Brother, Yes Holmes, No

by Librasmile

You know what they say. Mama's baby, daddy's…well… So many fans love to see Martin as the littlest Holmes brother. But what if he wasn't? What if he WAS their brother, just not a Holmes? What do the brothers do? Welcome him into the family? Ignore him? Or worse? Once again it falls to Mycroft to make the hard decisions.

Brother, Yes. Holmes, No.

Summary:
You know what they say. Mama's baby, daddy's…well…

Disclaimer: Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes are the property of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate and/or Steven Moffat, Mark Gattis, the BBC et. al. Martin Crieff and Douglas Richardson are the creations of John Finnemore and presumably controlled by him and BBC Radio. No infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work which is purely for entertainment, not commerce.

~8~*~8~*~8~

Perhaps Sherlock would finally forgive him for failing to rescue Mummy. That's what this was really all about wasn't it?

Mycroft Holmes stood stock still just inside the doorway of the hospital room located at the end of a relatively quiet corridor of the intensive care ward. In one hand, was his rolled umbrella. In the other was the file on everything he knew about the man in the bed before him.

The room's occupant had arrived three days ago. The fact that he had not arrived in the eye of a storm of police activity and media speculation had been testament to Mycroft's ability to control the situation. The man had been discovered accidentally in a makeshift dungeon that masqueraded as an ordinary suburban basement as part of the ongoing investigation into master criminal James Moriarty's network.

Thankfully, it had been one of Mycroft's agents who had discovered him. Normally, the man would have informed the police along with Mycroft as protocol required. The agent had managed to argue his way through Anthea to speak with Mycroft directly which was a feat in and of itself. Even as the agent suffered silently through one of Mycroft's surgically precise verbal eviscerations he'd had the presence of mind to transmit the victim's photo. Mycroft had had an extraction team scrambled in five minutes.

At first glance, he had thought it was Sherlock. They ALL had. Only after he'd been pulled from that frustratingly empty house and transported him here, a civilian hospital thoroughly infiltrated with Mycroft's agents, had they gotten definitive proof that it wasn't him. It had only been three months since Sherlock's "death" and this man showed evidence of having been beaten, starved and tortured for twice that time. While the medical staff had gone about the business of treating him, Mycroft's staff had gone to work compiling everything they could find about the victim.

The preliminary results had only reinforced his conclusions. He had no doubt the DNA tests would be little more than a redundancy.

Of course he had informed Sherlock who had yet to send a response. Yet the brothers knew how to read each other even without a word said, even at a thousand miles distance.

Sherlock had had nothing to say because this was Mycroft's call as all family matters all ultimately came down to Mycroft. It was one of their unspoken agreements. Rightly or wrongly, Mycroft would be blamed – he was still waiting to receive some credit, any credit, for anything – for how the situation was handled. He supposed it was a cop out that only younger siblings could pull off with any semblance of dignity. Mycroft, on the other hand, would bear the brunt of the fall out and if he got it wrong, not only would he look the fool, but he'd add one more brick to the wall that stood between him and Sherlock.

And that was why he was here, wasn't it? When it would have been much more efficient – more of a relief really – to do everything by remote control, from the safe remove of his office, where clones of his brother couldn't eat away at the foundations of his family history.

Taking a breath, he took a step forward, then another and still another into the room, his shoes echoing on the cold linoleum floor, until he was standing in its center, feet apart, arms slightly akimbo, absurdly, he realized, as if he were in a Mexican standoff.

He couldn't honestly say he had any PERSONAL feeling for the boy. The man. Martin. Call him Martin, he chided himself. He's your brother. Call him by his name.

But that was just it wasn't it? Martin Crieff was his brother. But he was not a Holmes.

