It was in front of a London sweet shop one night, on an empty street, that Peter Pan first found Brolly. He was very, very thin, and had a cough. He was looking quietly in the shop window, and the rain was coming in through his umbrella with the broken spoke.
He was older than most of the boys Peter found, old enough to understand certain things they usually didn't. So when Peter came flying out of the sky and landed in front of him, clad in rags and leaves, his dark, wild hair tangled with twigs and bracken, the rain sparking on the pavement around him, Brolly figured he was probably dying.
Brolly was not really his name, of course. But the first thing Peter did after arriving was point to his umbrella and say "What's that?" and the boy had said "It's a brolly," and Peter had gotten distracted by the shop window before he'd gotten around to asking "Who are you?" so that had done for an introduction.
They stood in silence in the dark and rain for a few minutes, Brolly getting wetter, the rain dripping from his ginger hair, and Peter somehow not seeming to. They stared in at the sweets in the window, Brolly with somewhat keener interest, though not quite as invested as before now that he thought he was going to die. All at once, Peter turned to him, and looked him up and down as though he'd only just noticed him standing there.
"Hullo!" said Peter. "I'm Peter Pan. Would you like to come with me?"
Brolly didn't ask where they were going. He only said "Do you have any food?"
"Oh yes, loads," said Peter carelessly.
"All right," said Brolly. Peter stuck out his hand. Brolly wrapped his larger hand around it, and they both lifted off into the rainy sky.
Peter carved a door for the new boy in the entrance to their tree, a hole exactly the size and shape of a thin, thin boy with a tattered umbrella. While he carved, the Lost Boys welcomed Brolly with loud greetings and gifts of apples and berries and half-crumbled tea biscuits. By the time they were all ready to go underground for the night, Peter had to carve Brolly's door just a little bigger for his belly round with food.
"Just the once," Peter warned. "I shan't have any holes big enough for pirates. Except for the days when we're pirates, obviously."
"Are we pirates some days?" asked Brolly, blinking.
"Of course!" said Peter. "Who wouldn't want to be a pirate?"
"All the grown-ups are pirates, and they're the ones we mustn't let in," explained one of the Lost Boys. "But sometimes we're pirates too. Peter is captain."
Brolly accepted this information with the same equanimity as he had shown toward his new name. He selected a disused hammock and settled in to sleep, one last apple from his welcoming cupped in his hand.
The adventures started quite immediately-Brolly was upended from his hammock at the crack of dawn and awoke to a ringing head and a stampede of boys.
"Are we pirates today?" he asked dazedly of a boy going by.
"Not today," said the boy, grabbing a bow and arrow from a hook on the wall. "Today we're fighting the pirates!"
At first it was fun. The path that Peter led them was winding and beautiful, a world of tightly-packed wonders in bright jewel tones completely different from the greys of London. Brolly carried the long, thin sword he had been given in one hand, knocking bark off the trees and blossoms off flowers as they went, and his umbrella in the other.
He started enjoying it less almost as soon as the pirates showed up.
The pirates had set up an ambush, and were on the boys in less than a moment. The boys met the onslaught with a merry cry and were soon clashing dagger to cutlass and sword to sword.
It's exciting, Brolly told himself, hanging back at the edge of the fight, nervously adjusting his grip on his sword. It's fun, it's an adventure. Then a musket ball whistled past his ear and it wasn't fun at all.
When a pirate advanced on him he raised his sword in terrified self-defense and their blades met with a clang that rang in the bones of Brolly's hands. The man leered down at him with a wide, gray-toothed grin. Brolly ducked under his arm and turned around, dropping his umbrella to swing his sword with both hands at the pirate's ribs. The man's dirty shirt bloomed red and the pirate clutched his wounded side and staggered.
Brolly held up his sword in front of him like a talisman, his hands shaking and his eyes huge. The pirate turned around slowly, and raised his sword. Brolly stood, waiting petrified, until the enormous weapon came on its heavy downswing. Then he stepped out of the way, took a deep breath, and drove his sword home.
A whoop rose from the other boys, and Brolly looked up to see the other pirates retreating. The boys were cheering Peter, who responded by putting his fists on his hips and crowing like a rooster. Brolly bent and picked up his dropped umbrella.
"Look," someone cried, "Brolly took a pirate down!" At that, the Lost Boys hurried over to crowd around the still-trembling Brolly and his fallen foe.
