Chapter Two.

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John was silent, staring at the unfamiliar words in that so-familiar handwriting. I love you.

I + love + you = I am going to die.

The letters of the postmark had blurred slightly, John noticed. The woman depicted on the stamp had a smudge of gentian-violet about her mouth and across the blade of her cheek. The face on the stamp was a profile; John didn't know whose.

Mycroft lifted his cup, and sighed. He sipped slowly at his tea, as if contemplating what to say. "You can understand the logic, of course. Words which we would refuse to speak to one another except upon pain of death; the perfect signal, really."

John said nothing. He did not find Mycroft's sense of irony at all comforting.

"I will be honest with you, John. I never expected Sherlock to complete this work without my assistance, let alone to survive it. That he has done both makes me more proud than I can say."

John stared up at him, his tea sitting cold in his stomach. "You knew he was going to die. You knew, and you let him get on that plane."

"I thought it… likely. I would have prevented it if I could, of course. But neither of us were under any illusions when he left England."

(Six months, Mycroft estimates. He's never wrong.)

"No," said John harshly. "I suppose you left those for me."

There was a hard, still silence.

John turned the postcard over in his hands. The cardboard was cheap, starting to soften about the corners. It was clearly old; there was a diagonal line of fading from where it had been displayed in the sun. The postmark was indeed from Copenhagen, dated four days ago. He wondered how Sherlock had managed that.

At last, Mycroft broke the silence. "We had few choices left to us in the wake of the Magnusson affair," he continued, as if there had been no interruption, no digression into that old familiar territory: your best friend would die (has died) for you.

"Again, I must reiterate that Sherlock has proven himself more capable than even I expected. Without my intervention, we fully anticipated that his assignment would prove fatal before six months were past. Even with my intervention, we estimated his chances of survival to be no greater than 35%. By the time the project had reached its eighth month and his death had still failed to eventuate we were in uncharted waters. We had almost no communication and even less ability to predict how further events might play out. By the ten month mark I was bringing considerable pressure to bear politically in order to have him brought in. Regrettably, it transpires that I have an enemy, or enemies, who have selected this particular project as their winning ticket. I have no legal recourse left to me, and few illegal ones. My hands, as they say, are tied."

John released a slow breath through his nose. His heart was beating very loud in his own ears.

"That can't be it." He said. "You wouldn't have told me if that was all there was. You're not going to let this happen."

Mycroft smiled thinly. "You weren't listening," he said. "I said that I had no legal recourse left to me. I do not intend to be the last and least of the Holmes brothers, John."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I am going to, as I believe the saying is, go rogue."

John didn't quite choke on his tea, but it was a near thing. "You what?"

"You heard me. I intend to bring Sherlock home. And I intend to enlist your services in order to do so."

There was a glint of steel in Mycroft's glance that reminded John that this was, after all, Sherlock's brother. It was easy to become complacent with Mycroft – so well did he convey the persona of a well-fed and self-satisfied gentleman Tory. It took moments like this to remind John of the sleek menace behind the façade.

"Why me?" he asked. "Why not Anthea, or some of your lot?"

Mycroft's mouth twitched at the name 'Anthea', as if he found it amusing.

"Because the exercise of my legal powers is currently hobbled by politicking. There are individuals in my organisation who have a strongly vested interest in ensuring that Sherlock never makes it home. If I approach this through my usual channels, I will find myself countered at every turn. The only means open to me, therefore, is to slip beneath their radar. That means no state resources, no funds, and strictly no personnel. At least four of my own staff are compromised, and there may be others of whom I am unaware." Mycroft raised one eyebrow, and fixed John with his most urbane look. "Which leaves me with you."

John let out a huff of breath. "A road trip with Mycroft Holmes. God help me."

Mycroft actually laughed. It was polite and decidedly un-humorous, but it was a laugh nevertheless.

"It may not be quite so painful as you imagine. There are several others I wish to recruit – notably, if she will consent to come, your lady wife."

"Now hang on," John objected. "Mary can't just drop everything and come chasing off to Cuba. We've got a baby."

"That's not going to prevent you from coming though, is it?" Mycroft asked, brows raised. "Arrangements for Miss Watson can be made. Your wife would be a considerable asset to our cause. She is, after all, an excellent shot."

John's mouth thinned. "She's not that person anymore."

"Is she not?" Mycroft asked, with an amused smirk that set John's teeth on edge. "Well, we shall have to see."

For a few moments, John met Mycroft's eyes challengingly. Mycroft's expression did not waver. Then he smiled, and reached again for his teacup. For awhile, there was silence.

.

"What did you mean before?" John said, at last. "That bit about being 'the last and least of the Holmes brothers'?"

There was a momentary hesitation in Mycroft's response, a slight chink as he laid his cup back on its saucer. "You are aware, I think, that we had an elder brother?"

John nodded. He did know, but only because he'd seen the photos at their parents' place. Two Christmases ago, before everything went to hell. Photos of three slight, dark-haired boys, incongruous and homely when set beside the siblings John knew. Several had been school photographs – gap-toothed and beaming in over-bright home-knitted jumpers, arrayed in artificial fraternity with their hands on one another's shoulders in front of awful pastel-blue 80s backdrops.

