"Because he has possibly been hurt, because he does, possibly, have a heart" – Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock.

Mycroft Holmes was twenty-two years old, when an event occurred that would decimate the tentative relationship between him and his younger brother. The entire event was a complete, unmitigated disaster, entirely beyond control but enough to destroy the trust Sherlock had ever had in Mycroft.

They had never been that close. Mycroft had been too academic, Sherlock too rebellious, and the pair clashed about like so many electrons, Sherlock lividly railing at Mycroft while Mycroft flicked through a newspaper, the epitome of boredom. He deemed his younger brother inferior, somehow below his notice or interest. When Mycroft went to university, neither had been sorry; an overly intellectual eighteen year old, and his eleven year old brother, didn't mix well.

As it happened, Mycroft leaving was the best thing that could have happened for their relationship; they didn't have to see one another, and as Sherlock developed into an adolescent, Mycroft made an effort to keep in touch with his brother. Sherlock didn't noticeably give a damn, was flippant and sarcastic, often outright rude.

Yet even at 3AM, he always took Mycroft's calls.

Mycroft had woken up on a relatively innocuous morning. He dressed, ate a minimal breakfast as a nod towards his perpetual diet, organised his files to ensure he was prepared for his working day. He had finished university with a Cambridge first in English Literature, doing politics and debating as a side-note. He was exceptional, but quiet; he deliberately kept himself away from scandals and problems, calling his brother usually once or twice a week.

Now, he was occupying a minor position in the British government. He was quite junior by official civil service accounts, but had links to all manners of departments. He was still working on ensuring his links in the upper echelons, but given his extraordinary intelligence he was getting himself connected to important people. He mostly kept himself to himself, however, for safety reasons.

Of course, this was not a foolproof plan. Criminals of any substantial calibre would eventually trace their way to Mycroft Holmes. It would be challenging, but within the realms of possibility.

Mycroft straightened his tie, and checked the post before leaving for work. In the post was a package, sent by courier directly to his front door; certainly unusual. Out of simple curiosity, he slit open the top of the package and tipped the contents into his hand; a video tape.

Mycroft looked at it stupidly for a moment, brow knitting as he contemplated the item. He naturally had a VHS player, but he rarely indulged in meaningless pastimes like television. He checked his watch; half past seven. He had plenty of time, as was his custom. It was possible to set clocks by Mycroft's schedule.

He was in the process of casting off the package when he realised there was something left inside it, something giving it a slightly heavier weight than an empty envelope would offer. He reached inside, and tugged out a tie, black with maroon stripes.

Mycroft was in immediate motion, retaining some semblance of calm as he moved to his living room and the video player. The tie was unmistakeably from his younger brother's school; Sherlock was potentially in some form of danger.

Sherlock, at that time, was fifteen.

Mycroft pushed the video into the player, and rocked back on his heels to watch the unfolding events on the television before him.

His teenage brother was bound to a chair in a dark room, duct tape over his mouth, a melodramatic spotlight over his head, blinding the boy slightly as he blinked, seeming to regaining consciousness. Mycroft recognised the starched white shirt and trousers; Sherlock had been abducted directly from school, presumably the previous night given that nobody had informed him of Sherlock's absence.

Yet Sherlock did have a habit of vanishing without warning for a few days, sometimes even a week, once vanished for an entire fortnight – Mycroft had been forced to call the police before Sherlock saw fit to reappear. It was possible, entirely possible, that he had been gone for days and nobody had deemed it necessary to worry just yet.

Mycroft called the family estate while he watched his younger brother cough slightly, soft curls flopping forward into Sherlock's electric blue eyes as he started to collect himself.

"Good afternoon, the Holmes estate," a perfectly clipped voice informed him over the phone.

"Mother, has Sherlock been home?" Mycroft asked without preamble, his lips pressed together with anticipation, eyes fixed on the screen.

"No dear, he has been absent for about three days, but I'll need to confirm that with Arthur. Father has been absent for the last two weeks. Why, do you wish to speak with Sherlock?"

The Holmes parenting style had always been that of disconnection. It was hardly a surprise that Mycroft's mother had no idea how long Sherlock had been gone. Frankly, it was a minor miracle that she had pulled herself out of a Champagne bottle long enough to answer the telephone.

