Fic for frozen_delight: Caring is not an Advantage, Part II
Title:Caring is not an Advantage
Recipient: frozen_delight
Author: dioscureantwins
Characters: Sherlock, Mycroft, Anthea, Mummy, Daddy, John, Mrs Hudson, OC’s
Rating:T
Warnings: no warnings apply.
Beta: the amazing stardust_made was so kind as to help me. She’s a wonderful writer and an incredibly kind and resourceful beta. Thanks to her this has become a much better story than it would have turned out to be otherwise.
Summary: “Fine.” A sharp click in his ear told Mycroft Sherlock had ended the call, robbing Mycroft of the chance to implore him to be careful. Slowly, he put the receiver back in place. Perhaps that was better, after all.
I was very happy and honoured to find I had been assigned the lovely frozen_delight. Dear frozen_delight, I’ve endeavoured to write you a story that would give you pleasure and sincerely hope I’ve succeeded in doing just that.
Find part one of the fic here
Mycroft hardly recognised the face that peered at him anxiously through the crack between the partly opened black door and its frame. Schooling his features into a bland smile he held up the bouquet of lilac, forget-me-nots and early tuberoses that Anthea had ordered for him that morning.
“Mrs Hudson,” he said pleasantly. “How are you?”
None too great, obviously, but perhaps her haggard looks were attributable to a recent illness. Upon realising who was perched on her stoop, his brother’s landlady opened the door wider.
“Mycroft.” Her voice quavered a little but her eyes widened and a tiny spark flickered up in them. “Oh, how lovely,” she warbled next, noticing the flowers. “Come in, come in. It’s lovely to see you.”
Her right hand flailed nervously next to his arm while she backed into the hallway, her whole body intent on urging him to step inside so she could smother him with her hospitality and months of untapped affection. How odd that John had not visited her. Mycroft had assumed the landlady and her former tenant were naturally going to seek comfort in each other’s company from time to time. Had he underestimated not just the depth of John’s grief but that of Mrs Hudson as well?
“…DI Lestrade, which was nice of him,” Mrs Hudson was finishing whatever she was saying while showing Mycroft into her kitchen. “I hope you won’t mind, Mycroft, but the parlour is in shambles with the spring cleaning I’ve been doing. Here, let me have those.” She swept the bouquet he was still carrying out of his hands. “Oh, Mycroft, they’re gorgeous. And what for?”
Mycroft shrugged his shoulders. “Sentiment?”
“Now you’re being silly. Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on. And I baked a cherry almond cake yesterday. You’ll have a piece, won’t you? I keep baking these cakes even though… Well, I’m silly like that. And John, he loves my cakes. I’ve been sending them over to Mrs Turner’s tenants, but Ted complained Jonathan was growing ‘love handles’. I’ve always preferred a man with some meat on him, but…”
After checking himself that a smile of innocuous encouragement was plastered firmly on his face-in addition to making the required humming noises of agreement-Mycroft tuned Mrs Hudson out. Her chatter receded to a faint drone in the background that wasn’t too troublesome. Its resonance reminded him of the buzz of a bumblebee enjoying a pollen feast on a bright summer day, and he felt irony tug at his lips when he spotted one hovering in the sharp sunlight falling upon the pot of zinnias on the windowsill over the sink.
“Oh, out you go.” Mrs Hudson opened the window and shooed out the insect. “Imagine, a bee in the middle of London! And here I was, watching this documentary on the Beeb only yesterday. They’re all dying, apparently, from the pesticides or something similar. Can’t you do something about that, Mycroft? It would be nice for Sherlock’s memory; he did love bees, didn’t he?”
The palaver went on and on while she busied herself around the kitchen. Tea appeared in front of him-the brew was of its habitual inferior quality by the smell of it, but at least she had remembered he had it without milk-together with a plate bearing a large slice of cake. While placing it in front of him Mrs Hudson brushed her hand over his shoulder.
“Thank you for visiting, Mycroft,” she said. “I know you’re a busy man so for you to take the time to come over…that’s really sweet of you, I mean, I’m just your poor brother’s landlady…” A small whimper of distress escaped from her lips when she seated herself on the other side of the table. Carefully, she lifted her cup from its saucer with a hand that trembled, the knuckles of her fingers whitening from the grip on the cup’s handle.
“Oh, my hip,” she complained. “It’s been giving me so much trouble lately. Oh well, the summer is nearly here and the sun always helps, I find.” Pursing her lips she blew at her tea. “Funny, I never cared much for the summer when I was younger. I’ve always been more of a winter person. I wasn’t too eager when Mr Hudson first told me he wanted to immigrate to Florida. That’s another thing Sherlock and I had in common, I think. He loathed the Florida climate. Oh dear, he never was one for mincing his words, was he? We were discussing it only a few days before…”
Mid-prattle she broke off to regard him over the rim of her cup with slightly rheumatic eyes. Whatever she read on his face-and Mycroft worked hard to meet her scrutiny with his blandest smile-caused her voice to be much softer when she resumed. “I’ll never understand why he did it, Mycroft, but I just wish he hadn’t. I miss him, I do. And I am sure John does as well, though I haven’t seen him for months, the poor man. He was really suffering, you know. You haven’t spoken to him, have you? I wish you would. People should support each other.”
Mycroft swallowed his bite of excellent cake. “True,” he murmured. “Regrettably, John has decided to live under the illusion that I am to blame for Sherlock’s decision to end his life.”
“Oh, yes, I know.” Mrs Hudson sighed, mercifully employing her gaze to an observance of the contents of her cup once more. “It must have been so horrible for him, horrible. That phone call and then to have to watch your best friend jump off of that roof right in front of your eyes… And then, after, to see him lying there on the pavement, all mangled up, and all the blood. Such a beautiful boy, Sherlock was, I don’t want to think what… I suppose that was why you had to have the closed coffin…” Her voice wavered and she hid behind another hasty gulp of tea. On the wall behind Mycroft’s back the clock ticked away the seconds. Close to the zinnias the bumblebee crawled over the window glass.
“So,” Mrs Hudson addressed him again after she put down her cup. “What brings you here? Everything is still upstairs, you know. I’ve thought of renting out the flat again but I don’t need the money, not really. So I’ve left it all the way it was; even Sherlock’s clothes are still there. I…Somehow I couldn’t summon the energy to sort things out, and it’s not like it’s bothering me. I just don’t go up there.”
After drawing out his handkerchief and patting it at the corners of his mouth, Mycroft nodded. “I confess your cherry almond cake rivals the one they serve at the Dorchester, Mrs Hudson,” he told his hostess whose face beamed at the compliment. “My apologies for not appreciating your plight,” he said next. “If you would like, I can have a few people come over and clear out the flat for you. It will take them less than a day.”
“No!” Mrs Hudson’s vehemence quite belied the harmless exterior she usually presented to the world. “No, I like the idea of the flat remaining the way it was. Maybe John, once he comes to his senses a bit, would like to come back. Otherwise…Ah, you’ll probably think I’m a daft old woman, and I know I am. But I feel that if I leave it untouched, I don’t know, it feels like Sherlock might walk in again any minute.”
Mycroft smiled.
“Silly, isn’t it?” Mrs Hudson smiled back.
“Quite,” Mycroft confirmed. “But that’s what sentiment does; catches one at a disadvantage when one cares too much. Sooner or later, all hearts are broken. Whether the fracture was caused by a criminal husband or an addict tenant, the outcome is the same.”
“Oh, Mycroft.” Mrs Hudson’s face crumpled, vacillating on that small ridge between grief and relief. Tears welled up in her eyes but she sat smiling through them, wiping them off with her hands and smearing mascara in the process. Mycroft delved into his other pocket for his spare handkerchief and slid it across the table.
“Oh, thank you.” She sniffed, plucking it from beneath his hand and reducing the snow-white linen to a soiled rag almost instantly by daubing at the stains around her eyes. “How can you talk like that? You loved your little brother, never mind you were always putting him down in front of others. You did that because you worried about him…Everyone can see that…”
A fresh outbreak of tears caused Mycroft to shift in his seat uneasily. He lifted another bite of cake to his mouth, found he couldn’t swallow it no matter how hard he tried, and had to take a swig of the awful tea to wash it down.
Putting him down…
Mrs Hudson’s phrasing had been rather unfortunate, to say the least. Of course she wasn’t aware of it, or she would have chosen her words differently or burst out into a round of apologies. It was simply impossible for her to know about Redbeard and the story of his sudden demise. Sherlock never mentioned the dog, to anyone.
Not after that awful day.
# # # #
The weather was unseasonably warm for June. Mycroft lay lazing in a recliner on the terrace, wrapped up in Pelling’s biography of Churchill. A faint breeze ruffled the cheery green and golden fringe of the big green parasol whose gentle shade protected him against the fiery heat of the sun’s rays. His mother had thrown him disapproving glances on her way to and from the clotheslines that were strung at the side of the house, grumbling about lazy, good-for-nothing twenty-year-olds beneath her breath. Mycroft had in fact worked quite hard at Oxford during the past term so he refused to acknowledge her remarks, raising his book a little higher to shield himself from them instead. Now from somewhere inside the house the faint ebb and flow of conversation put up some effort to disturb his general sense of wellbeing but he bravely battled the tiny flicker of annoyance the sound sparked in him.
Whatever other advantages his Harrow education might have brought him, he counted the carefully cultivated ability to turn a deaf ear to random noise among those that were the most useful to him. Instead of pricking up his ears to distinguish the words that were being spoken, the part of Mycroft that was not concentrating on his book was able to dilute the sounds with the gentle hum of the bumblebees tumbling over the flowers that gave off a fresh waft of sweet fragrance with every flurry brushing their petals.
Unfortunately, most of the time paradisiacal peace and quiet and the Holmes household were as unlikely to meet as East and West. As the discussion inside grew more heated, the voices turned shriller, rising higher and higher in a discordant duet of enmity. Mycroft closed his book first and his eyes briefly after, and felt for the handle to put the back of the recliner into a more upright position. He had just succeeded in rearranging the chair and himself when the kitchen door was thrown open wide, crashing into the wall so loudly Mycroft was momentarily afraid the glass inset in the door would shatter.
