When the Wolf Comes, or, How Mycroft Learned Anthea's True Name

[igrab]

Mycroft/Anthea • 4047 words • ao3 • sequel to How to Love a Goldfish

Sherlock was wrong. Magnussen did not, in fact, have any leverage on Mycroft aside from his brother, and direct threats were never that odious man's style. Mycroft did not have a public face to defame, and all those who respected and relied upon his work knew perfectly well that his brother had a drug habit and a questionable taste for crime solving. Mycroft did not fear him, and he did not cause the kind of damage that would need his expertise. Magnussen was a blackmailer, at his core. He traded in information and power and money, depending on the person, and occasionally his business kept the world running. Men like him were, regrettably, necessary.

So it had never come up before. Mycroft took great pains to keep himself out of Magnussen's business to ensure the continued safety of his brother, and before that word was spoken in 221B Baker Street, there had never been a conflict of interest.

There was a conflict now.

He took his car to a busy street corner; took a taxi 'round the block and bought his way into a nightclub by the side door. He exited through the back, down a service elevator, and climbed three flights of stairs before picking a lock into a disused storefront on the other side of the street. Avoiding where the dust had settled, he made his way to a door behind a painting frame, cleverly concealed. He picked the lock.

Anthea didn't even look up as he came up into her flat out of a storage closet.

"He's going to get himself killed," Mycroft snarled, and she held out a glass of wine - white, as it turned out. She knew him very well indeed.

"I find it odd that he chose such a... public sort of place, don't you? Unless he knew John would end up there eventually," she said, because of course she knew everything. Of course.

"It is my belief that he's undertaking such an adventure in an effort to bait Charles Augustus Magnussen." He was certain she knew the name, of course. She had undoubtedly brokered meetings between the two of them before. He did not expect, then, for her thumbs to pause on her keyboard and her face to turn up to his with the most curious expression - he would have said horror, if he thought her at all capable of it.

"Magnussen? The blackmailer?"

He detested repeating himself and she knew it. She seemed distressed, however, and he had loved her for long enough to understand when to let things slide. "Indeed."

Anthea swallowed and placed her phone aside.

"Dear god, Anthea," Mycroft muttered, and she cut him off with a sharp look.

"If he's on Magnussen's radar, it must be something to do with John, and if it's to do with John, it's to do with Mary." She actually looked scared. She, Elizabeth Anthea Jones, the unlikely love of Mycroft's life and indisbutably the smartest woman in the world, looked scared.

"What's wrong," Mycroft said quietly, taking a seat beside her and studying her face.

She bit her lip, a mannerism he'd never seen on her, not once. "I've done this," she whispered. "It's my fault. I've - Mycroft, you're in terrible danger."

Of course he was. He was always in terrible danger, not a day went by that he did not consider himself in mortal peril. "What do you mean, it's your fault?"

Anthea stood and held herself away from him. She looked, very suddenly, quite small and fragile, with her arms wrapped around her waist and wearing nothing but lingerie and a bathrobe. She didn't look powerful and sensual, she just looked lost, stripped, and bare.

If Mycroft had ever deluded himself into thinking he did not feel love, this moment would have shattered that idea to pieces.

"Anthea, please tell me what's wrong," he said, voice low and quavering as he stood. "I will do everything in my not inconsiderable power to make it right. I cannot bear to - please tell me."

One shoulder was raised, like she was trying to hide her face, but he could see her blue eyes over it, swirling with far too many emotions to name. "Have I ever told you my name?" she whispered.

"Elizabeth Jones," he said, immediately. "Your parents were Charles and Lena, and you never speak of them, so I never asked. Is it - "

"You're wrong," she whispered, cutting him off. "That's the name it says in my file. My name," and she straightened up just a bit, then, some of her fire returning, "is Elizabeth Magnussen. Charles Augustus is my father."

•
Mycroft had to sit down, and take a long drink of his wine. It didn't help.

"You're saying you - " but he stopped, because how could he put it into words? He did not blame her for lying about it, of course not. Nor could he really find fault with the way she just pretended he was nothing to her - a man such as Magnussen, her father. He could not imagine it.

She came to him, kneeled before him and pushed his knees apart until she was curled up between them. He cradled her head, understanding on some level that she needed this, needed to feel that even with this knowledge, he still cared just as much.

"I understand why you feel some responsibility for his actions," he began, choosing his words carefully, "but you cannot believe that - "

She cut him off once again. "No," and her hands were curled tight in the fabric of his slightly-too-large suit jacket. "I don't assume blame for atrocities my father commits. He is his own man. But I have directly," and her fist smacked against his side, "set these events in motion. Me. My actions. When your world falls apart there will only be one instigator, and you are looking at her."

