When he was seven years old Mycroft was presented with a small bundle by his parents. Holding it he'd seen a pair of bright eyes staring back at him, and a light fuzz of black hair coating a tiny head. "This is your brother" His mother had told him. Mycroft remembered finding that incredibly patronizing what else was it going to be? A child father had kidnapped? "His name's Sherlock" The elder child had stared into those eyes as they focused on his face and a tiny hand as it touched his cheek. Even at the age of seven Mycroft was a cold and distant child. He rejected hugs and any displays of affection from his mother, but to his parent's complete astonishment he held the baby close to his chest and let the little one grab hold of his thumb and pull. The brothers had continued with their silence for a time until their mother realising her newborn must be tiring reached to take Sherlock away.
At once the baby had burst into tears and started shrieking. Mycroft tightened his hold on his brother not wanting to let him go. Mother had argued with them but each time she moved to take the baby away from its brother the child began to cry. So on his first night in the world Sherlock Holmes slept curled against his brother's chest, both hearts beating in sync as the two geniuses slept.
As they got older, Sherlock began to act in the way his parents had hoped he wouldn't, like Mycroft. His older brother was his role model and everything Mycroft did Sherlock wanted part of. When he went back to school after one summer a three year old Sherlock had demanded to be allowed to go to school with his brother. But there were differences while Mycroft remained aloof and cold to everyone but Sherlock, his little brother was loud and demanding. He would throw tantrums to get what he wanted while Mycroft preferred to reason until his demands were met. By the time Sherlock was four Mycroft was the only person who could make him see reason when he was being outrageous, which was of course nearly all the time. Mother didn't know what to do with Sherlock she tried getting him do read which had worked for a time until the young boy had started testing designs from books in real life. After a disastrous afternoon where Sherlock had managed to blow up the shed with a home-made explosive he was banned from reading. When Sherlock turned five, Mother rejoiced by sending him to school hoping that it would provide enough distractions for the possibly hyperactive child. That however didn't work for long, Sherlock was far above the level of his classmates and saw no reason to keep that fact to himself. The young Holmes spent his first week completing all the work in the course and the second informing his class that they were all idiots and would never amount to anything. In under a month Sherlock was asked to leave school.
Mycroft intervened after discovering the boy dissecting a lizard in the front yard using a butterknife. He led his little brother inside and told him that while yes Sherlock was smarter than the rest of the school he didn't need to tell them that and that a real genius wouldn't. Mycroft was the one who taught Sherlock to observe and deduce. It started as a game, Mycroft would tell Sherlock to observe at a dinner party their parents threw, and Sherlock had to do it without asking them any questions of course. Later when their parents ordered them away from their guests, Sherlock would tell Mycroft everything he'd deduced. At first he'd get things wrong his fantastic imagination didn't deal with the ordinary very well, a recently repaired tear didn't mean hard monetary times to Sherlock it meant that the wearer had been in a sword fight. Sherlock loved the game and simply lit up every time Mycroft told him he was right. Their parents were grateful that Mycroft had found a way to stop Sherlock insulting every person who walked through their door. Mycroft never told them exactly what Sherlock was saying when he whispered in his brother's ear and was rewarded with a subtle nod. Mother was better off not knowing who her dinner guests were sleeping with. In the end Sherlock was placed in a different school and Mycroft had thought that was the end of their problems.
Except that Sherlock's new past time wasn't helped by his inability to keep his mouth shut. Even if it wasn't Mycroft who was next to Sherlock would turn to them and tell them his deductions. Unfortunately not everyone praised Sherlock for his deductions like Mycroft did. His classmates were not impressed with his power to discover their secrets and announce them to the world. The first time Sherlock was called a freak he couldn't have been older than seven. Mycroft had been waiting for him after school while Sherlock walked towards him. Mycroft had noted his brother had been talking with a group of people before he'd seen him, optimistically he'd hoped that Sherlock was finally making friends. Only one of the boys had shouted after Sherlock "Yeah you'd better run freak." Sherlock had stiffened completely and for one second Mycroft had been sure he was going to cry. Sherlock never cried. Their father believed tears were a sign of weakness and Sherlock was eager to please.
Mycroft remembered walking forwards ready to hit the boy who'd upset Sherlock when his little brother surprised him. "I might be a freak but at least my mother doesn't have to sleep with my teacher so I pass a test" Sherlock's voice was cold before he turned to his brother and walked out of the school with a simple "Shall we?". He didn't know exactly what to expect from Sherlock once they were out of the school. Was his brother going to cry?
"It's okay Sherlock" Mycroft tried to comfort, the Holmes' brothers never really did comforting well. They were emotionally detached to most and Mycroft really had no idea how to cheer up his brother. Sherlock had never been sad in all the time Mycroft had known him even when he was banned from reading Sherlock had just nodded and walked away. Later Mycroft had opened the door to Sherlock's room and found him with an old padlock in front of him industrially trying to open it without the key. Mycroft attempted to lay a hand on Sherlock's shoulder offering physical comfort. "Are you alright?"