“William Sherlock Scott Holmes!” Mummy shouted. “You come back right this minute and apologise!”
“No!” Sherlock whipped past Mycroft’s chair, running faster than a snap dog.
“Sherlock,” Mycroft called out, worry jilting his heart in his chest as he caught sight of his brother’s face. Beneath the wet sheen of brimming tears the blue and silver enamel of Sherlock’s irises was glittering even more brightly than usual. The look he shot his elder brother made Mycroft cower, for it was so full of icy hate it reminded him of Dante’s description of Lucifer, perpetually locked in the frozen lake fed by his own tears.
“Sherlock!” Sherlock paid him no heed but rushed on in the direction of the refuge he still sought out on a regular basis despite their mother’s remonstrations that he’d grown too big for the treehouse and it was dangerous to sit up there.
“Sherlock!” Now Mummy came scampering onto the terrace. Her face was glowing with a redness that certainly wasn’t thanks to the heat. “Where is he?” she huffed at Mycroft.
“Up in the treehouse, I surmise,” answered Mycroft, shrugging. “What’s wrong?”
“That boy, I swear…” Sighing dramatically Mummy flung herself down into a chair. “One of these days he’s going to give me a heart attack.”
Mycroft rearranged his features into the required empathetic mask.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with that child,” his mother went on complaining. “I simply have no idea what’s going on in that head of his. He must be intelligent for otherwise he would never have got himself a scholarship for Harrow, never mind your father and I can barely suffer the expense of the uniform. Not after having had to pay for yours as well.” Mycroft rolled his eyes inwardly.
“He’s simply obsessed with death. Did I tell you that a month ago I chanced upon a dead badger he’d stashed beneath his bed when I was hoovering his room? He claimed he needed it for ‘experiments’. I made him throw it away, of course, and had him scrub his hands with Vim. And now he’s foaming at the mouth because he just discovered what really happened to Redbeard. Well, I beg your pardon but if there’s one child that ought to have figured that out years ago, it’s Sherlock.”
Mycroft blanched. Suddenly the day’s heat seemed oppressing. “How did he find out, then?” he asked, affecting nonchalance.
“Apparently the vet told him,” Mummy replied. “Sherlock has been helping her out occasionally, cleaning the benches and looking after the animals that have to stay overnight. In return Mrs Johnson teaches him how to use a microscope and, as Sherlock puts it, “do science stuff”. He just confronted me with the tale and I told him that of course Redbeard had to be put down. I can’t for the life of me imagine he still believed that silly tale we only told him to spare his feelings at the time. Good heavens!”
“I see,” Mycroft murmured through thin lips.
“Well.” Mummy pushed herself up. “I’m going to call Mr Boulstridge and ask for him to drive over and take down that treehouse tomorrow. One of these days Sherlock is going to come crashing down with it and break his neck just to spite me. You can go and tell him he’s forfeited his dinner this evening.” She strode off into the house; in turn forfeiting Mycroft of the chance to inform her that Sherlock wasn’t likely to rue this particular form of punishment.
Peace and tranquillity descended on the terrace once more after his mother’s departure, but Mycroft found he was no longer in the mood to enjoy them. He threw his book a longing glance. Mr Churchill’s stern visage stared back at him and told him to go look for his little brother and stop the rot.
”Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
In some ways Sir Winston Churchill’s life had been surprisingly easy, never having been stuck between the opposing forces of Mrs Holmes and her youngest.
In the corner of the garden Mycroft found the ladder was pulled up onto the platform. His eyes searched the tree, but found no evidence of Sherlock. He had to be cooped up inside the small house. But then, the discomfort was probably just heightening the satisfaction of his sulk.
“Sherlock,” Mycroft called. As expected, the treehouse remained ominously silent.
“Sherlock, please,” Mycroft begged.
“Go away!” Sherlock shouted. His voice was wet and sounded thick with crying.
Oh, Christ. Mycroft balled his fists so hard he could feel his nails tear at the flesh. Why had their father ever come up with his stupid idea and why hadn’t Mycroft had the guts to step down on it and tell Sherlock the truth?
For of course Sherlock had grasped onto the story eagerly and held onto it all these years; that was how his mind worked. To him everything was true or false, black or white. The endless shades of shadowy greys were Mycroft’s specialty. Mycroft, with the advantage of someone who had seven years on his brother, had always been quietly fascinated by this difference in their outlook. Sherlock, once he became aware of it, had grown increasingly frustrated with it. He frequently complained to Mycroft about other people’s unwillingness to answer direct questions or give replies that were short and to the point. Meanwhile, he’d grown a reputation in the village for being the bane of his poor parents’ life and a nosy and impertinent youngster, never mind his perfectly angelic looks.
Six years ago the three people closest to Sherlock had all confirmed that Redbeard had galloped off to live his life happily in some other place. Today that story had been exposed as the blatant lie it was. The very foundations of Sherlock’s world had just been shaken with a force close to nine on the scale of Richter.
Jesus bloody fucking Christ, what a mess.
“Sherlock, please,” Mycroft said. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes to let the pain block the burning itch of the tears crowding there. When he trusted his voice to be calm and even again, he continued. “Sherlock, I apologise for lying about Redbeard. It was cowardly and bad of me and an offence to both of us. I know that in agreeing to go along with the story I’ve upset you greatly. I should have put my foot down and told Mummy and Daddy we ought to tell you the truth.”
Mycroft remembered then he had in fact done so, but his loyalty to their mother forbade him to mention this. Besides, the disclosure of that detail wouldn’t have served his argument. Worse, it would have shown Sherlock that Mycroft had capitulated again when confronted with the massive juggernaut of their mother’s terrifying will, and further exposed another crack that lay at the base of the rift that was rapidly widening between him and his brother.
“Sherlock? Will you say something, please?” Mycroft pleaded, gazing up to the platform. Nothing stirred except for the leaves rustling in the wind. Leaning his back against the trunk Mycroft let himself slide down until he was seated on the soft bed of moss and seedlings surrounding the tree.
“What do you want me to do? What do you need?”
He waited, his eyes locked up on the little house over his head. A sigh escaped his lips. Silently, he cursed the spineless creature that had been his fourteen-year-old self. The futility of his belated remorse made him huff in irritation. Lamenting the past was a fruitless exercise. Evidently, the only good thing that mulling over it brought about was the bitter memory of all the stupid mistakes one had made. Mycroft was being taught the hard way now. Sherlock was an excellent agent to drive the message home.
Never again would Mycroft let his brother down in such a spectacular manner.
“Sherlock?”
“Go away!” The cry was accompanied by an even louder crack as Sherlock’s foot slammed against one of the walls and shot through the rotten wood that gave way in a crushing hail of splinters.
“Sherlock!” Mycroft sprang to his feet. “Sherlock! What are you doing up there? It’s dangerous. Come down, please.”
Mycroft didn’t really expect Sherlock to react so he was forced to take a step back when Sherlock’s head suddenly appeared over the edge of the plateau. His face combined fire and ice-tear streaks tumbling down over his cheekbones like runlets from a molten glacier. In defiance of the laws of nature the heat of Sherlock’s distress closed a freezing fist around Mycroft’s heart.
“And what are you doing down there, Mycroft?” The sheer depth of contempt in the tone made Mycroft flinch. “You can stand there hollering for me to come down all day, but you know quite well I won’t do it. I won’t listen to you, ever again.”
“Sherlock, lis-Please. Come down. Staying up there is dangerous. You don’t want to fall and break your neck, do you?”
“I couldn’t give a hoot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come down here so we can talk this through like sensible people. I understand what you’ve learned today-”
“Tell me, Mycroft. What have I learned today?”
Mycroft swallowed. The whole situation was painful and extremely humiliating. However, there was no alternative but to plough through so he did.
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” Another great piece of advice by the great statesman himself. Mycroft couldn’t have said he was going through hell, but Sherlock certainly was, and it fell to Mycroft to help him through.
“You have learned the truth about Redbeard,” he offered carefully. “And you’ve discovered that we lied to you all those years ago, then never bothered to tell you otherwise.”
“I don’t care about them,” Sherlock said coldly. “But you, I’ve always believed you. You lied to me. You said you’d never lie to me, Mycroft! How many more lies have you told me? Can’t you see I can never trust you again? I wondered… I often asked myself… When I asked, that evening you returned from school, I knew you were going to tell me that Redbeard was dead, that it was just a story they had made up because they’re stupid and just assumed I wouldn’t understand. But then you…”
Mid-stride he cut off and his head vanished as abruptly as it had come into view two minutes ago. After a slight hesitation-somehow the motion felt like admitting defeat, a debilitating sensation Mycroft had been growing increasingly unaccustomed to-Mycroft took a step back in order to find out what was happening over his head. He was just in time to catch sight of Sherlock’s lower left leg slipping into the darkness of the hut.
“Sherlock?” he called.
“Why don’t you get lost and find someone else to appal?” Sherlock demanded in a voice so stony it sent a shiver of disquiet rippling down Mycroft’s back.
“Sherlock, please…” Mycroft pleaded, fighting the despair he felt gnawing at his insides. He fixed his gaze on the hut but nothing moved, save for the ever-shifting shafts of sunlight that waved their way path through the softly rustling canopy of the ancient tree. A few splinters chafed against the skin of his neck. He wiped at them with his hand and combed his fingers through his hair to get rid of them. Then, when he was sure Sherlock was prepared to stay inside the hut for as long as he would remain standing there, Mycroft pivoted on his heels and without looking over his shoulder once began the long walk back to the house.
# # # #
“I was worried,” Mycroft hissed into the phone.
“Oh, please. Save your boring fretting for those who appreciate it. If there are any that do.” If Sherlock intended to aggravate Mycroft even further with his breezy tone, he was succeeding admirably well.
Forcing himself to go back to sounding perfectly composed Mycroft spoke, enunciating every word. “My man warned me you were being reckless, as usual.”
“Your man, brother dear, is an incompetent moron who should be paying you for the privilege of being employed. Please tell me you’re not assigning these people to me as a chastisement for any wrongs I’ve unwittingly committed in the past.”