Technically, he was holding her, and his eyes were closed. So this is what love is like, he thought. Wanting to disregard the facts, to cling to the fantasy that the one you love can do no wrong. Refusing to assign blame, and he knew himself, knew with a depressing certainty that even when he knew the details, he would be unable to hold it against her. Feeling no anger, only a great and terrible sorrow.

"Tell me," he said.

•
Elizabeth is sixteen years old and she's been kidnapped, again.

"He won't care," she tells her captors, in acidic tones. "He never cares. Do you think you're the first to try and get to him through me? Just accept that he isn't coming, that he doesn't have a weak point, and pay up." She normally wouldn't be so rude, but these particular kidnappers are rather stubborn and she's bored. "If you don't have the money, you can use me to get it. I've been told a give a good blowjob, someone might be interested."

They torture her, they violate her. She takes it all with such good grace that they're a little frightened - it's difficult to hurt someone who simply won't let herself be hurt. Injured, yes. Used, yes. But if it doesn't affect her then what good is it? But she puts on a show for the cameras, because maybe if they understand, they'll give up this stupid farce.

Her father watches her cry and does nothing. He hears her scream and sighs, bored. If anything, he's annoyed that she let herself be captured again, because if it were up to him, she would just never leave the house and never tax his patience when he could be doing more important things. But she is sixteen, and she wants to live, not just be alive.

In the end she gets herself out, with a combination of sharp words and sharper deductions. She is sixteen, but a room of mob bosses doesn't intimidate her. She calls her father, only to find out that he'd gone public with their secrets hours ago. If she hadn't gotten out, they would have killed her.

It isn't the first time her father has gambled carelessly with her life. It isn't that he takes a calculated risk, that he knows she'll be safe - she had a mother, once. She doesn't anymore. Either her father truly does not care for her life, or his work is more important. And, really, does it matter which it is? She has always known that if she's ever going to survive in this world, she's going to have to take care of herself.

As a birthday present that year, her father gives her a change of name and wipes all record of her former existence from the world. He can do things like that, and from any other parent, it would be a strange present. But she thinks then, that maybe he does care, on some tiny and inconsequential level. He is giving her freedom from the tedium of constantly being used as leverage. He is giving her the life she always wanted.

She finds out later that he had set up the last kidnapping attempt. That the whole thing was orchestrated, to send a message to all those listening - Charles Augustus Magnussen would let his only daughter die before caving. There is nothing in the world that can hurt him.

She accepts her death with good grace. It makes more sense, knowing her father had an ulterior motive. It fits. She is grateful for the chance to put it behind her, and move on.

•
"I'd understand if you want to fire me when I tell you all of it," she began, and Mycroft made a noise that was certainly not human.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, "I could no more fire you than I could live without kidneys. Just tell me," and the simile was imprecise, but something had steered him away from saying heart.

The kettle made that hissing sound that meant it was about to whistle and she took it off, quickly, making a pot of tea with infinite grace. Mycroft had always assumed she was British, for she had never given him any reason to suggest otherwise, but everything was different now. Magnussen. He was Swedish, which made her at least half, but she was so dark that he wondered if her mother was a person of color of some sort. She had the true Brit's tea instinct, but he wondered if that was learned. He wondered a lot of things, now. He wondered if he would ever stop finding her fascinating.

"You're aware that I was the one to pick out Mary Morstan," she began, as she went through the familiar motions of preparing tea.

"Of course."

"I knew that wasn't her real name, I'm not stupid." She was the furthest thing from it, and he would take great pains to reassure her of this, from now on. "In fact, it was part of what caught my attention. John needed someone to look out for him; she would have to be exceptional."

"You don't need to explain yourself to me, my dear," Mycroft murmured.

"Yes, I do!" she insisted, pressing her palm to the counter in a sudden fit of frustration. "I chose Mary because I knew she had a history, and when I couldn't find it on my own, do you know what I did, Mycroft? When I," and she jabbed her thumb at her chest, "couldn't find something, that was how classified it was? I went to man who knows everything."

Understanding finally dawned. "You turned to your father."

Anthea pressed her lips together and curled her hands around the scalding mug of hot tea. "On occasion, he has been known to give me answers at no cost, if it does not affect his work. He gave me, and I believed - he vouched for her. Told me she had been a CIA operative and had been compromised. Do you understand now?" Her lip was trembling when she looked up, met Mycroft's eyes. "He gave me the assurance I needed to introduce her into John's life, and thus Sherlock's, and thus yours."

