The panic attack hit when Mycroft was on an Air Serbia plane—though everyone still called the airline Jat out of habit. The plane was too full, the temperature too high. The man seated beside him was sweating in a wool suit that had been sweated in far too often before. The woman across the aisle had brought aboard a smoked sausage and apples, and she'd been having a private feast. The smells had rolled over Mycroft and he'd reflexively pushed himself into his relaxation exercises—calm, calm, calm. Then the plane had dropped a sudden yard or so, and the other passengers had squalled, and Mycroft's concentration had slipped for that one vital second. The chatter of Serbian voices had shifted from comprehensible to gibberish as his mind lost focus and jumped back to English, and in the mental scramble to get his bearings back and recover his newly-built mastery of the language, it all caved on him.

Too close. Too many people. The smells, the sounds, the feeling of being surrounded and helpless…

If he hadn't had years of dealing with his own damned weakness, it would have gotten ugly fast. Instead he knew what to do and how to manage.

He closed his eyes tight, mastered his breathing, and dropped down and down into the oceanic depths of his mind. Mind palace? That was Sherlock's little affectation—a quaint mental concept popular in the Victorian era, really nothing more than a mnemonic technique. Mycroft had his own less romantic methods drawn from every psych study on memory retention he'd read over the past three decades, most of them stripped down and unromantic in every way. His imagery of his own mind, though—that was rich and no less drawn from psychiatry: a Jungian ocean deep and complex and alive with currents. He let himself fall and fall, refusing to give in to the panicked need to remain aware of his surroundings, looking for the shadowed cool dark. Only when he'd found it and touched the stillness did he let himself begin the trip back up.

Field work. Leg work. He hated it—hated it like fire. Just as much he hated dealing with the fact that he hated it because it scared him in ways he could never entirely resist or control.

It wasn't even something he'd ever been able to keep secret—not from MI6. In the very first psych evaluation in his file it was marked down: borderline agoraphobia, acousticophobia, enochlophobia… fear of public spaces, of sounds, of crowds. The list went on, all borderline, all controllable on the whole, all just bad enough to warrant concern on the part of Mycroft's trainers—and all just bad enough to take him like this, when the pressure was too much and the stress too extreme.

As he came back up, he caught someone jabbering above him. He struggled to bring his mind back into a Serbian frame of reference, eventually determining the cabin steward was asking if he was all right. He opened his eyes, and looked up, nodding warily.

"Just feeling a bit airsick," he said, letting his tension sound in his voice, adding convincing detail to the claim. "How soon until we land?"

"Half an hour, sir," the steward replied. "Would you like a bottle of water? A sick bag?"

Mycroft smiled politely, still using his own misery to play this alien part. "Both, I think, thank you." Then he let his shoulders slump and round, and ducked his head down, knowing that aside from the moment when the bag and bottle were delivered, the odds were now good that the steward and all around him would leave him in peace, if only out of fear he'd vomit at them.

He wished so much he were back in London. In his office. In the Diogenes Club. Or on the estate. That would be a comfort. A lovely little place. Her Majesty's government had seen fit to grant him a lifetime lease when he'd turned down a knighthood a decade back. Anywhere, he thought—anywhere quiet, and empty, and dim, and still.

Except Sherlock had to come home, now, and between the challenge of fitting into a fast hack-job of a cover identity, of pulling off a convincingly commanding performance, and, most of all, of being able to cope with Sherlock regardless of what condition he was in when they managed to extract him from his current mess—well. It wasn't like even MI6 had that many people able to pull all those skills together at a moment's notice, after all. Mycroft could do it all, do it fast, and get himself and Sherlock out alive. Well, he could almost certainly do it all, do it fast, and get himself and Sherlock out alive. Probably. At least, the odds were better for Mycroft than for anyone else they had available. Mycroft had figured the odds himself, swearing the entire time under his breath and praying that in the years since he'd last had to go in himself they'd gained a lively young mini-Mycroft trainee he could send in his place.

But in all honesty, he'd known that no trainee could have done it anyway. Not with Sherlock as a potential problem to deal with. And no matter how much Mycroft hated field work, not-doing field work in this instance would have been a betrayal of both nation and brother.

Thus Mycroft's unwilling and resentful presence on the Jat plane.