Peter flew over too, effervescent with triumph, and surveyed the scene of Brolly's victory.
"An excellent kill," he declared, apparently not noticing Brolly's pale face or unsteady stance. "Your sword." Brolly handed it over. "Kneel." Brolly went down on one knee. Peter tapped the boy ceremoniously on either shoulder. "I dub you," he said grandly, "my second in command!"
Brolly looked around in a bit of a daze at all the beaming faces congratulating him.
They don't know, he realized slowly. They don't understand about Dead. Even Peter... Even Peter doesn't know. He looked down at his kill, and then up at Peter, standing above him grandiose, his silver eyes glittering with joy and life, and a small cut on his flushed cheek bleeding red like a jewel.
"Thank you, Peter," said Brolly. "It is a great honor." He stood, his one trouser knee wet through with the blood of the dead pirate, and accepted back his sword.
The other boys did not quite understand Brolly; he practiced with his sword even when they weren't fighting any pirates that day, carried it with him everywhere like he used to carry his umbrella, and he was quiet and grim and dry-humored and did not always say what he seemed to mean. Peter, on the other hand, was delighted to have such a dedicated, inscrutable second in command. He liked to order Brolly about imperiously, because the boy had a way of nodding in reply that made every command seem very solemn and important. Peter did not seem to notice or mind that the orders he gave were never followed.
He was, nevertheless, an excellent second in command, despite his disobedience (and his tendency, left over from long hungry stretches back on the Mainland, to overeat and barely fit his door in the tree). Peter never went into battle again without Brolly at his elbow, tall and forbidding and becoming day by day more fearsome with his sword. Nor was there an exploration undertaken in which Brolly did not head up the duckling trail of Lost Boys following behind Peter.
And then one day Peter announced that he was going to visit the Mainland, and Brolly volunteered to join him. Peter eyed him with momentary suspicion.
"You aren't thinking of deserting, are you?" he challenged. Brolly's eyebrows rose in genuine surprise.
"Not at all, sir. I was only hoping to meet battle with you." He did not say protect you, never protect you. Peter didn't need protecting, he wouldn't stand for it, Peter was a fierce warrior, Peter just didn't understand about Dead, was all, and Brolly was bigger and the second in command and it was his job to understand.
"Well, I don't really get into battles on the Mainland," said Peter, apparently forgetting all the stories he had brought home of bloody battles while he was gone from Neverland. "But yes, I suppose you may come."
The other boys watched in envy as they waved goodbye to Peter and Brolly flying away. They would have never dared to ask for such a privilege , meanwhile, never had to ask again. It became assumed that every time Peter intended to go to the Mainland, Brolly came with him.
Peter's visits to the Mainland were sporadic but not infrequent. It was always at night, when he and Brolly could roam the streets and structures of the great, gray world of grown-ups undetected. The visits were not as interesting to Brolly as they were to Peter, who was fascinated by anything new and inspected every unfamiliar detail with intense attention. But any little boy likes a deserted building or park to explore after dark, and Peter made even the most familiar sights new, so Brolly didn't mind much.
Peter also had a cunning talent for finding ways in to places, open windows or unlocked doors, or else a talent for making ways come open to him. Brolly and he would roam the hallways of office buildings or shopping malls or abandoned homes.
One night, on a visit to the mainland, Peter found an open skylight for them to slide through and Peter and Brolly found themselves in a public pool.
It wasn't actually closed yet, though it was after dark, and Peter led the other boy from shadow to shadow in the way only Peter knew how. Most everyone was gone, but it still made Brolly uneasy to be about before the witching hour. Brolly had been in Neverland a while, by then—impossible to say how long, with no calendars or wristwatches or age, impossible to say how the world had changed since he last stood in front of a sweet shop in the rain—but he still remembered about Death, and Danger, and Strangers. He still remembered the skin-saving cautions of a homeless boy, and was not nearly as gleeful about sneaking around so close to Mainlanders. Peter, however, was delighted by them, all the more because there were only a couple of unobservant adults and a few young boys. He was deeply amused by the pool as well, a bad imitation of a lake, square and blue and clean, and when they happened on it he lingered, staring at it and, Brolly was afraid, judging for a dive.