Mycroft was distracted by a cry from the television; the picture quality was not exactly good and Mycroft was distracted by his conversation, meaning that he hadn't noticed the black-clothed man crossing towards Sherlock and punching his younger brother in the stomach.

Sherlock folded forwards, his movement restricted by the bonds around his wrists, keeping him firmly attached to the chair. The black figure held up a newspaper in front of Sherlock, and the camera suddenly zoomed in to focus in on the date; three days ago. This was footage from three days previously.

The man proceeded to beat Sherlock. An unarmed, innocent fifteen year old. He looked incredibly young in the video; his face was beginning to thin as he grew up, cheekbones beginning to protrude, collarbones pronounced, lean body looking intensely fragile under thin layers of cloth and skin.

Mycroft watched, stony-faced and rendered completely speechless, as the man pulverised every reachable part of his brother's body. Sherlock made very little noise, just grunting after every dull thump of fist on flesh.

Mycroft called his secretary. "Anthea? We have a code 2 emergency, I need everything relevant dealt with. 15 year old kidnapped by violent aggressors, being held in unknown location, immediate risk to physical wellbeing and potentially lethal. I need a full team to my house immediately."

Sherlock whimpered audibly, and Mycroft felt something contract painfully in his stomach. He had never thought he would have to hear his brother make such a noise.

Anthea confirmed the information, and Mycroft could almost see her nodding to herself as she put through the relevant information. Her voice was cool and crisp as she asked: "Any demands?"

"I will inform you as to any further developments," Mycroft informed her, and hung up the phone as his brother gave a sudden, muffled scream through the tape gag. Mycroft watched impassively, stomach churning painfully. He guessed one of Sherlock's ribs had given way, and he hoped it wasn't a puncture; that would cause unnecessary medical complications.

The black figure disappeared for a moment. Sherlock's head flopped forward, nerveless. There was a nasty-looking head wound, hair matted with blood, red smears across the side of his face.

The black figure reappeared with a piece of paper, ripping the tape roughly off Sherlock's mouth, Sherlock giving out a strangled sob of pain. His eyes were incredibly wide, the pupils hugely dilated, blue glinting around the black.

"Read it," a voice grunted; Mycroft registered that it might survive voice recognition.

Sherlock took a moment, blinking to refocus his eyes. Mycroft studied his expression carefully; pain, confusion, and teenage defiance were drawn over his thin, leonine features. "Fuck you," he spat.

The black figure drew out a thin, sharp blade, and placed it against Sherlock's throat. Sherlock's eyes widened further; evidently, he had assumed that he was a hostage of some value, and therefore not likely to be disposed of.

Not for the first time, Mycroft thanked several gods that Sherlock was intelligent. He was teenage and hormonal, and therefore had impaired judgement, but his intelligence would ensure that he survived. That would need to be enough, at least for the time being.

"Mycroft," Sherlock read, his voice steady, the slightest drawl of boredom. His eyes flicked to the video camera, the slightest of lopsided smiles on his face. "Abandon your current plans concerning the RPG-16, or they will kill me. They want a copy of the RPG-16 plans as they stand, and the identity… oh, for god's sake, is it beyond your capabilities to write "your" and "you're" correctly?"

The man flicked the knife downwards in a shockingly fast moment, slicing open a gash along Sherlock's collarbone; it welled up and spilled red down his shirt. Sherlock hissed in pain, and the knife returned to his throat. "Read," the man grunted again.

Don't be an idiot, Mycroft thought to himself. His brother could not afford to be stupid, given that there was a fair chance of him getting himself killed, or physically compromised.

"They want a copy of the RPG-16 plans as they stand, plus the identity of your intelligence operatives working within their organisation," Sherlock said, and Mycroft could literally hear the defeat threading through Sherlock's voice. Sherlock already knew that Mycroft would never sacrifice that kind of intelligence. Not even for his teenage brother.

"This tape will be delivered in three day's time, on the morning of the 27th; at twelve noon, they expect the information in an attaché case, to be delivered…" Sherlock was interrupted by a coughing fit, red staining his lips. That didn't bode well.

"Read," the man reiterated, pressing the knife slightly harder against Sherlock's throat and making his brother's breath shudder; Mycroft leaned into the screen, watching his brother intently. Sherlock's eyes were shuttering rapidly; Mycroft hoped very hard that he wasn't going into shock.

