I own no part of Sherlock, BBC produced or otherwise.
Orbiting the sun
by Kaiyo no Hime
"Oh, that's beautiful Sherlock," Violent smiled, listening as her youngest son pulled the bow across the strings of his violin and let Mozart drift through the room, "Just beautiful. I love it when you play."
Sherlock smiled and played on, enjoying the feeling of making his precious mother proud. He was all of five years old and completely devoted to the pale haired woman. She was nearly his entire world, outside of Mycroft, and he circled around her gladly. He would always circle around her and try to make her smile, forever and ever, his tiny brain swore. He couldn't imagine life any other way.
Mycroft stood at the doorway, staring in at the pleasant scene in the conservatory with sad eyes. He knew it was nice now, nice when everyone was smiling and everything was calm, but he knew that would change. Sherlock was too young to remember the bad times, too young to understand them. But Mycroft could. He knew it wouldn't last. But he enjoyed it while it did. It would be good if Sherlock could remember this, he thought to himself, remember the pleasant times.
It would give him something to hold onto when they drifted away.
"Sherlock," Violet smiled, shaking her youngest child awake in the middle of the night, "Come on Sherlock, you have to get up and pack now."
Sherlock groaned and rolled over, cuddling his teddy bear tighter to his form.
"Sherlock Holmes, you will get up this instant and listen to your mother," Violent snapped, pulling the blankets away from his form.
Sherlock mewled and rolled over, looking up at his mother with confused eyes. He knew she had been acting oddly for days, he had tried to help, had even tried to cook breakfast in bed for her (although she hadn't been in bed, hadn't slept in what seemed like days from what he could tell), but she seemed happy. And he just wanted his Mummy to be happy.
"Mummy," Sherlock slurred, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, "What's wrong Mummy?"
Violet smiled and ran her hand gently through his darkening curls. With a quick step she had lifted him out of bed and placed him, standing, on the floor, and a suitcase on his bed in his stead. Sherlock watched, confused, as she opened the luggage and began to set his clothes inside.
"Mummy?"
"We're going on a trip to visit your grandmother, Sherlock," Violet smiled, brushing stray strands of hair out of her eyes, "You want to see your grandmother, don't you?"
"Grandmother in France," Sherlock asked, blinking.
"Yes, my mother, your grandmother in France," Violet smiled, crouching down to kiss Sherlock's forehead, "Of course my brilliant little Sherlock would know that. Just think of all the sorts of adventures we can have in France! Maybe we can even see pirates and chase Peter Pan!"
"Mummy," Mycroft's voiced echoed from the doorway as he stood there, fully dressed and looking very tired, "I'll help Sherlock pack."
"That's my darling Mycroft!" Violet smiled, swishing out into the hallway and out of sight.
"Myrcoft," Sherlock asked, still clutching his teddy bear, "Is Mummy alright?"
Mycroft sighed, taking out some clothes for Sherlock to wear, and beginning to pack the rest of the essentials. He didn't know how to answer his younger brother. He just knew how to go along with everything, he didn't know how to explain it. He couldn't explain why their father avoided home so often, or why their mother stayed up for days at a time, wrapped up in her writing and studies, never sleeping or eating, and then crashed just as solidly and suddenly.
"Yes Sherlock, Mummy's fine," Mycroft sighed, looking down at his younger brother, "She's just happy that we're going to go visit grandmother. Are there any toys you want to pack?"
Sherlock shook his head, curls tumbling, and clutched his teddy bear tighter. He was a bright boy, he knew that things weren't alright. He knew that there was something wrong with his mother. But she was his mother. And Sherlock loved his Mummy dearly.
When Sherlock was six years and two weeks old, he tried to run away from home. He hadn't seen his mother in days, she had gone away to rest for a little while Mycroft had assured him. She had just been very, very tired, and so Mycroft was going to look after him. It was just a few days, he had been assured. Just until she was feeling better. Sherlock had known Mycroft was lying.
And so Sherlock had run away to find his Mummy.
It took Mycroft six hours to find him, curled up under a tree in a park near their home, soaked solid by the rain storm. Mycroft had collapsed to the ground, picking up his little brother, so tiny in his arms, and held him close, sobbing.
"Not you too," Mycroft had cried, "Don't leave me too."
Sherlock, shivering and coughing, had nodded. And had spent the next two weeks in bed with pneumonia. Their mother had returned a week after his cough had cleared up, and neither brother mentioned the incident to their mother. Their father had never even known it happened under his watch.
"Mycroft," Sherlock whispered in the dead of night one night, eight years old and still holding his ragged teddy bear close, "Mycroft, something's wrong."
