Of Brothers and Side-kicks
From: chibifukurou
To: roh_wyn
Title: Of Brothers and Side-kicks
Beta: apple_pathways
Wordcount: 3,000
Rating: PG13
Pairing/s: Sherlock/John (pre-slash)
Warnings: Character Death (Kind-of)
Summary: When Mycroft first heard that his brother had gotten himself a new sidekick, he'd been skeptical
When Mycroft first heard that his brother had gotten himself a new side-kick, he'd been skeptical. He knew his brother better than virtually anyone and he knew that his brother was anti-social to the extreme. Finding a man that would be loyal to him beyond reason within two days seemed more likely to happen in a fairy tale than his brother's life.
So he'd decided to take matters into his own hands and approach John Watson with an offer: give him information about Sherlock in return for money. If he took the deal then he would quietly disappear into some dank dungeon or end up floating in the Thames--a suicide note sent to the police since his brother would never believe that John Watson will capable of committing suicide. Not even with his obvious case of PTSD.
Mycroft watched on the CCTV as John Watson strode down the sidewalk after being abandoned by Mycroft's precocious brother. If there was any time for John Watson to be in the mood to betray Sherlock, this would be it.
He motioned for one of his operatives to start the phones ringing. He saw John Watson jump and eye the phone next to him with trepidation, his soldier's instincts telling him it wasn't a coincidence. He also saw the moment logic kicked in and John decided he was being stupid. It was just a phone after all.
The second phone got a suspicious look and a tense grip around his cane, but he still didn't answer it. Logic was still ruling his decisions. John Watson trekked on, looking neither left nor right and particularly not at the red pay phone box that stood feet in front of him; or so he tried to pretend. Mycroft could see the inevitability of his catching John Watson in every furtive glance he sent at the phone box.
When the phone rang, John stopped and stared at it for a few seconds, probably trying to convince himself that this was just coincidence. But John wasn't stupid enough to truly believe that. With hesitant steps he approached the phone box and picked up the line.
His hesitant 'Hello' echoed through Mycroft's Bluetooth.
“Hello, Mr. Watson,” he replied a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
***
Sherlock's cases were inherently dangerous. That was one of the reasons Mycroft worried about him so much. If he could have he would have made Sherlock give up his foolish pastime, but he unfortunately didn't have that much control over his brother.
Sherlock didn't take to being protected well. He chafed under the constrictions of common sense and society. So Mycroft had taken to giving him the feeling that he was controlling his destiny even when he wasn't. Lestrade was a good man and he truly cared for Sherlock so it was of no consequence for him to give information to Mycroft about his brother--and to give his brother cases Mycroft had picked for him. Lestrade got to look good to his supervisors and Sherlock got to think he was doing things on his own. Everybody won.
It was the same with his brother's decision to keep John Watson at his side. There were a lot of things that John Watson got involved in that should have killed him or gotten him fired. Mycroft stepped in on a few occasions to keep that from happening. Nothing obvious or that Sherlock could track, but if a sniper happened to be on the roof above John Watson's head when he shot the taxi cab serial killer or if Moriarty's men happened to be waylaid on more than one occasion when they tried to capture the Doctor, well that was all coincidence and happenstance. At least it was as long as Sherlock didn't catch on.
What surprised Mycroft most about the whole debacle was the fact that John Watson seemed to be in on it. He seemed to realize someone was backing him up, though he didn’t say anything to Sherlock. Even Mycroft wouldn't have realized he'd caught on, if he hadn't come to him to get a permit for his gun 'since you already know about it' as he'd said. The implications were perfectly clear.
The one thing Mycroft would never forgive himself for was the way that Moriarty figured out his protection. Two of his operatives were killed and John Watson was kidnapped. He had a bomb strapped to his chest and almost died in an explosion that took the roof off a community pool and left John Watson in a coma, and Mycroft's dear brother with a broken arm and leg.
***
By the time his people had figured things out the explosion had already happened. All they'd been able to do was dig through the rubble to rescue Sherlock and John.
For all his hatred of Mycroft's informants Sherlock still hadn't forgiven him for that. Why, of all the times for Mycroft to fall down on the job, had it been the time that mattered most? He knew that that was what Sherlock was thinking even if Sherlock would claim otherwise. He would never forget the broken look in Sherlock's eyes as he saw them pulling John out of the wreckage. Or the broken sound of his voice as he'd screamed for John to stop being stupid and answer him.
