A Study in Grief
Chapter One:
How Mycroft Holmes Became the Ice Man
~the Last Time Lord
DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters, nor do I use these stories to make money.
Warning: character death.
A/N: 'How Mycroft Holmes Became the Ice Man' is set shortly after the events of 'A Study in Pink'. Blame an evil anon from tumblr for the tone of the story and for the excessive amount of tragedy and angst.
"Where so many hours have been spent convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear that I may be wrong?"
– Jane Austen
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"…/ A bullet pierced my true love's side/ in life's young spring, so early, /
and on my breast, in blood, she died, / While soft wind shook the barley/…"
- Robert Dwyer Joyce; The Wind that Shakes the Barley
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WHEN MYCROFT walked through the door and into his home at 11 o'clock at night, he got the vivid impression that there was something wrong – horribly, dreadfully, and utterly wrong.
The building felt hostile whereas it was usually welcoming. Gloom seemed to hang heavily in the air in the stead of contentment. It was pitch dark inside, which was bizarre considering that there was supposed to be someone home. It was also uncannily quiet. He could have heard a pin drop, should one have fallen at that precise moment. Absolutely nothing stirred. The obscurity was disturbing; the silence eerie. Everything felt out of sorts.
This caused the base of his neck to prickle, and for goosebumps to rise on his arms. The elder Holmes brother currently found himself in 'fight-or-flight' mode, without being too certain of the reason. For as uncanny as his present situation was, he couldn't identify a plausible threat. The logical conclusion, then, was that his instincts were picking up on a menace that his senses couldn't register; the adrenaline rush was his limbic system's way of warning him, telling him that something was awry…
"Anthea, love?" He called out tentatively as he flicked on the hall light, removed his over-coat, and hung it up.
No answer. His words echoed off the walls and reverberated through the entire house.
Mycroft frowned. Why was his wife not answering him? This stillness, this quiet - it wasn't right. Anthea would have been home for nearly three hours by now, so there should be some indication that she was about. And yet, it was sorely lacking. The man behind the British government began to feel more perturbed as his mind kicked into overdrive, pondering theories that could explain this unusual occurrence then discarding the ones that were not plausible.
Had she stepped out last minute? No, that definitely was not the case – her coat was hung up, and her Blackberry was on its charger on the hall table (she never went anywhere without it). It was late, and they both had an exhausting day – perhaps she had retired early? Reasonable, but it was unlikely. She had developed the habit of waiting up for him if she left the office before he did. He did the same, on those rare occasions where he would leave before her. They both found it hard to sleep when the other was not there, though this was partially due to them worrying about whether or not their other half would make it home without a try on their life. It would, however, happen that they would fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion every once in a blue moon as they waited. That must be it, then: the reason why his wife was not responding was because she must've dozed off somewhere.
That hypothesis sounded shaky, at best. There were, of course, other possibilities that were a better fit to the current situation. They, on the other hand, were far too dark, far too desolate - far too ominous - for his tastes. They had been discarded as soon as they had flitted into his mind. Despite the disturbance in the air, the queerness of the situation that night, Mycroft refused to believe that it was anything serious.
Or rather, he did not want to believe the gloomier, nevertheless very possible, explanations. There were so many factors that were influencing his perception (and he was so very tired) that he could not – would not – take them seriously.
A small voice kept nagging him about how he was not being objective, and that he was denying very reasonable (and more presumable) prospects, but the elder Holmes was determined to shut it up, to prove it wrong. He was stubbornly choosing not to listen to it because what it was suggesting just couldn't be true. The reason simply had to be that she had nodded off. Mycroft Holmes was always accurate in his deductions.
On the other hand, were these true deductions? Or was he simply seeing what he wanted to see? He frowned a bit. Those nefarious thoughts were merely him over-reacting, he decided. Nothing drastic could've happened to her.
Not to his love; not to his Anthea.
