He had not spoken directly to Mycroft for eighteen months after Sherlock died. When Mycroft texted, John ignored him, and when he called on him at his new flat, John refused to see him.

Almost inconceivably, John found himself venturing to Mycroft's work one afternoon, and he let himself into his office when he noticed no one was there.

He glanced around the luxurious room, taking in its regal mahogany bookshelves and desk, rich rugs, posh seating and dim lighting. It was exactly the same as he remembered it. Mycroft was a creature of habit, and John imagined Sherlock's death was probably at most an inconvenience to him, because it threatened his carefully formed schedule. He could not imagine Mycroft grieving. He could not imagine Mycroft feeling much of anything, actually.

Eventually, he heard soft footsteps and the rustling of papers. Mycroft, although he had not seen John in well over a year, did not react to his sudden presence in his office, save for a soft, "John," that seemed more of a sigh than an acknowledgement. His face twitched in reply, and he watched Mycroft, who, in his three piece suit and silk tie, gingerly closed the door and proceeded to ever so calmly pour two drinks. Handing John one and keeping the other, he seated himself in the chair opposite in silence, waiting for John to speak first.

John sipped his drink for a few moments, realizing that everything he had thought to say had left his mind. It was obvious now that Sherlock's death had affected Mycroft. He had lost weight, and looked tired and worried. His hair was thinner, and he was pale.

John cleared his throat, and spoke at last, "I . . . wanted to see you."

Mycroft smiled for approximately a tenth of a second, and replied, sipping his brandy, "Yes."

John's eyebrows lifted at this. He turned his drink in his hands. "You were expecting me, then?"

Mycroft nodded. "For some time, though I did not expect it would take you so long to show up," he admitted smoothly, in his characteristically detached yet paradoxically gentle voice.

John glared at him. "Yeah, I've been busy," he said shortly, "You know how it is."

"Hmm. Yes," Mycroft pondered at the obvious lie, then continued, "I suppose that you are here to speak about Sherlock."

"Yeah," he replied weakly. All of John's anger seemed to momentarily dissipate at the sound of the familiar name. He felt crushed and anxious again, and drank the rest of his brandy. Mycroft did the same, and went to refill their glasses. John tracked his movements, and noted the stiffness that had intruded upon his usually fluid motions. He felt obligated to speak. "You are . . . ," grieving was not the correct word, and though worried seemed to fit, John could not imagine what he was worried about. He furrowed his eyebrows, cleared his throat, and started again, "This affects you."

Mycroft, still with his back turned to John, paused suddenly. His shoulders seemed slumped, and he slowly turned, drinks in hand, and regarded John with his piercing grey eyes. "Of course, John," he murmured, and handed him the drink. "He is—," he caught himself, "was my younger brother." He seemed mildly surprised at his emotions, and drank the brandy. After a moment, he said, "I feel partly responsible, and I—," he paused, glancing at his shaking hand, "— miss him." He was silent after that, and looked sadder than John had ever seen him. It was unnerving to observe any such emotion on Mycroft's face.

John closed his eyes. He imagined it was true. Sherlock was Mycroft's intellectual peer, though not equal, as Sherlock had often pointed out. He had always credited Mycroft with being more of a genius than even he. It must be lonely being people of the intellectual calibre of Mycroft and Sherlock—bored and distressed with the ordinary, and finding true understanding only in the company of other exceptional human beings.

John thought about Sherlock's death and Mycroft's part in it. He could not forgive him, but he perceived that Mycroft struggled with what happened to his brother and his role in Sherlock's grisly end. This thought disabled him for a few moments, and his thoughts turned inevitably back to the blood-soaked sidewalk outside of St. Bart's.

John could feel himself pale and become faint, even after all of this time, remembering the scene outside of the hospital. He had felt disbelief, when he had heard Sherlock's voice catch on the phone, telling him, "This is my note. It's what people do, isn't it?"