“I’m saving those for when you’re safely back again,” Mycroft said smoothly.
“Ah. Then perhaps you could do me the favour of sending over for the next stage someone with two brain cells. Functioning, preferably.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mycroft said, and ended the call. Rather appear to be brusque than start shouting into the receiver-that certainly wouldn’t do. Besides, Sherlock was the last person in the world to be affronted by an abrupt dismissal.
# # # #
To say that Mycroft hadn’t been looking forward to the coming weekend was something of an understatement. He had gone out of his way to avoid his younger sibling for over a year. By now he was thoroughly done with Sherlock snubbing every attempt at reconciliation with a haughty toss of his head and a contemptuous twist of his lips. Mycroft was too engrossed in his career to concern himself with someone to who Mycroft, in his most private thoughts, referred to as a ‘giant pain in the arse’. One day, hopefully, his brother would grow up and cease his revolt of resentment against the people who ought to be his dearest. In the meantime, provided Sherlock didn’t enter any paths that led to actual self-annihilation, his little brother was free to wallow in the hellish morass of his own devising, if such was his wish.
Mycroft had brought down the number of his visits to their ancestral home to the lowest possible minimum, carefully planning his weekends to coincide with those during which Sherlock remained at school. At the end of the summer Sherlock would be off to Cambridge; he’d passed his exams with flying colours and rumour had it that the University was very eager to add him to the student body. Mycroft assumed that would result in Sherlock being at home even less, allowing Mycroft more of a breather. In the meantime, the few encounters Mycroft had been unable to avoid had merely served to prove his brother at eighteen was even more insufferable than at seventeen.
Friends of their parents-a couple both Mycroft and Sherlock had known all their lives-were celebrating their Pearl Wedding Anniversary by throwing a party to which they had invited half the village. Early on Mycroft had found out that a decline to participate in the festivities was simply unnegotiable. As he had nothing against the people in question he’d acquiesced. Only that spring he’d received a promotion to a position that-back in those days when he set his first tentative steps in the jungle that was the British government-he hadn’t expected to obtain before he was at least thirty-three. To a man who at twenty-five grasped what he’d envisaged to hold eight years later, the obligation to spend three nights under the same roof as his sibling should have been an encumbrance no more vexatious than the insistent buzzing of a mosquito in the bedroom. Thus, Mycroft had packed his suitcase and set off for the homestead, determined not to be shaken by whatever atrocity Sherlock might choose to inflict on them.
So far he’d succeeded remarkably well. A scarcely civil reserve reigned over any space the Holmes brothers shared. Mummy did her best to engulf the uneasiness in a cloud of cheerful chatter, but only succeeded in highlighting the awkward silence that stole down on the domestic scene whenever she had to pause for breath. Their father hid behind his newspaper or busied himself in the garden shed, while Mycroft turned another page of his book and smiled politely in answer to his mother’s request whether he would like a second slice of cake.
“Oh yes, keep stuffing him, as if he isn’t fat enough already,” Sherlock harrumphed from behind his own book.
“Thank you for your comment, Sherlock,” their mother told him. “Now apologise to Mikey.”
Sherlock’s answer was to shut his book and shuttle out of the room. Mycroft exhaled and closed his eyes. Only one more evening and another day. He’d make sure to leave at three in the afternoon at the latest.
On the evening of the celebration Mycroft and his parents sat waiting for Sherlock to come down so they could be off to the party. Both Mummy and Daddy had donned their best clothes. After some debate Mycroft had settled on a simple midnight blue two-piece he’d combined with a watery blue pinpoint Oxford shirt. His neck felt strangely bare without a tie but he believed it highly unlikely any man under thirty would be wearing one, and for his parent’s sake he wanted to blend in with the crowd. Besides, it was likely to be hot beneath the canopy that his father had helped erect earlier in the day, so he wouldn’t have minded the chance to profit from every breeze, however futile, sweeping past him.
“Well,” Mummy said. “I suppose Sherlock taking so long to choose what to wear must be a good sign.”
Mycroft offered his most non-committal hum. His father continued his contemplation of the rose bed in front of the window.
“Ah, there he is,” their mother began at the sound of Sherlock’s feet hopping down the steps. Her face fell when her youngest materialised in front of her eyes.
“What in heaven’s name!” she choked.
Sherlock was dressed in the pair of thin cotton trousers and oversized t-shirt he’d been wearing when he went upstairs an hour ago. One of his daytime activities must have been either to climb a tree or to burrow himself in a hole in the ground with nothing but his hands for an implement, for both the trousers and the t-shirt were incredibly filthy and his hands were covered with tiny cuts and bruises. His hair was the same messy jumble haphazardly falling into his eyes that it had been when he’d come home earlier. It was now complete with the remnants of some tiny twigs.
“Sherlock,” Mummy started again. Her face had acquired a reddish cast and she was practically wringing her hands. “For God’s sake, even you must understand you can’t go like this.”
“Can’t I?” Sherlock enquired with mock-jocundity. “I don’t see why not.”
“Because it’s Uncle Tim’s and Aunt Maisy’s thirtieth wedding anniversary,” Mummy screeched. She picked up one of their father’s newspapers and set to fanning herself with furious determination. From his vantage point on the last step of the stairs Sherlock cast their mother a dispassionate eye.
“First of all,” he said, his tone mimicking the pitch healthcare workers assumed when addressing either a child or the very, very elderly, “Mr and Mrs Evans are not related to us. Secondly, I fail to see how the clothes I’m wearing or the way I look would in any way influence the festivities.” One of the twigs in Sherlock’s hair wiggled whenever he moved his head, adding to the illusion he wasn’t a human at all but rather some forest sprite. “If their marriage can be rocked by such a detail as my attire,” he went on, “it can’t have been very good to start with, and we might as well save ourselves the trouble of showing up at all and stay at home, instead. Which I’d rather do anyway. Not that I like it here, but at least I have to contend with only the three of you, whereas at the Evanses I will have to endure the company of a whole horde of insufferable people,”
“Who are undoubtedly desperately looking forward to yours,” Mycroft quipped.
The sound of the door being shut informed them their father had left the room.
“Mikey, no one asked you to comment.” Their mother had found the command of her faculties and her voice again. “Sherlock,” she addressed her youngest. “You stop this nonsense right now and go back upstairs to change into something appropriate. And draw a comb through your hair!”
“Why?” demanded Sherlock.
“Because I say so! Because your Aunt Maisy and Uncle Tim are lovely people, and they’ve invited the Mitchells and the Ravensdales.”
“Ah…” Sherlock breathed while Mycroft shot an enquiring glance in his mother’s direction.
“I’ll explain, Mycroft,” Sherlock said in a smug voice. Sprucely, he took the last step and glided towards the sofa. He perched himself on its edge with the studied elegance of a society hostess, then continued to pretend to direct a pleasantly civil conversation.
“Naturally, with your always being so busy in London and therefore denying us the pleasure of your company, you are unaware of some of the delightful chitchat Mummy and I have indulged ourselves in recently.”
Here, he halted to incline his head to the left and stare straight at Mycroft, a hint of smile on his lips. Mycroft did his best to glower but ended up breaking the eye contact first.
“Sherlock,” Mummy began but Sherlock ignored her, turning away and crossing his legs, the gesture pointed.
“Now, now,” he said. “I feel we have been deceiving Mycroft for too long, Mummy. You see, Mycroft, by now Mummy has rather come to despair of the proclivity of her heir to provide her with his own heir, and so she has turned to her spare. Oh, this is rather fun, isn’t it? Just like Dr Seuss. Yes, Mycroft, you might as well rejoice in the fact Mummy has finally accepted you are an inveterate pervert-her private opinion, obviously, not mine. Personally, I don’t give a hang who or what you get off with. I have no interest in sex whatsoever, or affinity for it. We really ought to forgive Mummy, though. After all, she can hardly be blamed for having been brought up in the true faith.”
The last time Sherlock had delivered such a long speech must have been when he was eleven and had recounted to Mycroft how Mr Wiggins had explained the dancing patterns of the bees and their meaning. Their language, it seemed, was infinitely intricate, and yet it revolved solely around the question where the best and most abundant pollen might be gathered. Sherlock, apparently, was equally deft in his employment of words.
With his spiteful banter he’d swiftly managed to deal a blow to their mother’s dreams of a happy future filled with the laughter of grandchildren and to Mycroft’s unwillingness to discuss his sexual preferences with their parents.
Shaken, Mycroft still managed to draw his mouth into a disapproving moue and tutted at his brother. From beneath the curtain of his fringe, Sherlock stared back with a mischievous smirk.
“Sherlock! You have said quite enough!” Sweat was pouring from their mother’s brow. She mopped at it with a paper handkerchief she’d plucked out of her purse. “Go to your room right now. We’ll tell Uncle Tim and Aunt Maisy you’re ill.”
“Oh.” Sherlock’s face was a portrait study in disappointment. “But Mummy, I would have loved to make love to Lucy Mitchell, and Susan, and Lydia Ravensdale.” He looked so sincerely put out Mycroft almost laughed, with the humourless desperation a common Private must have felt as he crouched in the trenches while waiting for the next German attack.
“Well, you’ve missed your chance,” Mummy replied, tone arctic. “Maybe next week, at the Ravensdale’s summer picnic.”
“I’m already looking forward to it,” Sherlock said in a false cheery tone. “I’m so sorry you won’t be able to attend that most tedious of social gatherings, Mycroft. However, unlike some of us, I understand how London’s gay bars must hold a bigger sway over you. Right, I’ll be upstairs then. See ya.”
# # # #
The evidence Sherlock had sent Mycroft that their longest serving agent in Japan had sold his services to Moriarty a long time ago initiated an unwelcome flurry of activity. After some deliberation Mycroft delegated the task of screening every main agent in their employ to Anthea, the only person in the service he felt he could truly trust. Regrettably this also meant she had less time to spend at his side. Her replacement was more than adequate, an eager young man who would have literally tried to fly for Mycroft if such feat was humanly possible. Mycroft’s agenda was organised with ruthless efficiency and for the first time in years he found himself in the luxurious possession of the occasional half an hour free from any matter requiring his attention.
