A/N: This is the result of boredom and procrastination. A friend and I started an RP that we plan to throw... pretty much everything into, so be warned. It may start serious, but it may get cracky, may get dramatic - either way, it'll be fun. Props to anyone who can figure out which characters I wrote, hehe. :)
Mycroft Holmes has not been sleeping well.
He lets no one know.
"That's only to be expected," they'd say. But Moriarty— and Sherlock, dear willful, infuriating, unwitting Sherlock— have planted the seed of doubt in their minds. "It's a terrible thing, what happened with his brother. Tragic. Poor man."
But there are whispers behind closed doors. The idea has been planted, and there is no cure. If the younger brother were a fraud, is it not possible that the elder brother is, too?
And so he is as he has always been.
Indispensable.
He has no choice, none of the room for error Sherlock had. When Sherlock had failed, those close to him had been devastated. A small handful of people. Tragic, yes.
If Mycroft fails, England itself will fall.
He cannot allow someone less competent to take his place, and so he needs to be— and to seem— more competent than ever. At the very least, perhaps they will come to realize the truth: if a fraud gets the results you want, he may as well be the real thing.
Bad dreams are not a weakness he can afford; he cannot afford any weakness at all.
And so it is that, at least in that, Mycroft Holmes is, indeed, a fraud. To all appearances, unflappable, stoic, the consummate professional and patriot. His brother's fall has not perturbed him at all— if anything, it has pushed him, made him sharper.
He could almost believe it himself, if he didn't remember the dreams so vividly, if he didn't find himself so ill-rested when he woke. But he does.
He never lets anyone know what it is that gets him through the day, because, so far as the world is concerned, he needs nothing to help him through the day.
But it is in those moments when he sees out of the corner of his eye, spray paint on a brick wall, a single shirt in a crowd, a picture on the internet.
Five words.
"I believe in Sherlock Holmes."
God bless the men and women of England. For a moment, just a moment, he no longer feels alone in carrying the weight of the nation on his shoulders.
There comes a morning, however, months later, when he finds that perhaps it would be better if he were alone.
A report crosses his desk, one of dozens. A theory. Numbers. Statistics. Data. Not that it matters so very greatly. They all have numbers. Statistics. Data. It's easy enough to twist them, to make them mean whatever you want. Mycroft should know, he does it better than any of those who write the reports that cross his desk.
Except this one is about an increasingly troubling trend in sleep- and dream-related studies. Hundreds. Thousands. Hundred thousands. Patients with symptoms… symptoms like his.
It's impossible, of course. There can't be an epidemic of bad dreams. It can't be weaponized (if it could, Mycroft would have done it by now.)
Which begs the question.
What the devil is going on?