That had been two weeks ago and Sherlock had long since left the hospital grumbling about boredom even as he cast worried looks at John's sleeping form. But his brother couldn't stay still, couldn't stay at John's side as he slept. It just wasn't Sherlock. He had to keep moving, keep thinking.
So Mycroft had taken over the vigil for him. He sat by John's bed for a few hours each day and told him tales about what Sherlock had done that day, be it case, experiment, or unfortunate run-in with the chip and pin machine. He told John everything. Because for all he had started out as a threat to his brother John had become family. Sherlock might not be able to admit to it yet. But Mycroft was the older brother--it was his job to know these things.
***
A month after the explosion at the pool John woke up. It wasn't in one of the hours that Mycroft was sitting with him but Anthea was sitting outside his door as Mycroft had ordered and she was quick to call him when the Doctor woke up. Mycroft left his meeting with the leader of M15 without regret so that he could take his town car to pick up Sherlock.
His brother grumbled at the intrusion up until he reasoned out why Mycroft would come for an unexpected visit. The glimpse of joy Mycroft saw before Sherlock recovered his sociopathic mask was enough to warm his heart. It reminded him of when Sherlock was young and not so reserved. When he'd joyously explored the Holmes summer estate with his golden retriever puppy.
That had changed as Sherlock had grown and gained his obsession with murder and crime but Mycroft still looked back on that time with happy nostalgia.
Sherlock’s face only became more joyous when they arrived at the hospital and found John sitting up in bed, albeit leaning on a pile of pillows. Sherlock straightened his features once he saw John looking but the joy still shone from his eyes. The part-exasperated, part-amused look John gave him as he started complaining about the trouble John had put him through told Mycroft that John had been able to see through his brother’s indifferent mask as easily as Mycroft had and that made him glad. John wasn’t what he would have picked for his brother, but it worked.
With a lazy twirl of his umbrella he waltzed into the room and sat down in the chair across from Sherlock. He ignored his brother’s annoyed glare and smirked at John before saying. “You’ll never believe what my dear brother did with his skull while you weren’t there to keep an eye on him.”
Sherlock’s enraged glare and John’s gales of laughter made the month of worrying about John’s health and his brother going off the rails worth it. Though he still planned to tell John about Sherlock putting his pet skull into John’s bed to watch over the place.
***
By the end of the next month Sherlock was back to solving dangerous cases, with John there to push around his wheelchair. Which he kept insisting he didn’t need. Mycroft was growing increasingly grateful for John Watson’s stubborn streak as he’d refused to go on a single case until Sherlock had agreed to use his wheelchair.
Sherlock was crazy enough to go hobbling around with a broken arm, a broken leg, and a cane, but he wasn’t stupid enough to go on a case without John: not when Moriarty was still on the loose.
Mycroft and Sherlock had never discussed it but they both knew that the battle between Moriarty and Sherlock was far from over and that John was still the weak point in Sherlock’s armor. Moriarty would go for him first and Sherlock didn’t trust Mycroft’s agents to keep him safe.
It was understandable, given the fact that Moriarty had managed to kill his agents and make off with John Watson once before. Mycroft had doubled up on the agents following John, but even he had to admit to being nervous. His agents would have a hard time stopping Sherlock and Moriarty by extension.
***
When Moriarty struck again it ended up an even worse disaster than the first. Sherlock was assumed dead and even Mycroft’s spies could find no proof to the contrary. He still refused to believe it though. His brother was far too tough to be taken out by a villain, or so he assured himself when he woke up from nightmares of Sherlock falling and dying.
He was so wrapped up in his search for Sherlock that he forgot John for a time. That was something he was going to regret for the rest of his life. When he went to two-twenty-one B Baker Street to tell John that the investigation into Sherlock’s death was over, he found just a shadow of the vital man John Watson used to be.
He was pale and gaunt with large sleep bruises turning him into a hollow-eyed zombie. It broke Mycroft's heart to look at him but he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge or the consequences of his actions.
