Disclaimer: Do not own Sherlock.
AN: Just to avoid any confusion, the flashbacks are not intended to be linear.
Footage
The teacup trembles in the saucer, just enough to send tiny ripples dancing across the liquid within.
Everything else about him is calm, every inch the Ice Man. Everything except that tremble.
He could never control that regardless of how much he desired to do so.
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Molly Hooper, currently the third resident of 221B is making a fatal mistake. She is playing Cluedo with Sherlock. John Watson learned his folly years ago, and has never played it with Sherlock since. Well, if Miss Hooper truly wishes to reside in the flat she will have to learn sooner or latter, especially seeing as she has yet to inform Sherlock that she disposed of his latest experiment because it had achieved an unfortunate degree of expansion (despite knowing full well what it was and why it was in Sherlock's possession). Sherlock makes a move and the confident smile vanishes from her face even as a frown of confusion draws her eyebrows together. His brother smirks evilly. Bet she wishes her house hadn't burnt down now, doesn't she?
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A tremble that only intensifies as he watches the screen.
A screen that has been the same for two hours now. Unheard of, except for when it's not.
That's always something to be worried about.
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It has been three days since Dr. Watson moved into his brother's flat - payment fee, surprisingly. Also surprising is that it's taken three days for Dr. Watson to get fed up with something. Right now it appears to be… ah yes. The tongues in the toaster. The shorter man flings up his arms and turns away, a small smile fleeting crossing his face. He's secretly enjoying this, as is Sherlock, judging by the light in eyes. Perhaps this one will work out as a flat mate after all.
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The image does not change.
The trembling grows.
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"Excuse me, sir. But is your brother shooting the wall?"
The curiosity in Anthea
's voice is enough to cause him to divert his attention to the monitor, as opposed to the question itself.
Not an unusual one, in regards to Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock is wearing his bathrobe, sitting in an armchair, and firing his gun at a spray painted smiley face without aiming nor looking.
"Mmmm. Yes, it appears so. You should see him with his harpoon, he's got much better aim."
Ignoring his assistant's blink of astonishment Mycroft returns his attention back to his phone. This James
Moriatry is getting tiresome, to say the least.
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The teacup is broken, the dark stain soaks into the carpet.
He's sitting in his desk chair.
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Molly is walking around the flat, her hair a mess and shirt on inside out as she tries desperately to rock four week old Oliver to sleep. The child is having none of it though, and if anything, appears to increase the volume of his cries. Mycroft is puzzled, for he'd just left 221B an hour ago, having successfully y rocked his nephew to sleep, allowing the child's mother to obtain some much needed rest as well. Not long enough, apparently. Well, shockingly enough there are no appointments scheduled for this afternoon and Mycroft doubts that the English Government will implode if he's out of the office for a few hours. Retuning in order to take Oliver off of Molly's hands for a few more hours appears to be feasible. Especially since her eyes are looking rather watery.
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Sitting? When did he sit down? He'd just been standing, hadn't he?
Doesn't matter.
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Mycroft does not need to see the screen to know what the image will be. He has just left the flat, having spent the past forty-five minutes occupying the corner by the window. He looks anyway.
Sherlock is sitting on the edge of the couch, his back bowed and hands buried in his hair. The week old stubble is a dark shadow across his jaw, and the scars that litter his bare back and torso (scars that were not there in the years before he began hunting down the flies residing in the spider's web) gleam dully in the lamplight.
Molly sits on his left, her hair unbound and cascading down her back, her face streaked with dried tears. Oliver and Kathryn are asleep, their heads resting side by side in her lap. With one hand threading though their hair Molly leans into Sherlock's side, placing her head upon his shoulder before running her other hand up along the length of his arm and firmly taking hold of his wrist.
John is on Sherlock's right, his throat working fiercely as he fights to contain his tears, shifting his hold on Abigail's sleeping form as he does so. He reaches behind Sherlock and rubs his hand along the length of his back, his fingers automatically tracing the layers of scar tissue as he goes. Once John's hand reaches the ridge just beneath the shoulder blades he stills before leaning over and placing a kiss just behind his brother's ear. In a direct mirroring of his hand his lips remain there even after they have ceased to move.
Sherlock does not move but Mycroft knows that he is aware of them, that he is grateful for their presence. Always, continuingly grateful. Mycroft also knows that, in the morning, it will be Sherlock that breaks the news to his son and daughters. That, in a near repeat of Mycroft's own words such a short time ago, Sherlock will explain that due to a faulty motor and a lake that was too cold, Grandma and Grandpa Holmes will never be coming back.
Turning away from the screen Mycroft covers his eyes with his hand and bows his head. His mind is blissfully blank. He does not move for a long time.
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Anthea enters, dark eyes wide with concern that, for once, she doesn't bother to conceal.
Normally she does. He would never have hired her if she wasn't capable of discretion and concealment.
