Mycroft Holmes tried to avoid the public spectacle of politics. He really did. It was all so loud, boorish, and ineffective. He much preferred to sit at his desk and solve problems while other people prattled on about them.
It was far more efficient that way.
Usually.
He'd gotten precious little accomplished this particular summer. He'd had so many distractions. Jim Moriarty. The trial. Sherlock's betrayal. His own betrayal of Sherlock and then the fall… the terrible, terrible, terrible fall…
He couldn't concentrate.
Then came Wimbledon and the Olympics.
Traffic. Crowds. Controversy. So much to do. So little thanks.
He couldn't take it anymore, not here, not in London. Everything, every place, every sight, every sound, every smell, and every taste reminded him of his younger brother.
Every person he passed, even the unwashed masses he tried so hard to avoid, were people Sherlock might have known, might have helped, might need his help now.
But Sherlock was dead.
His reputation in ruins.
And Mycroft only had himself to blame.
He wanted to scream!
He didn't know how.
Mycroft's greatest escape. His once luxuriously silent club failed him. It offered no distraction to drown out the guilty voices in his head.
Still, he went every day.
The pain was all he had left.
It was killing him.
He had to get away.
He couldn't afford to go.
Global financial crisis.
Raising tensions in the Middle East.
He couldn't leave. The city, the world, they need him.
He couldn't stay. It was destroying him.
It had been suggested, by his so called superiors, that he attend the American nominating conventions. He didn't see the point. All that scripted, boring, bluster. And for what? The man who would be president was of little difference to him.
He planned to refuse.
But why? America was so gloriously far away from London.
Mycroft went.
He regretted the decision the moment he first felt the heat.
How could people live like this?
But as he settled into the city, he began to understand. The hot, humid Florida air weighed as heavily on him as his grief.
He found comfort in it.
All around him people prepared for a coming storm. There was such a flurry of activity and investment in the face of such daunting uncertainty.
He found it fascinating the way people prepared for potential calamity.
Nature itself might upend them and all they had to arm themselves with were the paltry inadequate things they could find at the hardware store.
None of the politicians preparing pretty little speeches could do anything about it.
They didn't try.
He couldn't do anything about it.
Well, there were sandbags to be filled… but really…
He watched the coverage of the storm and was annoyed when the topic changed to the convention.
What was that but people playing games?
The storm was calamity in action.
As the speeches were set to begin the storm turned left.
Mycroft left Tampa.
There was nothing for him there.
How, why, he followed the storm, he could not say. It called to him.
If the oppressive heat of Tampa could match weight with his own grief, maybe the furious winds of Isaac could rage as much as the anger he never allowed himself to express.
He found himself in some tiny little town with no proper hotel and no three star dining. Yet, he needed to be there.
He knew rain.
It was an old friend.
He had an umbrella and a heavy coat. He was prepared for the weather.
He didn't understand.
The wind.
The water.
The sound like a train whipping through the station.
The rain assaulted him from above and from below. It flew sideways with the wind. The force stung his exposed skin.
His umbrella was of no use, even before it turned outward.
His normally heavy suit soaked through in minutes. He was barely strong enough to move against the added weight. He couldn't make any headway against the stronger gusts of winds. All of his energy to move forward and all he could do was stand still.
He was at the mercy of the storm.
Helpless, he yelled out against the howl of the wind.
Hopeless, he wept into the driving, pelting rain.
He was undone.
And then the rains stopped.
The winds died.
All that was chaos was calm.
In the blink of an eye the whole world changed.
He slogged his way through standing water, over broken glass, around uprooted trees.
He walked through debris until he found shelter amongst the unwashed masses he tried to so hard to avoid.
People Sherlock would have helped.
People who would have helped Sherlock.
People who did help him.
A bottle of water.
A set of clean, dry, warm clothes.
A cot.
A blanket.
A place to heal.
And when he finally returned home, atop the desk in his private office, he found an umbrella identical to the one he had lost and a handwritten note.
I heard you would be needing this. – SH.