“You look awful Mr. Watson,” he said while looking around the apartment with an expression of absentminded curiosity. If he hadn’t just spent the last month and a half searching for his brother, he would have thought that he was still alive with the way two-twenty-one B looked. Sherlock’s experiments were still in their place on the kitchen table and around the living room. It didn’t look like John had changed anything. Except for the reappearance of John’s cane and the absence of Sherlock’s pet skull. Mycroft wondered if the skull had taken up residence in Sherlock’s bed to watch over his things. He could still remember how amusing John had found the idea when Sherlock had made it guard skull of his room, and John seemed the type to enjoy the symmetry.
“Please tell me you’ve found him, found something!” John begged, his voice rough from disuse and the hint of tears.
“I’m sorry John, but there is nothing to find. I don’t believe he’s gone either, but I can no longer keep the investigation open. Not officially.”
“So that’s it, you're just going to give up on him then?” The question would have been sharp if John hadn’t sounded so tired.
“Of course not! I am simply saying that wherever he is, we cannot count on him to come back anytime soon, and I cannot afford to keep looking; not as long as I do not know the situation. I’m as likely to bring Moriarty down on his head as I am to rescue him now.”
“Moriarty is still out there?” John’s breath caught--a fear he probably didn’t want to admit.
Mycroft wished he had better news. “Perhaps he is, or perhaps Sherlock was able to take him out but somebody is still running his organization.”
“And you don’t think Sherlock will come back until Moriarty’s organization is gone?”
“Do you?”
John clenched his jaw, the only sign of stubbornness left in his tired form. “No.”
Mycroft nodded sharply, more affirmation than agreement. Sherlock wouldn’t be back until the case was done, even if that meant never coming back to John. Mycroft just hoped that John could survive the loss.
***
Mycroft makes it a habit to visit John at least once a week after that. It’s two months and ten visits before he starts to see changes in two-twenty-one B. Sherlock’s experiments slowly start to disappear. It becomes a guessing game to predict which experiment John will get rid of next. At first it’s easy since dead body parts start to smell after a while; after that it gets harder. One week the Sherlock's chemical distillery is gone from the kitchen table. The next the gunshot holes in the wall have been patched. The week after that the living room reeks of new paint and every wall is covered in bright yellow.
The week after that nothing seems to have changed, but he sees papers in the bin and suspects that John has started to clean out Sherlock’s room. Three days after that visit he gets a panicked call from Mrs. Hudson. He can hear crashing in the background. By the time he gets to Baker street everything is quiet and John is on his hands and knees wielding a dust pan and broom. Bits and pieces of his brother’s experiments litter the area. Sherlock’s skull sits in a place of honor on the table next to the sofa. Mycroft doesn’t bother giving him platitudes. He just helps him clean.
He never mentions the ad for a flat-mate that shows up in the newspaper the following week. He just makes sure that one of the young operatives that’s good at undercover takes the flat. Her name is Mary and she’s a charming girl; he’s sure John will fall easily to her charms. After that he gets reports back daily about how much John eats, how much he doesn’t sleep, and how he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.
Mycroft sends money for the shops and makes sure that Mary develops a habit of cooking meals that are big enough for John and Mrs. Hudson to eat as well. Between Mary and Mrs. Hudson they manage to get meat back on John’s bones and he stops looking like a corpse.
John gets a job at a local surgery six months after Sherlock’s disappearance; Mycroft still can’t bring himself to call it death. John is never late for work, never called up for delinquency. Most of his patients like him and those that don’t aren’t a threat. John Watson’s life runs like clockwork and if Mycroft didn’t watch him on the CCTV, didn’t see him slump and lean heavily on his cane, he could almost convince himself that John was living his life again.
But Mycroft is willing to take what he can get. He still feels the loss of Sherlock acutely; he can’t imagine what John must feel. Sherlock was his world; Mycroft at least has a country to run.
***
It’s a little over two years since Sherlock left, and Mycroft is starting to see Moriarty's organization implode. There’s no proof that Sherlock is behind it but Mycroft can’t help but hope that he is: that his brother is still alive, somewhere.
Two days after Moriarty’s empire falls, John disappears. Mary calls, panicked, because John never showed up after work. He’s never disappeared without calling Mrs. Hudson: he knows how she worries.
