'John.'

John looked up at the soft remark. Sherlock rested a hand on top of the violin case, his pale fingers stroking it lightly.

'John – as a doctor-'

Sherlock looked up from the pebble he had fixed his gaze upon, as though he hoped to deduce the solution from its roughened surface.

' 'As a doctor-' what? Sherlock?'

'Do you think –'

Sherlock looked into John's face, his pale eyes pleading (he never pleads – or begs, John thought).

'Will Eurus ever talk again?'

John inhaled sharply and pushed his hand over his face. He felt Sherlock's gaze pinning him.

'Can't you deduce that from seeing her?' John finally asked gently (as gently as he could, considering Sherlock's little sister had attempted to drown him not seven days ago).

'I want my doctor's advice.'

John huffed. Sherlock knew the answer – but he didn't want to admit it out loud. That made it real.

'If you want my honest opinion, Sherlock, then no. No, she won't. Remember what Mycroft said? She was –'

'-Too far gone. I am aware of what Mycroft said.'

'But you still asked me.'

'As we have witnessed, my brother is not as smart as he believes.'

The waves crept closer as they walked along the beach below Sherrinford. Dusk was falling, and they had wanted to walk in the clean ocean air before getting back to the chopper Mycroft had arranged to pick them up.

'She tried to kill you to hurt me, John. I should have –'

John turned to the ocean, his jaw set.

'Should have what, Sherlock? You couldn't do anything, you didn't even know you had a bloody sister until a week ago! You couldn't have found out what she was planning!'

John sighed.

'If anyone should have done anything, Mycroft should have seen this coming! He allowed her to see Moriarty, he put her in there –'

'Shut up.'

'Sherlock, don't you bloody tell –'

'Shut up, John. Can you hear that?'

John snapped his mouth shut but as he did so, he heard it.

Singing.

A low voice, definitely male, a bit shaky but not unpleasant to listen to. It lifted over the whisper of the surf.

'Sherlock, who's singing on the beach of a place like this?'

'A man, around my height, twice my weight, dressed in a dark suit –'

'Bloody hell, Sherlock, how-'

Whatever John was going to say was silenced as he finally caught Sherlock's expression and followed his stunned gaze.

Mycroft was standing in the centre of a small cove just below an outcrop of rock. The bleak walls of Sherrinford jutted out on the overhang.

He was, as always, impeccably dressed, but his umbrella lay on the sand by his scuffed shoes. He was looking directly up at the walls, apparently deaf to the arrival of the two other men.

John felt his jaw slowly drop as Mycroft's voice, low and tremulous, reached their spot behind two large boulders.

'Fate has been cruel, and order unkind –

How could I have sent you away?

The blame was my own, the punishment yours;

Your world is silent today.'

Sherlock said nothing but stared at his brother, eyes shining. Mycroft drew in a shuddering breath, closing his eyes as he did so.

'But into the stillness, I'll bring you a song,

And I will your company keep-'

Mycroft opened his eyes again and raised his head to the cliff's towering sides.

''Til your tired eyes, and my lullabies,

Have carried you softly to sleep….'

Mycroft didn't see the cliff anymore. Instead he saw them – the three of them – together on a river bank. He curled his fingers against his palm as he watched his little brother playing with Victor, laughing in a way he hadn't heard in years.

'Once did a boy with eyes blue as the sea,

Splash in a river at play,

From sunrise to sunset he lived out his dreams

For his best friend was with him all through the day.'

The boys' pirate costumes dripped as Sherlock shoved Victor into the water, only for Victor to grab his sleeve and drag him down as well. They shrieked as Mycroft smirked and Eurus watched with her large dark eyes. Mycroft's throat tightened as he breathed.

'So great was their bond and so brilliant their laughter

That long was the shadow it cast;

It fell very dark on the young sister we loved – '

Eurus' gaze was icy. Mycroft felt his heart clench.

'-And grew only darker as days and nights passed.'

John sensed Sherlock's sharp intake of breath beside him but he couldn't turn. Mycroft bowed his head.

'Soon did the eldest take notice that no-one

Would give his sister her due –'

He had seen her crying once. Just once, when she hadn't done anything to frighten his parents, or hurt Sherlock, or unnerve him. Just crying like the little girl she was, alone in her room. A picture of Sherlock with Mycroft lay torn on her bedside table.

What he didn't know – couldn't have known – is that she had drawn it as a surprise for Sherlock, had given it to him, and Sherlock had torn it by accident by dropping a book on it in his hurry to play with Victor. That was all. But he had assumed she had done it for the same reasons she had done everything else.

He raised his voice in annoyance. She looked at him with her dark eyes full of hate before she slammed the door on him.

'But neither had he loved her as she deserved;

He watched as his sister's unhappiness grew.'

He should have gone back in; told their parents; done something. But his conviction of his own rightness – his superiority to his wild, brilliant, troubled sister – made him move his palm away from her door handle.

'But such is the way of genius, it firmly

Takes hold of the mind of its host;

And that foolish brother did nothing to stop

The destruction of one who needed him most.'

John's face was wet. Sherlock's hands gripped the boulder so tightly John thought his fingers would bleed. Mycroft opened his eyes – they shimmered in the sunset – and looked at something only he could see.

'Sleep now, dear Eurus, goodnight sister mine,

Rest in your brothers' embrace.

Bear up this lullaby, winds of the earth,

Through night and through dark and through space.

'Carry the peace and the coolness of night,

And carry my sorrow in kind -'

John was startled by a low murmur near his right ear. Sherlock was singing under his breath, catching his brother's words almost before they left Mycroft's mouth.

'- Eurus, you're loved so much more than you know,

May troubles be far from your mind -'

Sherlock's tears shone in the fading light as Mycroft brought a hand to his face.

'- And forgive me for being so blind.'

Mycroft pressed his lips together as Sherlock left John's side and strode over the sand towards his brother.

'The years gone between us,

So fearful and unknown,

I'd never imagined

We'd face them on our own.

'May these tender wishes

Reach you now, I pray –'

Sherlock took his place at his brother's side, face upturned.

'- I love you, I miss you,

A wind blown far away.'

Mycroft hadn't cried since he was ten years old.

'May all your dreams be calm tonight

Safe on a bed of moonlight.

And know not of sadness, pain or care-'

Sherlock's voice rose to join his brother's.

'- And when I dream, I'll fly away and meet you there.

'Sleep…'

John scrubbed his eyes with his coat sleeve. The moon had nearly risen.

'Sleep…'

Sherlock looked at Mycroft, whose face was blurred with tearstains, and placed his hand on Mycroft's shoulder.

'Sleep…'

Deep inside the bleak white building, Eurus Holmes smiled in her dreams.