prompting part XXIII
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Prompts from this post can be filled on the Overflow Post
IMPORTANT! Spoilers for aired episodes are now being allowed on this area of the meme, without warning. If you do not want to encounter spoilers, please prompt at our Spoiler-Free Prompt Post.
( Read more... )
"Is he-" It's barely audible.
"He's breathing, weak but steady pulse. I need him inside, so I can check where he's hurt. Sherlock? I need you. Put your arm under here, like this. That's right. Wait for me, and don't lift any higher than I can, keep it flat. No, take his leg - yes. Ok. Now lift-" The whole way inside John keeps up a steady, detached flow of instructions, largely redundant, but it fills the air, punctures the tension.
Mrs Hudson gives out small distressed gasps, and clears the table with a sweeping tug at the tablecloth. Several things don't make it off in one piece. Nobody notices. Sherlock lays Mycroft down at John's instruction, then disappears after Mrs Hudson. John catches a glimpse of him holding her arm as he tells her to get clean water and a number of other things, some of which John will need, most of which he won't.
He wishes he had better light, and gets to work.
Mrs Hudson comes up behind him with an emergency kit, at some point. Every now and again Sherlock is at his shoulder, moving things around. It's more comforting than disruptive. He checks for broken bones, maps out the bruises and cuts, cleans Mycroft's face. Expensive fabric is ruthlessly set to with scissors; it's in the way, it has to go. He was right about the ribs. Most of it seems consistent with blunt trauma, skin broken on impact and bleeding shallowly, as well from the nose and mouth. All apart from one deep laceration to the lower abdomen, which he directs Sherlock's pliant hand to apply pressure to until he's able to stitch it together. After that he just stands there, looking at his fingers.
Eventually Mrs Hudson makes Sherlock sit away, on the couch. John is relieved. He steps back, runs through a checklist in his head. after a moment or two he realises what it is that's been eluding him, and pulls his woollen sweater off and folds it to tuck under Mycroft's head. Then he washes his hands, and goes in to the next room.
"He should go to a hospital. I can't really evaluate organ damage like this, let alone head-"
"No." Sherlock says, impassive. He's sitting back in his chair, eyes fixed on the wall. There's something about his posture, not unlike when he's reached a stumbling point on a case. John's not sure whether that should make him nervous or not.
"Right," John says eventually. Sherlock always has a reason. "Then we can put him in your bed."
Sherlock just nods. "Hypothesis?" He asks.
John blinks. "Sorry?"
"Observations, John." Sherlock states flatly. "I presume he's undergone some sort of interrogation? You have experience in that area. Would you be able identify the origin?"
"Sherlock?"
"Objectivity is essential, John. I would have thought, in your line of work, even you would be aware of that. Do you want to move him now? No need to be overly cautious. We can assume that they had not as yet got what they wanted, and the underlying principle of torture is to cause the desired levels of distress with the minimum of critical injury in order to maintain coherence in the subject."
John lets the silence stretch. "Then these guys weren't any good at their job," he says shortly, trying not to think of Harry on that table, trying not to yell.
Apparently he doesn't succeed, because Mrs Hudson's eyes go wide and she takes him gently by the arm and guides him out of the room. "I'll get some new sheets, dear." She says. "And then we'll move him, shall we?"
They move him in to John's bed, in the end, and John sets up some blankets on the couch with an assurance from Mrs Hudson that she will wake him in a few hours to check on Mycroft again. Eighteen hours is taking its toll, so he agrees.
He doesn't speak to Sherlock at all, but just before he drifts off, he thinks he hears some stop-start attempts at Bach from the direction of his room.
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Mycroft finds him smoking on the balcony of a squalid two-room london flat a week later, and joins him via the fire escape. The polished tip of his umbrella taps against the metal of each rung in a pleasingly ominous manner. He thinks perhaps he could get used to that.
"Anonymous letters to policemen," Mycroft says, by way of greeting. He holds up the single typed sheet delicately. "This is new."
"I got bored."
"Yes, I know." Mycroft brushes at the railing before leaning on it, an upright mirror to his brother's aching deliberate slouch. "You wrote as much on the wall before you left your previous accomodation."
"I'm not going back."
"I know."
A raised eyebrow. "Does that mean you'll stay out of my business?" Sherlock asks.
"No," Mycroft says, almost off-hand. "But I will cede you the point; you always were the wrong choice for a caged thing."