"Closing soon, Carl," said a grown-up as one boy, about Brolly's size, walked out of a changing room in a swimsuit.
"Yes, sir. Just going to do a few laps," said Carl, swinging a towel over his shoulder.
Peter and Brolly were crouched in the shadows of the upper level, peering through the gaps in the railing, Peter observing Carl closely (probably, Brolly figured, because he sensed the boy was about to do something Peter could shortly prove he could do better). But Brolly's attention, the attention of a keen second-in-command, was elsewhere. His neck prickled with a threat, the way it might at an impending pirate ambush or a dangerous beast lurking in the forest, and he reached out and laid a warning hand on his captain's elbow.
"What, Brolly?" demanded Peter, irritated, but it wasn't until a moment later that Brolly even knew how to answer. As Carl dove into the pool, Brolly raised his hand and pointed.
In the corner of the huge room was a dark open doorway, and standing in it was a boy.
He was smaller than Peter, slight even for his young age. He stepped just a little bit out into the dim light, and he was watching Carl with dark eyes, wolf eyes. Pirate eyes. Brolly had never seen such a look on anyone so small.
Brolly's hand tightened on his sword. Peter's did not.
"What, the boy?" said Peter. Brolly opened his mouth to answer, but then something started happening in the water.
It was the swimming boy, Carl, who had ceased his smooth stroking and was beginning to flounder. Brolly couldn't see why—he seemed like a strong swimmer a moment ago. Then the boy started to thrash and sink. Something was wrong. Something had happened that was not supposed to.
"Why isn't he swimming properly?" said Peter almost indignantly, as though he intended to jump in and show the boy how swimming should be done.
"He's drowning," said Brolly. Something was very wrong, his mind kept telling him, they shouldn't have come here. He didn't know why until his eyes rose again to the dark doorway across the room.
"Well, let's save him," said Peter. Before Brolly could stop him, he clambered up onto the balcony railing and executed a perfect swan dive into the pool, crowing like a rooster as he dove.
The adults would hear that, thought Brolly even through his strange panic. Brolly hung back, frozen, torn between his captain's attempted heroics and the shadowed place at the back of the pool. The boy was still there, the boy with the pirate's eyes, but he didn't look at all concerned by either Carl drowning or Peter saving him. He was smiling. Brolly's chest went cold and hollow.
Peter was pulling Carl to the edge of the pool with more difficulty than Brolly would have expected, until he saw Peter tugthe boy out of the water. Carl was still thrashing, gurgling, choking, his eyes rolled back in his head and his fingers convulsing at his sides.
Brolly, who couldn't fly without Peter's help, ran for the nearby stairwell and down it to go help. He knelt by the boy, laying his sword down on the ground next to him. Peter was bewilderedly shaking Carl by the shoulder, trying to bring him to his senses. The boy's lips were blue, his spasms less violent already by the time Brolly got there.
"Something's wrong. Fix it," ordered Peter, his eyes troubled despite his imperious tone. This was not a Neverland death, brave and picturesque. Brolly wished he could follow orders, but all he could do was watch as the boy slowly stilled.
"He's dead," said Peter, frowning. "Brolly, he just died." He looked up at his lieutenant, but Brolly's gaze was across the room. Peter followed it to the smiling boy retreating into the shadows. "Who was that?"
"I think," said Brolly quietly, "that he killed him."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Peter was frowning still, frowning at the empty doorway like there was something he didn't understand. "Was he a pirate?"
Brolly didn't know how to answer. "He was a boy," he said.
Peter, still kneeling over Carl's corpse, turned his eyes up to Brolly. "Why would a boy do this?" he demanded. "It's not… sporting. It's… it's…" For lack of his own words, he reached for another's. "It's bad form."
Brolly just looked helplessly down at him, and shook his head. He didn't have the words either of them needed.
"Carl? Closing up now," came a man's voice. Brolly grabbed Peter's arm and jerked him to his feet in an instant, pulling him over to the stairwell.
The grown-up from before appeared in a nearby door and sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of Carl.
"Carl!" he rushed over, and Peter tried to linger, to watch, but Brolly still had a vice grip on his arm any d dragged him up the stairs.
"Why would a boy do that?" Peter kept saying, despite how Brolly shushed him.
"We've got to get out of here," Brolly said. He couldn't have said why it was so important, but he knew it was. "We've got to get back to Neverland."