Naturally, his character in its perversity would not allow him to enjoy that rare commodity. Instead, Mycroft sat fretting, thrumming with his fingers on the side of his chair and living in even greater fear for his brother’s life.
# # # #
In the past Sherlock had visited Mycroft’s office occasionally. Each of these occurrences had been instigated at Mycroft’s behest and invariably started with a fuming Sherlock being marched into the room between two of Mycroft’s security personnel. Thus, Mycroft was rather surprised when on the first truly pleasant day of spring that year, Anthea informed him his agenda had been reshuffled at the last minute to fit in an unexpected caller.
“It’s your brother, sir,” she said. The words were hardly out of her mouth when, with a dramatic swirl of his coat, Sherlock swanned into the room. Anthea cleared her throat and closed the door behind her.
“Here are your boring plans,” Sherlock announced, tossing a memory stick onto Mycroft’s desk. “Now tell me everything you know about a man called Moriarty.”
Slowly, Mycroft pushed himself up in his chair. He picked up the memory stick and took off the tiny cap. A few drops of water fell out straight onto the draft of the new tax treaty with Germany that Mycroft had been correcting. He lifted an enquiring eyebrow at his brother. Sherlock merely shrugged and flung himself down into the chair in front of the desk.
“It fell into a pool,” he explained. “A bit.” He waved off any further conversation on the topic with a dainty flick of his wrist. “Moriarty, Mycroft. He’s a dangerous man and an outrageous criminal. You must be aware of his existence.”
“Of course I am,” replied Mycroft. He let the memory stick drop onto the hardwood flooring, before standing up and crunching it beneath the heel of his shoe, swivelling left and right for good measure. “What is he to you?”
“My new archenemy.”
“Ah.” Mycroft laid a hand against his heart. “I hope you realise how much it saddens me to have to relinquish that place.”
“Stop your theatrics, Mycroft, and be serious for a change.” Sherlock’s voice was so fraught with anguish that Mycroft sat down rather abruptly. He tented his fingers in front of his mouth and arranged his face in its most attentive expression.
“How can I be of your assistance?” he asked.
“That’s better,” Sherlock growled. Now that Mycroft took a proper look at his brother he noticed that beneath Sherlock’s usual paleness he was quite white around the nose. His teeth were worrying his lower lip, always a sign of nervousness on Sherlock’s part, rather than the display of sexual innuendo others had sometimes taken it for.
“I… He and I have been playing this game lately,” Sherlock began. Mycroft nodded. “It was quite fun, actually,” Sherlock continued. His eyes darted towards Mycroft and then away, to a spot above Mycroft’s head. “John remonstrated with me that people were dying which was unpleasant. John being angry, I mean.”
He halted and Mycroft nodded again for him to continue, also settling his gaze on a point that was not the other person in the room-the top of the doorframe served that purpose admirably well. When Sherlock recounted how the red dot had appeared on his forehead, Mycroft pressed the tips of his fingers so hard the blood started to drain away. At last Sherlock’s story reached its end. Somehow, miraculously, he and his doctor flatmate had walked out alive. Now, it seemed that Moriarty’s audacity to threaten John’s life meant Sherlock intended to hunt him down.
“So I decided to turn to you,” Sherlock wrapped up his account of his latest endeavours to get himself killed. From the fact that Sherlock didn’t finish this last sentence with the prerequisite, ironic ‘brother dear’ Mycroft deduced his encounter with James Moriarty and the subsequent revelation of his emotions upon another human being’s narrow escape from termination had shaken his brother badly. In the course of one night, it seemed, Sherlock had grown up considerably.
Screening his own emotions, Mycroft coughed discreetly behind his hand.
“I can, of course, start collecting information on the man, make inquiries,” he suggested, picking up his fountain pen and subjecting it to an elaborate survey.
“No,” was Sherlock’s immediate reaction. “He is too dangerous. We must do away with him.”
Slowly, Mycroft lifted his eyes from the pen to regard his sibling. “We?” he enquired. “Have we become an entity all of a sudden?”
“In order to defeat, Moriarty, yes.” Over the desk Sherlock locked eyes with Mycroft. His gaze was guileless. He didn’t waver, no matter how hard Mycroft stared at him.
“Ah, I see,” Mycroft forwarded at last. He took some time to arrange the pen on his blotter, positioning it first to the left than the right of the sheaf of papers in front of him. In the end he opted for placing it in the right hand corner, at a forty-five degree angle to the drafts. “You’re offering a truce,” he concluded. “But how about the time after you’ve defeated Moriarty? Provided that you succeed, of course.”
“I will.”
“You will do your best, I’m sure. But sometimes one finds, brother dear, that doing one’s best isn’t enough.”
“That depends.”
“Exactly.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “I loved that dog, Mycroft.”
Mycroft’s heart was beating in his chest so frantically he was amazed Sherlock couldn’t hear it.
He moved forward, folding his hands on top of the ruined drafts and settling his eyes on them. “As I loved you,” he said. The skin between his fingers was starting to feel unpleasantly warm and damp. His voice, however, was as flat as if he were dictating a letter to the President of the European Council.
There, it was out in the open. Privately Mycroft congratulated himself on posing his brazen declaration as if it were a natural part of their conversation. He braced himself for the inevitability of Sherlock’s derision. A part of his mind told him that was what he was after, what he wanted, what he needed, in order to maintain the resemblance of a relationship with Sherlock. Denial of all feeling was his best defence, enmity the citadel in whose twisted by-lanes he could chase the chimera of his devotion. That glorious summer day, a little over two decades ago, Sherlock had shut the door between them and gone off to tramp down his own trail through life, as friendless and solitary as a hermit secluding himself in the desert. Good husbandry incited Mycroft to maintain his side of the buttresses and secure them with an extra layer of stone.
On the opposite side of the desk Sherlock flinched, the sudden movement startling Mycroft out of his ill-timed reverie. He raised his gaze to his brother, momentarily afraid that in the rashness of his lowered guard he’d destroyed the first tentative buds of an understanding he wouldn’t have dared hope for ten minutes ago.
“Sherlock?” he pressed quietly.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Sherlock gritted between his teeth.
“Nothing, I suppose,” Mycroft replied, taking care to let his gaze drift back to his hands. Perhaps, indeed, it was better for both of them to remain aloof-after all, this was what they had become accustomed to. At heart, Sherlock was such a conservative being.
When he looked up again he saw his brother’s mouth already twitching with a curl of impatience.
“Right.” Mycroft lifted an enquiring eyebrow. “No doubt you’ve already concocted a plan full of unnecessarily dashing aspects. I’m all ears.”
# # # #
The instant the phone started clamouring at his bedside he was wide awake. He grabbed for the device and grappled with the buttons. “Yes,” he growled, his voice thick and heavy with sleep.
“Apologies for waking you up, sir.” Anthea’s breathless voice poured into his ear. “It’s Lazarus. It’s as you feared. He’s been apprehended. In Serbia.”
Mycroft was already out of his bed and getting rid of his damp pyjama jacket. The nights had been unaccountably, swelteringly hot lately. “Is the plane ready?” he asked.
“Almost, sir,” Anthea answered. “You can be off in three quarters of an hour. Your car will be ready to pick you up in ten minutes.”
“Good, thank you.” Mycroft ended the call and headed for the bathroom. After a quick shave and a shower he dressed himself hurriedly. A stack of dictionaries and grammar books on various Slavic languages had been lying, waiting, on top of the small desk in his bedroom since Sherlock’s departure for Eastern Europe. Now Mycroft extricated an English-Serbian dictionary and a book with a brief introduction to the Serbian language. After tossing them into his suitcase he still had one minute to put on his overcoat and select himself an umbrella from the extensive collection perched in the hallstand.
Once he hoisted himself into the faintly distasteful garb of a Serbian officer he’d have to relinquish the item. Until that time he’d relish the comfort of spinning the handle between his fingers as means to ward off what to his imagination constituted the stuff of nightmares. Their man in Serbia was an old hand, thank God, so it shouldn’t take Mycroft more than three days to insinuate himself into a position of power in the prison where Sherlock was probably being interrogated at this very minute. But three days were an awfully long time, especially for someone suffering through torture.
Briefly, Mycroft closed his eyes. Two days, he’d allow himself, no more.
His car glided to a halt in front of the gate just as he was locking the front door. His chauffeur sprang out to relieve him of his suitcase and hold the door open for him. Inside Anthea sat waiting, her fingers deftly working the keys of her Blackberry.
“Good morning, sir,” she greeted him.
“Good morning.” he replied, adding straightaway. “You needn’t have come.”
She smiled the mysterious smile that was her trademark. “Yes, but I wanted to,” she said, the sleek silver bracelet on her wrist glinting in the light of the streetlamps that rushed past the window.
“That’s very kind of you,” Mycroft said.
For a moment her gaze unlocked itself from the tiny screen in her hands and slanted in his direction. “You won’t receive a very warm reception in Serbia, I think.”
“Probably not.”
An awkward silence hung between them for a few seconds that felt like hours, then her fingers began tapping away at her phone again.
Mycroft shifted in his seat and peered out of the window. They had left The Thames behind them. His hand spun the handle of his umbrella of its own accord. It wasn’t until he felt Anthea’s gaze on his hand that he became aware of the motion, and stopped. On his right side The Tower loomed, the mass of white stone eerily shimmering in the orange blur of its floodlights that were muted by the fog rising from the river. Even dressed in muted colours the building was forbidding and locked in self-imposed solitariness, its walls prepared to turn their back in haughty indifference to the multitude that thronged past them on a daily basis.
In its splendid isolation The Tower managed to snub even the great pillars of the bridge that soared above its own turrets. Why should it feign interest in what happened on the other side of the mass of water that had flowed past its walls ever since it was first built? Mycroft smiled and tipped his head in a spontaneous salute to the building. Then the car swung onto the A1203 and left the castle behind. Mycroft turned to cast one last look at it but found that suddenly, what drew his eye was not The Tower but the bridge.