In that horrible, ethereal moment, John did not feel as if he was really watching Sherlock standing grimly on the edge of the roof, reach desperately, impossibly, out to him. In yet another unimaginable moment, Sherlock said goodbye, tossed his phone determinedly to the rooftop, and cast himself into the cold fall air, limbs flailing, with his coat and scarf swirling around his doomed body. John remembered screaming. He remembered running, and getting knocked violently to the ground, and he felt utterly removed from reality as he clawed his way through the crowd to Sherlock's corpse, grabbing his bloody hand. He was only half conscious by then, and his only instinct was to touch him. Isn't that how one wakes from a nightmare—by doing the impossible, like hitting the ground, or meta thinking, "I'm dreaming", or by touching the corpse of your friend, who just hours before had been alive and with you, and arguing with you, and breathing, and frightened, and real. After Sherlock had been rudely hauled away on a stretcher to his permanent destination, John, who had been leaning heavily on a stranger, unable to experience any more, lost consciousness. And the chaos was over, and a deadly emptiness crept over his life, casting a long, dark shadow over everything he knew.

"John? John?" Mycroft was suddenly kneeling in front of John, and he emerged slowly from his hellish memory of Sherlock's last moments. When John managed finally to focus on his face, Mycroft was alarmed by the pain in his eyes, and the moisture looming in them, though stubbornly refusing to fall. John was embarrassed, and tried to shake Mycroft off. It didn't work.

Mycroft offered him his hand, and John looked at it dumbly for a moment before gingerly taking it. Mycroft stood slowly, and lifted John to his feet, and grasped his arm, leading him to the door. "Can I call my driver for you, John?" He asked softly. John blinked, and nodded slowly.

"Yeah, ok," John replied, still shaken. Mycroft nodded, and John sniffed, trying desperately to hold back tears. "He would think I was a sentimental git right now," he said, wiping his face.

Mycroft's face twitched in what might have been a smile, and agreed, "No doubt. He was . . . ," he struggled for the phrase, "an intolerable dick like that." John smiled sadly, and Mycroft squeezed his arm, opening the door, and lead him out of his office.

When John awoke the next morning, he was mildly mortified of his emotional reaction from visiting Mycroft. He hadn't even accomplished his intentions of the visit, though, upon reflection, his intentions were not very well defined in the first place. He stayed in bed, and let the cool morning air drift over his tired body for a few quiet moments. He thought again of his friend, and closed his eyes, scrubbing his hands over his face and through his dishevelled blonde hair. Last night had been thankfully dreamless. No nightmares of the war. No nightmares of Sherlock dying, and no dreams of fulfilling his most fervent desire—Sherlock being alive. In most of those dreams, Sherlock had never died. In some, he survived the fall. But these were the most emotionally draining. It was a horrible thing to experience such desolation and hopelessness first thing in the morning. He always felt strung out, and he always sobbed afterwards. It wasn't the nice and pretty crying of female leads in dramatic pictures, but the ugly, breathless, gasping, panicked, and agonizing sobs of someone completely broken. On those trying mornings, John called into work, and stayed in bed, feeling too distraught to do anything useful.

After he had told his therapist of the dreams and his reactions to them, she believed, probably correctly, that he was depressed. She also told him that on those mornings, more than the others, he should go to work, and take his mind off of Sherlock, but his mind was never successful in distancing itself from him. Thoughts of his friend were always close at hand, no matter what his physical location happened to be. Even if he were standing in a place Sherlock and he had never been, and never spoke of going, and had nothing to do with Sherlock at all, his mind could be brought back to Sherlock in a tortuous instant. His therapist had suggested that he speak with Mycroft, and attempt to relieve the tension between the two of them. She thought it might help with his dreams, too.

When he finally extracted himself from his bed and walked out to the kitchen, he was, though should not have been, surprised to see Mycroft seated, reading a newspaper with coffee in front of him, donning a fresh suit. John spotted another cup of coffee and a plate of toast and fruit across the table. He sighed, scratching his head, and said quietly, "Morning."