Mycroft calls a code red and puts as many operatives as he can on the streets. He goes through the CCTV himself, but whoever took John was prepared for that. John is only a few blocks away two-twenty-one B one second and gone the next, thanks to a tiny blind spot that nobody should know about. Panic digs its claws into his chest. He can’t lose John, he’s all Mycroft has left of Sherlock.
He does the leg work himself, for the first time in years. He can hear the newer operatives whispering about his odd behavior, but Mary and Anthea understand and that’s all he cares about.
There is no sign of a fight so he goes off the assumption that John went willingly or at least semi-willingly. He doesn’t want to think about why he doubts somebody threatened John because John wouldn’t have reacted to the threat. He’d have just let his kidnapper kill him.
Mycroft follows clues his operatives miss through back alleys and skips and a house just across the street from two-twenty-one B. It’s abandoned: broken windows and crumbling brick, but logic and the faint trail of clues say John is here. There are scuffed footprints left in the dust covering the houses first-floor and steps. A bit of fuzz from the thick oatmeal jumper John had been wearing, is caught on a loose wall that the sun bleached wallpaper say use to hold a picture. John is here. Now Mycroft can only hope that he’s alive.
***
Mycroft’s brain can’t process what he sees when he breaks through the door and into the bedroom across the street from Sherlock's living room, gun drawn. John is there but so is somebody else. It looks like an old, stooped over hobo, but that doesn’t make sense. John wouldn’t be kissing a hobo. The hobo pulls away from John to glare at Mycroft, he straightens up as he does and there is suddenly something familiar about him, the he catches sight of the hobo’s nose, large and curved just so, and he knows just who it is John’s kissing.
Even before he snaps. “Must you make a bother of yourself Mycroft?”
Mycroft relaxes his gun arm and leans against the warehouse door hoping it hides the fact that his legs are shaking. Sherlock’s smirk says he failed but he can’t bring himself to care, not when his brother is standing here blessedly alive, if a little worse for wear.
“So whatever happened to my skull?” Sherlock asks.
Mycroft can’t keep himself from chuckling, until he’s bowed over with the humor. He can hear John joining in, in the background. It is so good to have his brother back. Even if Sherlock still can’t say he missed them.
To: roh_wyn
Title: Of Brothers and Side-kicks
Beta: apple_pathways
Wordcount: 3,000
Rating: PG13
Pairing/s: Sherlock/John (pre-slash)
Warnings: Character Death (Kind-of)
Summary: When Mycroft first heard that his brother had gotten himself a new sidekick, he'd been skeptical
When Mycroft first heard that his brother had gotten himself a new side-kick, he'd been skeptical. He knew his brother better than virtually anyone and he knew that his brother was anti-social to the extreme. Finding a man that would be loyal to him beyond reason within two days seemed more likely to happen in a fairy tale than his brother's life.
So he'd decided to take matters into his own hands and approach John Watson with an offer: give him information about Sherlock in return for money. If he took the deal then he would quietly disappear into some dank dungeon or end up floating in the Thames--a suicide note sent to the police since his brother would never believe that John Watson will capable of committing suicide. Not even with his obvious case of PTSD.
Mycroft watched on the CCTV as John Watson strode down the sidewalk after being abandoned by Mycroft's precocious brother. If there was any time for John Watson to be in the mood to betray Sherlock, this would be it.
He motioned for one of his operatives to start the phones ringing. He saw John Watson jump and eye the phone next to him with trepidation, his soldier's instincts telling him it wasn't a coincidence. He also saw the moment logic kicked in and John decided he was being stupid. It was just a phone after all.
The second phone got a suspicious look and a tense grip around his cane, but he still didn't answer it. Logic was still ruling his decisions. John Watson trekked on, looking neither left nor right and particularly not at the red pay phone box that stood feet in front of him; or so he tried to pretend. Mycroft could see the inevitability of his catching John Watson in every furtive glance he sent at the phone box.
When the phone rang, John stopped and stared at it for a few seconds, probably trying to convince himself that this was just coincidence. But John wasn't stupid enough to truly believe that. With hesitant steps he approached the phone box and picked up the line.
His hesitant 'Hello' echoed through Mycroft's Bluetooth.