Recipient: frozen_delight
Author: dioscureantwins
Characters: Sherlock, Mycroft, Anthea, Mummy, Daddy, John, Mrs Hudson, OC’s
Rating:T
Warnings: no warnings apply.
Beta: the amazing stardust_made was so kind as to help me. She’s a wonderful writer and an incredibly kind and resourceful beta. Thanks to her this has become a much better story than it would have turned out to be otherwise.
Summary: “Fine.” A sharp click in his ear told Mycroft Sherlock had ended the call, robbing Mycroft of the chance to implore him to be careful. Slowly, he put the receiver back in place. Perhaps that was better, after all.
I was very happy and honoured to find I had been assigned the lovely frozen_delight. Dear frozen_delight, I’ve endeavoured to write you a story that would give you pleasure and sincerely hope I’ve succeeded in doing just that.
Find part one of the fic here
Mycroft hardly recognised the face that peered at him anxiously through the crack between the partly opened black door and its frame. Schooling his features into a bland smile he held up the bouquet of lilac, forget-me-nots and early tuberoses that Anthea had ordered for him that morning.
“Mrs Hudson,” he said pleasantly. “How are you?”
None too great, obviously, but perhaps her haggard looks were attributable to a recent illness. Upon realising who was perched on her stoop, his brother’s landlady opened the door wider.
“Mycroft.” Her voice quavered a little but her eyes widened and a tiny spark flickered up in them. “Oh, how lovely,” she warbled next, noticing the flowers. “Come in, come in. It’s lovely to see you.”
Her right hand flailed nervously next to his arm while she backed into the hallway, her whole body intent on urging him to step inside so she could smother him with her hospitality and months of untapped affection. How odd that John had not visited her. Mycroft had assumed the landlady and her former tenant were naturally going to seek comfort in each other’s company from time to time. Had he underestimated not just the depth of John’s grief but that of Mrs Hudson as well?
“…DI Lestrade, which was nice of him,” Mrs Hudson was finishing whatever she was saying while showing Mycroft into her kitchen. “I hope you won’t mind, Mycroft, but the parlour is in shambles with the spring cleaning I’ve been doing. Here, let me have those.” She swept the bouquet he was still carrying out of his hands. “Oh, Mycroft, they’re gorgeous. And what for?”
Mycroft shrugged his shoulders. “Sentiment?”
“Now you’re being silly. Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on. And I baked a cherry almond cake yesterday. You’ll have a piece, won’t you? I keep baking these cakes even though… Well, I’m silly like that. And John, he loves my cakes. I’ve been sending them over to Mrs Turner’s tenants, but Ted complained Jonathan was growing ‘love handles’. I’ve always preferred a man with some meat on him, but…”
After checking himself that a smile of innocuous encouragement was plastered firmly on his face-in addition to making the required humming noises of agreement-Mycroft tuned Mrs Hudson out. Her chatter receded to a faint drone in the background that wasn’t too troublesome. Its resonance reminded him of the buzz of a bumblebee enjoying a pollen feast on a bright summer day, and he felt irony tug at his lips when he spotted one hovering in the sharp sunlight falling upon the pot of zinnias on the windowsill over the sink.
“Oh, out you go.” Mrs Hudson opened the window and shooed out the insect. “Imagine, a bee in the middle of London! And here I was, watching this documentary on the Beeb only yesterday. They’re all dying, apparently, from the pesticides or something similar. Can’t you do something about that, Mycroft? It would be nice for Sherlock’s memory; he did love bees, didn’t he?”
The palaver went on and on while she busied herself around the kitchen. Tea appeared in front of him-the brew was of its habitual inferior quality by the smell of it, but at least she had remembered he had it without milk-together with a plate bearing a large slice of cake. While placing it in front of him Mrs Hudson brushed her hand over his shoulder.
“Thank you for visiting, Mycroft,” she said. “I know you’re a busy man so for you to take the time to come over…that’s really sweet of you, I mean, I’m just your poor brother’s landlady…” A small whimper of distress escaped from her lips when she seated herself on the other side of the table. Carefully, she lifted her cup from its saucer with a hand that trembled, the knuckles of her fingers whitening from the grip on the cup’s handle.
“Oh, my hip,” she complained. “It’s been giving me so much trouble lately. Oh well, the summer is nearly here and the sun always helps, I find.” Pursing her lips she blew at her tea. “Funny, I never cared much for the summer when I was younger. I’ve always been more of a winter person. I wasn’t too eager when Mr Hudson first told me he wanted to immigrate to Florida. That’s another thing Sherlock and I had in common, I think. He loathed the Florida climate. Oh dear, he never was one for mincing his words, was he? We were discussing it only a few days before…”
Mid-prattle she broke off to regard him over the rim of her cup with slightly rheumatic eyes. Whatever she read on his face-and Mycroft worked hard to meet her scrutiny with his blandest smile-caused her voice to be much softer when she resumed. “I’ll never understand why he did it, Mycroft, but I just wish he hadn’t. I miss him, I do. And I am sure John does as well, though I haven’t seen him for months, the poor man. He was really suffering, you know. You haven’t spoken to him, have you? I wish you would. People should support each other.”
Mycroft swallowed his bite of excellent cake. “True,” he murmured. “Regrettably, John has decided to live under the illusion that I am to blame for Sherlock’s decision to end his life.”
“Oh, yes, I know.” Mrs Hudson sighed, mercifully employing her gaze to an observance of the contents of her cup once more. “It must have been so horrible for him, horrible. That phone call and then to have to watch your best friend jump off of that roof right in front of your eyes… And then, after, to see him lying there on the pavement, all mangled up, and all the blood. Such a beautiful boy, Sherlock was, I don’t want to think what… I suppose that was why you had to have the closed coffin…” Her voice wavered and she hid behind another hasty gulp of tea. On the wall behind Mycroft’s back the clock ticked away the seconds. Close to the zinnias the bumblebee crawled over the window glass.
“So,” Mrs Hudson addressed him again after she put down her cup. “What brings you here? Everything is still upstairs, you know. I’ve thought of renting out the flat again but I don’t need the money, not really. So I’ve left it all the way it was; even Sherlock’s clothes are still there. I…Somehow I couldn’t summon the energy to sort things out, and it’s not like it’s bothering me. I just don’t go up there.”
After drawing out his handkerchief and patting it at the corners of his mouth, Mycroft nodded. “I confess your cherry almond cake rivals the one they serve at the Dorchester, Mrs Hudson,” he told his hostess whose face beamed at the compliment. “My apologies for not appreciating your plight,” he said next. “If you would like, I can have a few people come over and clear out the flat for you. It will take them less than a day.”
“No!” Mrs Hudson’s vehemence quite belied the harmless exterior she usually presented to the world. “No, I like the idea of the flat remaining the way it was. Maybe John, once he comes to his senses a bit, would like to come back. Otherwise…Ah, you’ll probably think I’m a daft old woman, and I know I am. But I feel that if I leave it untouched, I don’t know, it feels like Sherlock might walk in again any minute.”
Mycroft smiled.
“Silly, isn’t it?” Mrs Hudson smiled back.
“Quite,” Mycroft confirmed. “But that’s what sentiment does; catches one at a disadvantage when one cares too much. Sooner or later, all hearts are broken. Whether the fracture was caused by a criminal husband or an addict tenant, the outcome is the same.”
“Oh, Mycroft.” Mrs Hudson’s face crumpled, vacillating on that small ridge between grief and relief. Tears welled up in her eyes but she sat smiling through them, wiping them off with her hands and smearing mascara in the process. Mycroft delved into his other pocket for his spare handkerchief and slid it across the table.
“Oh, thank you.” She sniffed, plucking it from beneath his hand and reducing the snow-white linen to a soiled rag almost instantly by daubing at the stains around her eyes. “How can you talk like that? You loved your little brother, never mind you were always putting him down in front of others. You did that because you worried about him…Everyone can see that…”
A fresh outbreak of tears caused Mycroft to shift in his seat uneasily. He lifted another bite of cake to his mouth, found he couldn’t swallow it no matter how hard he tried, and had to take a swig of the awful tea to wash it down.
Putting him down…
Mrs Hudson’s phrasing had been rather unfortunate, to say the least. Of course she wasn’t aware of it, or she would have chosen her words differently or burst out into a round of apologies. It was simply impossible for her to know about Redbeard and the story of his sudden demise. Sherlock never mentioned the dog, to anyone.
Not after that awful day.
# # # #
The weather was unseasonably warm for June. Mycroft lay lazing in a recliner on the terrace, wrapped up in Pelling’s biography of Churchill. A faint breeze ruffled the cheery green and golden fringe of the big green parasol whose gentle shade protected him against the fiery heat of the sun’s rays. His mother had thrown him disapproving glances on her way to and from the clotheslines that were strung at the side of the house, grumbling about lazy, good-for-nothing twenty-year-olds beneath her breath. Mycroft had in fact worked quite hard at Oxford during the past term so he refused to acknowledge her remarks, raising his book a little higher to shield himself from them instead. Now from somewhere inside the house the faint ebb and flow of conversation put up some effort to disturb his general sense of wellbeing but he bravely battled the tiny flicker of annoyance the sound sparked in him.
Whatever other advantages his Harrow education might have brought him, he counted the carefully cultivated ability to turn a deaf ear to random noise among those that were the most useful to him. Instead of pricking up his ears to distinguish the words that were being spoken, the part of Mycroft that was not concentrating on his book was able to dilute the sounds with the gentle hum of the bumblebees tumbling over the flowers that gave off a fresh waft of sweet fragrance with every flurry brushing their petals.
Unfortunately, most of the time paradisiacal peace and quiet and the Holmes household were as unlikely to meet as East and West. As the discussion inside grew more heated, the voices turned shriller, rising higher and higher in a discordant duet of enmity. Mycroft closed his book first and his eyes briefly after, and felt for the handle to put the back of the recliner into a more upright position. He had just succeeded in rearranging the chair and himself when the kitchen door was thrown open wide, crashing into the wall so loudly Mycroft was momentarily afraid the glass inset in the door would shatter.