It's not as if Mycroft wasn't aware of his own hypocrisy. The Holmes name MEANT something to him. No matter how dulled it might have become from the mediocrity of the 19th century's Holmeses, his grandfather, his father and he himself had all made heroic strides in restoring its traditional luster in 20th century and the 21st. Through two world wars, the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and past and current depressions, their superlative efforts on behalf of both White Hall and the Palace had reminded one and all of the proud legacy of foreign and intelligence service the Holmes family had achieved. Despite his little brother's misadventures – indeed, even because of them, at least with regard to that tiresome Adler woman – the Holmes name was once again synonymous with the stalwart defense of the nation. He was not about to allow that redeemed image to be smeared by this mediocre ginger by-product of his mother's tawdry mésalliance.

Wearily, he pinched the bridge of his nose. The Vernets had always been wild cards. Grandmother Holmes had never liked them, and although he'd always been careful to hide his feelings in their presence, he was inclined to agree. To the last man, woman, and child, they all had a wild streak that could erupt at the least auspicious moment. To his great relief, his Grandfather Vernet had been a reliably stable, almost staid presence. A chemist by profession – someone had to mix the paints Mycroft supposed - his wilder proclivities had only manifested in a passionate, occasionally manic obsession with opera, classical music, and French impressionist art. Mummy had inherited the music. Sherlock had inherited the music AND the talent for chemistry. Apparently, stability and sensibility were for lesser beings. Nor had his Aunt Chloe been any help. She had inherited the manic obsession for art chased with a side of fashion photography and all the seedier elements went with it. No one can convince Mycroft that she wasn't Sherlock's introduction to harder drugs. Sherlock had gone off to Paris as a truculent, rebellious college drop out. He'd come home as an addicted one.

Nor had Mummy been spared. Although more than capable of tackling the role of sparkling chatelaine, Mummy had had the infamous Vernet temperament – up one day, down the next and no clue as to the when, the why, or for how long. The font of all of Sherlock's dangerous magnetism, Vivianne Vernet Holmes' charisma could bespell you in a flash and drop you just as fast. Say what one wanted about Sigur Holmes and Sherlock could certainly be alarmingly vocal on the subject, but their father was at least predictable – cold, but predictable. Being in their mother's presence always gave Mycroft just the slightest sense of vertigo, as if he'd imbibed too much Moet – when he wasn't tensing for the next eruption. While Sherlock had basked in her presence, Mycroft had always felt it best to keep his distance – which was why he hadn't seen. He hadn't known. Sherlock had tried to tell him while Mummy had still been safely at home but who would have listened to the ramblings of a 5-year-old even one as bright as his baby brother? He hadn't listened, so he hadn't known. Not until it was entirely too late. By then his father held all the cards and the crumbling of Sherlock's trust in and esteem for Mycroft had begun their disastrous decline.

He took a breath, then another, and still another, clearing the air that had suddenly seemed to clog in his nose and lungs.

They had had a sister once, Alexandra. She had lived all of nine days – the family's nine days' queen. Mummy had been devastated of course. Sherlock had been confused. To Mycroft's surprise, Sherlock had actually liked Alexandra and Sherlock liked few other children, certainly no infants. Father of course had said nothing and Mycroft had had no idea what to say. Mummy had had no ability to say anything at all. Post-partum depression had been the diagnosis, followed swiftly by hospitalization. So the transfer from the hospital to the psychiatric institution hadn't really come as a surprise to anyone but Sherlock. He knows now that the fact that the institutionalization had never ended had broken Sherlock's heart. He cannot say whether or not his own had been as damaged. What he can categorically say – to himself alone and no one else, certainly not to Sherlock with his unnerving ability to suss out everything hidden – is that he was relieved.

No wonder his brother hated him.

Still, he would have devised a special circle of hell for a man who could take advantage of a woman as deeply debilitated as his mother had been. Whether his father knew or took action he can only hazard a guess, at least until his staff come back with the findings of a deeper background check. He knew how he would have addressed the problem. And he could have gotten away with it – just one of the many perks of his "minor position with the British government."

But that was the point wasn't it, said the ghost Sherlock in his head – well not truly a ghost since Sherlock was still alive. An inner projection perhaps? A version of Sherlock that still spoke to him as if the brothers could truly be honest with each other. Mummy would never have become so debilitated had you fixed the problem when you had the chance.