Mycroft steepled his hands together in front of his mouth, touching his forefingers to his lips. The gesture sent a pang through John's abdomen.

"Sherrinford was talented," Mycroft said. "Exceptionally so. He had an ability to read a situation and manipulate it accordingly that I have rarely seen equaled. He could pick up any weapon and use it; any instrument and play it; any gadget and understand it. A language that might take Sherlock or me six hours to learn, Sherrinford would master in two. And yet, for all this, it has always been Sherlock who burned the brightest."

He paused, as if trying to marshal and explain some concept beyond John's understanding.

"Sherrinford was talented," he said, with a light shrug. "I am clever. But Sherlock – Sherlock is extraordinary."

"He says you're smarter than him," John said awkwardly. Mycroft tipped his head in acknowledgement.

"And so I am," he said. "But it is cleverness only. I have knowledge and strategy and inductive reasoning, but I lack Sherlock's brilliance; the leaps of logic; the flashes of intuition of which he is capable. Sherlock is a genius, John. At his best, he reaches heights of which neither Sherrinford nor I have ever been capable."

Privately, John felt that Mycroft was being over-modest in his assessment, but he didn't say anything.

"I have already lost one brother for the sake of England," Mycroft said at last. "I find a second to be a sacrifice that I am not willing to make."


After Mycroft had left, John opened a bottle of wine. It was a red: heavy, astringent and hangover-inducing, and not the sort of thing he liked. The first glass went down hard, but the second was easier. The third only made him feel ill.

He was lying in bed with his eyes open and the postcard still in his hand when he heard the jingle of Mary's keys in the front door. He heard her stealthy footsteps in the hall and the sound of her easing open the door to Billie's room.

John lay in the dark while Mary checked on the baby. He wasn't thinking, not really. He didn't know what to think about.

He didn't know how long it was before Mary left Billie's room and crossed the hall to their own. She was momentarily silhouetted in the doorway before she slipped inside. She placed her handbag in its usual spot beside the dresser and discarded her coat over the back of the chair. It was only as she turned back towards the bed that she seemed to realise John was awake.

"Hello," she said, surprised. "You're up late."

She walked over to kiss his temple, perching on the edge of the bed beside him. The makeup around her eyes was smudged to a smoky grey.

"Mycroft came over," John said, by way of explanation, though it didn't explain things – not really.

.

"Did you know that they had a brother?" John asked.

Grey light was beginning to filter through the curtains. John was lying on his back, not touching her, his face turned towards the ceiling. In the dim light, she could not tell what he was looking at.

"I did hear a rumour," Mary admitted. John lay very still. For a few moments, she thought that he would leave it be.

"Did you ever hear anything about them… before?"

Mary tensed. They didn't talk about it often. Usually, John tried to believe the lie. But he couldn't keep himself from worrying at it, working around the fraying edges of the fiction as though it were a ghost that he could not quite lay to rest. She supposed that after all those years with Sherlock worrying at mysteries was as much a habit as anything.

"A little," she told him warily. "I knew of Mycroft by reputation. Everybody knew about him. I never knew his real name though. It took me an embarrassingly long time after I got over here to realise who he was." She snorted. "If I'd known he was Sherlock's brother, I never would have dared to ask you out."

"Holmeses. Ruining my love life since 1863."

Mary's mouth twitched. "Quite."

"Did you ever hear anything about their brother?" John asked quietly. "Apparently he died 'for the sake of England', whatever that means."

Mary laughed harshly. "Well, that's one way of putting it."

"What do you mean?"

The frown was apparent in John's voice, and it gave her pause. Gently, she rolled sideways until she was facing him, her fingers skimming the line of his forearm.

"Sherlock never told you?"

John huffed a little. "Sherlock doesn't tell me stuff." His hand gestured vaguely in something approximating irritation. Mary sighed.

"Mycroft killed him, John. Or at least ordered him killed; I don't know if he actually pulled the trigger himself. I said Mycroft had a reputation. That's how he got it."

"What?" John's voice was incredulous, almost amused, like a parent who suspects a child of telling stories.

"It only came out afterwards, obviously. Mycroft was head of the whole Russian field: intelligence smuggling, sabotage, running agents out of every border state, and somehow managing to pull off the entire thing from deep cover right inside the Russian centre. His brother was a field agent who got caught. The story goes, Mycroft sold him out rather than break his own cover."

John turned his head to look at her for the first time. His eyes searched hers and it came to her, painfully, that he did not trust her. His brow was crumpled, a frown etched deep between his eyes.

"It could have been a mistake," he said.

Mary felt a strange rush of pity for her husband, for the good, sweet man who lay beside her.

"It could have been a mistake," he repeated, stubbornly. "They could have been trying to fake it. Maybe they tried to escape or something and it went wrong."

Mary met his eyes, wanting to kiss him, wanting to smooth away the troubled frown from between his brows. Her hand faltered against his arm, thumb skimming lightly over the inside of his wrist.

"It was hardly a mistake," she said softly. "Mycroft gave the execution order."

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Author's Note: Haha. And just when I had you all convinced that Mycroft was a nice guy! My grateful thanks to everybody who's reviewed so far. Stay tuned!