Mycroft had been almost completely certain, before today, that Magnussen knew nothing of his involvement with Anthea. To the world she was a secretary, and he, a confirmed and avowed bachelor. Surely if he smelled a scandal there, he would have attempted to use it to gain leverage. But now, he wasn't so sure. So many things were different, with this one piece of crucial information.

"You could not have known," he said instead, slowly and carefully. "My dear - Anthea. You had no reason to suspect him, and you did what you thought was best."

"And my best wasn't good enough," she whispered. "I should never have trusted him. I should never have thought - he could have been planning this for years, just waiting, knowing my weakness and waiting and waiting for the right moment to use it. That's what he does." Her voice was so small, so shaky, and Mycroft felt his heart go out to her. He had never loved like a storybook, never gone in for romance or any of the messy, complicated things that most people assumed love meant. But he did love her. And it was painful, seeing her hurt like this, seeing her beautiful confidence crushed to nothing and her soul aching at the roots.

"We will fix this," he swore, low and soft. "If you and I and Sherlock cannot fix this, it's not worth fixing and I will go down gladly. You are not alone, my dear."

"I wish I was," she said, as she let him turn her into his chest and cry into his shirt. "I wish I could be like him, Mycroft. I wish nothing could hurt me."

If it were anyone else, they would have said, No you don't. But Mycroft understood. He had wished the same, fervently, every time he'd had to look at his brother's arm and see new scars. Sherlock understood, it was why he'd gone away, left John, left everything he'd ever loved to chase Moriarty's network. He could have told him that it would be a fruitless effort. You cannot help caring, sometimes, and you cannot run away from it. He had learned this.

"No man is untouchable," he muttered. "Magnussen himself is proof of that. We will fix this."

•
It was a month into Sherlock's recovery - he was still mostly bedridden, though according to sources he had popped out now and again for food, fresh air, or just to get a little of his own back. He was still heavily dependent on morphine, but John had sworn to help him through withdrawal, once he was healthy enough to weather it. Mycroft was a late riser on the best of days, but stress made him eat and food made him exercise and exercise exhausted him, so surely, Sherlock would have known that noon was an excellent time to text.

Baker St. Please come alone, must discuss CAM. --SH

Anthea rolled her eyes and deleted the text.

She had never been inside, though she knew it as intimately as surveillance cameras could. They did not communicate the feel of the place, the smells and sounds, the creak of the stairs and the inconsistent warmth that suggested a broken radiator somewhere (she made a note to look into getting someone to fix it, at some point). She was in jeans and trainers, because she didn't have much cause to wear them these days and she took the opportunity to be comfortable when she could. A quick glance around the room confirmed that John was out, Mrs. Hudson had been in recently but wouldn't be back up for a while, and Sherlock had enough of a vantage point to see when cars pulled up to the street. They could dispense with the pleasantries.

"I take it you have a plan, and it's not one that Mycroft's going to approve of," she started in with, taking a seat on the client chair because she knew better than to touch John's.

"I need to determine the extent of the physical evidence he maintains," Sherlock muttered, staring out the window. "I have already determined that most of his network is maintained mentally, but he must have something, some proof somewhere, or his bluff would be too easily called. As far as I can tell, the only way to get a concession from him is to offer something of value in return."

Anthea wanted to tell him. She could have, sitting right here, she could have told him all about how one heinous act of sacrifice had led to another, that there were no files, no papers. But she found that, despite everything, she couldn't. She could not betray her father so plainly, even after everything he'd done.

"Let me guess. You plan to offer up Mycroft."

"I plan to offer up a scandal he can't resist," he corrected her, and her estimation of Sherlock's intellect rose another few notches. Mycroft had the raw brainpower, but Sherlock was capable of a far greater breadth of thought. He was devious, which in this case was sorely needed. "He clearly wants to have my brother at a disadvantage, rather than simply know what he knows. I plan to give him the means to crush me, which in turn will give him leverage with Mycroft."

"The unfortunate part of the plan being that he then has leverage with Mycroft."

"Precisely." Sherlock shifted on the couch and only a slight wince passed over his features, before they smoothed out to blank intensity. "If I can find his stash I may be able to lead the government back to it."

"And if you can't?" If there is no stash? She did not like any part of where this conversation was going. Why did she have to care, still? Why could she not have found it in her to facilitate his death, right when she understood that he could get to her? She knew she was the only one who could.

But Sherlock surprised her yet again. "I don't know," he said quietly. "I will be frank with you. I have never been so scared in all my life."