"Ah, John, I'm glad to see you looking a little more . . . composed. Please," Mycroft gestured to the empty seat, apparently unashamed to have started his morning with a bit of breaking and entering. He folded his newspaper slowly and laid it down on the table. John resisted the urge to glare.

John cleared his throat. "Right, yeah. Hi, Mycroft." With a furrowed brow, he sat down, and sipped his coffee. It was surprisingly delicious, and therefore not his.

"Costa Rican," Mycroft commented. "I have it imported." John rolled his eyes, and inwardly scoffed. Of course Mycroft imports his coffee from Costa Rica. "I left you a bag." He added, motioning lazily in the general direction of the counter. In that moment, John almost liked Mycroft.

Through the haze of the Costa Rican coffee contentment, John realized he felt quite uneasy with Mycroft's presence, largely because of the months of resentful silence, at least on his part. Last night had been strange. John had resisted his therapist's advice of going to Mycroft for a long time because he was angry about Mycroft's role in the matter. It had occurred to him that Moriarty could very well have found other ways to destroy Sherlock, and likely would have, with equivalent results. Mycroft had just been one pawn in one particular plan, though John imagined Moriarty had relished the delicious irony of using Sherlock's own flesh to destroy him. Mycroft was an indication of Sherlock's humanity to John, and he knew how badly Moriarty wanted to exploit that. Without Mycroft, John could have imagined that Sherlock had not even been born of mortals. He had heard nothing else of his family in the entire time he had known Sherlock, save for vague mentions of "mummy" from Mycroft. It would not have been difficult to imagine that Sherlock had been dropped from the sky. The man had been otherworldly.

John shifted uncomfortably when he noticed that Mycroft had been examining him shrewdly. "John, I know why you came to me last night, and I want to help you make your life more stable." He announced suddenly, setting his mug on the table.

John was taken aback. He wasn't even completely sure why he had gone to Mycroft last night. "I'm sorry, what? How—how could you," he stopped mid-sentence, as an unwelcome idea entered his thoughts. "You've been spying on me. On my therapist." Mycroft didn't acknowledge the accusation. "Oh, for god's sake," John muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on.

"It was for your own safety," Mycroft shot back, obviously offended at the notion that he found anything about John's ordinary life even remotely interesting.

"How?" John erupted, slamming his fist down on the table. "How? Moriarty got what he wanted!" John was furious and distraught that his grief had been on display for Mycroft, probably in the form of a government report. Or his therapist's notes.

Mycroft was unfazed at the outburst, and continued drinking his coffee, which simultaneously enraged John and made him feel ridiculous at his uncontrolled emotions. But then again, Mycroft was the Ice Man. "It was strictly precautionary," he elaborated. "It wouldn't do to have another tragedy to deal with," he explained, as if John's death would have been a small inconvenience.

"Of course," John said sarcastically. He marvelled at how kind Mycroft had seemed last night, in contrast with the current situation. It made some sense, however: once you accuse one of the Holmes brothers of something, they instantly become aloof and distant, uninterested in speaking about or acknowledging their faults. Their decisions were always justified in their minds, and it mattered little to them that everyone else understood or approved of their motivations. It resulted, predictably, in a great deal of seemingly bizarre and unexplained behaviour. John recalled his ire at Sherlock for poisoning him as an experiment.

"Have you ever thought about coming to work for me, John?" Mycroft inquired, ignoring the previous conversation entirely.

"No," John replied immediately. He sighed, "No, I don't think so, Mycroft."

"Hmm, I thought as much. But you can't keep working at that dreadful surgery. Would you like to have your own practice? I've already purchased a suitable building and furnished it with all of the necessary instrumentation, as well as with a small medical research laboratory. All of the certifications have been taken care of. A small staff can be prepared quickly."