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John stares upward, eyes wide and mouth agape. All of the bedding is hanging from the plaster, having been glued to the ceiling. There is something that Mycroft does not care to identify dripping from the fabric, something that appears to be lumpy, wet, of a mass quantity, and extremely sticky. You'd think that John would have learned by now not to leave Sherlock alone when he said that he was board.
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Two things that he, himself, excels in.
This though? There is no concealment from this.
Perhaps this time, it is a good thing?
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The flat was empty.
Silent.
Dark.
Dust gathered on furniture, cobwebs formed at the corners, and a mouse attempted and failed to eat the violin case.
No one came. No one ever came.
Not since his brother –
Not since he and John Watson had witnessed the blood and cracked skull and he'd made his people dig and burn - dig and burn, dig and burn, dig and burn, dig and burn- until there was nothing left and as he'd stood over that wretched box there was not a single doubt in his mind.
His fault. All of it, for he had all but handed Sherlock over to Moriatry on a silver platter.
No shadows.
No movement.
Nothing.
He can't bring himself to delete the footage.
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The shadows stretch differently across the wide expanse of the room.
Long and low to the ground.
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There is new brand of tea in the cupboard above the stove. Not new in the sense that it's never been there before, for Mycroft has noticed it numerous times over the years, but new because in the year and a half since his brother's miraculous return from the dead it has been absent from the kitchen of 221B.
John Watson's tea. Light and naturally sweet and one of the few brands that his brother wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.
Now it has reappeared.
The occasion is less then a joyful one, however, and as Sherlock sets the steaming mug before the ex-soldier that is slumped upon the couch, Mycroft doubts that Sherlock notices the brand at all.
Doubts that Sherlock observes that he is drinking the formally detested brew nor that his hand has not ceased to be removed from his inner elbow, exactly over the spot where needles once penetrated his flesh.
For, just as in the hospital, the clothing and faces of these men are still dark with Mary Morstan's blood.
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Time has passed. It always does but this time it is more important than most random ticks of a hand upon a face.
How long?
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Mycroft tears his eyes away from the screen, determinedly not looking at his sister-in-law whom is on her hands and knees and unaware of the…. tantalizing… motion of her bum as she struggles to reach an orange that has fallen behind the dresser, nor of her blonde husband whose eyes are currently fixed on said bum.
He really does not need to that Molly's bum looked like… well, that, and he most definitely did not require the knowledge of John's expression when he ogles his wife (Mycroft knows how his brother-in-law looks when he admires Sherlock, and that's more then enough for God's sake).
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Minutes? No. Hours. Hours have gone by.
The blood will have dried.
Blood that should never have been spilt in the first place, for all that the spilling of blood has occurred since the dawn of time and will continue to do so up until the end. Mycroft has spilled more then his share over the years and has grown so tired of it. Bone tired.
Yet that blood….
He would end the life of thousands if that blood is not the blood.
If it is not drying out in the heat of the sun.
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Miss. Hooper brings Sherlock home, about a month after the incident at Baskerville. When it was well passed 2AM and his younger brother had almost collapsed in a hallway at Saint Bart's, having gone three days without food and sleep as an answer to a triple murder hovered just out of his grasp.
After she had laid Sherlock down upon the sofa Miss. Hooper remains standing, looking down at him. She is facing away from the camera, so her expression was hidden. Not hidden however, was the set of her shoulders.
Lax, despite the almost ramrod straightness of her back.
Slightly hunched even though her hands were clasped tightly together behind her back, as if she were resisting the impulse to reach out to the man before her.
Sad.
Miss. Hooper was sad, most likely because she thought Sherlock was either unaware of her feelings or did not return them.
Neither were true. Not the first and most certainly not the second. For Sherlock had resorted to exploiting and mildly manipulating said feelings when it suited him, Mycroft knew.
The second…. well, it would be wrong to say that his brother returned those emotions in full, but truthful to claim that Sherlock did feel something similar for Molly Hooper. His brother cared for the woman, for sure. That much was obvious from the manner in which he disapproved of any and all potential suitors and was never deliberately cruel towards her, for all the times that he was cutting in his remarks.
Trust? Mycroft wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it, but trust in her his brother had. Trust enough to take Miss. Hooper's word and skill at face value and to feel at ease with her continued presence. Something which only John Watson, as far as Mycroft had been able to deduce, had ever been awarded.
Only time would tell if those feelings deepened into the more that Miss. Hooper was longing for.
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The dust will have cleared.
His people will still be on location, dressed to fit, dressed to disguise, dressed to hunt and slaughter in plain sight, dressed to investigate without being seen. That is what they are trained to do. It is amazing really, how many creatures do this. Man was not the first, not by a long shot.
Snakes, birds and beetles, lizards, whales and wolves, jellyfish, crabs, deer and dolphins.