Mycroft groaned and turned over in his sleep, staring blearily at his younger brother. Sherlock looked afraid, nearly terrified, and that's all that it took for Mycroft to bolt out of bed, robe and slippers be damned. He looked his brother over carefully, checking for injuries as tears began to stream down the young boy's face.
"Sherlock, what's wrong," Mycroft asked carefully.
"Mummy," Sherlock whispered, "Mummy's in the downstairs hallway."
Mycroft frowned and took his brother's hand, walking towards the staircase. He was prepared for nearly anything from her repainting the entire hallway in the dead of night to her curled up on the ground sobbing. Mycroft knew her moods had been shifting wildly over the past month, and he was sure that father would send her away again.
What Mycroft did not expect was to see his mother swinging by a rope from the banister, clearly dead.
"Oh god," Mycroft whispered, clutching his sobbing brother close and turning him away from the gruesome scene.
Sherlock kept crying and pleading for Mummy for the next week, even though he knew she was dead. He understood death. He knew it was the biological end of life, the loss of the spark that lit up eyes and drove people, and the decomposition of human remains. But he was eight years old and wanted his mother. Fifteen year old Mycroft did what he could, everything he could, to be there for his brother.
The funeral was silent, widely attended by relatives that neither of them knew well, and the two boys stayed as far away from all of them as possible. Especially their father. Mycroft blamed him for not seeing just how bad their mother had gotten, and their father just stared at his sons with calculating eyes.
Mycroft hated those eyes, his own eyes, passionately for the rest of his life.
When Mycroft was seventeen he moved out of the solid, empty house to attend university, leaving his younger brother far behind. He was gone, studying abroad in some European country, when Sherlock's moods began to shift. He was still far away when Sherlock sat up one day, studying an experiment in depth, and realized that he had neither ate or slept in over forty eight hours, and remembered his mother doing the same thing.
Mycroft, the only person Sherlock had ever been close to outside of their dead mother, was gone the first time Sherlock had a break down, sobbing and staying in bed for days, when he realized just how much like his mother he was. Mycroft only showed up when Sherlock was placed in the same institution their mother had occupied all those many, many years ago.
He was only there because Sherlock had tried to take his life.
"Sherlock," Mycroft sighed, sitting next to the sixteen year old's bed, "Oh my Sherlock."
"Is this what Mummy went through," Sherlock asked, staring up at the ceiling, "Is this why Mummy killed herself?"
"Oh Sherlock," Mycroft sighed, taking his brother's hand, "There's medication, it can be controlled. It's not perfect, but there's-"
"There's nothing," Sherlock roared, "Everyone leaves, no one cares!"
Mycroft recoiled away from the angry teen.
"Just a short drop and a sudden stop. Just like in all the pirate stories Mummy used to read. You should have left me to die under the tree Mycroft, it would have been better than this. Better than dissolving into this."
"Sherlock, please," Mycroft whispered.
"You're only here because you want to make sure I don't shame the family," Sherlock sneered, "You're only here because father thinks you'd be better talking me into something than he would."
"No, of course not!"
"Leave Mycroft," Sherlock roared, "Only Mummy understood me! And you're not my Mummy, no matter how hard you try to replace her!"
Mycroft fled the room, his brother's words haunting him. He knew Sherlock was sick, that he didn't really mean anything he had said, but still they followed him. And he did something then that he would regret for the rest of his life; he left. Completely.
Oh, he made sure Sherlock received proper medical care after his drug overdoses, and he payed for rehab time after time. He watched out for his younger brother from afar, doing anything and everything in his power to make sure that he was happy, and that he did not travel the same path as their mother.
Instead he seemed to be traveling a far worse one. Instead of wrapping himself up in something safe and sane like their mother had, he turned to violence and crime. He solved murders and chased criminals and took insane risks with his life. But it gave him something to concentrate on, something positive, no matter how disturbing, so Mycroft merely watched, and prayed.
And, one day, his prayers were answered.
A short, sturdy, blond doctor fresh home from war moved in with his brother, and his brother seemed to adjust his life to him. And, for the first time in decades, Mycroft thought, for just one moment, that Sherlock might honestly survive. His life was dangerous, and he was under no illusion that he wouldn't still be called in to identify Sherlock's corpse on an autopsy table one day; but now there was the glimmering chance that Sherlock might die happily of other causes other than his own hand.
And, for Mycroft, that's the most he could hope for. Sherlock had a sun to orbit again with his John Watson.
Author's Note: Sherlock's mania is very similar to classic symptoms of bipolar disorder (of course, I am not a licensed medical doctor, so I couldn't make such an official diagnosis, but Sherlock Holmes is also a fictional character, so I really don't he would mind me commenting on it), and I could see how such a disease might have shattered the Holmes family before, and why Mycroft and Sherlock were so estranged from each other.