"... to be delivered at King's Cross Station. Come alone. I will be released twelve hours after the package has been delivered," Sherlock continued.

He read the next few sentences, scanning ahead, and let out a low moan. "Read it," the man intoned again, pressing the knife against Sherlock's throat a little harder. The coughing had clearly been painful, had taken it out of him, and Sherlock was too young; his body was unable to take that kind of abuse.

"If you don't comply with their demands, I will be…" the boy wetted his lips, hesitating. "They will torture me." Sherlock's eyes flicked to the camera, and Mycroft felt his breath catch in his throat for the first time since beginning the video. Sherlock's eyes were completely dead. He knew he was going to be tortured, and knew he was going to die. At fifteen years old, Sherlock Holmes had accepted his death.

"Please, My," Sherlock whispered, the first time Mycroft had ever heard his little brother beg for anything. The tape ended, the screen displaying only static.

Mycroft allowed himself a breath. He called Anthea. "We have demands."

Sherlock could see the clock on the opposite wall. The hands were teetering frightening close to twelve noon, and if Mycroft did as Sherlock expected, then he had only minutes.

His brain stalled inches away from the word. Sherlock was scared, not unreasonably so. A lot of him hurt, and he was slightly concerned about the fact that he had coughed up blood. Breathing hurt. Thinking was the only thing he had left to him, and thoughts turned repeatedly to his brother. Mycroft had to pull through for him, he simply had to.

Three days had passed since the beating, and he hadn't eaten anything in that time. He had been given insufficient amounts of water once a day since, and was unpleasantly surprised by the sensation of mounting dehydration and starvation.

Twelve noon. Sherlock watched the clock with wide eyes. Seconds passed. He waited. The door opened, and the black figure emerged from the darkness. He pressed a button on the waiting video camera, and a red light blinked; he was being recorded.

Sherlock watched the man warily, keeping his expression impassive, plastering a cocky mask across his terror and waiting for what would come next. The man grabbed a small object that Sherlock couldn't quite see properly.

He could certainly see the bright blue, almost white flame of the blowtorch that was approaching him. Sherlock closed his eyes, cursed his brother with a touch of desperation, and didn't bother concealing his screams.

The man stopped when Sherlock passed out.

The video was delivered by a man who was instantly arrested, but naturally didn't have the faintest idea where the video had originated. He was only a delivery boy, had nothing to do with the people presently holding Sherlock.

"Fuck you, Mycroft, you bastard!" his brother screamed, as the blowtorch was held against his sternum. The boy was still dressed in school uniform, shirt torn open, the sharp points of ribs and collarbone pressed against a thin layer of skin, the outlines of ribs clearly visible after three days of being starved on an already thin frame.

Mycroft was caught; if he didn't release the documentation and security information, Sherlock could very possibly die. If he did release the documents, Sherlock would be a target for the rest of his life. Every terrorist group in the world would recognise Mycroft Holmes' younger brother, and Sherlock would die at their hands if not at the hands of his current tormentors.

Either way, Sherlock's life didn't look to be going in a positive direction.

Naturally, Mycroft had ordered all the men he could humanly rouse to get searching for Sherlock, and there was slow progress being made.

My…

The boy was still murmuring his brother's name like a soft prayer as he lost consciousness, tears tracked down his face and horrific-looking burns crisscrossing his abdomen.

Mycroft loved his brother. He wanted to keep Sherlock safe, and he was faced with the hideous realisation that no matter what he did, his little Locky, as he had always called Sherlock, was going to be badly hurt.

"You have twenty four hours, or the kid loses fingernails," the man announced gruffly to the video camera. Mycroft gave an involuntary shudder at the prospect, and the video ended. Static replayed across the screen.

I will find you, Sherlock, Mycroft thought, promising his brother. He would get Sherlock out, alive, and keep him safe. It was all Mycroft would ever be able to do, after all.

He telephoned Anthea. "We have another tape."

It was a further two days by the time Mycroft managed to locate Sherlock. By that point, to the best of Mycroft's knowledge, Sherlock had been left with malnutrition, dehydration, several broken fingers, at least two missing toenails, cracked or broken ribs, a relatively serious scalp injury with risk of concussion, and a series of serious burns.

