An exploration of the relationship between the Holmes brothers, from their childhood to adulthood, and linking into canon. Warnings for angst. A lot of angst. This is the link back into canon. It is Holmescest, after all. Most of the previous plot is self-evident, but references and context are linked through the series.
Dedicated to Lex, without whom this story would not exist.
Mycroft had been taken hostage. It was not his first time. The last time had been phenomenally dull. This time, they had attempted something that was certainly new; a demonstration of their intellect, the extent of their influence, and the only thing in his life that had terrified Mycroft since he was five years old.
They had taken Sherlock.
Sherlock was twenty-three years old, Mycroft had just turned thirty. Both brothers were working in the government at various levels; Mycroft was the public front, while Sherlock worked in espionage. They had little official contact with one another, for safety reasons, but still shared a flat; Sherlock claimed he was unable to find a more suitable roommate, and anybody who met the man had no reason to question that statement.
Mycroft was tied to a chair. It was difficult to ascertain who their captors wanted information from, given that both brothers had a good deal of information at their disposal.
Sherlock had disappeared approximately twenty-four hours before Mycroft had been abducted. Mycroft had, in that time, alerted many of his own people in an attempt to find him; somehow, they had hijacked his car while he had been more concerned with Sherlock than his own safety. Mycroft had arrived in the warehouse to the sound of echoing screams, quite distinctively Sherlock's.
Two days had passed since that point. Their captors were clever. Mycroft was aware that their affiliations were somewhere middle-Eastern, despite being born and bred British men, but beyond that, they were doing spectacularly well at disguising their identities.
Sherlock screamed pleas, curses, at one point a reverberating sobbing cry that felt as though it stabbed Mycroft in the throat. Mycroft had not seen him at any stage. They were attempting to derail him, and irritatingly, were doing rather well.
After approximately fifty-one hours, Mycroft opened his eyes to the door opening in the room he had been sitting in. He was aching, muscles sore and atrophying, bored, and admittedly terrified for his younger brother and love. They had been together, as more than brothers, for five years. Mycroft had told himself once not to care, not to ever allow himself sentimentality, and he could safely confirm his unequivocal failure in that venture.
They dragged in Sherlock by his hair, hands cuffed behind him, a rough piece of cloth crammed crudely in his mouth, on his knees in front of Mycroft's chair, barefoot. He had been badly beaten, repeatedly judging by the state of him, blood coating the side of head, left arm at a strange angle from the shoulder joint, carefully keeping weight to one side, exceptionally pale and covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
Four men. One by Mycroft's side, two flanking Sherlock, and a spare. Obvious firearms, none being shown at present. Posture secret service rather than military. Clothing covering every inch of their bodies, disguising any identification. No other men on the complex; this was a compact unit, well-organised.
They did not intend to leave the Holmes brothers alive. The idea was to extract as much information as possible, and kill the pair. Mycroft needed to ensure that Sherlock survived. He began to think.
Mycroft kept his expression carefully impassive. "What is it you want?" Mycroft asked them. Nobody answered him, just watched his reactions. "May I look at him? You appear to have dislocated his left arm."
"We want information on several of your middle-Eastern ventures."
"That is hardly a surprise. Why did you find it necessary to severely beat my younger brother?" Mycroft asked coldly. Sherlock stared up at him, one clear blue eye staring up, the other swollen shut, looking incredibly young and terribly damaged.
"He had information we required," a heavy-set man intoned, making Sherlock flinch incrementally. "In addition, he is useful in extorting information from you."
"Naturally, he is my sibling," Mycroft said carefully; he struggled suddenly as one of the surrounding men took two definite strides towards Sherlock, tugging the cloth out of his mouth. Sherlock coughed slightly with a hiccup of pain, bruises indicating a very bruised jaw, not dislocated but remarkably close.