They taught each-other and man learned from them, not the other way around. Man would have died out long ago, if they had not learned the art of concealment, had they not come to terms with the necessity of slaughter.
James Moriatry was such a man.
A spider and a viper. A lion and wolf and chameleon and a savage hyena all wrapped into one.
A remarkably intelligent, formidable, and disgusting creature that glorified in the hunt and bathed in the blood of his kill. A hollow excuse of a man that smiled around broken teeth and sliced his own wrists to watch you blanch and laughed as he toyed with lives and made you dance the fools' dance.
As he slaughtered for the joy of it and refused to be beaten…. except Sherlock had beaten him in the end, hadn't he.
Yes, he had. But this…. this is not a true slaughter andMoriatry is not the cause and his brother will not candor to whims not his own – and it does not matter.
Mycroft's people are still there and there they shall stay until his order says otherwise.
Coral Snakes twined around the Milk.
For the dust had existed in the first place.
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Miss. Hooper has found the human torso in the freezer, the same one that she'd procured for Sherlock last week. Doing credit to the strong stomach that she must surly posses due to her routine examination of corpses in various states of mutilation and decomposition, Miss. Hooper firmly shuts the door and proceeds to lean against the counter and eat some ice cream out of the container. Perhaps she will stay for a while, after all.
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The press will still be swarming the scene, no doubt.
They will focus on the carnage, as will the rest of London, for that is what people do. They will not see the war zone, made so by other people's own private hell. As are all war zones, privately driven or not. A hell. The most devastating of hells.
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Mrs. Hudson begins to come by. Dusts and vacuums while ignoring her tears of loss and the sneezes from the thick accumulation of dust.
His fault, in part. He has not sent over a cleaning crew, for it would mean they would be touching his brother's things and that… Sherlock had never liked anybody touching his possessions.
So simple to use that against him, once.
John Watson never stops by.
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The sirens will not have stopped.
The screams will have done so by now. Not because the shock has passed (although it will have abated somewhat), but because there is no one left to scream. Echoes are the only remnants now. It is what becomes of all screams, be they on the street or in a field or inside your own head. A constant question. Desperate souls seeking answers for the pain, for the drugs and ongoing violence, for the self loathing and rage and abandonment and misery and loss and the constant avalanche of everything. They never receive a response. There is none, really. He is no exception, Mycroft knows, as he attempts to stifle the echo of the scream buried deep within his mind. He is not successful. Then again, no one ever is.
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It's three AM, according to the clock hanging on the wall. According to Mycroft's internal one, it's well past dawn and high time for him to be awake. Blasted thing. Pausing in writing one of the never ending reports he glancing at the screen off to his right, his gaze focusing on the one in the upper left corner of the screen.
All three are asleep on the sofa. John flat on his back with his arm around Molly, whom is wedged between his side and the back of the sofa, her hands curled up below her chin. Sherlock is sprawled out between their legs, his head nestled between Molly's hip and John's stomach, and an arm and a leg each dangling off the edge of the sofa. The same arm that is covered with small, scarred over track marks.
Evidence of a substance that caused his brother to slip further and further away.
A reminder of their father's shuttered eyes and mummy's hitched breath.
An instant recall of a time when a disappearance lasting for weeks was common as were dilated pupils, vomit, and trembling limbs, when nightmares ruled his own mind and the five separate occasions when his brother's eyes rolled backward in their sockets and the powder was almost too much and the ambulance almost arrived too late.
Evidence of what is, without a doubt, at the root of Mycroft's almost compulsory observation.
He cannot – will not- allow Sherlock to slip away once again.
For so long the work and the fear of the loss of respect (from their parents as well as Detective Inspector Lestrade, the same man that had personally hulled Sherlock's rail thin arse from an underground den where you got on your knees and your corpse wound up in the dumpster)is all that kept him from slipping.
Now? Perhaps it will be these two that finally give Sherlock the resolve he needs not to slip. To work as he has never done before to keep away from the glass syringes hidden in the skull, to never again let the white powder run though his fingers, to cease the hunger in his eyes and the desire to make his mind whirl and dance the vile rainbow dance.
Please. Please let the man who buys their milk and the woman that stuttered when he gave her an expensive birthday gift that morning, the people whose hands Sherlock now takes without reservation and whom he'd burn all of London to find, be the ones that prevent him.
For if they cannot prevent him, if they leave or give up then…. then the next needle to pierce a vein will contain too much.
Mycroft cannot loose his brother. Not again.
Swallowing heavily Mycroft pushes his thoughts aside and returns to the reports.
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Mycroft feels bile rise in his throat.
He forces it back down.
Now is not the time to be sick.
It's never the time.
He cannot offered that luxury.