So in reality Martin Crieff's existence was just as much his fault as the mentally defective miscreant who had sired him.

He suppressed a shudder.

Steeling himself, he stared down at the doppelganger of his baby brother – no, he corrected himself, no longer the baby, the middle child now – and oh how he would love to crawl inside Sherlock's brain and see exactly how he was taking being dethroned as mummy's baby. Red hair, he noted. Well. It seems he was no longer his mother's only ginger-haired child, although thankfully his hair was nowhere near as bright. Mummy had bequeathed her dark locks to Sherlock, so Mycroft had always assumed he'd gotten his own admittedly darker ginger strands from the Holmes strain.

Unabashed, he moved closer to peer at the patient as the facts from Crieff's hastily assembled preliminary dossier ran through his head.

Name: Martin Malcolm Eilmer Crieff.

He remembered pausing when he'd come to "Eilmer." Clearly no stranger himself when it came to odd names, he'd nevertheless glanced up at Anthea, eyebrow raised. She'd stared back, expression carefully neutral. He'd gone back to his reading, the corner of his mouth twitching only once. Welcome to the family indeed, he'd thought.

Occupation: airline pilot with MJN Air based out of Fitton.

Of course. He'd already known the man was a pilot. They'd originally thought that was the motive behind his kidnapping.

Age: 30

Date of Birth: October 27, 1985.

Mother: Wendy Crieff

Father: George Crieff

That was the adoption certificate. The actual birth certificate read:

Birth Mother: Viviane Vernet Holmes, in-patient, long-term, The Gables Rehabilitation and Treatment Residence.

Birth Father: Malcolm Edgerton Douglas, in-patient, temporary, The Gables.

His skipped over the listing of the start date of his mother's residency and landed on Douglas' before progressing to the date and location of his original hospitalization. He frowned – a military hospital? – then rechecked the date. Wait -1982? That was the year of the Falklands War. Achievement of the political objectives aside, he'd always considered the Falklands conflict to be about neither guts nor glory but an ultimately empty exercise in grandstanding. Mostly on the part of the Argentinians who'd had to be put back in their place – pride of the Commonwealth and all that. But there HAD been casualties, and, he'd guess, not more than a few combatants had come back with significant cases of PTSD.

Abruptly, he'd flipped through the paperwork to find – ah, yes, there it was. His rank: Flight Lt. Malcolm E. Douglas, RAF. So junior officer. How resoundingly ordinary, Mycroft thought. On active duty during the conflict until…

He exhaled softly. For all that the conflict had barely merited the designation of an actual war, there had been some serious losses on both sides, including the sinking of several British ships. The HMS Sheffield, Ardent and Coventry had all been lost. Injuries on the Sheffield had been especially bad and her loss – the first ship lost in combat since World War II – had knocked British military and civilian confidence alike before the victory restored it. Of course, Douglas' original assignment had been the Sheffield. Although he'd been reassigned, Douglas hadn't made it through the rest of the conflict. Shot down over the South Atlantic, he'd been sent back to Britain and his physical injuries healed before his post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms had made his institutionalization inevitable. He'd been transferred to The Gables late in 1983. His death was recorded in December 1985, three months after Crieff's birth. Coroners had ruled it a suicide. He paused again. Sherlock had been 9 years old. He had been 16. And neither had seen Mummy for over a year at that point.

Briefly swiping a hand across his eyes, he'd skimmed rapidly through the rest after that, gleaning the essentials. Martin Crieff was an ordinary man, from an ordinary working or lower middle-class – depending on the day of the week and that year's tax bracket – family. His adoptive father was dead. His adoptive mother was a pensioner. His brother and sister were both respectably employed and coupled. His education was entirely ordinary, but then Mycroft could hardly expect evidence of the Holmes genius when Crieff had no Holmes blood in him. His completion of flight school was admittedly unusual as was his perseverance in the face of multiple CPL exam failures. He was also a captain at a very young age. However, since MJN Air only employed one other pilot and Martin received no actual remuneration for his piloting skills, Mycroft felt he could be forgiven for having trouble seeing that as an actual accomplishment. In addition, Crieff lived in a dilapidated attic bedsit in student housing with a bunch of barely housebroken freshers. And the only thing that allowed him to barely scrape by was his pathetic little moving company, Icarus Removals. Icarus. Mycroft shook his head. From Eilmer to Icarus. Clearly, a classical education would not have gone amiss there. On the other hand, the Vernets would undoubtedly have found him an adorably enterprising soul before attempting to remake him in their own feckless image.