To be sure, he and she led dangerous lives. They both were extremely powerful people, which resulted in a fair amount of enemies, which meant a rather large and frequent amount of assassination attempts on each of their persons. Regardless, they'd constantly managed to escape relatively unscathed, not to mention the fact that they were more than apt at defending themselves – Anthea exceptionally so, what with her military background. What would be diverse this time around, if indeed there had been yet another attempt? With a shake of his head, he dismissed the idea. Holmes thought it better that he did not embellish upon that train of thought. It might lead him down the dark paths at whose forks he'd been standing at earlier, and, while he had always been of the opinion that refuting what was did not change the fact that it happened, perhaps illusion was preferable to reality in some cases in the end.
Mycroft squared his shoulders and stood up straighter, his features determined. He was just being silly now and blowing everything out of proportion. Everything was fine. His wife was simply curled up somewhere; he merely needed to find her.
He set off at a slow, cautious pace down the hall (why, he wasn't sure), umbrella – which could also double as a weapon, need be (to be safe; it would not do to be caught unawares should he be proven wrong) – in hand. He passingly checked the den to see if she was curled up by the fireplace, then the dining room, the latter just for the sake of being thorough. He did not find her there. Mycroft went upstairs and checked every room on that level: her study, their room, the guest bedroom, etc. – and still no sign of her.
As he made his way back downstairs, knots began to form in his gut. Fear, the irrational beast of an emotion, began to sink its claws into his heart, clutching it fiercely, and tearing his cool façade to shreds. Mycroft struggled to keep his breathing even and his hands steady.
'Only three possible rooms left…' He agonized. He felt his gut clench. His mouth, he realized, had gone dry. He swallowed as he reached the end of the hall.
At the end of the corridor, on the right-hand side (if you were facing the patio doors and had your back to the main entrance), was the kitchen. On the left was a corridor that led to a powder-room, and – at the far end – to his personal study. From which he could see light emanating. Mycroft let out the breath he hadn't been aware of holding. He felt elated as well as strongly relieved. He headed down the passageway that led to his home office with an eager step. Soon enough, he reached the door, which was barely ajar. Pushing the door open, he stepped into his study.
"Anthea, my dear, I'm h…"
The first thing Holmes noticed, as the door swung open as he entered the room, was that Anthea lay sprawled in the middle of it. The second was the blood; or, to be more precise, what caught his sight was the large pool of the dark crimson substance within the proximity of Anthea's body. Mycroft froze in the doorway, trailing off in mid-sentence, eyes going wide with shock. His umbrella clattered to the floor with a loud 'thunk'.
Reality can be a harsh thing. You can hide you head under the sands of Illusion in order to escape it, and, for a certain period of time, you do. Nevertheless, an illusion is just that: a delusion, a false image – a lie – and all deceptions at some point or another are brought to light. 'What is' will eventually get around to pulling your head out of the earth (sometimes quite callously) in order to make you face what you must, should you not have come to terms with the truth by the time Reality comes knocking.
It was atypical for Mycroft Holmes to find himself in such a situation where he needed to be slapped across the face by the facts, to have Reality force him to admit that he was wrong, because the political mastermind usually saw what Fate had coming long before it even happened. There are always exceptions to the rule.
"No. Please, God… " He prayed, reaching out his trembling left hand while stepping towards her corpse, only to stumble forward and fall to his knees instead.
He was only vaguely aware of his heart beating in his chest; he was in a state of complete despair – something which his expression mirrored. He could feel his eyes glazing over with tears, yet he blinked them away. He couldn't let emotions get to him now. His left hand (still shaking, still outstretched) ghosted over his wife's face, as though he were afraid to touch her.
"Oh please, God, no…" He begged in a half whisper.
He pressed his index and middle fingers to Anthea's neck, and looked for a pulse: nothing. He somewhat frantically tried to find a pulse at her wrist, but still nothing; always nothing. He gazed at the blank expression on her face. There was no point in trying to deny it any longer. She was gone.
His heart shattered. A quiet sob escaped his lips as he sat down beside his wife and pulled her into his arms, clutching her firmly. He didn't care that he wasn't supposed to touch the corpse: all he wanted to do was hold her, just one last time. He clutched her close, cradling her head in one hand, while the other kept her from slipping away from him. Her body was so cold.
'She's gone, and I wasn't even there. She died alone.' He thought bitterly.