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John is asleep in the armchair, dead to the world after getting off a double – no, triple shift – at the hospital. Sherlock is off on a case out in Manchester and Molly has taken the children to the library. The flat is completely silent and so John slumbers on, unaware that the girls had turned their Barbie make-up kit into art supplies, with their father's face as the canvas prior to leaving for the day.
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A sinkhole formed in the middle of London.
Took out the apartment building it formed under, four buildings on either side, plus the next three streets.
Cars.
Street signs.
Shops and parking meters.
Trees.
Animals and people.
Everything.
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Pouring some milk into his tea Mycroft glances automatically at the screen, not bothering to do a double take.
Sherlock is sitting exactly where he had been three hours ago, his hands steepled underneath his chin and his eyes blank as he rifles through his Mind Palace. He had been talking to someone, most likely John Watson, unaware that his flat mate had left four and a half hours ago. Well he'll figure it out eventually.
Sipping his tea Mycroft opens some files on an illegal smuggling operation in Madagascar, strong ties of which have been traced to England. At least Mycroft can be certain his brother was not talking to the skull this time.
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The screens are dark.
Blank and dead.
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Glancing up from his truly engrossing novel for the first time in an hour grants Mycroft a view of the screen. For a second he isn't sure what he's seeing, but as soon as the naked skin, six tangled limbs, and thrown back heads register he quickly pushes the button that makes the screen go black.
He does not need to see that, by all of Queen and Country.
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They'd been inside.
All of them, so his people report, but Mycroft already knew that.
He had seen them go inside.
The building fell.
They hadn't come out.
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As they drink coffee at the table the three matching rings are quite obvious upon their fingers, at least to Mycroft, seeing as how he is responsible for their legality. Seeing those symbols of three lives joined, Mycroft wonders when those looks between the three of them changed. When it was not simply pupil dilation as a result of lust or close companionship.
They had all been physically attracted to each-other for quite some time, even before Moriatry and Sherlock's return and the collaboration of their lives. There is a difference however, between experiencing lust fueled by love and choosing to either be aware or act upon those desires.
Molly had chosen to be aware yet remain silently at a distance, first with Sherlock and then with John as well. The first due to her assumption that Sherlock would never return her feelings, and John not only because of the recent loss of his fiancée, but according to Molly herself she had always been the "friend type", in John's eyes, never the girlfriend.
John and Sherlock had each remained stubbornly unaware of their desires for one another, despite the frequent assumptions of their civil partnership from compete strangers, a dominatrix, more then one child, and so many moments that were brushed aside that Mycroft had seriously considered placing them in couple's therapy just to see if anything came of it.
They did the same to Molly as well, after she had moved in (but seeing as John was grieving the loss of his fiancée for quite some time he can be excused in this case, at least up to a point). Sherlock was simply being Sherlock. The moron.
It didn't help that about a year and a half after the fire that caused Molly's relocation, people were constantly mistaking either Sherlock or John for her husband. Occasionally it was the other way around as well.
No. Mycroft isn't sure when those looks changed. When pupils dilated and eyes softened and emotions were finally brought to light. The process was too gradual to be sure of an exact date.
But change they had.
The rings are simply the physical evidence.
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No survivors.
Expected, in this case.
Plenty of investigation.
Plenty of forms to complete.
Plently of cries issued by people in the street.
Plenty of bodies; bruised, broken, and bloodied.
No one to arrest.
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As Mycroft watches Sherlock gently adjusts Kathryn's hold upon the violin, standing behind her to shift the instrument further underneath her chin and covering her hand with his, prompting her to relax her grip on the bow. In the middle of the floor Abigail and Oliver are playing cars, Abigail placing yellow stickers on the toys seconds before her brother snatches one and hurls it into the pile of unadorned cars underneath the coffee table. John is washing up the dinner dishes in the kitchen, barefoot and with suds in his hair. Molly is curled up in an armchair with her feet tucked under her, her eyes fixed on the book in her hands and ignoring the chaos around her out of sheer force of will. Controlled chaos. Just the way Mycroft prefers it.
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Mycroft forms a fist. The trembling is contained but does not cease.
At least the teacup isn't shaking any longer. The rattling of china's the one sound that they all hate – hated.
Hated.
Past tense from now on. Always past tense.
Hated.
Hat – oh, God.
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Molly and John stand on the step of 221B, heedless of the snow dotted wind whipping around them. Molly says something and John laughs before leaning forward to kiss her. As she pulls him closer his hand automatically moves to rest on her protruding stomach, just visible beneath the many colorful winter layers.
A crash sounds from somewhere in the house, followed instantly by Kathryn and Abigail's angry screams and Sherlock's exasperated voice trailing closely behind them.
Mycroft sighs and gets up from the desk. Time to deal with the three visiting children.
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He closes his eyes.
The screens remain black.
Mycroft does not request a new camera feed, for if they have been recovered from the rubble he does not wish to see their bodies.
He will have to at some point, he knows.
Not right now.