Sherlock's blue eyes looked up at Mycroft's own and he could see the confusion in the younger's. "Of course I'm alright. Honestly you were the one who taught me not to pay attention to what people say. You said, people lie Sherlock don't trust their words. Why shouldn't I be alright if he's just saying are just words, and words are lies? Are we going to get ice-cream?" Mycroft nodded thinking about what his brother had said. He was impressed with his brother's attitude to the bully. Sherlock was distractible and nothing kept his attention long so his sudden change in conversational topic wasn't surprising. But Mycroft later wondered if this time it had been a front, an attempt to placate Mycroft.
It was years before Sherlock was called a freak again everyone remembered what the youngest Holmes had done to the pervious person who'd called him that. If you didn't want you darkest secret revealed you didn't insult Sherlock. However Sherlock continued to lack friends. Most of the other students were scared of his ability, the others hated Sherlock for his intelligence. Mother had him sent to countless psychologists where all Sherlock received was a diagnosis of Asperger's. Sherlock didn't care. To Sherlock it didn't matter if he had no friends, he had Mycroft who as he frequently said was his only friend.
One good thing that came out of Sherlock's therapy was the violin. One of his doctors suggested that perhaps if Sherlock shifted the energy he spent deducing to the violin he could make more friends. The doctor was wrong though, Sherlock simply devoted himself to both. The deductions didn't stop but now they were joined by Sherlock's incessant violin playing. Sherlock didn't understand other people's sleeping habits. If he was awake at two in the morning he would do as he wanted. He didn't understand that there were only certain hours he could practice the violin. If you could practice violin at ten in the morning you could do it at two according to Sherlock's logic.
In the end Mother approached Mycroft and asked him to stop Sherlock. Sitting his then ten year old brother on his bed and telling him to stop playing the violin was hard. Sherlock had looked at him with those wide confused eyes and said "but I love the violin". Mycroft sighed and sat next to him, explaining that Mother wasn't sleeping and that was because of Sherlock. You could accuse Sherlock of many things but not caring about his family was not one of them. "That's because of me" he whispered and then leapt off the bed and took his violin bow from where it rested on his desk. Mycroft could see the dilemma his brother was facing, he loved both his Mother and the violin. Before he could say a word Sherlock snapped the violin bow. Mycroft was off the bed in an instant.
"Sherlock you didn't have to do that"
Sherlock was looking at the pieces of the bow in his hands still held together by the horse hair. To Mycroft's absolute terror there was a single tear glistening on his brother's cheek. He looked up at his seventeen-year-old brother, "It was upsetting Mummy"
"She only wanted you to stop playing at night"
Sherlock looked at the violin again. "It doesn't matter. It's just an object." Sherlock's voice was actually trembling. "I've still got you don't I?" Sherlock smiled up at him "You're not going anywhere."
So that was why Mycroft didn't tell Sherlock about being accepted to Oxford University the night he found out. His brother lived his whole life with Mycroft only minutes from him. Leaving him was going to be the worst thing Mycroft ever did. Mycroft wondered how he was going to tell the dark haired boy.
In the end Sherlock wouldn't let him say anything. A month before Mycroft was due to leave when he was still figuring out what he was going to tell Sherlock, their father died. Mrs Holmes cried but her children didn't. Although the heart attack had been a surprise, it was entirely unexpected Mr Holmes had a history of heart problems most due to his constant smoking. A few days later and two before the funeral Sherlock approached Mycroft. "Do you think they'd let me autopsy the body?"
Mycroft stared at his little brother trying to keep the disgust off his face. The bright eyed eleven-year-old awaited an answer "He died of a heart attack Sherlock, you know that."
"I know, I just want to get to see what a real corpse is like."
Mycroft would regret what he said next to the end of his days, he was under a lot of pressure. Mother had broken down, no-one was looking after the house and Sherlock needed someone to look after him as well, he was planning his father's funeral. But no excuse would ever make Mycroft feel better about what he'd said to Sherlock that day in the garden. "He's not a corpse freak, he's our father"
Sherlock had flinched away as though he'd been slapped across the face. His eyes watered but he didn't cry. He shook his head softly as if he couldn't believe Mycroft had said those words before turning on his heel and running back towards the house. Mycroft had shouted after him, begged his brother to forgive him but Sherlock had never turned around. He'd tried knocking on his door, talking to him through it but all he got in response was silence. This was the first of Sherlock's silent periods. For three days he didn't talk. For the first two he didn't leave his room, neither Mycroft or their mother could persuade him to eat or even open the door.
On the day of the funeral they'd been minutes away from calling a locksmith when Sherlock had opened the door dressed in a suit with dark circles under his eyes. At the funeral Sherlock again hadn't spoken just staring at people who tried to tell him how sorry they were. Mycroft tried to hold Sherlock's hand while they watched the casket getting lowered into the dirt and one of their aunts held their mother as she cried. Sherlock shot him that same betrayed look and removed his hand.