It almost makes Sherlock smile. Almost.
*
Mycroft wakes up only and hour or so after John does. His breathing is shallow and it seems to cause him pain to move, but his eyes are clear and his first words are careful thanks to Mrs Hudson, who is in the process of adjusting his pillow at the time. Her loud, joyful cries of Sherlock's name echo through 221B.
John doesn't let allow any talking until he's checked Mycroft thoroughly, asked all the routine questions. He appears fully aware of his surroundings, if somewhat tense at the sight of John. Sherlock hovers in the doorway, a buttoned-up stormcloud.
"There, then," John says, and sinks gratefully in to a chair. "This is where you tell us what is going on."
"Is it?" Mycroft says, almost vulnerable, before he steadies himself. "I must first ask how, exactly, you brought me here-"
"Moriarty." Sherlock says sharply. Oddly enough, Mycroft appears both confused and relieved.
"Your... I see. He explained? When he... brought me here?"
"No."
"Ah."
"Shall tell you?" Sherlock says flatly. Mycroft raises an eyebrow as if to indicate that's not so much a possibility as an inevitability.
"It isn't difficult. Those with the resources to get to you are limited. Those with the motive, less so. But this was because of the plane, wasn't it? I can only imagine the position your source was left in."
"It was complicated," Mycroft concedes. He's watching Sherlock warily.
"Don't patronise me." Sherlock is all ice and hard lines. "And the british government; they'd allow the perceived loss of hundreds of lives to keep this quiet. Moreover, apparently, they'd allow these people to get to you. To question you. I didn't know you had superiors, Mycroft. Much less that they thought so little of you."
"Everyone answers to someone." Mycroft's smile is thin. "But well done. And as difficult as I acknowledge it is to believe considering my current state, the situation is, in fact, under control." He turns his head slightly to face John, and it takes obvious effort. "I do not mean to be ungrateful, Doctor, but I must request that you permit me to transfer to a more equipped medica-"
"Don't lie to me!" Sherlock says loudly, furiously, and everyone freezes.
"Sherl-" Mrs Hudson berates, but is cut off.
"No good at their job, John said. Unless that wasn't their job at all. Unless this was something entirely different."
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"Stay out? Yes, yes, stay away Sherlock, keep out Sherlock," he repeats, high-pitched and mocking. "It's your people! Your own people! And you'd nod while I spin some nonsense about terrorist kidnapping and then hand yourself straight back to them rather than stay here and accept my help! Is there anything you wouldn't do to keep me at arms length?"
"Of course there isn't!" Mycroft yells back, voice breaking on the words. "You're-" He stops too late. He doesn't have to fill in the unspoken words. Nobody does.
you're my brother
John's eyes are on Sherlock's face and he sees the exact moment everything clicks in to place.
There's a shaky silence.
"Your very old friend." Sherlock says, eventually. "Not as forgiving as you thought."
"Don't be childish." Mycroft sounds tired. "Some things are sorted out in private. It would only upset her."
"Sorted out? And how, exactly, is it decided to remove Mycroft Holmes from the equation?"
Mycroft grows very calm. "I was responsible for a security breach of disastrous proportions, Sherlock."
Except you weren't, John thinks, then he thinks shit, oh shit, because Sherlock has closed up again, stone-faced.
"I don't understand," John says, because damn it, he's in the room too. "Your bosses? They just - they tried to kill you?"
Mycroft blinks slowly. "In my line of work, one can hardly simply be fired, Doctor Watson. As you can imagine, things are rather more complicated than that. It is decided, from time to time, that people need to be quickly and quietly removed."
John hesitates a moment, but Sherlock is still sitting in stony silence, so he decides to simply put it out there. "Then why aren't you dead?" He winces a little, though he had known it would sound blunt. "I mean. This- " he skims his finger along Mycroft's bandaged arm. "Isn't very quick or quiet, or, you know, efficient, and I thought..." He trails off. "Sorry."
Mycroft actually laughs, though John can tell from the way it hitches that it hurts to do so. "Not at all, dear Doctor. I am, I admit, thinking something similar. I can only conclude it wasn't a popularly endorsed decision, which is gratifying, and that when I was young I was rather clever." He's starting to look and sound a bit sleepy, and John can't help but smile back.
"I'm beginning to think that might run in the family. Still not sure how it relates, though."