He cursed the Fates for this cruel hand. Anthea hadn't done anything to deserve to die alone. Someone should have been there – he should've been there. In the times when he'd had a close encounter with death (some of which had been too close for Anthea's comfort), she'd been there: she'd held his hand, calmed his fears. He strove to do the same, but the one time where it would have counted, he hadn't been there. She'd had to die without anyone there to ease her anxieties. What sort of partner was he? She'd had to face the Great Beyond alone.
A grim smile flickered on his lips, though it didn't reach his eyes. Somehow, he knew that his Anthea had faced it with determination and courage, as she did any new situation. Hell, she'd probably taunted Death with the fact that she did not fear it, even as her life's blood spilled from her body. Between the two of them, she had been the bolder one, the braver one. The smile then fell. Had there been moments, though, where her bravery had faltered? Had she begged for someone, anyone, to find her? Called for help? Pleaded to God Above to spare her, even for a just few moments longer? Cursed? Regardless of what had passed, Mycroft still wished that he could've done something for her at the time when she breathed her last, even if all it meant was being a hand for her to hold.
He continued to cling to his wife. He didn't want to let go. Letting go would make her death an irrevocable fact, and he would never more see her face in this life time. The feeling of loss was almost unbearable. He pulled away just a bit to look upon her face, but could not bear the look in her soulless eyes. Reverently, he closed them. He then kissed her forehead, and embraced her again. As he did so, a fresh wave of grief hit him. His shoulders shook as he held back his sobs. A tear, however, managed to escape this time. It rolled down his cheek and onto her shirt.
"I… I'm sorry, love. I'm so, so sorry." He rasped in a barely audible whisper. He'd heard tell that a person's spirit lingered around its body for a short while before it permanently left the physical world. Perhaps she was still here. Perhaps, just perhaps, she could hear him. "I… I should have been here… You shouldn't have had to face dea–" his voice cracked, "- death on your own. Heck, you shouldn't have had to die. I could have prevented this," he paused, and then fiercely added, "Should have prevented this."
He pulled back and cradled her body in his arms. "Oh, my dear, I… I only hope you can forgive me." He took in a shaky breath as he struggled to keep himself in control. "Do know that I - that I love you, Anthea, more than anything."
Another wave of grief, and he held onto her as though his life depended on it. At the same time, something in him in snapped and all rational thought left him. "Please… please! Come back to me, love. I don't know what I'll do without you. Please, love, just… Come back." He begged. He sounded so broken; he felt so broken, so dead. A voice in his mind sneered at him: the great Mycroft Holmes, reduced to a blubbering fool.
Deep down inside of him, he'd known that she would never come back to him; he'd known it the moment he felt her cold skin. But he was blinded by the hope of desperation. Miracles, although uncommon, were not impossible.
Of course, he also knew that it was all in vain. Spirits did not linger after death, and the hope of resurrection was futile. He was being a fool. So he sat there, in his study, stained with his wife's blood, grieving the loss of his other half.
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It had been their maid that had found him sitting there, numb to the rest of the world, with Anthea's body cradled in his arms, near a pool of blood, in his study come mid-morning, and it had been she who had called the police. The paramedics collected the body, while he was given a blanket and treated for shock. The DI came over and asked him if he knew what had happened. Mycroft dazedly answered: "Assassination." The DI, clearly taken aback, asked by whom and why on God's Earth would they want to assassinate the wife of a man who occupied only a minor role in the British government, but Mycroft Holmes could only answer that it should have been him that was killed– not his wife. The DI looked sympathetically at the politician, and offered his condolences before leaving Mycroft alone.
Mycroft Holmes changed that day. What remained of his heart became as cold as ice, and he seldom let it thaw. For to let it thaw would mean to unleash his emotions, and he could not have that. It would be his downfall if he tried. Emotions were messy things, he realized, and they made him irrational, which meant that he could easily make a mistake, and he could not allow that to happen.
That day, he became the Ice Man.
A/N: Right! First chappie finished; three more to go. I'm sorry for any pain I may cause with this. I hope you enjoyed it nevertheless. Please be kind enough to leave a bit of feedback – it would be greatly appreciated.
Preview of Chapter 2 – We knew the Risks: They would have been married two years, come next month – nearly to the day. They had not even made it to their second anniversary, and yet one was already burying the other. He had hoped that they could avoid this sort of tragedy for another couple of years at least, but no such luck.