They sat there together, and it began to rain. Anthea thought of all that she'd accomplished in her life, all that had brought her to this point. Much of it was in spite of Charles Augustus Magnussen, but some of it, she had to admit, was because of him. She had no doubts that growing up with such a man had shaped her into the woman she was today - polite, professional, unseen, and infinitely powerful.

"I will install a GPS tracker in Mycroft's laptop," she said, breaking into the silence. "I don't doubt you'll find a way to obtain it, and when he realizes it's missing, he will be sure to go after it. If, as you say, there is a vault to be found, you will find it. Quiet criminals secretly relish the chance to show off their handiwork. I'm sure you know that as well as I do."

"Indubitably," Sherlock muttered.

Anthea turned her hand over in her lap and rubbed the gold of her wedding ring on the third finger of her right hand, the ring that said that she was married, but had never actually done it. Part of her - the part that had hoped, even against all odds, that her father cared for her - had wanted to see the look on his face as she married the most powerful man in the world. I have done more with love than you ever did with fear, she would have told him, and in this fantasy - it was surely a fantasy, for Charles Magnussen wouldn't care that his daughter was getting married - his very latent, very impossible love for her protected them. Mycroft would be safe, because she loved him.

"But if all else fails," she whispered, "you need to kill him."

Sherlock's eyebrows shot up. "I'm sorry?"

"Kill him." She was perfectly, entirely serious. "Shoot him in the head, right between the eyes. Don't let John do it - don't you dare let him go to jail, not when Mary has a baby on the way. You kill him, and then you let Mycroft and I pull strings to keep you safe."

Sherlock was staring at her. She didn't care; she had made this mess, her pride had been her downfall and now, it would be her father's. "He is a vile, evil monster, Sherlock. I have not spent all these years keeping your brother functional to let that man break him. He will knock you all down like dominoes if he can, and - "

She didn't dare go on. It was bad enough that Mycroft knew, bad enough that her relation to that man ever had to become relevant again, but if Sherlock figured it out she knew he would never look at her the same. Mycroft did not have Sherlock's moral sensitivity. He didn't see what Magnussen did as disgusting.

"Please," was all she left him with. "I have great faith in you, Sherlock. Please."

Please kill him, because I am not strong enough to help you.

•
She heard him before she saw him, coming into his rooms in Pall Mall. He was angry. She understood.

He didn't turn the light on in the living room, just let his eyes adjust to the dark, and when he saw her curled tightly in the corner of the sofa, his steps softened, he slid out of his suit jacket and tossed it aside but lightly, carefully. He sat down next to her and watched her face in the dark.

"He's dead," he said, quiet and a bit hollow.

"Yes, I know," she murmured. She hadn't needed to check in with Mycroft's guard, though she had. She had known how it all would go down, months ago. She had planned for this.

She had not been able to plan for how it felt.

"I'm sorry," Mycroft said, which was ridiculous. She made a noise that sounded like a jagged gasp and belatedly realized she was crying, her face ugly and raw, breath uneven. "My dear, I am sorry, but I cannot say that I'm not glad it's over."

"I-I am too," she gasped, her hand pressed to her mouth to try and stop herself from breaking. "Glad. I'm glad. Oh, god, Mycroft, you don't know what's like," and she would love him forever, this man of hers - a man so allergic to expressing himself that she'd actually had to schedule herself into his heart, who was now wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her into his lap. "I was the only one who could." Her words were stilted and awkward, tucked between sobs, and only Mycroft's bony arms kept her together. "I was the only one - I was more afraid of him than anyone. I was so afraid, but I'm free now. I'm free."

The laugh rose up into her throat and spilled out in fits and starts, sharp with a hysterical edge.

"I am free of him," she hissed. "I don't have to make excuse to myself any longer. I don't have to care what he thinks of me. I don't have to wonder if he ever loved me, for a moment, I don't have to be afraid that I'll lose him and it'll hurt - it does hurt, but I am free."

She couldn't stop, any of it, the crying or the words that poured out like poison draining from a wound.

"Free, free, free."

Mycroft held her until the sun came up, and she loved him more than words could say.

•
Four minutes was a good length of time, she thought. Four minutes before she deftly hacked into every broadcast in London, running the video she'd been saving for this very moment.

She had a promise to keep, you see. She had promised Sherlock that she would see to it that he was kept safe, and the mission for MI6 was not safe. There wasn't much that could bring Sherlock home, but she was Anthea Jones, daughter of Charles Augustus Magnussen and unofficial wife of Mycroft Holmes. She could make anything happen.