“William Sherlock Scott Holmes!” Mummy shouted. “You come back right this minute and apologise!”
“No!” Sherlock whipped past Mycroft’s chair, running faster than a snap dog.
“Sherlock,” Mycroft called out, worry jilting his heart in his chest as he caught sight of his brother’s face. Beneath the wet sheen of brimming tears the blue and silver enamel of Sherlock’s irises was glittering even more brightly than usual. The look he shot his elder brother made Mycroft cower, for it was so full of icy hate it reminded him of Dante’s description of Lucifer, perpetually locked in the frozen lake fed by his own tears.
“Sherlock!” Sherlock paid him no heed but rushed on in the direction of the refuge he still sought out on a regular basis despite their mother’s remonstrations that he’d grown too big for the treehouse and it was dangerous to sit up there.
“Sherlock!” Now Mummy came scampering onto the terrace. Her face was glowing with a redness that certainly wasn’t thanks to the heat. “Where is he?” she huffed at Mycroft.
“Up in the treehouse, I surmise,” answered Mycroft, shrugging. “What’s wrong?”
“That boy, I swear…” Sighing dramatically Mummy flung herself down into a chair. “One of these days he’s going to give me a heart attack.”
Mycroft rearranged his features into the required empathetic mask.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with that child,” his mother went on complaining. “I simply have no idea what’s going on in that head of his. He must be intelligent for otherwise he would never have got himself a scholarship for Harrow, never mind your father and I can barely suffer the expense of the uniform. Not after having had to pay for yours as well.” Mycroft rolled his eyes inwardly.
“He’s simply obsessed with death. Did I tell you that a month ago I chanced upon a dead badger he’d stashed beneath his bed when I was hoovering his room? He claimed he needed it for ‘experiments’. I made him throw it away, of course, and had him scrub his hands with Vim. And now he’s foaming at the mouth because he just discovered what really happened to Redbeard. Well, I beg your pardon but if there’s one child that ought to have figured that out years ago, it’s Sherlock.”
Mycroft blanched. Suddenly the day’s heat seemed oppressing. “How did he find out, then?” he asked, affecting nonchalance.
“Apparently the vet told him,” Mummy replied. “Sherlock has been helping her out occasionally, cleaning the benches and looking after the animals that have to stay overnight. In return Mrs Johnson teaches him how to use a microscope and, as Sherlock puts it, “do science stuff”. He just confronted me with the tale and I told him that of course Redbeard had to be put down. I can’t for the life of me imagine he still believed that silly tale we only told him to spare his feelings at the time. Good heavens!”
“I see,” Mycroft murmured through thin lips.
“Well.” Mummy pushed herself up. “I’m going to call Mr Boulstridge and ask for him to drive over and take down that treehouse tomorrow. One of these days Sherlock is going to come crashing down with it and break his neck just to spite me. You can go and tell him he’s forfeited his dinner this evening.” She strode off into the house; in turn forfeiting Mycroft of the chance to inform her that Sherlock wasn’t likely to rue this particular form of punishment.
Peace and tranquillity descended on the terrace once more after his mother’s departure, but Mycroft found he was no longer in the mood to enjoy them. He threw his book a longing glance. Mr Churchill’s stern visage stared back at him and told him to go look for his little brother and stop the rot.
”Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
In some ways Sir Winston Churchill’s life had been surprisingly easy, never having been stuck between the opposing forces of Mrs Holmes and her youngest.
In the corner of the garden Mycroft found the ladder was pulled up onto the platform. His eyes searched the tree, but found no evidence of Sherlock. He had to be cooped up inside the small house. But then, the discomfort was probably just heightening the satisfaction of his sulk.
“Sherlock,” Mycroft called. As expected, the treehouse remained ominously silent.
“Sherlock, please,” Mycroft begged.
“Go away!” Sherlock shouted. His voice was wet and sounded thick with crying.
Oh, Christ. Mycroft balled his fists so hard he could feel his nails tear at the flesh. Why had their father ever come up with his stupid idea and why hadn’t Mycroft had the guts to step down on it and tell Sherlock the truth?
For of course Sherlock had grasped onto the story eagerly and held onto it all these years; that was how his mind worked. To him everything was true or false, black or white. The endless shades of shadowy greys were Mycroft’s specialty. Mycroft, with the advantage of someone who had seven years on his brother, had always been quietly fascinated by this difference in their outlook. Sherlock, once he became aware of it, had grown increasingly frustrated with it. He frequently complained to Mycroft about other people’s unwillingness to answer direct questions or give replies that were short and to the point. Meanwhile, he’d grown a reputation in the village for being the bane of his poor parents’ life and a nosy and impertinent youngster, never mind his perfectly angelic looks.
Six years ago the three people closest to Sherlock had all confirmed that Redbeard had galloped off to live his life happily in some other place. Today that story had been exposed as the blatant lie it was. The very foundations of Sherlock’s world had just been shaken with a force close to nine on the scale of Richter.
Jesus bloody fucking Christ, what a mess.
“Sherlock, please,” Mycroft said. He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes to let the pain block the burning itch of the tears crowding there. When he trusted his voice to be calm and even again, he continued. “Sherlock, I apologise for lying about Redbeard. It was cowardly and bad of me and an offence to both of us. I know that in agreeing to go along with the story I’ve upset you greatly. I should have put my foot down and told Mummy and Daddy we ought to tell you the truth.”
Mycroft remembered then he had in fact done so, but his loyalty to their mother forbade him to mention this. Besides, the disclosure of that detail wouldn’t have served his argument. Worse, it would have shown Sherlock that Mycroft had capitulated again when confronted with the massive juggernaut of their mother’s terrifying will, and further exposed another crack that lay at the base of the rift that was rapidly widening between him and his brother.
“Sherlock? Will you say something, please?” Mycroft pleaded, gazing up to the platform. Nothing stirred except for the leaves rustling in the wind. Leaning his back against the trunk Mycroft let himself slide down until he was seated on the soft bed of moss and seedlings surrounding the tree.
“What do you want me to do? What do you need?”
He waited, his eyes locked up on the little house over his head. A sigh escaped his lips. Silently, he cursed the spineless creature that had been his fourteen-year-old self. The futility of his belated remorse made him huff in irritation. Lamenting the past was a fruitless exercise. Evidently, the only good thing that mulling over it brought about was the bitter memory of all the stupid mistakes one had made. Mycroft was being taught the hard way now. Sherlock was an excellent agent to drive the message home.
Never again would Mycroft let his brother down in such a spectacular manner.
“Sherlock?”
“Go away!” The cry was accompanied by an even louder crack as Sherlock’s foot slammed against one of the walls and shot through the rotten wood that gave way in a crushing hail of splinters.
“Sherlock!” Mycroft sprang to his feet. “Sherlock! What are you doing up there? It’s dangerous. Come down, please.”
Mycroft didn’t really expect Sherlock to react so he was forced to take a step back when Sherlock’s head suddenly appeared over the edge of the plateau. His face combined fire and ice-tear streaks tumbling down over his cheekbones like runlets from a molten glacier. In defiance of the laws of nature the heat of Sherlock’s distress closed a freezing fist around Mycroft’s heart.
“And what are you doing down there, Mycroft?” The sheer depth of contempt in the tone made Mycroft flinch. “You can stand there hollering for me to come down all day, but you know quite well I won’t do it. I won’t listen to you, ever again.”
“Sherlock, lis-Please. Come down. Staying up there is dangerous. You don’t want to fall and break your neck, do you?”
“I couldn’t give a hoot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come down here so we can talk this through like sensible people. I understand what you’ve learned today-”
“Tell me, Mycroft. What have I learned today?”
Mycroft swallowed. The whole situation was painful and extremely humiliating. However, there was no alternative but to plough through so he did.
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” Another great piece of advice by the great statesman himself. Mycroft couldn’t have said he was going through hell, but Sherlock certainly was, and it fell to Mycroft to help him through.
“You have learned the truth about Redbeard,” he offered carefully. “And you’ve discovered that we lied to you all those years ago, then never bothered to tell you otherwise.”
“I don’t care about them,” Sherlock said coldly. “But you, I’ve always believed you. You lied to me. You said you’d never lie to me, Mycroft! How many more lies have you told me? Can’t you see I can never trust you again? I wondered… I often asked myself… When I asked, that evening you returned from school, I knew you were going to tell me that Redbeard was dead, that it was just a story they had made up because they’re stupid and just assumed I wouldn’t understand. But then you…”
Mid-stride he cut off and his head vanished as abruptly as it had come into view two minutes ago. After a slight hesitation-somehow the motion felt like admitting defeat, a debilitating sensation Mycroft had been growing increasingly unaccustomed to-Mycroft took a step back in order to find out what was happening over his head. He was just in time to catch sight of Sherlock’s lower left leg slipping into the darkness of the hut.
“Sherlock?” he called.
“Why don’t you get lost and find someone else to appal?” Sherlock demanded in a voice so stony it sent a shiver of disquiet rippling down Mycroft’s back.
“Sherlock, please…” Mycroft pleaded, fighting the despair he felt gnawing at his insides. He fixed his gaze on the hut but nothing moved, save for the ever-shifting shafts of sunlight that waved their way path through the softly rustling canopy of the ancient tree. A few splinters chafed against the skin of his neck. He wiped at them with his hand and combed his fingers through his hair to get rid of them. Then, when he was sure Sherlock was prepared to stay inside the hut for as long as he would remain standing there, Mycroft pivoted on his heels and without looking over his shoulder once began the long walk back to the house.
# # # #
“I was worried,” Mycroft hissed into the phone.
“Oh, please. Save your boring fretting for those who appreciate it. If there are any that do.” If Sherlock intended to aggravate Mycroft even further with his breezy tone, he was succeeding admirably well.
Forcing himself to go back to sounding perfectly composed Mycroft spoke, enunciating every word. “My man warned me you were being reckless, as usual.”
“Your man, brother dear, is an incompetent moron who should be paying you for the privilege of being employed. Please tell me you’re not assigning these people to me as a chastisement for any wrongs I’ve unwittingly committed in the past.”