They landed safely. Mycroft debarked, flashing his forged ID papers. He found his contact—not MI6, but one of the Baron's own people, already fed misinformation. The man was expecting the corrupt BIA agent Mycroft's cover suggested him to be.

The contact was a short, dark man, disturbingly jolly and pleasant, not to mention hospitable. Advance research had suggested he was a lovely fellow in most ways—if you didn't mind a history of rape, participation in genocidal mass murders, and a variety of skills in rough and ready interrogation techniques. Mycroft could now add to the list of negatives a passion for apple brandy and a willingness to drive at high speeds in spite of having drunk quite a bit of it. Oh, and a fondness for singing while doing both of the above.

"Gdje li si mi sad kopile jedno, kažu mi da kradom služaš teno…" he bellowed, keeping up quite impressively with the radio. It was a fast song, just short of a patter song. He elbowed Mycroft. "Come, come. Sing along! It makes the road shorter and the trip happier."

Mycroft shook his head, and looked as stern as he could manage while trying not to look over the edge of the drop down the mountain pass mere feet away from his elbow. It wasn't a good road. It wasn't a good driver. It wasn't even a good car.

I'm going to die, he thought. I'm not even going to see Sherlock before I do. I'm going to die bouncing off boulders on the side of a mountain in Serbia, stuck in a glued together shoe box next to a shouting drunkard who's good at patter songs…

God, it was a long way down.

And, yes, fear of heights was also listed in that early psych report. Borderline. All of it borderline. Which really just meant he could control it enough to survive repeated rounds of exposure, when it came down to it. A real, proper, well-over-the-border phobic would have died of terror already, and had done with it. What was the saying? Oh, yes. A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but one. Who knew the hero was phobic and died of heart attack while the coward lived and jounced up the mountain to rescue Little Brother from the dungeon?

It really was a dungeon, he thought, later. With rats…

Musophobia. Borderline, and restricted to rats, though the term included mice. Mycroft didn't find mice in the least unsettling, and had indeed tamed several wild mice as a boy, sitting quietly in the attic waiting till they would come to his hand for sunflower seeds. Rats were another thing entirely. He shuddered as a low, dark shadow scurried away from him and his guide down into the depths.

Getting Sherlock out of here was going to be a bitch. Maybe even a bitch and a half. Three weeks previously he'd succeeded in infiltrating Baron Maupertius' stronghold, having passed himself off as a black marketeer running arms to the Macedonian nationalists. If Sherlock hadn't convinced them that he'd been sent, and that it was all part of some much larger, national-scale scheme, he'd probably have died the minute they captured him. As it was…

As it was, the survivors still in residence in Maupertius' keep were hoping to trade Sherlock to the BIA in return for a blind eye regarding their remaining arms deals. Today they would try to get Sherlock to say something—anything—to convince the "BIA administrator" that he was worth the trade.

When the door to the cell opened, Mycoft had to clench his teeth. The smell was horrible, and some of it was clearly Sherlock. And Sherlock…

God dammit, Baby Brother… what do I have to do to get you to take care of yourself?

He looked like he'd run wild for the entire two years he'd been gone. No. Not "like." He almost certainly had run wild for the entire two years he'd been gone. That was about two years of hair growth, yes—and if Sherlock had been bothering to comb or brush it more than occasionally during that time… And while he had muscle he'd lacked when he left, he also had scars long since healed over, and calluses.

All of which could be ignored, if he hadn't been dangling half-dead from chains and stinking of untreated, septic wounds and oozing rashes and urine and feces and who knew what else? Or if his back hadn't been bruised and torn. Or…

Mycroft grabbed frantically for the role. From here on the role was everything. He got it right, and they had a chance. He got it wrong, and it was over for both of them.

There was a cold place in the ocean of his mind. A place all still and icy and cruel. A place where Mycroft could go, when he had to. It wasn't a nice place. He didn't pretend it was. It was, however, a useful place…especially at moments like this.

"Such a pretty sight," he said in Serbian. "Your man's already been working with him?"

The guide shrugged. "On and off. He's a tough one. We've had him on sleep deprivation the last few days. Eh, Dimitar—our guest is here. Let's see something."

Mycroft snorted. "Hurry, hurry, hurry. Why hurry? Something like this you take time over. Something like this you enjoy. A glass of wine, a bit of appreciation for the artistry…. Eh. I'll take this barrel over here for a chair, yes? This box for a footstool. And you—yes, you," he said to the guide. "A bottle of wine. Some bread and cheese, a few apples. Go, get it for me. Dimitar and I, we can get started without you. Nothing interesting will happen in the first few minutes anyway. Not with a stubborn one like you say this one is."

