentence, punctuation marks at the end of each example of dialogue, comma for "Hello, John", yadda yadda.

OH MY HEART. REUNION FEELS.

... And this ending, this ending is not good. GAH.

This was an interesting chapter insofar as to see this and the "graphic" one side by side and see which parts were taken out :) I agree with your A/N, clever plot device! I love fics that "branch out" like this.

I appreciated the warning. While you wrote a harrowing piece here, it seemed relevant to plot and character and not gratuitous, which is frankly all I ask from harrowing writing :) Some very vivid descriptions. Nicely played.

LOVED LOVED LOVED John's dream. Please expand that to a one-shot? PLEASE? It's awesome!

"No you don't," John said firmly and kindly. "You're going to let yourself have a good cry." - FEELZ. FEELZ RIGHT HERE.

"He sighed, mentally and told his libido to shut it." Yeah, like that's ever gonna work, John. Nice try, though ;)

Again, you are possibly the queen of wham!lines to end chapters on. Missed the final speech mark and a few others around Mary's earlier dialogue, but whoa!

"I'm sorry... I was just sick..." I love this dialogue. It's so understated and numbed and not melodramatic, and of course, John's reaction, which is appropriately "meh." He's a doctor with an alcoholic sister, he can handle a bit of puke.

A couple of errors: "No your not" should be "no, you're not"; "Moran for 3 days" should be "Moran for three days." A few missing commas, but I'm hardly one to talk.

I love, love, love this scene between them. Oh, my heart. I love it. Squee. Squee forever.

Oh, Sherlock, for God's sake. This can't end well. Not for John, anyway. Jeez.

I loved Mary's angrish here, excellent dialogue. It's about time somebody unleashed a torrent of sweary abuse at the git :p I thought John's punch should perhaps have been emphasised a bit more- it seems a bit of an afterthought in that line rather than the Big Awesome Thing I thought it should have been.

AND YAY FOR SHERLOCK. Being a complete arse as usual. Bless him x

Wow, I totally did not see that end coming... not until about six or seven lines before it did, I mean :p Excellent twist! And I really like your take on Mary. She's got guts without kicking men in the face for no reason. Love it x