“Hello, Mr. Watson,” he replied a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
***
Sherlock's cases were inherently dangerous. That was one of the reasons Mycroft worried about him so much. If he could have he would have made Sherlock give up his foolish pastime, but he unfortunately didn't have that much control over his brother.
Sherlock didn't take to being protected well. He chafed under the constrictions of common sense and society. So Mycroft had taken to giving him the feeling that he was controlling his destiny even when he wasn't. Lestrade was a good man and he truly cared for Sherlock so it was of no consequence for him to give information to Mycroft about his brother--and to give his brother cases Mycroft had picked for him. Lestrade got to look good to his supervisors and Sherlock got to think he was doing things on his own. Everybody won.
It was the same with his brother's decision to keep John Watson at his side. There were a lot of things that John Watson got involved in that should have killed him or gotten him fired. Mycroft stepped in on a few occasions to keep that from happening. Nothing obvious or that Sherlock could track, but if a sniper happened to be on the roof above John Watson's head when he shot the taxi cab serial killer or if Moriarty's men happened to be waylaid on more than one occasion when they tried to capture the Doctor, well that was all coincidence and happenstance. At least it was as long as Sherlock didn't catch on.
What surprised Mycroft most about the whole debacle was the fact that John Watson seemed to be in on it. He seemed to realize someone was backing him up, though he didn’t say anything to Sherlock. Even Mycroft wouldn't have realized he'd caught on, if he hadn't come to him to get a permit for his gun 'since you already know about it' as he'd said. The implications were perfectly clear.
The one thing Mycroft would never forgive himself for was the way that Moriarty figured out his protection. Two of his operatives were killed and John Watson was kidnapped. He had a bomb strapped to his chest and almost died in an explosion that took the roof off a community pool and left John Watson in a coma, and Mycroft's dear brother with a broken arm and leg.
***
By the time his people had figured things out the explosion had already happened. All they'd been able to do was dig through the rubble to rescue Sherlock and John.
For all his hatred of Mycroft's informants Sherlock still hadn't forgiven him for that. Why, of all the times for Mycroft to fall down on the job, had it been the time that mattered most? He knew that that was what Sherlock was thinking even if Sherlock would claim otherwise. He would never forget the broken look in Sherlock's eyes as he saw them pulling John out of the wreckage. Or the broken sound of his voice as he'd screamed for John to stop being stupid and answer him.
That had been two weeks ago and Sherlock had long since left the hospital grumbling about boredom even as he cast worried looks at John's sleeping form. But his brother couldn't stay still, couldn't stay at John's side as he slept. It just wasn't Sherlock. He had to keep moving, keep thinking.
So Mycroft had taken over the vigil for him. He sat by John's bed for a few hours each day and told him tales about what Sherlock had done that day, be it case, experiment, or unfortunate run-in with the chip and pin machine. He told John everything. Because for all he had started out as a threat to his brother John had become family. Sherlock might not be able to admit to it yet. But Mycroft was the older brother--it was his job to know these things.
***
A month after the explosion at the pool John woke up. It wasn't in one of the hours that Mycroft was sitting with him but Anthea was sitting outside his door as Mycroft had ordered and she was quick to call him when the Doctor woke up. Mycroft left his meeting with the leader of M15 without regret so that he could take his town car to pick up Sherlock.
His brother grumbled at the intrusion up until he reasoned out why Mycroft would come for an unexpected visit. The glimpse of joy Mycroft saw before Sherlock recovered his sociopathic mask was enough to warm his heart. It reminded him of when Sherlock was young and not so reserved. When he'd joyously explored the Holmes summer estate with his golden retriever puppy.
That had changed as Sherlock had grown and gained his obsession with murder and crime but Mycroft still looked back on that time with happy nostalgia.
Sherlock’s face only became more joyous when they arrived at the hospital and found John sitting up in bed, albeit leaning on a pile of pillows. Sherlock straightened his features once he saw John looking but the joy still shone from his eyes. The part-exasperated, part-amused look John gave him as he started complaining about the trouble John had put him through told Mycroft that John had been able to see through his brother’s indifferent mask as easily as Mycroft had and that made him glad. John wasn’t what he would have picked for his brother, but it worked.
With a lazy twirl of his umbrella he waltzed into the room and sat down in the chair across from Sherlock. He ignored his brother’s annoyed glare and smirked at John before saying. “You’ll never believe what my dear brother did with his skull while you weren’t there to keep an eye on him.”