The guide scowled and tried to argue, but Mycroft managed to shift his best "I am the British Government" over a cultural step or two, and project that instead he was the BIA itself, and worthy of all submission from the lowly thugs in the Baron's service.

Dimitar, the torturer, got out a length of pipe. Mycroft smiled, merrily. "Ah, simple but practical. Don't go too heavy, though: easy to go too fast with something like that. You want to linger a bit. Go lightly." He let the words linger, sounding almost salacious.

Dimitar laughed, and the questioning began.

Mycroft knew then that Sherlock had recognized him, even in the condition he was in, even with Mycroft in his cover role. How did he know? Because the impossible brat started baiting his inquisitor, of course! Idiot! Idiot boy, did he have to risk everything just to be sure Mycroft knew he was still his snotty, bratty self?

Mycroft wanted to wring his neck. Done wrong this would all be much harder. He kept silent, though, letting Sherlock and Dimitar play out Sherlock's game.

Oh, God. Of course the cheating wife and the coffin maker and the entire silly mess, and all of it ending with Dimitar racing from the room roaring. Which would help now, but make it harder to get Sherlock out later. Unless…

Mycroft was planning like mad even as he went to his brother and informed him of his immanent return home.

It didn't go well. Sherlock was in no state to walk, much less run. Mycroft was going to have to get him out with words and wiles—and while those were his most natural tools, he wasn't really ready to use them in his newly acquired Serbian, in the keep of a crazy criminal Baron looking for political favors.

Why did Sherlock have to scare off Dimitar? Mycroft could have played Dimitar, using the structure of the interrogation to slowly convince him and that he'd gotten what he wanted and impressed the BIA man. Now Mycroft was going to have to explain Dimitar's absence to the guide—and then explain why he wanted to take the prisoner with him without Dimitar's backup.

He licked his lips, uneasily. "Sherlock, you've got to play along."

Damn. Sherlock had passed out, whether from sleep deprivation, injury, or just relief that Big Brother had come for him was anyone's guess. But that meant he had one less bit of evidence why he should…

Or perhaps not.

He could hear the guide's footsteps approaching. Mycroft made himself shriek, then, a deep, anguished moan. "Aaaaieee. He's run away!"

The footsteps shifted from steady to fast. The guide crashed in. Mycroft rushed toward him. "Dimitar—he went crazy. He's killed the prisoner and run away!"

The guide squealed. "No!"

"Yes! Quick, quick, before the Baron finds out and kills us all—we have to get the body out of here. We can't afford for the Baron to learn he's missed his chance!" Mycroft's heart was in his throat. This was going to be a long-shot. The guide had to help, without realizing Sherlock wasn't dead after all. But it was the best thing Mycroft could think of that would get them out of the keep quickly. "We need a cart or a barrow or something. We've got to get him out and into a bus or a truck. We've got to get him away from here."

The guide turned pale. "Good God, no. How? The Baron's guards… they'll look. They'll know…"

"A back door? A secret entrance?"

The guide shuddered. "The supply tunnel. We can use that."

"Then quick. A cart. Then we go."

While the guide got a low cart—little more than a child's wagon, really—Mycroft searched the dungeon. In a dark corner he found a worn blanket. He took Sherlock down from his chains (lock picks were such useful things…) and shrouded his brother, aiming for a properly corpse-like look. He wished Sherlock had not been limp and pale enough to make "corpse" an easy look to manage. Together he and the guide slung Sherlock's body onto the cart and proceeded deeper into the dungeon.

"What is this tunnel, anyway?"

"Used to be a sewer," the man said, pushing the cart ahead of him. "Cleaned it out in the 30s, and use it to get supplies from town, now. Easier than trying to haul it up to the courtyard. Baron's people don't check it often. Too boring."

It wasn't boring, though. It was narrow and dark and it still stank of old waste. Worse…

"Eeeee!" Mycroft barely managed to strangle his shriek when the first rat raced past his ankles. By the second he'd clamped his teeth tight. By the third he'd fisted his hands on the edge of the wagon and begun to really push.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Mycroft said. He didn't think admitting he was terrified of rats was going to add any credibility to his role as crooked BIA agent avoiding sudden death scenes with the Baron. "Just want to get this over with."

