Hello, all, I wrote the shortest thing ever. Also low quality, so yay. Clearly you're dying to read this now. But yes, Mycroft fic, a bit deep I guess if you overanalyze it. I don't own Sherlock by the way, or it would be back by now, regardless of what BBC would do.

He was in a meeting. Just another meeting, you know, shady government business that was none of your concern, thank you very much. It was night, and his office had a particular gloom about it, as he talked with yet another corrupted fellow about yet another subject he cared so little about.

He, in his ignorance, chose not to fear the electric feeling on his skin that evening, did not break a sweat over how heavy the silences felt when he was alone. He was a man of logic, he knew that any irregularity was scientific, reasonable, and on a basic level, controllable.

For what consequences ever arise from a prickling on one's neck? Easy to say such warnings of danger are made up by a media obsessed with witchcraft and aliens, engrained in our minds after thousands of years. Where do you see these warnings? Mycroft would scoff. In movies, and stories, stupid fairy tales that touch our deepest darkest inner corners and then curl there, hiding like a child. No sir, he would not give to these odd urges.

And yet, should he have heeded the warnings his own body gave him, he would have called his most trusted adversary, and the pair, an unnerved politician and a cold young woman, would enter the car, drive to the flat of the ill-causing brother, and take him away. Had he been in Mycroft's hands, maybe his own source of excessive heat would have overheated, died beside the waves of that chlorinated crime scene, just another link to young Karl Powers, the child being the epicentre of the day's earthquakes.

Or maybe the fiend, the devil entertained with his kidnapping, would be dissatisfied without the treat of total destruction. The toy would be his to keep for a bit, to toss around and drop and generally harm as all the young do for their entertainment. And maybe he would break that toy before the rightful owner could claim it. He, as a greedy thief, would break the wooden puppet, tear its strings and break its nose before Gepetto's presence.

But maybe the toy would not split and splinter as expected, but owner Gepetto arrives, takes his treat and punishes his thief. But the toy would be damaged, weak, and its time would decrease, and eventually he'd have to be thrown away, and Geppetto bleeds his sadness.

And Geppetto arrives because he escapes. A patch of silver hair would be seen helping his keen associate leave the detrimental force of the government, and his family's, tight fist. And the brother would make the older sibling envy him, with his run that could never be done, by his speed and agility the elder never had, the teased child, too hunched over books to bother with that sort of nonsense, books of fairy tales and foolishness that he loved until he hated himself, hated what he saw in the mirror, and left the Grimm Brothers and joined a soulless world of hunger and seriousness, of politics and law books.

But where the brother could have ran. To a pool, to a friend and enemy and to red lights shaking on his chest, but those being only a laughing matter, for he birthed a plan as he sped, and he saved all except the one he wanted saved, all but that and his sanity. For with absence comes confession, and the younger must admit to feelings unlike those observed in the typical sociopath. But that's a hard thing to admit, not being a tin man after all, suddenly open and alive, but so empty save a breaking heart.

Or maybe that same run would have ended at that same place, and instead the rescue attempt surprised the young brother and his friend with success, maybe both of them could get out just fine, and the elder would arrive and clean up just as elders do, you know, clean up the mess before mummy looks around and sees, before the bosses poke around and see. You must not upset the bosses, no not his. More than the job depends on that one, so hungry and serious is big brother's life.

But running so rarely ends in success, there are far more losers in the marathon than winners, and maybe another marathon came to London that night, neck in neck, police and government and Anthea and brother and brother, in which the wrong brother wins, in which the ending is not the snap of ribbon across a chest, but a catch, a chase ended, and older took younger back home for tea and scolding while a puppet was broken, wooden fingers snapped and painted face distorted.

But he realized these feelings of nerves and unexplained sweat so minutely, so barely recognizable, that he, being him, pushed them down. Should he have lived then as he lived so long ago, he would have responded to his body, would have grabbed coat and umbrella and ran out of his office, and oh, the possibilities.

And yet he didn't.

And that was the reason for it, for the call interrupting his meeting, for Anthea's rational voice to blankly reveal the younger's location, under a very large bit of debris. And a meeting ended, and many lives ended on that gloomy night.

In possibilities, how things are different. How lives are changed or stopped or reborn, how pain finds new homes and new people to feed from, sucking away joy like a starved parasite. For Mycroft, there were so many possibilities, so many chances to save the young brother. But he changed himself almost to the core, a change that took years of misguidance and self hatred, and lost his chance to heed the warnings.

And now brother and brother, with a bond already damaged, a bond thin as ratty string, are separated, with never a moment for apology, or explanation, or goodbye. And Mycroft will spend a lifetime convincing himself he had missed nothing, the younger had nothing to say to him, that the man wasn't human anyway. Spend a lifetime barely recognizing the human still present in death, the human not heard due to plain disbelief, common self loathing. He should have stopped, he should have listened. He would've heard his brother, calling his name with dying breath.

So yeah, sorry, I apparently like killing Sherlock in the pool scene, which is stupid because we all know he doesn't. Anyway, hope you liked it, hope there's no grammar errors, and I promise another little one for you in a week or so. Just a little one, though, don't expect too much.