They followed the upstairs corridor they'd come in from to the open window through which they'd entered. Peter was still frowning.
"Come on, Peter," Brolly urged, sliding his sword into his belt. "We've got to fly."
"Flying, right," said Peter, shaking his head. He reached out and wrapped his smaller hand around Brolly's, took a breath, and…
Nothing.
"Peter," Brolly insisted, shaking their joined hands.
"I'm trying!" Peter protested. He took on a look of great concentration, lifted onto his toes, but… no further. "I can't do it," he said, confused. "I can't fly."
Brolly made a frustrated noise but didn't spend more time on it. He released Peter's hand and put one leg out of the window, then ducked his head and shoulders out.
"There's a drainpipe here," he reported. "I'm going to climb down it and you follow. All right? Be careful."
"Why can't I fly?" Peter was asking, but Brolly shushed him again.
"Follow me," he repeated, "And be careful."
He reached out in the dark with his toes and found the bolts of the drainpipe, then got a good grip with one hand and pulled the other half of his body out of the warmth and light of the building. There was a brief, terrifying moment of hanging half-secured in the air, scraping at the drainpipe with is foot, before he got a foothold, but once he had he descended the pipe quickly and quietly.
"Now you!" he whispered up to Peter.
Peter reached out with just one hand and grabbed the drainpipe before swinging out of the window as though he intended to fly after all. Brolly braced to catch him, but he slammed the side of the building with both feet and then slid down the drainpipe nearly as quick as falling, hitting the ground next to Brolly with an "oof."
"I said careful," said Brolly, but what did Peter Pan ever know of careful? Brolly reached for the sword in his belt, but it wasn't there. It was back in the building, next to Carl's still body. He felt naked and off balance without it.
"Come on," he said. "We'll find a better place to fly home from."
They found no better place, though they searched all night, and when the sun started coming up over the tops of the buildings, their arms and legs were pink with cold and Brolly felt the familiar twinge of hunger in his gut. They were in a very different part of town by now, surrounded by large, intimidating buildings. Men in suits were starting to appear in the streets, carrying briefcases and walking briskly.
"We need to find something to eat," Brolly said, rubbing his cold hands together. Peter scowled.
"We need to get back to Neverland," he said.
"Well, we can't," Brolly snapped. Peter glared at him and Brolly rubbed his eyes and sighed. "We won't be able to find our way home until tonight when the stars come out again, captain," he said. "And before then we need some food and sleep."
"I don't need food or sleep. I think we should climb that," he said, pointing at a tall building. "I'm sure I could fly from there."
"We're not doing anything until tonight," said Brolly. "And yes you do. People need food and sleep."
"Well I'm not a person," Peter responded petulantly.
A voice spoke up behind them. "Are you boys lost?"
Brolly spun around to face a tall woman with kind eyes looking down at them in concern. He looked over at Peter, who was staring distrustfully at the woman from behind Brolly.
"Sort of, ma'am," said Brolly. The woman looked around.
"Where's your mother?" she said. "Or your father?"
"We haven't got any of those," he answered. The woman looked much more alarmed at that than Brolly felt the statement warranted.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. Brolly looked over at Peter again, who had his arms crossed over his chest and was saying nothing. Brolly looked back at the woman. He nodded. Her face creased in sympathy.
"Why don't you come home with me?" she said. "Just for now. I'll get you some food and warm clothes. I'm Miss Holmes. What are your names?"
Brolly paused for a moment. He no longer remembered any name he had before "Brolly," but he did remember that this was not a proper name to grown-ups. He couldn't remember whether "Peter" was a real name either. He looked over at Peter one last time, but the boy's jaw was clamped shut. He looked back at the woman, and then over her shoulder at the big black building behind her. There was a bronze plaque on the side of it, with lots of names—long, important, real names.
"I'm… I'm Mycroft," he said. "And he's… Sherlock."
"My," said the woman, smiling. "Those are some big grown-up names for big grown-up boys."
"Yes ma'am," he replied. "Very grown-up."
One day in the kind woman's beautiful house turned into two, turned into three, turned into a week, turned into a month. She bought them new clothes, and when Brolly lingered in front of the umbrellas at the store, she bought him one, big and black and with not a single rip or broken spoke. He missed his old one, but as far as he knew it was still propped against a wall in an underground den far, far away.