Facts were one thing, however. Being faced with the living, battered flesh of the man as you stood at the foot of his hospital bed was quite another thing entirely.

Mycroft's hand reached out and hovered in midair over the younger man's foot then retreated to the safety of the hospital bed's foot rail. He was shorter than Sherlock although only by a hair. From the description of the timid, nerve-wracked personality Anthea had gleaned from her preliminary research, Mycroft had expected to see someone considerably shorter. He was also dotted and speckled with freckles. Sherlock had always been a pale, porcelain child. Although Martin's skin color was drained and all but translucent due to his grey pallor, Mycroft could see a fine spray across his nose and unnervingly familiar cheekbones. They remained sparse as they trailed down his throat growing denser as they reached his sharply prominent collarbones which were visible above the thin hospital gown and presumably continued down. There was even speckling across the inside of his frail arm. It dotted his skin and surrounded the needle parked inside his vein like some kind of oddly cheery ornamentation. He was as skeletal as Sherlock had been before his last rehab stint, oh so long ago. Mycroft glanced up at the network of IV lines, blood pressure and respiration monitoring clips and consoles, and the array of pills placed on the bedside table. There was no movement from the bed's unconscious occupant. No restless shifting. No fluttering beneath his eyelids. If the monitors hadn't continued in their serene, unbroken beeping, Mycroft could not have actually proven that the man was still breathing. Not from simple visual observation in any case.

The corners of Mycroft's mouth tightened perceptibly as he recalled Sherlock's last rehab. Unlike the two previous attempts, this one had been residential. Sherlock had raged like a man possessed, not just enraged but terrified, convinced Mycroft was permanently locking him away as their father had done their mother. But the failures of the last two out-patient treatments had convinced Mycroft to take a harder line. He hadn't weakened and Sherlock had stayed. At least this last rehab appeared to have been successful. So far. That didn't mean Mycroft liked to remember it. He had no doubt that one Dr. John Watson had been a critical factor in its continued success and now that his brother was playing dead and separated from his dear doctor, Mycroft feared a relapse.

And he cannot handle rehabbing two of them at one time. He simply can't.

Abruptly he staggered over to the bedside chair and collapsed into it, shoulders sagging.

This man, this boy, this bastard child was NOT a Holmes, so why should he be forced to shoulder the burden of him?

He shuddered as his thoughts darkened. He could do it. It would be easy. Crieff was already in critical condition and there was never any guarantee that he would survive. In fact, the odds were only slightly in his favor and infection could turn the tables instantly. Mycroft wouldn't even have to be on the scene. He could assign one of his minions the task. It would be neat and clean with no questions from medical personnel or police. As for the intelligence community, which could always smell and dissect a cover up, the demands of national security covered a multitude of sins. All he had to do was convince his colleagues that Crieff was a threat. And could one ever again trust a pilot who'd been the captive plaything of a man like Moriarty? Besides them, no one else would ask – certainly not his Wokingham relatives who had yet to show up 72 hours into his hospital admittance. It would be so easy. The problem erased. Mummy's reputation restored, her memory rescued if not she herself. His overfull plate restored to manageability. His hand closed around his cell phone. Anthea was just one call away.

"Excuse me is this Martin Cr – Good God!" The sentence ended on a breathless note as the speaker stopped in the doorway and just stayed.

Mycroft stared at the newcomer. He was a big man – tall, broad shouldered - in a disheveled pilot's uniform. He had dark hair and expressive eyes that suggested they could be droll, doleful or seductive by turns but were currently stricken by the bruised and battered patient before him. Ah yes, the first officer. He should have expected that. Why hadn't he expected that? He rubbed his forehead. "May I help you?" Mycroft asked.

