The brothers sat, facing each other: elegantly suited, legs crossed, hands folded. The younger was the first to speak. "You couldn't live without me for five minutes," he said, scornfully.
"Surely you didn't expect me to let you die.
"I thought you might wait a few weeks. Might have been a bit subtler."
No answer.
"Moriarty's dead, Mycroft. Everyone knows it. He blew his brains out."
"He had a brother."
This caught the younger man's attention, and his insouciance largely faded as he sat straighter, suddenly intense, sharp as a razor. "No wonder he went mad," he said, but it was a force of habit insult: his mind was racing.
The elder knew this, and took no offense. "He's a professor of mathematics," he said, one hand automatically reaching to twiddle the handle of his umbrella. "He wasn't difficult to convince."
"I'm sure Her Majesty was thrilled. Does she know you manufacture villains for your dear brother? Or was this little maneuver, shall we say, under the table?"
"He would have wormed his way out of the woodwork eventually, Sherlock," came the reply, with all the smooth confidence of a man who knows he's won. "I just . . . sped up the process."
"I'm sure you did."
A tilt of the head, a faint smile. "Run along, Sherlock. You have a dragon to slay."