"It pays," Mycroft says, "to know one's colleagues. Know which one will call the loudest for your head. It's even better to make sure that they truly and fervently loathe you." He's gazing somewhere between John and Sherlock, at nothing. "There are few things as... inefficient... as hatred. Perfectly sane men suddenly feel the need to draw things out, watch and revel in it."
"Caring is not an advantage," Sherlock says, and it sounds to John like a quotation, a learned line. Mycroft stiffens. The two brothers are looking at each other, some sort of silent conversation happening right in front of John's face and he has no idea what it means. "You wouldn't make that mistake."
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Sherlock's lips part a little, involuntarily, before he presses them together and swallows back whatever it is he was going to say. And that, if nothing else, is enough proof to John that he's not the only one to find it hilariously, tragically ironic that Mycroft can lie there and apologise.
"Go to sleep," Sherlock says, and John realises that at some point, his hand came to rest on his brother's. "When you wake up, we can make plans."
Mycroft's lip twitches. "Can we indeed." There's an almost cautious lilt on the 'we'.
"Shut up," Sherlock says, and squeezes his hand. "Just shut up." John's fairly sure that as far as the Holmes' brothers are concerned, he really isn't in the room. And, right now, he's more than fine with that.
*
Sherlock is thirty three and Mycroft is forty one, and neither know with certainty how old Irene Adler is, but that's beside the point. The point is that Mycroft has failed, Mycroft has lost, Mycroft has been beaten because Sherlock has been beaten and while everyone answers to someone, Mycroft answers for someone too. He answers for Sherlock; he always will, so long as it is in his power, and power is what he's most fluent in.
Someone hits him hard across the face. Again. It's not the punches so much as the recoil against the cement of the wall that's causing his vision to blur. His left arm is numb; he tries to move his fingers and can't.
A hand tightens around his collar, tilting his head up. He knows the sleeve, knows the voice. More than one coffee shared over papers weighed with a nation's secrets. Old school tie, the expected camaraderie.
"I have total discretion in this, Holmes. I can make it easy. Civilised. I know, I just want to hear you say it."
There's a lot between the lines in that, Mycroft thinks blearily. Any other time, I'd have a field day. Resentment, to start, insecurity. Reassertion of dominance. Regression to a childhood sens-
The largest of the five or so masked men surrounding them pulls him fully to his feet, makes his head swim.
"Just say it," the voice echoes. "Tell me how everything went so wrong. Where was your leak, Holmes?"
"Oh no," Mycroft manages, and thinks what would Sherlock say. "It's more fun if you guess." It earns him something sharp in his stomach and he sinks to the ground.
"Holmes." The voice is disappointed. "We could have done this politely. "
Everything, mercifully, fades to black.
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Thank you so much! Especially for saying that it's in character, that means a lot! ♥ Especially with two such tricky boys as the Holmes brothers.
More coming! Hopefully really soon, sorry, work is getting in the way
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Thanks so much! This is definitely all my Mycrift mind-canon let run riot... ♥
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Thank you so much! <3
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On one hand - it's good to see Sherlock care so much (even if it was really sad to see him so lost whilst John was treating Mycroft). Again, I'm glad he is taking this so seriously rather than just brushing it off.
And Mycroft ;_;
He's so hurt and just a little bit vulnerable and... I really hope he and Sherlock make the bastards behind all of this pay (or at the very least, make them stop.)
And what's Jim playing at anyway? I don't know, but I trust him just about as far as I can throw him >:(
Anyway - as you may have gathered, still loving this and my sincerest apologies for taking so long to review (Damn RL)
I wasn't waiting for a bus this time but if I were, I dare say I would have missed it, so congratulations on a brilliant update and I can't wait for more :D
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thank you so much for this comment! And so sorry it's been so long ;_; I've been been staying somewhere & not able to get on lj for a while
Sherlock is indeed wanting to make some bastards pay, if only Mycroft'll let him... I'm glad you like vulnerable!Mycroft. Gatiss always seems slightly vulnerable, to me, when he's trying to communicate with Sherlock
anyway, more up, and the last part coming v.v.soon
thank you again! <3
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Thank you so much! I'm glad you like the Holmes dynamic, I'm such a sucker for these two :D
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Thank you so much, and so so sorry to keep you waiting. It's all finished up, and I'm editing and posting asap now that I can :D
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