“I’m saving those for when you’re safely back again,” Mycroft said smoothly.
“Ah. Then perhaps you could do me the favour of sending over for the next stage someone with two brain cells. Functioning, preferably.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mycroft said, and ended the call. Rather appear to be brusque than start shouting into the receiver-that certainly wouldn’t do. Besides, Sherlock was the last person in the world to be affronted by an abrupt dismissal.
# # # #
To say that Mycroft hadn’t been looking forward to the coming weekend was something of an understatement. He had gone out of his way to avoid his younger sibling for over a year. By now he was thoroughly done with Sherlock snubbing every attempt at reconciliation with a haughty toss of his head and a contemptuous twist of his lips. Mycroft was too engrossed in his career to concern himself with someone to who Mycroft, in his most private thoughts, referred to as a ‘giant pain in the arse’. One day, hopefully, his brother would grow up and cease his revolt of resentment against the people who ought to be his dearest. In the meantime, provided Sherlock didn’t enter any paths that led to actual self-annihilation, his little brother was free to wallow in the hellish morass of his own devising, if such was his wish.
Mycroft had brought down the number of his visits to their ancestral home to the lowest possible minimum, carefully planning his weekends to coincide with those during which Sherlock remained at school. At the end of the summer Sherlock would be off to Cambridge; he’d passed his exams with flying colours and rumour had it that the University was very eager to add him to the student body. Mycroft assumed that would result in Sherlock being at home even less, allowing Mycroft more of a breather. In the meantime, the few encounters Mycroft had been unable to avoid had merely served to prove his brother at eighteen was even more insufferable than at seventeen.
Friends of their parents-a couple both Mycroft and Sherlock had known all their lives-were celebrating their Pearl Wedding Anniversary by throwing a party to which they had invited half the village. Early on Mycroft had found out that a decline to participate in the festivities was simply unnegotiable. As he had nothing against the people in question he’d acquiesced. Only that spring he’d received a promotion to a position that-back in those days when he set his first tentative steps in the jungle that was the British government-he hadn’t expected to obtain before he was at least thirty-three. To a man who at twenty-five grasped what he’d envisaged to hold eight years later, the obligation to spend three nights under the same roof as his sibling should have been an encumbrance no more vexatious than the insistent buzzing of a mosquito in the bedroom. Thus, Mycroft had packed his suitcase and set off for the homestead, determined not to be shaken by whatever atrocity Sherlock might choose to inflict on them.
So far he’d succeeded remarkably well. A scarcely civil reserve reigned over any space the Holmes brothers shared. Mummy did her best to engulf the uneasiness in a cloud of cheerful chatter, but only succeeded in highlighting the awkward silence that stole down on the domestic scene whenever she had to pause for breath. Their father hid behind his newspaper or busied himself in the garden shed, while Mycroft turned another page of his book and smiled politely in answer to his mother’s request whether he would like a second slice of cake.
“Oh yes, keep stuffing him, as if he isn’t fat enough already,” Sherlock harrumphed from behind his own book.
“Thank you for your comment, Sherlock,” their mother told him. “Now apologise to Mikey.”
Sherlock’s answer was to shut his book and shuttle out of the room. Mycroft exhaled and closed his eyes. Only one more evening and another day. He’d make sure to leave at three in the afternoon at the latest.
On the evening of the celebration Mycroft and his parents sat waiting for Sherlock to come down so they could be off to the party. Both Mummy and Daddy had donned their best clothes. After some debate Mycroft had settled on a simple midnight blue two-piece he’d combined with a watery blue pinpoint Oxford shirt. His neck felt strangely bare without a tie but he believed it highly unlikely any man under thirty would be wearing one, and for his parent’s sake he wanted to blend in with the crowd. Besides, it was likely to be hot beneath the canopy that his father had helped erect earlier in the day, so he wouldn’t have minded the chance to profit from every breeze, however futile, sweeping past him.
“Well,” Mummy said. “I suppose Sherlock taking so long to choose what to wear must be a good sign.”
Mycroft offered his most non-committal hum. His father continued his contemplation of the rose bed in front of the window.
“Ah, there he is,” their mother began at the sound of Sherlock’s feet hopping down the steps. Her face fell when her youngest materialised in front of her eyes.
“What in heaven’s name!” she choked.
Sherlock was dressed in the pair of thin cotton trousers and oversized t-shirt he’d been wearing when he went upstairs an hour ago. One of his daytime activities must have been either to climb a tree or to burrow himself in a hole in the ground with nothing but his hands for an implement, for both the trousers and the t-shirt were incredibly filthy and his hands were covered with tiny cuts and bruises. His hair was the same messy jumble haphazardly falling into his eyes that it had been when he’d come home earlier. It was now complete with the remnants of some tiny twigs.
“Sherlock,” Mummy started again. Her face had acquired a reddish cast and she was practically wringing her hands. “For God’s sake, even you must understand you can’t go like this.”
“Can’t I?” Sherlock enquired with mock-jocundity. “I don’t see why not.”
“Because it’s Uncle Tim’s and Aunt Maisy’s thirtieth wedding anniversary,” Mummy screeched. She picked up one of their father’s newspapers and set to fanning herself with furious determination. From his vantage point on the last step of the stairs Sherlock cast their mother a dispassionate eye.
“First of all,” he said, his tone mimicking the pitch healthcare workers assumed when addressing either a child or the very, very elderly, “Mr and Mrs Evans are not related to us. Secondly, I fail to see how the clothes I’m wearing or the way I look would in any way influence the festivities.” One of the twigs in Sherlock’s hair wiggled whenever he moved his head, adding to the illusion he wasn’t a human at all but rather some forest sprite. “If their marriage can be rocked by such a detail as my attire,” he went on, “it can’t have been very good to start with, and we might as well save ourselves the trouble of showing up at all and stay at home, instead. Which I’d rather do anyway. Not that I like it here, but at least I have to contend with only the three of you, whereas at the Evanses I will have to endure the company of a whole horde of insufferable people,”
“Who are undoubtedly desperately looking forward to yours,” Mycroft quipped.
The sound of the door being shut informed them their father had left the room.
“Mikey, no one asked you to comment.” Their mother had found the command of her faculties and her voice again. “Sherlock,” she addressed her youngest. “You stop this nonsense right now and go back upstairs to change into something appropriate. And draw a comb through your hair!”
“Why?” demanded Sherlock.
“Because I say so! Because your Aunt Maisy and Uncle Tim are lovely people, and they’ve invited the Mitchells and the Ravensdales.”
“Ah…” Sherlock breathed while Mycroft shot an enquiring glance in his mother’s direction.
“I’ll explain, Mycroft,” Sherlock said in a smug voice. Sprucely, he took the last step and glided towards the sofa. He perched himself on its edge with the studied elegance of a society hostess, then continued to pretend to direct a pleasantly civil conversation.
“Naturally, with your always being so busy in London and therefore denying us the pleasure of your company, you are unaware of some of the delightful chitchat Mummy and I have indulged ourselves in recently.”
Here, he halted to incline his head to the left and stare straight at Mycroft, a hint of smile on his lips. Mycroft did his best to glower but ended up breaking the eye contact first.
“Sherlock,” Mummy began but Sherlock ignored her, turning away and crossing his legs, the gesture pointed.
“Now, now,” he said. “I feel we have been deceiving Mycroft for too long, Mummy. You see, Mycroft, by now Mummy has rather come to despair of the proclivity of her heir to provide her with his own heir, and so she has turned to her spare. Oh, this is rather fun, isn’t it? Just like Dr Seuss. Yes, Mycroft, you might as well rejoice in the fact Mummy has finally accepted you are an inveterate pervert-her private opinion, obviously, not mine. Personally, I don’t give a hang who or what you get off with. I have no interest in sex whatsoever, or affinity for it. We really ought to forgive Mummy, though. After all, she can hardly be blamed for having been brought up in the true faith.”
The last time Sherlock had delivered such a long speech must have been when he was eleven and had recounted to Mycroft how Mr Wiggins had explained the dancing patterns of the bees and their meaning. Their language, it seemed, was infinitely intricate, and yet it revolved solely around the question where the best and most abundant pollen might be gathered. Sherlock, apparently, was equally deft in his employment of words.
With his spiteful banter he’d swiftly managed to deal a blow to their mother’s dreams of a happy future filled with the laughter of grandchildren and to Mycroft’s unwillingness to discuss his sexual preferences with their parents.
Shaken, Mycroft still managed to draw his mouth into a disapproving moue and tutted at his brother. From beneath the curtain of his fringe, Sherlock stared back with a mischievous smirk.
“Sherlock! You have said quite enough!” Sweat was pouring from their mother’s brow. She mopped at it with a paper handkerchief she’d plucked out of her purse. “Go to your room right now. We’ll tell Uncle Tim and Aunt Maisy you’re ill.”
“Oh.” Sherlock’s face was a portrait study in disappointment. “But Mummy, I would have loved to make love to Lucy Mitchell, and Susan, and Lydia Ravensdale.” He looked so sincerely put out Mycroft almost laughed, with the humourless desperation a common Private must have felt as he crouched in the trenches while waiting for the next German attack.
“Well, you’ve missed your chance,” Mummy replied, tone arctic. “Maybe next week, at the Ravensdale’s summer picnic.”
“I’m already looking forward to it,” Sherlock said in a false cheery tone. “I’m so sorry you won’t be able to attend that most tedious of social gatherings, Mycroft. However, unlike some of us, I understand how London’s gay bars must hold a bigger sway over you. Right, I’ll be upstairs then. See ya.”
# # # #
The evidence Sherlock had sent Mycroft that their longest serving agent in Japan had sold his services to Moriarty a long time ago initiated an unwelcome flurry of activity. After some deliberation Mycroft delegated the task of screening every main agent in their employ to Anthea, the only person in the service he felt he could truly trust. Regrettably this also meant she had less time to spend at his side. Her replacement was more than adequate, an eager young man who would have literally tried to fly for Mycroft if such feat was humanly possible. Mycroft’s agenda was organised with ruthless efficiency and for the first time in years he found himself in the luxurious possession of the occasional half an hour free from any matter requiring his attention.