Sherlock’s enraged glare and John’s gales of laughter made the month of worrying about John’s health and his brother going off the rails worth it. Though he still planned to tell John about Sherlock putting his pet skull into John’s bed to watch over the place.
***
By the end of the next month Sherlock was back to solving dangerous cases, with John there to push around his wheelchair. Which he kept insisting he didn’t need. Mycroft was growing increasingly grateful for John Watson’s stubborn streak as he’d refused to go on a single case until Sherlock had agreed to use his wheelchair.
Sherlock was crazy enough to go hobbling around with a broken arm, a broken leg, and a cane, but he wasn’t stupid enough to go on a case without John: not when Moriarty was still on the loose.
Mycroft and Sherlock had never discussed it but they both knew that the battle between Moriarty and Sherlock was far from over and that John was still the weak point in Sherlock’s armor. Moriarty would go for him first and Sherlock didn’t trust Mycroft’s agents to keep him safe.
It was understandable, given the fact that Moriarty had managed to kill his agents and make off with John Watson once before. Mycroft had doubled up on the agents following John, but even he had to admit to being nervous. His agents would have a hard time stopping Sherlock and Moriarty by extension.
***
When Moriarty struck again it ended up an even worse disaster than the first. Sherlock was assumed dead and even Mycroft’s spies could find no proof to the contrary. He still refused to believe it though. His brother was far too tough to be taken out by a villain, or so he assured himself when he woke up from nightmares of Sherlock falling and dying.
He was so wrapped up in his search for Sherlock that he forgot John for a time. That was something he was going to regret for the rest of his life. When he went to two-twenty-one B Baker Street to tell John that the investigation into Sherlock’s death was over, he found just a shadow of the vital man John Watson used to be.
He was pale and gaunt with large sleep bruises turning him into a hollow-eyed zombie. It broke Mycroft's heart to look at him but he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge or the consequences of his actions.
“You look awful Mr. Watson,” he said while looking around the apartment with an expression of absentminded curiosity. If he hadn’t just spent the last month and a half searching for his brother, he would have thought that he was still alive with the way two-twenty-one B looked. Sherlock’s experiments were still in their place on the kitchen table and around the living room. It didn’t look like John had changed anything. Except for the reappearance of John’s cane and the absence of Sherlock’s pet skull. Mycroft wondered if the skull had taken up residence in Sherlock’s bed to watch over his things. He could still remember how amusing John had found the idea when Sherlock had made it guard skull of his room, and John seemed the type to enjoy the symmetry.
“Please tell me you’ve found him, found something!” John begged, his voice rough from disuse and the hint of tears.
“I’m sorry John, but there is nothing to find. I don’t believe he’s gone either, but I can no longer keep the investigation open. Not officially.”
“So that’s it, you're just going to give up on him then?” The question would have been sharp if John hadn’t sounded so tired.
“Of course not! I am simply saying that wherever he is, we cannot count on him to come back anytime soon, and I cannot afford to keep looking; not as long as I do not know the situation. I’m as likely to bring Moriarty down on his head as I am to rescue him now.”
“Moriarty is still out there?” John’s breath caught--a fear he probably didn’t want to admit.
Mycroft wished he had better news. “Perhaps he is, or perhaps Sherlock was able to take him out but somebody is still running his organization.”
“And you don’t think Sherlock will come back until Moriarty’s organization is gone?”
“Do you?”
John clenched his jaw, the only sign of stubbornness left in his tired form. “No.”
Mycroft nodded sharply, more affirmation than agreement. Sherlock wouldn’t be back until the case was done, even if that meant never coming back to John. Mycroft just hoped that John could survive the loss.
***
Mycroft makes it a habit to visit John at least once a week after that. It’s two months and ten visits before he starts to see changes in two-twenty-one B. Sherlock’s experiments slowly start to disappear. It becomes a guessing game to predict which experiment John will get rid of next. At first it’s easy since dead body parts start to smell after a while; after that it gets harder. One week the Sherlock's chemical distillery is gone from the kitchen table. The next the gunshot holes in the wall have been patched. The week after that the living room reeks of new paint and every wall is covered in bright yellow.