They tried for the first several nights to fly out the window of the guest room where they stayed, but it never worked. And when they stopped trying, it was Brolly who stayed by the window until he fell asleep, staring at the second star to the right. Sherlock seemed offended that he couldn't fly, and kept to his bed in a sulk.
A stern man in a suit came to visit Miss Holmes, and they spoke to him. She signed some papers and when the man in the suit left she was their new mummy. When she looked at the two of them and called them "Mycroft" and "Sherlock" with warmth in her voice and pleased eyes, Peter did not smile, but he took her hand. His trousers had pockets, and while he yet resisted shoes, there was not a single leaf caught in his curly hair.
That night, in the bedroom they still shared, Brolly sat in the window and stared at the second star again.
"Peter?" he said. There was no answer from the lump on the bed. "Peter." The covers rustled. But nothing more. "Sherlock."
The other boy turned sleepily over to face him and rubbed his eyes.
"What is it?" he said peevishly.
"Do you think the Lost Boys wonder what happened to us?" he asked. "It's been such a long time."
"What are you on about, Mycroft?" scowled Sherlock.
Mycroft shook his head. "Nothing," he sighed. "Go to sleep."
"Sorry, I don't know when he'll be back," John said, handing Mycroft a cup of tea. "I don't even know where he went, he left while I was running an errand. Sometimes he does that, just vanishes, doesn't tell me anything. I never get a straight answer, like whatever he was doing is too obscenely boring to be worth remembering long enough to tell me."
Mycroft shook his head as he took a sip. "Yes, he's always been… forgetful. I only found out what he did all day when I came along."
"Surprised he let you," said John. "I mean, just 'cause you two don't… Y'know, get on."
"We weren't always who we are now," Mycroft replied. Then he smiled, a small, wry smile. "And I let him think he was in charge. That helped."
John grinned. "It does that, yeah." There was a great bang from downstairs, and John rolled his eyes. "And there's himself now. He'll accuse me of harboring the enemy."
Sherlock thumped up the stairs and threw the door open, his expression stormy, which only got stormier when he saw Mycroft.
"What are you doing here? I wouldn't have come back if I'd known."
"Yeah, thanks for coming back at all, by the way," said John. "It's been four hours, you couldn't have left a note?"
"You were out and I couldn't wait for you to come back," scowled Sherlock, tugging his scarf off and throwing it on his chair as he headed into the kitchen.
"I was gone for five minutes!" John protested. "What was so urgent?"
Sherlock opened the refrigerator and glared over his shoulder at Mycroft.
"Not saying," he declared, pulling out a petri dish and inspecting its contents.
John threw up his hands. "Oh for God's sake, don't be so childish."
Neither of them saw Mycroft's strange expression at that, a smile and something else. "Oh, I'm not sure if I'd recognize him if he ever weren't," he said. He stood, taking up his big black umbrella from where he had propped it against the chair. "Sherlock, I've left a case on your desk in case you might deign to open it. Needless to say it's classified government information, so I'll thank you not to leave it on your seat on the tube."
Sherlock opened his mouth to begin a no doubt highly sarcastic retort when his phone chimed with a text. He pulled it out hurriedly, read the text, and grinned at his screen.
"Hah! He reneged, I knew he would. John, hurry and you can come along this time."
"Well, I'll take my leave," said Mycroft. "John, thank you for the tea. Please try to get Sherlock to look at the folder, will you?"
"Yes, of course," said John as he grabbed his coat. "Who reneged?" he directed at Sherlock.
"Lestrade. He told me he didn't need me for his current case so I went and interviewed the victim's landlord," he said, spilling the held secret anyway in his smug excitement. "Texted Lestrade about the man's shoelaces and apparently we're invited after all." Mycroft stepped out the door and started down the stairs as John locked the flat and Sherlock carried on. "God, finally, finally a good one. I'll tell you about it in the taxi. Oh, it's interesting. Very smart. A jewel of a murder, you'll love it."
"I don't love murders, Sherlock," replied John, but Mycroft could hear the smile in his voice.
Sherlock paid him no attention, his victory not squelched by John's admonishments. He let out a crow like a rooster, loud and triumphant. John laughed in disbelief, and at the bottom of the stairs, Mycroft smiled to himself, hooked his umbrella over his arm, and walked out to his waiting car.