"Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever."
-Toni Morrison
When I first knew I would be taken, my thoughts had gone unerringly to him. Bound and waiting for an outcome, mulling over the information I had received about Mycroft, I wondered if either the panic at my loss or anger at his brother would cause him to lose control. I never doubted he would come for me. I didn't stop to think about the very real possibility that of my death until the bullet dove into Jem, showing me in deeds what Yuri's words had not managed: no matter my worth to others, I was expendable. Still, I knew he would come.
Huddled in the cold under the underpass, I was surprised to see his brother instead. When Mycroft whispered a Rolling Stones lyric and the half dozen armed men around us fell over like fainting debutantes, the numbness of my impending death receded like a tide, replaced by a detached sort of wonder. I stared at the starburst patterns on the car windows as we drove home, hearing Mycroft recite his history with MI-6 and the past day with Sherlock as if I were underwater. I wanted a shower, and to sleep, and to not be the tennis ball that they batted about between them, heedless of the bite marks.
I let the doctor examine me as I waited for their confrontation, my inertia washed away in a torrent of exhaustion. I thought he would go to his brother first. His clipped steps shot straight into my spine and his large grey eyes, so often sparkling and observant, were opaque and bottomless as he stared at me, like the Hudson at night. I concentrated on making my words as gentle as I could, picturing myself as a buoy, drawing myself up to my full height, making eye contact so he could see the truth of it.
-"It's okay. I'm all right."
If anything, his breathing accelerated, and what I saw on his face had not been there since Irene. I tried again.
-"I'm. All. Right."
His mouth turned down in that comical frown, the briefest of pauses, then, "My brother?" Even as he threatened to thrash him and Mycroft mimicked my calming tone, the strings holding me up snapped. I had no interest in playing catch with them. I walked upstairs, peeled off the dress I knew I would never wear again and took a shower so I could wash Jem's blood out of my hair.
Home, I had told him on the phone. The brownstone was a solid, real presence in my life, and not just because it was where I had regained a sense of purpose, but because of him, because of what he had taught me to do. I could no longer tell if this was a life I had chosen, or if it was the life he had picked out for me, his preternatural brain laying out the bait while I fell into every trap. I took Clyde from his terrarium and took him to bed with me, suddenly too keyed to sleep. His slow amble across the bedspread focused me, and I had to think.
I had no delusions about what we meant to each other, even if Irene's giant hint of a portrait hadn't clinched it. I was the single most important person in his life, his partner in everything that he considered worth pursuing - intellect, science, deduction. He trusted me implicitly, and he knew me intimately. I had divulged things to him I had never told any lover. My feelings for him were murkier, but no less encompassing. He was and always would be an addict, quick to anger, slow to introspection, disrespectful of boundaries. His shirts were buttoned too high, and he only owned one coat. He wasn't so much handsome as magnetic, and I pitied the poor women he reeled in who thought they had a chance at anything more than energetic sex and goodbye coffee. He was endlessly annoying in repetitive and novel ways, and the next time he woke me up I was going to conduct an experiment of my own with the heel of my hand and his jaw. He was also, in the sum of his total parts, the single best man I knew. From the moment I met him going forward, he would become the yardstick against which all others fell short.
For a time, I accepted this. I was the Robin to his Batman. What more could I want?
I would never tell him that he was right, my one night with his brother had been an experiment of sorts. Neither Holmes was attractive in the traditional sense. Their hair alone would merit a genetic study. Still, they shared the same dry wit, the same unnecessary formality, a sort of lazy confidence that could inexplicably open to shivering vulnerability. At certain times, even their voices were similar, their inflections the same, although Mycroft was decidedly the more socialized of the two. When he had made his cautious move on me in London, it was easy to push away any thought of consequence and imagine that the shape above me in the dark, the voice, was a shared entity. He was kind, and it had been a long time since a man looked at me like he wanted to do something with me other than discuss murder. As valued as I felt in our partnership, I felt, and very likely was, asexual in Sherlock's eyes.
I meant it when I told him he had changed. I knew enough of addiction and basic psychology, not to mention enough about him personally, to know that neither of us was capable of effecting that change. It was a process that he would have to pick his way through in time, with its own perils and falls. I had lingered way beyond my time as his caregiver and become his partner, but old habits were hard to break, and the new ones I had formed were just as alienating. His world had become my own, and in doing so, I forgot all the things I had once enjoyed-friends, lovers, the promise of a family. I had wanted to become a doctor because I cared deeply about people's well-being. I had become a sober companion because of the same. People were resilient, incredibly adaptable to change. I knew Sherlock was, I had faith in him, so it followed that it must be that I doubted myself.
And there was only one way to fix that.
The next morning, I just wanted to move forward. We were both in the exact same physical space as last night when he first laid eyes on me, and I knew he wanted to say what he did not then. When his tone deepened to tell me about his feelings, I had to cut him off lest we end up in the same emotional space, as well. That road was a dead end. A dead end with dragons in it. Work, routine. This was what would get me over this, what would show me if my decision was the correct one. I was grateful when he relented.