He was on the scene with the medical crews when Sherlock was found; the men responsible for his torture were immediately imprisoned, and taken to a secure location. Mycroft would visit them later.

For now, the focus was his brother. Sherlock was lucid, coherent, and showed complete emotional detachment which would later be diagnosed as dissociation. He was gently taken off the chair, the duct tape being removed very carefully to avoid ripping skin. He was placed on a gurney for emergency treatment, waiting to be transferred to a waiting ambulance.

"Lock? Locky, I'm here."

Sherlock turned those extraordinarily icy, emotionally dead eyes on his brother. They were in sunken sockets, black with exhaustion, bleary and bloodshot.

"Get the hell away from me, Mycroft." Sherlock wasn't angry or contemptuous, or even cruel. He was simply emotionally absent from the proceedings.

"Sherlock…"

"Go back to work. I know where your priorities are."

"I…"

"Leave," Sherlock yelled at him, before coughing violently; the force jolted his cracked ribs and shifted the burns, making Sherlock cry out jaggedly in pain before passing out a second time.

Mycroft watched with empty eyes as his baby brother was wheeled away into a waiting ambulance.

"My, do I still have to attend school?" Sherlock had asked, one night, calling up Mycroft for no explicable reason other than loneliness. Sherlock had once been so trusting, so naïve in many respects, able to look up to his elder brother and even speak to him with something approaching respect.

"Locky, you already know the answer to that," Mycroft said with a laugh, propping his head against his pillow with the phone to his ear, the wire trailing to under his desk.

"I'm bored though," Sherlock whined. He was twelve, precociously intelligent, the bane of his teachers' lives. There was silence for a moment.

"Thank you for the umbrella," Mycroft said, with a gentle smile. The umbrella had been a Christmas present from Sherlock, sent through the post to his university dorm room. He loved the thing, an elegant grey, metal-cored umbrella with an addition from Sherlock of a concealed blade. He would still have that umbrella thirty years later.

"Merry Christmas," Sherlock said, his voice containing a wry smirk. "My… Father is coming home."

"Ah," Mycroft replied simply. He paused for a moment, thinking, before speaking intensely quickly. "Sherlock, you will be alright. You're leaving for school again in two days, correct?"

"Yes," Sherlock replied, betraying his youth in a single word.

"You will be alright. If you're not, call me, and I will come home. Ok?"

"Yeah," Sherlock replied, sounding at least slightly consoled. They sat in companionable silence, separated by miles of English countryside, connected by a telephone line. "I should go to sleep," Sherlock said eventually, trying valiantly hard not to sound reluctant.

"Alright. Talk to you soon, Locky," Mycroft told him.

"Bye," Sherlock replied, sounding nonchalant. Mycroft smiled to himself as Sherlock hung up. His brother tried so hard to be so mature, and in doing so, constantly managed to betray his childishness.

Sherlock was young. He had trusted Mycroft entirely. He believed in Mycroft as he believed in nobody else in his entire life. He needed somebody to depend on, somebody he could trust, somebody he could put on a pedestal and demand that they saved him, no matter what.

When that person failed him, everything Sherlock knew disintegrated. In tandem in torture, it shattered the remnants of Sherlock's mind.

Sherlock stared blankly forward, refusing to look at Mycroft who was sitting by his bed, who had been sitting by his bed for the last two days while the hospital kept Sherlock in for observation.

"Sherlock…"

"Mycroft, leave, or I will call the nurse and have you thrown out," Sherlock said in an icy voice.

"Mother and Father…"

"Are not coming, and that is not a surprise," Sherlock completed. He was still staring at the opposite wall when he said, in a quiet, broken voice: "Mycroft, please leave."

Mycroft was literally speechless. He had never thought he would be on the receiving end of that kind of broken voice, that horrific shattered sound of his little brother's pain.

Shortly after that, he made the single worst mistake of his entire life. An irreversible decision that would mean their relationship would never be redeemable. He could have saved everything, in that moment, in that decision. He could have ignored everything his brother was saying and stood by him, stayed despite Sherlock's insistence that he did otherwise, proven that he cared enough about his brother to stay.

Instead, Mycroft Holmes picked up his briefcase, and left.