I DO NOT OWN SHERLOCK HOLMES
It was Christmas and Sherlock was sitting stoically in front of him. Messy black curls framed a slightly chubby face. It made Sherlock look cute but he would never admit it out loud. Sentiment was a disadvantage. He held a large box neatly wrapped with sickeningly gaudy Christmas wrapping. His parents were in the kitchen singing some silly holiday jingle. Of course they were off tune. He and Sherlock shared a mutual grimace as their father hit a terrible high G which was nowhere in the original score; then their faces went back to the usual mask of indifference that would become their natural facial expressions years later. They stared at each other for a few seconds more.
"Well?" he asked.
"Let me hold it," Sherlock said.
"Tell me what you have deduced about it thus far and I will see if you have earned the right to hold it," he countered. Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes. He fought back a smile. His brother was always so dramatic.
"Box; large. Dimension approximately twenty by fifteen by eleven," Sherlock began.
"Inches or centimeters?" he interrupted.
"Inches of course," Sherlock drawled, "material; most likely cardboard. From the indentation that it is leaving on your thighs; it's heavy. Or could just be that your thighs are soft and weak…and fat." He caught the frown before it was fully formed and schooled his expression back to neutral.
"Fair enough, but that last part may be irrelevant," he said a bit miffed. Sherlock gave him a mischievous grin.
He sighed and tried to hand to hand the box to Sherlock but he found that he could not move his arms. He tried again, frowning but still the same result. His arms remained pinned to the box.
"What is going on?" he asked. Sherlock shrugged.
"Maybe because we are not home," he said casually, "Maybe this is all a dream, a hallucination." He gave Sherlock a sharp glance.
"That is absurd," he snapped, "Of course we are home. This is not a dream. This is not a hallucination."
"How do you explain the fact that your arms are tied to that metal chair," Sherlock asked. He glanced down to see his arm handcuffed to the armchair.
"Sherlock," he said feeling somewhat panicky, "What did you do?" Sherlock held his small hands up defensively.
"It wasn't me," he said shaking his head, "It wasn't me. But you better find out who it is Myc. or else…"
"Or else what?" he asked. Sherlock gave him a sad smile and dropped his hands.
"Or else you will die," his baby brother said, "Wake up Mycroft. You're being tortured."
Mycroft woke with a gasp of air. The sitting room and the decorations and Sherlock spun away like broken glass in a violent kaleidoscope. Then the pain hit him. He heard himself scream out as a fresh wave seared across his chest. His body arced in agony and he felt an arm wrap around his neck tightly to pull him back against the chair. Above him; a bright fluorescent light was shinning down onto him while in front of him a figure squatted between his legs, one arm resting on his left thigh like it was an arm rest and the other held some kind of blade.
"Good," a voice spoke somewhere off to his left, "I was disappointed that you passed out of the reach of your pain. We gave you a dose that was too high. Won't happen again, Mr. Holmes, I assure you."
His brain tried to latch on the tone and subtle shifts of the man's voice and compare it to the hundreds of stored away files of voices that he had in his brain but the deductions slipped away like sand, leaving him feeling frightened and frustrated. The arm around his neck was cutting off his air supply and making his vision go blurry so that he was unable to see his surroundings clearly and unable to process much thought but it was not tight enough to make him pass out. Whoever was doing this had the right minions.
"But fortunately for us you came out right in time for the finale of our first act," the voice continued happily.
The cheeriness reminded him of Jim Moriarty but he knew for certain this man was not him. Even in a delusional state Mycroft was sure he would recognize Moriarty's voice. The figure in front of him leaned in again and the cold press of steel sent a shiver down his spine before the man began cutting into his chest again. His body shook and fought despite the fact that Mycroft knew he could not get away or stop the pain. It was a natural instinctual response. He wondered how Sherlock would have handled it. What felt like hours later, but was really only about ten minutes the figure patted his thigh and got up.
"It's done," he said and walked away. Mycroft slumped in chair, his throat sore from screaming and the sweat hid the tears that had fallen from his eyes. The arm moved from around his neck and held his hair instead, pulling his head back and up. Myroft has not energy to graon at the pain that flared across his chest from that motion.
"Say save me Sherlock," the first voice said. Mycroft said nothing as the camera snapped.