I expected Mycroft to try to speak to me again at some point, but I wasn't prepared to see him sitting on the stoop that very night. I knew he wasn't here for Sherlock, but I tried to deflect anyway. When he corrected me in almost the same words he had used to propose a relationship with me, the same soothing tone I realize now we both used on his brother, I said the only thing that came to mind.
-"No."
I didn't need to hear how Sherlock felt about someone hurting me-I knew. I knew what it was to believe yourself impervious to deception, to feel superior to those around you because of your intellect, your talents, and to have that security taken away by someone close to you. Mycroft and Sherlock had been at odds for years. I was the one who prompted their closeness. I was the one who slept with him, mediated for him, all while he lied to me, to us. The deception to myself, the harm I had suffered was negligible. That he would put his brother in such peril, knowing the possible outcome, was unthinkable. That he should have done so for years, mirroring the other great disappointment which had almost ended Sherlock's life was unforgivable. I was never one to raise my voice in anger, but I wanted my words to burn him. I wanted him to feel how much I meant it when I said he was not to be trusted. I regretted every time I had ever taken his side.
-"Sherlock may be insensitive and intrusive but with him I know exactly where I stand. He deserves better than you and so do I." I expected him to argue with me, to press his point. I didn't expect to feel like a bully. His eyes, so much like his brother's in that moment, threatened to break the choke hold I had on my tears.
- "I understand."
Stupid Holmes brothers. This was my world now, ricocheting from one to the other like a stray bullet, hurting them both, and as disappointed in him as I was, if he was going to accept his responsibility in this, so must I.
I tried and failed once, and felt almost proud of Sherlock when he brought it back up, knowing as he must that I would say something he would not like. I knew he appreciated forthrightness, so I thought it best to rip the band-aid off, hoping it seemed casual, normal. His reaction told me my words had been wholly, terribly unexpected. Even as I tried to reassure him, he set off doing what he did best, spouting facts and trying to piss me off, questioning my dedication to our job, which of course was the same in his mind as my dedication to him. It was true that there would never be a good time, but that was as true of myself as of him. I knew better. I knew our closeness was latently maladaptive. He had to know it, too, but he liked the status quo too much to change it. All he heard was that I was leaving him, and he rushed to argue all the reasons I shouldn't, confident that he could sway me. I knew just as well I couldn't let him. His frustration tore at every protective instinct I had. I had taken care of him for so long, and so well, but there were things that I would come to want from him that would fester and rot us to the core. If I did not grow that part of my life, I never would, and I would come to blame him for it. I didn't want either of us to resent the other. I tried one more time to clarify.
-"I know this is hard for you. I know that you like things just so, but I need room for a life outside of this. Us…. what we do…"
-"But we are what we do." And there it was, our fundamental difference. I echoed the same word I had said to his brother only moments ago.
-"No. You are what you do. You have to be to be happy." I hated to expose his vulnerability this way, to expose my own. "I don't."
His silence, the slight raise of his eyebrow and the slamming door told me what I needed to know. He understood. When he didn't come home, I didn't call. Best to start as we meant to go on. I never expected that casual chitchat with Marion West over coffee would cause me to question any of my decisions.
Later, dozing in Mycroft's bed, trying not to think about why I was going to purposefully antagonize the man I admired more than anyone and my business partner to boot by starting a relationship with his brother, I couldn't help but recall the words that had changed the tide, as softly spoken as mine to Sherlock.
-"Why didn't you tell him? Why didn't you tell me?"
-"And accomplish what? Telling you after the fact would be a paltry attempt to dodge blame. Telling him… it could have sent him down a bad road, and you know that better than anyone." I did, but I thought I was the only one to think of him, always him first. I had been terribly wrong, unjust. Mycroft's smile was sad, worn. I could feel every emotion like it was my own. "He is more fragile than he cares to admit. The two of us… we share that burden, don't we? Taking care of him whether he realizes it or not."
My hand came up to his face in empathy and some other emotion I could not name. I didn't believe in fate, but I recognized in him the same dedication, the same depth of purpose that we would both likely carry to the grave. Sherlock, who didn't think of consequences, must be protected. From others, from circumstance… from himself. It was a lonely, thankless job, and I did not want to be alone anymore, and I didn't want it for him. If Mycroft never managed to show me new aspects of myself, to thrill me in the way that life with his brother did, what he did do was remind me of virtues that I once held dear, that I wanted to rediscover: self-sacrifice, caring for others, subjugation to a greater purpose, love for another that was greater than either of us, greater than both of us. Maybe no other woman would understand this as well as I. Certainly no other man would understand it, allow it, forgive it, in me. Someday soon, maybe we would both regret it. It would certainly not be easy, but now it would be a burden shared.
Sherlock could not be what either of us wished, but there was nothing that said we could not wish it together, and provide each other with the comfort of that knowledge.