For a moment, the man just stood in the doorway, mouth agape "I-, I- " Then he seemed to rouse himself. With an effort he tore his eyes away from the man in the bed and turned to Mycroft.

"I'm sorry, I came to see Martin. How is he?"

Mycroft stared at him, considering. Did the man want sentiment or the truth? "He's holding on for now," he said finally.

The man nodded without rancor, turning his gaze back to Martin, then back to him as a frown creased his forehead. "And you are?"

Mycroft paused again. What to tell him? Hello, I'm Mycroft Holmes. I'm a minor government official investigating your coworker's kidnapping. A smooth combination of truth and lies beautifully wrapped up to go down easy. That would do nicely.

Yet something stilled his tongue as other options ricocheted through his head.

Hello, my name is Mycroft and this is the bastard child my mother conceived with another mentally ill patient in the institution at which they both resided. Didn't even know he existed a week ago. But don't worry, since Mummy died of self-starvation and the man she'd dallied with killed himself, all's forgiven. Just popping in to see how he is.

Oh yes, yes, that would go down nicely. Especially if Mycroft managed not to take his umbrella and smash the face in of an already grievously wounded man who nevertheless had no right to the face he had, a face he and Sherlock, his full brother, had inherited from their mother in infuriatingly equal measure.

How do you do? I'm Mycroft Holmes and this apparently is my brother. Yes, quite a mess isn't it? Still, he is family and all. And if I let him go, what sense does it make to hold onto my other brother? It's not as if this one has been any more trouble than the other one. Quite the contrary. It wasn't even his fault that I found out. Still, quite a shock to the system to learn your mother had a whole other child hidden from your view. Don't know what to make of that. Don't know if I can make anything of that. But I don't imagine she'd forgive me, wherever she is, if I don't take him on board. After all, Sherlock hasn't forgiven me yet for failing her once before and he's still alive. What else can one do?

Mycroft realizes he's still staring at the bewildered man who is watching Mycroft blink as if waking himself from a dreamless sleep. Slowly, he rises and straightens his tie before extending his hand and grasping the other man's.

"How do you do? I'm Mycroft Holmes. Martin is my brother."

~FIN~

Author's Note: I love Sherlock – Cabin Pressure crossovers and Martin as the youngest Holmes brother. It always amuses me to see what kind of narrative backflips people come up with in order to explain Martin's resemblance to Sherlock. Usually he's the result of Papa Holmes's dalliance. However, my own backstory for the Holmes family forced me to come up with something else.

In my head canon, Mycroft and Sherlock are full brothers. Mummy aka Vivianne Vernet Holmes was a beauty who bequeathed Sherlock her looks while Mycroft resembles their father. There was a sister who died in infancy. The Holmes marriage ended badly though there was no divorce. Shortly after Alexandra's death, Mummy had a breakdown and was institutionalized for the remainder of her life. Sherlock always thought there was much more to it and blamed Mycroft for not stopping their father from putting her in the hospital. I got the idea of the Vernets by extrapolating from Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote that Sherlock's mother was somehow related to the Vernets, a real family of artists apparently. I just decided they were all volatile by nature, giving us Sherlock in all his mad glory.

But while Mummy was in hospital she connected with a fellow patient. Martin is the result.

Timeline notes: Here's how I see their ages
Vivianne born in 1943
Mycroft born in 1969; Vivianne is 26
Sherlock born in 1976; Vivianne is 33
Martin born in 1985; Vivianne is 42 – so I've actually made him younger than he is in Cabin Pressure. I did this so there was a larger gap between him and Sherlock. In Cabin Pressure, he's 36 as of series 4, which presumably was in 2012. That means he would have been born in the same year I have Sherlock being born. Now, while I wouldn't have put it past Papa Holmes to pull off something like that, Vivianne has more class – and of course in my little alternate universe, Martin is HER child, not Sigur's.