Naturally, his character in its perversity would not allow him to enjoy that rare commodity. Instead, Mycroft sat fretting, thrumming with his fingers on the side of his chair and living in even greater fear for his brother’s life.
# # # #
In the past Sherlock had visited Mycroft’s office occasionally. Each of these occurrences had been instigated at Mycroft’s behest and invariably started with a fuming Sherlock being marched into the room between two of Mycroft’s security personnel. Thus, Mycroft was rather surprised when on the first truly pleasant day of spring that year, Anthea informed him his agenda had been reshuffled at the last minute to fit in an unexpected caller.
“It’s your brother, sir,” she said. The words were hardly out of her mouth when, with a dramatic swirl of his coat, Sherlock swanned into the room. Anthea cleared her throat and closed the door behind her.
“Here are your boring plans,” Sherlock announced, tossing a memory stick onto Mycroft’s desk. “Now tell me everything you know about a man called Moriarty.”
Slowly, Mycroft pushed himself up in his chair. He picked up the memory stick and took off the tiny cap. A few drops of water fell out straight onto the draft of the new tax treaty with Germany that Mycroft had been correcting. He lifted an enquiring eyebrow at his brother. Sherlock merely shrugged and flung himself down into the chair in front of the desk.
“It fell into a pool,” he explained. “A bit.” He waved off any further conversation on the topic with a dainty flick of his wrist. “Moriarty, Mycroft. He’s a dangerous man and an outrageous criminal. You must be aware of his existence.”
“Of course I am,” replied Mycroft. He let the memory stick drop onto the hardwood flooring, before standing up and crunching it beneath the heel of his shoe, swivelling left and right for good measure. “What is he to you?”
“My new archenemy.”
“Ah.” Mycroft laid a hand against his heart. “I hope you realise how much it saddens me to have to relinquish that place.”
“Stop your theatrics, Mycroft, and be serious for a change.” Sherlock’s voice was so fraught with anguish that Mycroft sat down rather abruptly. He tented his fingers in front of his mouth and arranged his face in its most attentive expression.
“How can I be of your assistance?” he asked.
“That’s better,” Sherlock growled. Now that Mycroft took a proper look at his brother he noticed that beneath Sherlock’s usual paleness he was quite white around the nose. His teeth were worrying his lower lip, always a sign of nervousness on Sherlock’s part, rather than the display of sexual innuendo others had sometimes taken it for.
“I… He and I have been playing this game lately,” Sherlock began. Mycroft nodded. “It was quite fun, actually,” Sherlock continued. His eyes darted towards Mycroft and then away, to a spot above Mycroft’s head. “John remonstrated with me that people were dying which was unpleasant. John being angry, I mean.”
He halted and Mycroft nodded again for him to continue, also settling his gaze on a point that was not the other person in the room-the top of the doorframe served that purpose admirably well. When Sherlock recounted how the red dot had appeared on his forehead, Mycroft pressed the tips of his fingers so hard the blood started to drain away. At last Sherlock’s story reached its end. Somehow, miraculously, he and his doctor flatmate had walked out alive. Now, it seemed that Moriarty’s audacity to threaten John’s life meant Sherlock intended to hunt him down.
“So I decided to turn to you,” Sherlock wrapped up his account of his latest endeavours to get himself killed. From the fact that Sherlock didn’t finish this last sentence with the prerequisite, ironic ‘brother dear’ Mycroft deduced his encounter with James Moriarty and the subsequent revelation of his emotions upon another human being’s narrow escape from termination had shaken his brother badly. In the course of one night, it seemed, Sherlock had grown up considerably.
Screening his own emotions, Mycroft coughed discreetly behind his hand.
“I can, of course, start collecting information on the man, make inquiries,” he suggested, picking up his fountain pen and subjecting it to an elaborate survey.
“No,” was Sherlock’s immediate reaction. “He is too dangerous. We must do away with him.”
Slowly, Mycroft lifted his eyes from the pen to regard his sibling. “We?” he enquired. “Have we become an entity all of a sudden?”
“In order to defeat, Moriarty, yes.” Over the desk Sherlock locked eyes with Mycroft. His gaze was guileless. He didn’t waver, no matter how hard Mycroft stared at him.
“Ah, I see,” Mycroft forwarded at last. He took some time to arrange the pen on his blotter, positioning it first to the left than the right of the sheaf of papers in front of him. In the end he opted for placing it in the right hand corner, at a forty-five degree angle to the drafts. “You’re offering a truce,” he concluded. “But how about the time after you’ve defeated Moriarty? Provided that you succeed, of course.”
“I will.”
“You will do your best, I’m sure. But sometimes one finds, brother dear, that doing one’s best isn’t enough.”
“That depends.”
“Exactly.”
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “I loved that dog, Mycroft.”
Mycroft’s heart was beating in his chest so frantically he was amazed Sherlock couldn’t hear it.
He moved forward, folding his hands on top of the ruined drafts and settling his eyes on them. “As I loved you,” he said. The skin between his fingers was starting to feel unpleasantly warm and damp. His voice, however, was as flat as if he were dictating a letter to the President of the European Council.
There, it was out in the open. Privately Mycroft congratulated himself on posing his brazen declaration as if it were a natural part of their conversation. He braced himself for the inevitability of Sherlock’s derision. A part of his mind told him that was what he was after, what he wanted, what he needed, in order to maintain the resemblance of a relationship with Sherlock. Denial of all feeling was his best defence, enmity the citadel in whose twisted by-lanes he could chase the chimera of his devotion. That glorious summer day, a little over two decades ago, Sherlock had shut the door between them and gone off to tramp down his own trail through life, as friendless and solitary as a hermit secluding himself in the desert. Good husbandry incited Mycroft to maintain his side of the buttresses and secure them with an extra layer of stone.
On the opposite side of the desk Sherlock flinched, the sudden movement startling Mycroft out of his ill-timed reverie. He raised his gaze to his brother, momentarily afraid that in the rashness of his lowered guard he’d destroyed the first tentative buds of an understanding he wouldn’t have dared hope for ten minutes ago.
“Sherlock?” he pressed quietly.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Sherlock gritted between his teeth.
“Nothing, I suppose,” Mycroft replied, taking care to let his gaze drift back to his hands. Perhaps, indeed, it was better for both of them to remain aloof-after all, this was what they had become accustomed to. At heart, Sherlock was such a conservative being.
When he looked up again he saw his brother’s mouth already twitching with a curl of impatience.
“Right.” Mycroft lifted an enquiring eyebrow. “No doubt you’ve already concocted a plan full of unnecessarily dashing aspects. I’m all ears.”
# # # #
The instant the phone started clamouring at his bedside he was wide awake. He grabbed for the device and grappled with the buttons. “Yes,” he growled, his voice thick and heavy with sleep.
“Apologies for waking you up, sir.” Anthea’s breathless voice poured into his ear. “It’s Lazarus. It’s as you feared. He’s been apprehended. In Serbia.”
Mycroft was already out of his bed and getting rid of his damp pyjama jacket. The nights had been unaccountably, swelteringly hot lately. “Is the plane ready?” he asked.
“Almost, sir,” Anthea answered. “You can be off in three quarters of an hour. Your car will be ready to pick you up in ten minutes.”
“Good, thank you.” Mycroft ended the call and headed for the bathroom. After a quick shave and a shower he dressed himself hurriedly. A stack of dictionaries and grammar books on various Slavic languages had been lying, waiting, on top of the small desk in his bedroom since Sherlock’s departure for Eastern Europe. Now Mycroft extricated an English-Serbian dictionary and a book with a brief introduction to the Serbian language. After tossing them into his suitcase he still had one minute to put on his overcoat and select himself an umbrella from the extensive collection perched in the hallstand.
Once he hoisted himself into the faintly distasteful garb of a Serbian officer he’d have to relinquish the item. Until that time he’d relish the comfort of spinning the handle between his fingers as means to ward off what to his imagination constituted the stuff of nightmares. Their man in Serbia was an old hand, thank God, so it shouldn’t take Mycroft more than three days to insinuate himself into a position of power in the prison where Sherlock was probably being interrogated at this very minute. But three days were an awfully long time, especially for someone suffering through torture.
Briefly, Mycroft closed his eyes. Two days, he’d allow himself, no more.
His car glided to a halt in front of the gate just as he was locking the front door. His chauffeur sprang out to relieve him of his suitcase and hold the door open for him. Inside Anthea sat waiting, her fingers deftly working the keys of her Blackberry.
“Good morning, sir,” she greeted him.
“Good morning.” he replied, adding straightaway. “You needn’t have come.”
She smiled the mysterious smile that was her trademark. “Yes, but I wanted to,” she said, the sleek silver bracelet on her wrist glinting in the light of the streetlamps that rushed past the window.
“That’s very kind of you,” Mycroft said.
For a moment her gaze unlocked itself from the tiny screen in her hands and slanted in his direction. “You won’t receive a very warm reception in Serbia, I think.”
“Probably not.”
An awkward silence hung between them for a few seconds that felt like hours, then her fingers began tapping away at her phone again.
Mycroft shifted in his seat and peered out of the window. They had left The Thames behind them. His hand spun the handle of his umbrella of its own accord. It wasn’t until he felt Anthea’s gaze on his hand that he became aware of the motion, and stopped. On his right side The Tower loomed, the mass of white stone eerily shimmering in the orange blur of its floodlights that were muted by the fog rising from the river. Even dressed in muted colours the building was forbidding and locked in self-imposed solitariness, its walls prepared to turn their back in haughty indifference to the multitude that thronged past them on a daily basis.
In its splendid isolation The Tower managed to snub even the great pillars of the bridge that soared above its own turrets. Why should it feign interest in what happened on the other side of the mass of water that had flowed past its walls ever since it was first built? Mycroft smiled and tipped his head in a spontaneous salute to the building. Then the car swung onto the A1203 and left the castle behind. Mycroft turned to cast one last look at it but found that suddenly, what drew his eye was not The Tower but the bridge.