"Myc, they know," Sherlock rasped. Swollen, bruise patterns indicate strangulation, no implements used, probably the thin man to Sherlock's right judging by the hand size and pressure used. "I'm sorry, Mycroft, I didn't… they knew before, when they took me, they knew and I…"
"Calm down, Sherlock," Mycroft said simply. Sherlock obeyed. "We will give these gentlemen what they require, leave, and get you medical attention. Now, if you would," he continued, speaking to the surrounding men. "I would like to examine my brother to ensure he will not die before I can get him to afore-mentioned medical attention."
"You are disgusting," the spare man told them. Mycroft looked up at him, nonplussed. "You're fucking brothers, and you're twice his age, and poofters… it's fucking disgusting."
"I am in a loving, monogamous relationship – which is quite considerably more than you have managed in your life. A marriage, a string of lovers. You have been abusive in your marriage, she left you. You work freelance for various secret services to escape your abortive attempts at a personal life. Pathetic."
An indication to the left-hand man, and Sherlock's head was wrenched upright, pulling him upright, gasping as he placed weight on his right side and pain shot up the side of his body. The right-hand man lifted a booted foot, and slammed Sherlock in the stomach.
Sherlock screamed, collapsed forward. He started retching a moment later, spitting a little blood onto the floor in front of him. Mycroft's face twitched slightly. The man had hit Sherlock in the stomach and chest more than once; the boot prints could be seen, evident in the bruising on Sherlock's left hand, the distinct patterning on his upper right arm.
"Point amply taken. Now please, allow me to look at him. I can assure you, there will be nothing you can gain from his death. You will only have my cooperation for as long as he lives."
The men exchanged glances. The man beside Mycroft reached behind, and detached his wrists from the chair. Mycroft slowly brought his wrists to his chest, flexing the muscles, allowing circulation to return to the numb flesh. It was remarkably painful. He slid onto the floor in front of Sherlock, taking a moment to look at him.
He stroked Sherlock's hair, feeling the sticky dampness coat his fingers. Sherlock's body was vibrating like a tuning fork; Mycroft looked directly at him, trying to convey calm. His fingers danced along the throat (bruised windpipe), left arm (dislocated), right arm (strain on the elbow joint), torso (broken ribs, several bruised, no puncture), stomach (internal trauma, damage to kidneys), hips (left side possibly cracked), legs (badly bruised).
He would kill them for this.
Sensation fully returned to his limbs. He kept his steady, calm eye contact with his injured younger brother. Placating. This was something Mycroft would be able to fix; he could follow through on his promises.
His movement was an intense flurry towards the nearest man, on his right side, fist into groin, against solar plexus, retrieving the first firearm from interior right jacket pocket. The man went down like a stone. One of the other captors dived for Sherlock; Mycroft grabbed his brother by the back of the neck and forced him to the ground while kicking out his left leg.
Two men incapacitated. Mycroft shot one, felt the graze of a bullet past his left arm, shot the second. He dispatched the two incapacitated men in a handful of fluid motions, leaving he and Sherlock alone in a room of dead men.
He pulled a mobile out of one of the dead men's pockets, tapping in not emergency services, but Anthea's extension number. "Anthea. Track this number, send a full spectrum of emergency services. Sherlock is severely injured. I will attempt to stabilise him, but I need assistance post-haste."
"Copied on the above. We have a fix on your location, will arrive in three to four minutes," Anthea responded. Mycroft copied, and signed off; the perks of being a government agent meant utilising emergency services from literally everywhere.
"Sherlock," Mycroft said urgently, finding a key and detaching the cuffs; Sherlock let out a keening cry as his left arm moved to hang loosely by his side, his other bruised arm protesting at the movement. Sherlock cried tonelessly, falling forward into Mycroft's arms with a muffled sob. "Help is coming. We're going to be alright, Sherlock."
"I'm sorry, I told them, I couldn't…"
"It's ok," Mycroft lied calmly. "I will find out if they have leaked any knowledge, and suppress pertinent rumours."
Sherlock nodded against him, and they waited in silence for the chopping of the helicopter that signalled the emergency services.
Sherlock had been in intensive care until the various medical services were certain there were no complications. Mycroft had waved off most who had attempted to come anywhere near him, barring his most trusted doctor who had only come near after he had examined Sherlock.
