Chapter One: I remember years ago…
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I remember years ago,
you were so little then.
Cynthia A. Sieving, 'Though you are grown'
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Mycroft was seven when his baby brother entered the world and promptly attempted to immediately leave it again. As soon as he saw the small, strange face surrounded by a mop of slimy curls, he knew that he loved him more than anything he'd ever loved before.
The baby, with firm indifference for the fact that Mycroft loved him tremendously, ignored this and unexpectedly stopped breathing. Four weeks early and already charging headfirst into situations he wasn't in any way prepared for, his brother was showing a stubborn disregard for his own safety.
Later Mycroft would remember this and sigh fondly. That never really changed.
Mummy slept, strained by the difficult birth. She didn't look much like herself anymore. More like an older, drained version of Mummy. Mycroft wondered if it was worth his brother's life if it cost him his mummy. He was quite afraid that it might be.
The room was raucous, busy with nurses and loud machines and clamouring distractions that grated on Mycroft's nerves and made his hands shake. He shoved them in his pocket. Mummy would be mad. He would crease his suit.
It occurred to him that the room was actually painfully silent when it came to noises that counted. Two children had entered it, and neither made a sound. The nurses spared him nervous glances; concern lining kind faces for the solemn seven-year old watching them, concern for the baby brother he was losing.
Father stood and watched with a blank, uncaring expression. Mycroft stood stiff-backed by his side and attempted to mimic the man's mannerisms, seeking comfort in the only way he knew was allowable. He longed to reach out and slip his hand into Father's warm palm. He knew what would happen if he did though. A sharp glare from his elder, a hissed rebuke.
"Such behaviour is unbecoming for a Holmes, Mycroft." The corner of his mouth would turn down minutely, expressing his great disappointment in how his oldest son had turned out.
Hours old and the baby was already acting in ways unbecoming for a Holmes. Mycroft could see the dissatisfaction settling onto Father's shoulders and turning his gaze dark.
A machine shrilled, and the nurses shooed them out. He caught a glimpse of tiny blue lips and a lifeless hand. The promise of a baby brother to love and protect suddenly seemed as though it was going to be snatched away from him before he'd had a chance to learn to resent it.
Something heavy lodged in his throat, cutting off his own air, and he fancied what it would be like to lie on the cool tiles of the hospital and forget how to breathe. Perhaps he would follow his brother wherever he went; blue and limp and refusing to be a Holmes.
Father was bored. Angry. Uncaring.
Mycroft had spent his life quietly making his mummy and teachers proud of him with his polite charm and exceptional marks. A mature and dignified child, but a child none the less.
He was polite and dutiful, and so people forgot he was there, observing and learning. He nurtured his inherited gift of intelligence to form conclusions and deductions about those around him and their motivations. He learnt to get what he wanted with practised charm and a smile.
His father was silent, but everything that would never be spoken was clear for Mycroft to read. In the impatient tap of his shoes was the truth of the affair; the slight crease on the cuff of his shirt proclaimed the paternity of the dying boy.
The way Mummy poured their juice in the morning was an unspoken, "I despise you." Over the snap of the business section being opened every breakfast was his reply. "I don't care."
Mycroft was the dutiful child but as he stood in that cold hallway and saw the lies coating his father's skin, he grew angry. If his brother died here today and became a sad bundle to be hastily hurried away and hidden, the man wouldn't grieve. He would continue as he always had and allow the lost child to become a ghost of a memory.
He won't die unclaimed, Mycroft thought furiously. He was his brother, always his brother, no matter what happened. He won't die like no one loved him. "He doesn't have a name."
Father glanced at him for the first time that day and his eyes were shrewd. He was a hard man, a cold man who was ruthless with his business associates, uncaring about his wife, and brisk with his only son. Despite this, he did love Mycroft, as much as he understood how.
The petulant jut of Mycroft's bottom lip, a quiver in his chin, and fear in eyes that gleamed with unshed tears all showed a child in distress. His child in distress. He relented, slightly. In what would become one of the handful of times he acknowledged his wife's bastard son, he named him.
"Sherlock." He glanced at the baby through the window, stubbornly clinging onto life. In that he could grudgingly respect him. "His name is Sherlock."
Mycroft nodded once, and scuffed his meticulously polished shoe against the linoleum. Not another word would be spoken about Sherlock until weeks later when Mother finally brought home the squalling, ill-tempered baby.
To himself he swore that if his brother lived, he would never allow harm to come to him. Mycroft had never shirked an obligation before. Sherlock was both the greatest gift and the most important duty he'd ever been given.