"Why don't we just dump him here?" the guide asked, panting as they wheeled the cart along. "Rats will eat him soon enough, if we hide him in the shadows."

Mycroft had no easy answer for that—but he was willing to come up with one. Unfortunately, Sherlock chose that moment to moan. Loudly.

The guard swore. He wasn't as stupid as he looked, either. In a flash he'd let go of the wagon and reached under his jacket…

Mycroft, as it happened, did not have a phobia about guns. It was more what even his MI6 psychiatrists considered a perfectly reasonable distaste for being on the wrong end of an armed encounter. He preferred being the one fingering the trigger rather than the one looking down the barrel. It was a common prejudice amongst MI6 field officers.

He didn't have a phobia about hand-to-hand fighting, either. He just wasn't exceptionally good at it. It seldom mattered: the whole point of secret agenting, in his considered opinion, was avoiding the necessity, really. But sometimes circumstances interfered, and when they did he was capable, if not particularly talented. He dropped, rolled, and performed a sweep-kick. He tried to ignore the squeak and squish of a rat under his shoulder as he rolled. Instead he lunged frantically, wrested the pistol from the guide, and thwacked him solidly over the temple.

It's remarkably difficult to actually knock someone out reliably. It's considerably less difficult to kill them if you know what you're doing. On the off chance he'd been a bit too mild, though, Mycroft took a few extra moments to break the guide's neck, before hiding him in the shadows and trying not to think too hard about rats.

It took Mycroft an hour to get them out of the keep. He didn't manage it without a fight, either. Then there was the long drive in the stolen shoebox of a car, all the way down the impossible road and the plunging mountain cliffs, with Sherlock passed out in the back. After that making contact with Hamburton, their man in Belgrade, who was able to do first-round medical care for Sherlock, who was still out cold. All of which would have been fine if it hadn't been for the hours spent in the dance hall attached to the bordello out of which Hamburton ran his espionage contacts, surrounded by a solid wall of writhing bodies, swamped in their odors (cheap perfume, sweat, garlic, and for some odd reason a heavy note of polecat…). And the music—full volume.

He had to drop into his calming routines and the dark ocean of his mind three times…and that was before the entirely unexpected Vice raid. The gunfire was unwelcome, as far as Mycroft was concerned, but the really unpleasant part was the bit where he had to disarm the prostitute with the far-from-fake Damascene dagger….

It was on the plane flight home, Mycroft still in his Serbian military coat with the wooly hat on the floor beside him, that he was finally able to try to talk to Sherlock.

"Are you awake, brother-mine?"

Sherlock's eyes opened, slightly. "Wha?"

"Sherlock—we're on our way home."

"'Course we are. Got us out, didn't I?"

Mycroft sighed. "You got Dimitar the oaf out."

"See? Proud of me?"

Mycroft pondered the best answer. After a moment he said, "You've completed your goals. I'm impressed."

Sherlock beamed, and husked, "See? Beat you at your own game."

No. Not exactly, Mycroft thought. If nothing else the only time Mycroft had needed to be extracted from anything like the keep dungeon, it was because Sherlock had gotten him there. But…"You're improving, anyway, little brother."

Sherlock grumbled. "Beat you at your own game," he said, more fiercely. "Won."

"I'll admit, you're better at field work," Mycroft said.

"'Cause you're too lazy."

Mycroft stroked the ragged mop of hair. "That will no doubt be it," he agreed, softly.

Sherlock murmured and fell back asleep, done in by days of sleep deprivation and a light dose of sedative. Mycroft picked up the wooly hat, and sat in the seat beside him. He turned the hat around and around in his hands.

The wool stank.

The plane juddered unevenly through the night sky.

Phrases of Serbian flickered in and out of Mycroft's mind as he transitioned back into English.

He was, he thought, a borderline phobic, beset with a million borderline fears. He hated field work. He loathed being undercover. He despised the work Sherlock adored.

He wondered if, under all Sherlock's sarcasm and spite, he knew how badly field work frightened him. Mycroft hoped not. He could deal with being a borderline coward—but he'd like to be spared Sherlock's scorn. Because if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Sherlock, his strange, strange brother, would understand the gift of his big brother's fearlessness—but never the gift of Mycroft's fear.