Mycroft was malnourished, dehydrated, and very pissed off. Sherlock was still unconscious, connected to several tubes, looking very fragile.
This could not be allowed to happen again. Sherlock was in enough danger by virtue of being his brother; being his lover made matters considerably worse. Another day or two of interrogation, and Sherlock could well have been killed. Mycroft was relatively certain that nobody else knew of his and Sherlock's relationship, given the research he had done into this terrorist cell over the previous few hours. Yet, it stood to be discovered again. He could not risk Sherlock in such a way.
He should never have allowed this to go for so long. He should never have allowed himself to feel so much. This relationship could jeopardise everything the brothers had made for themselves. Mycroft knew he was being selfish, keeping Sherlock to himself. Sherlock needed a life of his own.
He built the reasons together in his head, and the answer was obvious. He had allowed sentiment to dictate his actions, and in doing so, was risking his brother's life and livelihood.
He was coward enough to do it in hospital, where Sherlock could not fight back, marooned in a hospital bed. He was under medical supervision, but in no immediate danger.
He hadn't seen it coming.
"Mycroft," Sherlock breathed, lips slack and body feeling drained, hollow. Shock crept into his blood like poison. "No, no. You can't. Don't do this. Please."
"I will always be your brother, and I will always love you. But we cannot remain together as we have been," Mycroft told him, keeping his voice carefully steady. He could not allow himself to feel, could not allow the emotions to subsume him.
Sherlock looked like his entire world had ended. Mycroft concurred. He had shown his brother how to feel, and then destroyed him completely. Mycroft would force his mind to forget Sherlock's sobs, cries, the way he had appealed to everything in him to keep his brother there.
"Myc, I… please, My," Sherlock tried. "I love you."
Mycroft gave a very slight gasp. He didn't reciprocate. He couldn't allow himself to care as he had done, or he would drown in the emotion, and he had never been adept at handling emotion.
Two years of utter, crystalline emotion. It splintered with a heartbreaking cry as Mycroft left him.
Three years later, Sherlock's pain had translated into livid, consistent anger. He had spent more time drugged than sober. He had begun on alcohol, found the entire experience insufficient, and moved onto marijuana. He moved up the ranks in terms of various drugs, stumbling across cocaine and falling into it with abandon.
It stopped the thrum of his own brain, his observations, how he saw the world. It stilled the hateful emotions that he refused to allow himself to feel any longer. He had not concerned himself with relationships, other than what he needed to cultivate to get another hit.
He had refused to see Mycroft after the day in the hospital. He didn't remember the day itself. He knew of the repercussions. When the pain radiating from that event threatened to swallow him, he knew it was time for another hit.
He cleaned up for a few months in the middle, found a pointless job, relapsed badly. He did that twice, maybe three times. He looked like hell these days, and he knew it. He had lost most of his body weight, the dark circles under his eyes intensely pronounced, hands rarely stopping shaking.
He hid from Big Brother, in every sense of the title. He lived on the streets for months at a time, reappearing when he felt it was time to get clean and raise funds for his next relapse. He always knew he would eventually relapse again.
One innocuous day, he went too far. He woke up in hospital. He was transferred to rehab. He knew Mycroft was funding it, and he attempted to escape, on average, once a day. He refused to see anybody at all, with the single exception of the police officer who had found him when he overdosed.
He hadn't consciously been trying to kill himself. It was on further reflection that he registered genuine disappointment at waking after the overdose.
He missed Mycroft. More than he could possibly hope to describe. He missed the way he felt, the warmth, the comfort and voice and the intellect. The latent brilliance, the mild condescension, the way his eyebrow arched and the way he smiled.
He needed another fucking hit.
He was in rehab for several months. While there, he got speaking to the police officer who had found him. His name was Lestrade, and he had taken an interest in Sherlock. After he realised Sherlock's uncanny ability to observe absolutely everything, understood his background in politics and secret service, (after Mycroft had spoken to him quietly), he began discussing cases.
