Disclaime: this fan-fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Not beta read, so all mistakes are mine. This is the last chapter: enjoy!

PENELOPE AT REST

She's still there when Mycroft opens his eyes the next morning.

Resplendent, tousled of hair and sleepy of eye, Anthea lies across from him. She's wearing a vest and a pair of his pajama bottoms, pulled in at the waist as tightly as the drawstring will allow, the bottoms rolled up.

The sight of this does something…. odd to him.

The've both kicked off the bedcovers in the night, and he can see that both his feet and hers are bare, his toes nestled beneath her arches for warmth. Her hair is spread out against his pillow, gorgeous in the early afternoon sunlight, and when she looks at him her lips curl up into a crooked smile. She looks…. She looks devastating. Beautiful. Forbidden.

Such things have always been forbidden, for Mycroft.

"Good afternoon, Sir," she says softly.

Mycroft stares at her like a simpleton.

"You survived," she continues, dryly. "I shan't have to shoot your sister: Huzzah."

At that, he blinks. "Eurus is... Eurus is an asset," he says, never feeling so much like a parrot in his life. That has always been what Rudy told him, the justification for treating his sister- Rudy's niece- as they had. Eurus was an asset, a tool, something to be honed and used. Contained. Justified.

Said now, looking at Anthea, that sounds nonsensical.

The young woman's voice turns to steel. "I don't care whose asset she supposedly is," she says quietly. "Had she succeeded in killing you then nobody would have kept me from her- Not our superiors, not anyone." An odd, sharp twist of her lips. "The only person who could have stopped me would have been dead, after all."

Mycroft looks at her, nonplussed. "But why would you do something so foolish and throw away your career?" He's always known that Anthea can be impulsive, prone to thinking with organs other than her brain when in pursuit of pleasure, but the thought that she would jettison all she's built for a petty bit of revenge? And for him, of all people?

That seems ridiculous.

The expression on her face though, that doesn't look ridiculous. Rather it looks vulpine, feral, the look of a hunter through and through.

It would make any other man shiver.

"She would have killed someone dear to me," she says softly. "For that, she would have deserved to die." Her tone brooks no disagreement. Those sharp, bright eyes find his. "Ask your brother," she says, "if you don't believe me.

He would understand."

He grimaces. "So you've seen the footage from Sherrinford."

"Of course." She nods and at this, Mycroft does balk. He had, of course, suspected his brother's feelings for his little mouse of a pathologist: Sherlock did not keep people as close as he kept Hooper unless he had some sort of fondness for them. But even he had been surprised by the ferocity of Sherlock's reaction to the coffin. In all his life, Mycroft had never seen his brother so incensed.

Had Eurus been in the room with them, he doubts even he could have saved her.

Anthea is observing him carefully though, her gaze now turned watchful. Waiting. It makes him feel like a specimen under a microscope, and that is a rare experience, indeed, for him. "What?" He snaps distractedly, and at the word a slow smile curls her lip, as if something she's been wondering about has been confirmed for her.

Maybe, Mycroft can't help but think, it has. The notion makes him feel exposed. Peculiar.

For some reason, his heart has begun to thud in his chest.

Anthea must be happy with her lot though. For with slow, practiced ease she leans over until Mycroft has no choice but to lie back down or have her smack into him. Still smiling, she shifts, moves until her face is inches from his, her hair hanging down around them. Her breasts press warmly against his chest. One of her hands is above his head, pressing into his pillow, while the other is right at his side, digging into his mattress...

Despite himself, Mycroft finds himself holding his breath, which is utterly, unspeakably ridiculous.

"Sir..." she says softly, her voice husky, and to his horror he feels... Good God, he feels himself becoming hard.

Pressed together as they now are, the bedclothes kicked away, he's certain that Anthea can feel it too.

The thought is absolutely mortifying.

If she does feel anything untoward, however, she gives no indication of it. Rather she continues to stare down at him, her eyes smouldering and wicked and familiar. That curling smile still at her lip.

Slowly, she lowers her head until she's mere inches from him and though he thinks she's going to kiss him she doesn't. Rather, she strokes her nose gently along his. Their breath mingling together. His skin tingling where it meets hers. She hums in her throat at the sensation and he has to bite his lip to keep from saying something absurd.

He's so hard it's beginning to become uncomfortable.

Trying to keep calm- trying to maintain control- Mycroft catalogues, as he always does, the physical facts of his surroundings: The faint sounds of traffic outside. The soft breathing of Anthea, the hard breathing of himself. The ticking of the clock beside his bed, the only thing he took with him from his childhood home, the only thing to survive the fire as Musgrove. His pajamas are scratchy, warmed from sleep but not softened by laundering. The bedsheets he can feel between his fingers- he's fisted them in his hands- are silk. Heavy. Expensive. Just like everything else in his life is silken and heavy and expensive. But not her, his mind whispers. Not her, not your Anthea.

"Anthea, I..." he tries to find the words, truly he does, but there aren't any.

For once his mind is unutterably, mercilessly blank.

There's only he, and she, and this bed and this moment, and the possibility of what they're about to do together- And he has to allow that whatever they do, they'll do it together-

"Sir," she says again, her voice quiet. "Do you remember by other name? My real name?"

He blinks up at her. "Your name before you became the new Anthea, you mean?"

She nods and smiles. It's absolutely beautiful.

"It's Penelope." He frowns, unsure where this is going but willing to play along. "Penelope Jane DeCours- Named for your late mother."

At the words, her smile widens. Softens. Suddenly, it's not a siren in his bed, it's his friend. His partner. His Girl Friday. "Say it again," she murmurs. "Please, say it again..."

"Penelope," he says. "You're- Penelope, Penelope, Penelope-"

It's on the third repetition that she kisses him.

Mycroft stills for a second, surprised and overwhelmed. He has a rush of physical stimuli- her weight, her heat, the softness of her kiss, the way she feels against his palms, and it's this which informs him he's decided to join in this kissing business. It goes on for second, or maybe hours or lifetimes, he can't be sure, and then suddenly they've parted and he's panting in air. Staring up at her.

To his combined mortification and delight, he can feel the heat of her arse against his fingers. His palms. She makes the most delightful handful as she grins brightly down at him.

"I knew you'd be good at that," she says softly.

"I'm glad one of us did."

The words come without his thinking about them and despite himself, he laughs. She joins him and oh, but that feels right.

"This will cause problems," he says and she nods.

She's still smiling.

"It will," she says gravely. "And yet we both know we'll still do it, don't we?"

"Yes," Mycroft says, without even having to think about it. "Yes it will. Yes."

And then he lets himself get lost in her kisses, and their kisses, and the laughter and softness and newness of this thing that should be terrifying but is somehow comforting instead.

Two days later, he'll emerge from his mansion to a new world, his Penelope at his side. His lapses of judgement, of understanding and of duty open for everyone to see. His heart, tattered thing that it is, on display.

His parents will rail and his superiors balk, but somehow he will survive it.

He has, after all, the person he wants at his side, and that, in the end, is all that matters to him.

To his surprise, most of the people who know him agree.