The next morning Sherlock was sitting across from Mycroft at breakfast as Mother attempted to make up for her days of weeping. She asked Sherlock about the violin forgetting the silence that had filled the house for the past months. Mycroft hoped Sherlock would forgive her this forgetfulness and he did as he answered, "I've stopped playing." She looked confused but Mycroft thanked whatever god was out there that she didn't question it any further. Only then she turned to him and asked if he was all packed and ready to move to Oxford. Sherlock's eyes had snapped up to meet his and his voice had gone as cold as the day he was first called a freak as he said "Yes Mycroft when are you moving to Oxford?"
The double betrayal would never be forgiven in Sherlock's eyes Mycroft knew that. So as the years went on and Sherlock grew up Mycroft did the only thing he could do. He watched. He saw Sherlock leave high school, saw him move to London and he saw him fall apart. Sherlock fell into a world of drugs and alcohol preferring to dull his senses instead of deducing as Mycroft taught him.
And then that Detective Inspector Lestrade came into Sherlock's life. He gave Sherlock something he could do and for that Mycroft would be eternally grateful. Slowly his brother stopped the drugs all except nicotine. Maybe Sherlock was more like their father than Mycroft had thought. He wasn't sure if it was an abuse of his power to have Sherlock followed every day but he felt it was his duty as a brother who'd failed him once.
When Doctor Watson entered Sherlock's life, Mycroft had been more than wary. People getting close to Sherlock was not normal. Sherlock was putting faith in this man, Mycroft wasn't going to let another person disappoint his little brother. But John was loyal, he didn't take the money offered. Sherlock had someone who couldn't even be bribed away from him after five hours, Doctor Watson could stay.
And stay he did. His brother and the good doctor were inseparable. Sherlock rose in fame, he became a household name while someone else came to the attention of Mycroft. Jim Moriarty was a criminal like no-one had seen before. He was kept in a sealed room for months and the only thing he said was Sherlock. His brother had a history with the so called consulting criminal. He needed information from the monster so he did the only thing that would work he told him about Sherlock. Moriarty told him whatever he wanted to know so long as Mycroft would tell him about his brother. There was no dangers in words wasn't there. He remembered what Sherlock had once said 'words are lies'. He prayed he hadn't doomed his brother with his actions.
He asked John to look after Sherlock knowing that the solider would do it anyway. He could only hope he was enough to protect Sherlock from Moriarty. Sherlock would have had to have figured out that Mycroft had been the one who gave Moriarty the ammunition to destroy him but he wasn't the one who confronted him. Mycroft had betrayed Sherlock too many times in his brother's eyes there was no point confronting him but John? John was angry, he knew what Mycroft had done. Mycroft had done what was right for the government, he'd gotten Moriarty to cooperate but he'd done it by damning his brother. He meant what he told John. He was sorry. More sorry than he'd ever been before, calling Sherlock a freak had been the mistake of child, this one could kill his little brother.
And it did. Sherlock jumped from the roof top of a hospital that had helped him solve so many of his cases. Mycroft did what Sherlock did when his father died, he stopped talking. It was his damned mouth that had got them here. His brother was lying under the dirt miles away from where they'd grown up because Mycroft's words.
He went to the funeral but he stood well back. There were few people there, many believed that Sherlock was a fraud. None of them realised that their distrust had doomed the greatest man they would ever meet. Doctor Watson stood closest to the coffin as it was buried, his landlady beside him. DI Lestrade was there as well as one of the doctors from the hospital. The four of them watched the casket get lowered. Mycroft could not join them. He wasn't one of them. He might have been Sherlock's brother but they were Sherlock's family.
He wondered sometimes had Watson ever passed his message on to Sherlock? Had Sherlock known that his brother was sorry, that if he could redo it he'd change everything? It made no difference. His brother still died. Mycroft wondered if Sherlock would ever have forgiven him for everything he'd done. There was no way of knowing of course and Mycroft couldn't help but think he didn't deserve his brother's forgiveness.
Alone in his house that night, Mycroft opened the box he kept hidden deep in his closet and took out the small violin that was kept there. After Sherlock had moved to London, Mycroft had claimed the violin from where it had constantly lain on Sherlock's desk. He had kept it for years as a reminder of the little boy Sherlock had once been. The snapped bow had been thrown away years ago and the violin itself hadn't been played in decades. But on the night of Sherlock's funeral Mycroft held it in his hand and for the first time in decades cried. He hadn't cried when his father died, or when he left home, or when Sherlock had nearly died after an overdose. Sherlock was the only person who could fool Mycroft as he'd once said. Maybe some part of him had hoped that this was all one of Sherlock's tricks that he was about to walk in laughing at Mycroft's sentimentality. But Sherlock was not this cruel. He would not keep it up this long. He would not let them all think him dead and buried.
But this was no trick. Sherlock Holmes was dead, the world thought him a fraud and he had died because of his brother's actions. So Mycroft cried and wished for he could take his brother's place if that meant Sherlock would live.