So this is my entry to Mid0nz's fabulous "Mr. Blue Skull Fan Creations Contest". I always thought that I wanted to write a little background story that explains how Sherlock got the skull and Mid0nz's competition inspired me to this little piece that links the two skulls and uses them to tell a little story set post season three. Don't want to give away spoilers here. I hope you like it.
Chapter 1 - Retrieving
Mycroft stepped out of his black car and walked past the police tape towards 221b Baker Street. He stopped to look at the house which in the light of dawn didn't look to bad. He was surprised that the walls were still intact. Soot covered some patches of the walls beneath one of the windows of Sherlock's flat. All windows were broken and now covered with plastics, but otherwise the house seemed to be fine. Mycroft stopped in front of the entrance door that looked untouched. The knocker was set straight and so he reached out to set it a bit lopsided just like his brother liked it. He smiled.
"Sir?" Anthea asked by his side pulling him out of his thoughts.
"I will go in alone. Wait here." Mycroft said without looking at his assistant. He opened the door and carefully stepped into the hallway. The air was still filled with the smell of chemicals and burnt furniture. It felt a bit damp as the residues of the extinguishing water were still lingering in the air, but fortunately the fires caused by the explosion were rather small and had been put out fast. He carefully walked up the stairs. The steps were still intact. Mycroft had ordered his people to make sure the building was safe to enter in order to rescue whatever had survived the blast of the explosion. But before they would gather Sherlock's belongings Mycroft wanted to take a look, no, he wanted to get the important things himself, things that may help his brother to realize that he would be able to move on.
When he stepped into the former living room he was shocked. He had seen pictures before, but standing here had a totally different effect. The bomb had been in the kitchen beneath the kitchen table when it went off, but by the look of everything it could have been in the living room as well. Suddenly Mycroft was acutely aware of how lucky Sherlock had been to survive. He had stood just a step away from the doorframe just like Mycroft did now and therefore was reached only by parts of the explosion. For whatever reason he must have hesitated to walk further into the flat and that had saved his life. A few seconds later and he might have been in the living room or even in the kitchen. The explosion was meant to kill him. It was still bad enough and Mycroft could easily spot the blood stains on the floor and the walls, testimony to the multiple injuries his brother had sustained. While each single cut and laceration was not so bad, the sheer number of them was horrific. That and the punctured lung due to some broken ribs had led to a life-threatening blood loss and added to the injuries he had sustained before. Damn Moriarty. I should have killed him the first time I got hold of him, Mycroft thought as pictures of his brother in the ICU crossed his mind. The memory of his brother's body covered in bandages, unconscious and on ventilation in a hospital bed made him shudder. He had spent way too much time sitting beside his brother in hospitals over the last few years.
He shook his head as if to get rid of those memories. Carefully Mycroft took one more step into the room and looked around. The light of the rising sun flickered through the plastic discs that covered the windows and it highlighted the swirling dust. The floor was covered with debris. Paper and glass shards were everywhere. He was looking for two special things. While his brother had a tendency to collect all kind of strange stuff, Mycroft knew that he didn't really care about most of it. Only two things had a real relevance for him. Mycroft walked to what had once been a window; covered under all the rubble he saw the brown case. It was a stroke of luck that it was closed when the explosion happened. He pulled it out and carefully brushed the broken bits of glass away and opened the case. He sighed with relieve when he saw the violin to be intact. Again memories flooded his brain. Mycroft had given Sherlock this violin before he went to Cambridge. It was an old and quite expensive instrument. He had asked his parents to lend him the money to be able to buy it. And he vividly remembered the bright eyes of his brother, who had already whined that as a ten-year old he shouldn't play a child violin anymore. Sherlock had immediately grabbed the instrument and after the few seconds it took him to tune it he instantly coaxed beautiful sounds out of the old violin. Mycroft closed the case again and put it on the table on top of the chaos of papers and broken glass.
Next he walked up to the mantelpiece, but the skull was not there. He looked around and started to carefully dig around in the rubble below, but the skull was nowhere to be seen. Mycroft dropped to his knees and looked under the leather chair, just to be greeted by a hollow look of the skull. He pulled it out and saw that beside some small cracks it seemed to be okay as well.
"Hi Victor." He said to the skull and smirked. Now he talked to the skull just like his brother used to do it. He had always scolded Sherlock for doing so as he found that it was an unhealthy coping mechanism, especially since Mycroft was one of the few people who knew whose skull it really was. More than once Mycroft had asked Sherlock to bury the skull, but Sherlock had always ignored his brother's pleas. Carefully Mycroft put the skull beside the violin case and turned around. He had nearly forgotten that the skull was always accompanied by another skull. As he looked for the painting that once hung beside the sofa he remembered the strange discussion he had with Sherlock just after he had moved into the Baker Street flat. He had asked why he had not put the picture in the middle of the empty wall and Sherlock had given him a look like he was an idiot before explaining something about the perfect angle and that they always needed to see each other. Back then Mycroft had needed a moment to realize that Sherlock talked about the skulls. And then his brother proceeded and explained that in this angle he easily could see them both when he was sitting on his chair, a triangle that represented certain lengths and angles. Mycroft didn't want to argue and didn't ask any further questions. His brother was different and he had accepted that, at least in this context.
The skull picture was predictably no longer at the wall; it had fallen to the ground. Mycroft gently turned it around to discover that the Perspex front that was painted with the silver part of the skull was broken and that splatters of what was surely Sherlock's blood mottled the cracked surface. Still held by the four bolts the skull had an even eerier look than before, broken and bloodied. Mycroft picked it up and leaned the painting against the door frame and once more turned around.
Mycroft took a deep breath. The rest of Sherlock's belongings would be collected by his staff, cleaned and repaired if possible. This was much easier to cope with than his broken brother, he thought for a moment. He slowly walked to the table and clamped the violin case under his left arm, took the skull in one hand and walked to the door where he picked up the painting with his other hand. He turned around again and took one last look back into the flat before he left the building.