The week after that nothing seems to have changed, but he sees papers in the bin and suspects that John has started to clean out Sherlock’s room. Three days after that visit he gets a panicked call from Mrs. Hudson. He can hear crashing in the background. By the time he gets to Baker street everything is quiet and John is on his hands and knees wielding a dust pan and broom. Bits and pieces of his brother’s experiments litter the area. Sherlock’s skull sits in a place of honor on the table next to the sofa. Mycroft doesn’t bother giving him platitudes. He just helps him clean.
He never mentions the ad for a flat-mate that shows up in the newspaper the following week. He just makes sure that one of the young operatives that’s good at undercover takes the flat. Her name is Mary and she’s a charming girl; he’s sure John will fall easily to her charms. After that he gets reports back daily about how much John eats, how much he doesn’t sleep, and how he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.
Mycroft sends money for the shops and makes sure that Mary develops a habit of cooking meals that are big enough for John and Mrs. Hudson to eat as well. Between Mary and Mrs. Hudson they manage to get meat back on John’s bones and he stops looking like a corpse.
John gets a job at a local surgery six months after Sherlock’s disappearance; Mycroft still can’t bring himself to call it death. John is never late for work, never called up for delinquency. Most of his patients like him and those that don’t aren’t a threat. John Watson’s life runs like clockwork and if Mycroft didn’t watch him on the CCTV, didn’t see him slump and lean heavily on his cane, he could almost convince himself that John was living his life again.
But Mycroft is willing to take what he can get. He still feels the loss of Sherlock acutely; he can’t imagine what John must feel. Sherlock was his world; Mycroft at least has a country to run.
***
It’s a little over two years since Sherlock left, and Mycroft is starting to see Moriarty's organization implode. There’s no proof that Sherlock is behind it but Mycroft can’t help but hope that he is: that his brother is still alive, somewhere.
Two days after Moriarty’s empire falls, John disappears. Mary calls, panicked, because John never showed up after work. He’s never disappeared without calling Mrs. Hudson: he knows how she worries.
Mycroft calls a code red and puts as many operatives as he can on the streets. He goes through the CCTV himself, but whoever took John was prepared for that. John is only a few blocks away two-twenty-one B one second and gone the next, thanks to a tiny blind spot that nobody should know about. Panic digs its claws into his chest. He can’t lose John, he’s all Mycroft has left of Sherlock.
He does the leg work himself, for the first time in years. He can hear the newer operatives whispering about his odd behavior, but Mary and Anthea understand and that’s all he cares about.
There is no sign of a fight so he goes off the assumption that John went willingly or at least semi-willingly. He doesn’t want to think about why he doubts somebody threatened John because John wouldn’t have reacted to the threat. He’d have just let his kidnapper kill him.
Mycroft follows clues his operatives miss through back alleys and skips and a house just across the street from two-twenty-one B. It’s abandoned: broken windows and crumbling brick, but logic and the faint trail of clues say John is here. There are scuffed footprints left in the dust covering the houses first-floor and steps. A bit of fuzz from the thick oatmeal jumper John had been wearing, is caught on a loose wall that the sun bleached wallpaper say use to hold a picture. John is here. Now Mycroft can only hope that he’s alive.
***
Mycroft’s brain can’t process what he sees when he breaks through the door and into the bedroom across the street from Sherlock's living room, gun drawn. John is there but so is somebody else. It looks like an old, stooped over hobo, but that doesn’t make sense. John wouldn’t be kissing a hobo. The hobo pulls away from John to glare at Mycroft, he straightens up as he does and there is suddenly something familiar about him, the he catches sight of the hobo’s nose, large and curved just so, and he knows just who it is John’s kissing.
Even before he snaps. “Must you make a bother of yourself Mycroft?”
Mycroft relaxes his gun arm and leans against the warehouse door hoping it hides the fact that his legs are shaking. Sherlock’s smirk says he failed but he can’t bring himself to care, not when his brother is standing here blessedly alive, if a little worse for wear.
“So whatever happened to my skull?” Sherlock asks.
Mycroft can’t keep himself from chuckling, until he’s bowed over with the humor. He can hear John joining in, in the background. It is so good to have his brother back. Even if Sherlock still can’t say he missed them.