Mycroft knew the danger his brother was in, knew that the men he was tracking had roots deep into places where the light of day would fear to tread. But there was no proof that these men, this surface of a much darker creature had access to the heart of the beast. The men Sherlock was tracking had never set foot in a level 4 hot zone, they had never gazed at the strains of virus under an electric microscope, never witnessed flesh die or mutate on a cellular level.
There should never have been any real danger.
But by the time he found the leak in his own department and…extracted him, by the time he knew what information had been divulged…
It is after all better to wound than to kill. To distract the enemy, make him tend to the fallen.
Sherlock had been given no warning, no clue that the game had changed.
He would never know.
Mycroft had sent every trustworthy soul, every marksman, every good man or woman under his control and even more telling, he had gone himself, but when he walked through the splintered door of 221B Baker Street the only people willing to look him in the eye were two small boys wrapped in each other's arms.
Mycroft quickly took in the scene before him. The two bodies which lay sprawled on the ground, no longer bleeding, bodies cooling as the processes of the body slowly dwindled and stopped, the small perfect holes in their chests, the pool of crimson which joined and engulfed them and seeped like a sentient creature closer to where the two children sat now engulfed in a sea of crimson. Darts devoid of their payload lay on the ground, one across the room where it had been removed and abandoned at the beginning of the ensuing fight, the other a stones toss from the boys, where the bloody imprint of small fingers could still be seen on the clean glinting metal.
The dried tears on their cheeks which had no brethren in clear dry eyes.
Mycroft felt the wave of grief crash over him, the nausea threatening to pull him under, sinking his body down onto a couch possibly contaminated with a level 4 hot agent.
Tearstained blue-grey eyes as piercing and terrible as their fathers peered at him from under locks of curling black hair from an ocean of blood.
These children had not had time to cry.
These tears belonged to the last moments of his brother's life, proof that the serum took cruel short minutes to work.
Long enough to fight, to try and protect the only person who had ever seemed to matter.
Time enough to fail. To watch the dart sink into soft yielding flesh.
Mycroft could see it in his mind's eye even as willed the images away and allowed himself the foolish human motion of pressing his palms into his eyes, willing it to disappear by force if not by mind.
Sherlock never cried. Not real tears. He swore that no one would ever be able to hurt him that badly again.
But he could see them even now over the bodies of these children.
He lad long enough left as himself to fail his partner, his friend.
Long enough to know their fate, whatever it may be, would be shared.
Long enough to say goodbye and at long last let humanity touch him and let the mask he wore fall in pieces upon the ground. To let that great heart show.
Long enough to break free of the past and understand maybe for the first time what he stood to lose.
Those tears were the last remnants of the brother he had lost.
Around him his teams were moving into position, carrying out their tasks but no one moved towards the two boys.
Mycroft let his hands fall from his face and knelt, his knees falling carelessly into the blood, the cloth wicking it up his leg.
Sherlock was no one's responsibility but his own. His to protect, and now, to care for.
He reached out, his hands encircling the child wrapped absurdly in a dress shirt and went to lift him but small hands fisted in soft cloth, arms went tight around the blond boy who had not escaped Mycroft's attention but had not been the focus of his pain.
The boy for his part fished his arms out of the swaddled cloth and through the neck of the jumper, pale arms wrapping around Sherlock's small chest, around his back and pressing their cheeks together with the ferocity with which they held one another.
For the span of a heartbeat Mycroft felt a thrill of something shining and unstoppable, something almost approaching hope.
Test results had been inconclusive. Some animals not seeming to retain their memories while others continued on in their daily routine with only the slightest hesitation in their actions to indicate rediscovery and subsequent memory regeneration.
Mycroft slid closer, deeper into the blood, reaching not with his hands but his arms by which he could grasp both boys.
His brother's name was on his lips, as he settled the two babes against his chest and in his lap. But the sounds were uncharacteristically frozen within his chest as he watched small delicate hand reach forward and touch the bare skin of the other boy in a moment of reassurance and tenderness.
The name died on his lips.
For once, Mycroft found he did not want to know.