Mycroft visited. Sherlock was taciturn, livid, defensive. Mycroft kept his heart icily cold, trying to convince Sherlock that they could still be brothers, that aspects of their relationship could be saved. Sherlock snarled at him, told him to get the fuck away from him, in almost precisely those words. Nobody would ever play one brother against the other, not again. The source of their row would never be known, but the effects were enough.
Sherlock was brilliant. Lestrade moved him onto more advanced cold cases, bringing case files during visiting hours. The intellectual stimulus had an immediate and obvious effect on Sherlock's improvement. After he was discharged, having spent eight full months of his life in rehab – partly on an outpatient basis, towards the end – he moved in with Lestrade, for a very brief stint, before insinuating that his wife wasn't necessarily being faithful to him.
He found a roommate who could put up with him. It was manageable. Eventually both moved on. Sherlock began calling himself a consulting detective. He found a bedsit. He got chucked out of the bedsit. He found another flat. He couldn't afford it, moved out again. He called in favours, sofa-surfed, earned his keep through deductions and solving crimes, usually petty.
He stumbled into homicide by accident, and was an immediate triumph in the department, as least from the perspective of the higher powers in CID. Lestrade grinned, and while he refused to ever let Sherlock live with him again, he helped find yet another bedsit.
An explosion in the kitchen put paid to that. Five years had passed by this stage, from Sherlock's release from rehab. He had a life. He had not been in a single relationship. He hadn't touched drugs since his release. He never had sex, and was visibly uncomfortable around the matter. Somewhere in rehab he had been labelled sociopathic. He clung to the incorrect label, because he could, and because it was easier than confessing that his heart had been broken irreparably by his elder brother.
He found John Watson.
"Do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?"
"… I could be wrong, but I think that's none of your business," John retorted. Perfect. Entirely perfect. He was precisely the kind of man Mycroft was not. He could be perfect for Sherlock, could show him to feel again, perhaps.
There was evidently something Sherlock could see in Doctor Watson; he never trusted that easily, never took anybody along for cases with him. Sherlock had seen the steadfast trustworthiness of the doctor. Perhaps this was the best thing for him.
"I worry about him. Constantly," Mycroft informed John Watson, and saw the arch of his scepticism. Mycroft's lips twitched. He said the right things in the right order, aware that he was ensuring that John would stay. Sherlock would be angry for his interference, but that could not be helped.
He watched Sherlock from a distance, loving in a way that only Mycroft Holmes was capable of doing. He could never allow himself to feel for Sherlock the way he had once. The other chair by the fire remained eternally empty, the brothers barely spoke, Sherlock never discussed anything with him and didn't speak to his brother if he could avoid it.
Mycroft visited, of course. Sherlock was rarely civil. Polite was unheard of. He had stopped himself caring. They both had.
The gamble paid off; a year later, Sherlock would be threatened, caught in a potentially fatal situation. Guns facing the three people who mattered most. Mycroft was never mentioned. Nobody played one brother against the other. They knew better than to waste their time.
Sherlock heard the names fall from Moriarty's lips, and felt a brief rush of joy at knowing Mycroft was not under threat. He quashed that thought almost instantly. He had to concentrate on keeping John safe now. John was his life now, the lifeline that kept him carefully tethered to reality and stopped him flying back to drugs and cases and anger and pain. He had to ensure John's safety.
He understood now, why Mycroft had left him. What it was to love somebody so much you would cause them – and you – more pain than you ever knew was possible. To love somebody so much you are prepared to leave them behind.
He jumped.
Mycroft watched the footage of his brother falling, Sherlock's arms freewheeling as he impacted against the concrete. There was something wrong, and Mycroft could see it, but he couldn't bring himself to analyse it.
He had never stopped loving his younger brother. He had never made much of a secret of it. He had hoped that Sherlock would soften with age, would allow him back in his life, as a brother and friend if not as a lover again.
He watched his brother fall. He watched him die.
He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, and in the oppressive silence of the Diogenes – where nobody would see, and nobody could speak to ask – he allowed himself to cry.
I apologise for the angst, but it appears I am incapable of writing stories without damaging perfectly lovely characters and ruining their relationships.