When Mycroft was thirteen; his father died and took his mother's will with him.
He saw it happen, right in front of his eyes; his mother crumbled and disappeared as well as his father's heartbeat. The shell left of her was a sobbing mess that could barely handle the blinding pain of losing the person she loved the most and seeing the string attached to her wrist turn black, leaving him in charge of making the important calls and taking his brother away so he didn't see what was left of his parents, what was left of his family.
The day they buried his father, Mycroft buried his heart as well.
He couldn't love like his mother had loved his father; he couldn't allow himself to be destroyed in that way. He closed the doors to his feelings and became a machine, keeping his mind busy and trying to put his mother back together, taking care of himself and his brother.
Sherlock never understood.
He hadn't seen their mother when they told her their father was dead, he wasn't there, he just cried into theirs Nana's arms and calmed by Papa's voice as he promised him that everything was going to be alright.
It wasn't.
His mother's cries still ringed in Mycroft's head at night, the ghost of his father heavy on his back and the responsibility of taking care of his family ate him alive, he was just thirteen when he had to hold to his mother's hand to stop her from scratching her face off because of the grief she felt, and he couldn't allow himself to ever become her, he loved her but he locked that love in a box and threw the key inside his father's grave.
People kept telling him it was going to be okay; eventually everything was going to be alright.
But it never was.
At least not for Mycroft, especially after Sherlock took it against him, resenting his decision of closing his heart, kept telling him that he was stupid for not seeing how amazing bonds were and how useful they could be to strengthen the human soul.
Mycroft could only think on how a bond had broken his mother's.
He grew up before his time, at fifteen he was a certified genius and people was afraid of him, he was a social creature but they knew he could manipulate them like they were jus rag dolls for his entertainment, disposed as soon as he got bored of them or weren't useful enough.
Ice man, they called him, they went to him because of interest and fear, asking for his help to solve mindless problems and in change he got favors, even from his teachers.
They called Sherlock a Monster.
He tried to stop them but eventually gave up, his brother's intentions got all mixed up and people never saw him as he was, took him for a freak and made fun of him, never in front of Mycroft, but he knew, everybody knew.
He graduated early and got himself a job in national security, being shipped off to strange countries barely at eighteen, training to become a real agent for MI5, learning to charm his way into people giving him information and taking a strange pleasure in torturing those who denied it to him, suddenly becoming a demon in the shadows of the system, feared by many and respected by even more.
He was building a kingdom and getting himself a crown, he had no use for a heart.
When Sherlock was eighteen he was still at college, which was a surprise to him, his brother had little patience for the nonsense his teachers gave him, being smarter than the lot of them already, but there was something holding him there, someone. Victor Trevor fed his brother's idea of love being a good thing, exchanging feelings and sharing a strange bond that was half friendship and half love, thing that they needed because they knew they weren't threaded.
When Sherlock was nineteen he felt heartbreak for the first time and Mycroft couldn't pity him, he knew how it felt, losing someone you loved and thought loved you back, maybe not in the same way but he knew what it felt like to walk around with your heart in pieces, his was broken in parts so tiny that he might as well swept them under the carpet and forget about it.
Mycroft was now an active agent for MI6 and was well known for his cold hearted ways, they said he was a vampire, already dead and still walking the land of the living, taking away their secrets away like blood and destroying them without breaking a bone, he was feared and respected, admired, worshiped…
The ice King, they called him.
He had no heart, no time for feelings, caring was not an advantage; he reminded himself every night, thinking of his mother, alone in their old house and trying to pretend she was alright even when her heart broke every morning when the other side of her bed was empty, unable to smile sincerely and crying every time she saw what Mycroft had become, like it was a bad thing that he had achieved all of this.
Those nights, the ones he went to visit his mother, hurt him like a bullet wound, and he could honestly say; he had been shot a couple of times.
He thought that caring was not an advantage but he couldn't help but to care about his mother, and sit with her and hold her in his arms as she cried, wiping her tears away and promising that everything was okay, talking to her about Sherlock's obsession on other people's love life and making fun of him if only to see her lips curve a little at the corners. He would make tea and sit with her in the garden, gazing at the stars and think of what others would say if they saw him there, next to his old mother and actually acting as if blood was pumping through his veins, making the heart everybody (including him) denied existed.
One night Mycroft stood in a room full of bodies, all of their strings dissolving into ash, being burned by death and sweeping away into the wind. That night he went back to his apartment, locked the doors and sat on his bed, looking at his wrist and thinking, for the first time in years, about the other end.
Was there really someone waiting for him? He wasn't waiting for anybody and most people got a surprise when they actually met him and saw the vibrant red string hanging from his wrist, always expecting to see black tied around it, as if the tragic death of his threaded was the reason of his frozen heart. He thought of cutting it a lot, but something stopped him every single time, this night was going to be the one.
At least that was what he told to himself, grabbing his Chinese ring daggers.
He was going to cut it; he was going to end it.
The little voice in the back of his head that occasionally whispered to him that he could be loved and deserved it needed to shut up, and he was going to do it tonight.
He almost did it this time, but his hands shook so bad that he ended up cutting himself and throwing his daggers at the wall in a fit of rage. He couldn't do it and couldn't understand what stopped him.
He forgot about it, buried as deep as his feelings and kept on living, fueled by his own anger and when it finally exploded; he ending up hurting himself in a mission.
If someone asked him, he would tell them it had been nothing, just a little mistake and a couple of scrapes, really, nothing to worry about, every agent got a stab wound or two and a couple of bullets here and now, it was nothing new, he was okay.
If someone his partner, "Anthea", she would tell them the same, trying to forget about what had really happened, trying to erase the memory of Mycroft beaten and tortured, chained to a wall with his body bloodied and barely alive, it had taken months for him to even get up and walk around without fainting. It had been the worst she had ever seeing, no one in her unit had ever being treated and tortured the way Mycroft had been, she knew he was not okay.
Not that she ever told a soul about it. It was their secret, it would be forever.
After that, he got a desk job and slowly became the king in the shadows, the one to rule without a soul knowing. Sherlock called him the real British government and was always asking for favors to get his way, breaking into important buildings and trying to hide the fact that he had already believed Mycroft's words and forgot about love but still keeping a little bit of hope locked in his heart.
Mycroft gave his mother a last visit, just to let her know he was fine and that he wasn't coming back, and then threw whatever was left of his heart as far as he could, he didn't need it, he couldn't need it, he was already too broken to let himself believe in something as useless as love, allowing himself to be too close to someone else was something he couldn't do, people could be taken away and he knew it all too well. He threw his heart away and hoped to never need it again.
So, of course, he met Gregory Lestrade and his heart came back to punch him in the gut.
Hard.