"Sherlock is not like you, Mycroft."
Mummy does not mean poorly by what she says; rather, she is stating fact. Mycroft responds appropriately. "Why is he different?"
Mummy runs her hand through Mycroft's thick auburn hair; she smiles and brushes her thumb over the freckles spotting the bridge of his nose. "He is phouka; you are nicor."
Mycroft thinks about this for a moment. "And you are what?"
"Promised from birth." When Mycroft's typically placid expression briefly twitches into something resembling distress, Mummy gathers him into her lap. They both peer into the cradle where a tiny, raven-haired infant sleeps. "I don't mind it any longer, darling. I have been given you and your brother. You are my miracles, my everything."
As he mulls that over, Mycroft wonders what he might have as his everything. The baby stirs and whimpers, and his thoughts turn to protection. If he had an everything, whatever it was, he'd do everything in his power to protect and keep it.
Gazing down at tiny Sherlock, Mycroft decides that he will be the first everything. Mummy has obviously updated hers to include Sherlock; if an everything can be added to, it won't hurt to start one right away. He promptly adds Mummy to his everything. Mummy and Sherlock, his first and most important everything.
His everything thus far, at any rate.
Sherlock awakens somewhere around noon the morning after relating his travels over the last three years to John. He shuffles into the kitchen, expecting to find John making tea, only to find that John is not in the kitchen. He pads upstairs—John is not in his room. He goes back downstairs, checks in the ceiling space, checks in the loo—no John.
He looks outside.
Mycroft is standing on the front walk, talking with John.
John and Mycroft both start when the front door bursts open to emit a very angry Sherlock. "Mycroft! What are you doing here?! Haven't you got a war to start? Go away!" The detective stomps right out to his brother and is fully prepared to shove him away, but John is suddenly in his space and chivvying him back toward the door, never once turning his back on Mycroft.
Mycroft watches it all with his typically infuriating, beatific smile. "Goodness, John, you act as if you've seen a ghost."
John's body shudders and twists; Sherlock's jaw drops as tawny-dust fur ripples over his skin and wings blossom from his back like strange, golden-brown petals. Barely thirty seconds after it started, John stands between Mycroft and Sherlock in his natural form. "You need to leave, Mycroft."
Sherlock can barely contain his complete and utter amazement at John's shapechanging, but Mycroft seems singularly unmoved. He sighs, shakes his head, and tuts; reaching into his jacket, he withdraws a round glass bauble from his pocket. It's barely the size of a large marble, and seems to be full of a salmon-coloured liquid. "I'm honestly impressed, Sherlock. I expected your reaction to John's true nature to be much more... negative."
"There is undoubtedly an explanation for it; just because a thing is unknown, does not mean it is impossible." Sherlock seems incapable of tearing his eyes away from John. "Mycroft, you... just leave, now. Go away, I want to talk to John without your meddling."
A small, carved wooden box is withdrawn from the same pocket the bauble presumably came from. Mycroft places the little trinket into the box and shuts it with a click. "John. This is now yours. Mind Sherlock; he will need you while transitioning back to Baker Street."
As soon as John's taken the tiny box between his teeth, Mycroft turns and departs without further comment.
As Sherlock grows and comes into his own intellectually, it becomes apparent that his fae nature must never come to light. Such a contradiction of the laws and theories of science would upset the already delicate balance of his emotional and mental development.
Mycroft refuses to allow something under his protection suffer any sort of damage or distress, so he takes it upon himself to find a solution for the rapidly approaching maturation of Sherlock's nonhuman traits.
His search eventually leads him to Lyminster, where he's quietly stuffed into a pair of tall rubber boots and shuffled through a gap in a tall hedgerow. He finds himself standing before a wide, calm pool of water, deep and dark and strangely quiet despite the sunny weather and verdant, tree-lined surrounds.
As Mycroft's gaze sweeps across the pool and its shore, something large, serpentine, and wriggly that glitters like wet, thin, pebbly rubber sort of slip-flop-slides from the boughs of a nearby tree. Grasses and heather blossoms rustle and part; a low, sibilant hiss joins the whisper of the breeze. "And who might you be?" The hiss becomes a whoosh, like some sort of large animal taking a deep, deep inhale; it goes on far longer than expected. "Aha. I would ask who you are, but I know the answer to that. I would ask what you are, but I know that too."
A wedge-shaped head rises above the vegetation on a thick, sinewy neck. Lizardlike blue-black eyes are set wide above a reptilian maw full of shark's teeth; slit-like nostrils flare open as the creature inhales again. It's covered in snakelike scales the same uncomfortably wet, dusky pink as the soft underside of a human tongue. Mycroft can only stare, caught somewhere between his usual herpetophobia and a strange, morbid fascination. "I'm afraid... you have me at a disadvantage, then..." he stammers, all of his carefully-constructed calm falling away in the face of something so blatantly not natural.
The creature's mouth opens to let out a basso laugh, displaying the frightening shark's teeth set in a blood red interior. "Were you anyone else, child, I would not hesitate to make a meal of you." It laughs again as Mycroft goes sheet-white. "I do not, however, partake of my own kind, boy, particularly not my own spawn."
The creature emerges fully from the vegetation. Its whole body is that same glistening pink; it resembles nothing so much as the top half of a truly massive snake stitched to the body of an alligator, with overlarge bat wings glued just behind its front legs and the rest of the snake sewn on as a tail. Awkward though the proportions seem, the creature's body speaks of latent, devastating strength and quickness. "Now, child, tell me why you have come."
Mycroft is still coming to terms with the 'my own spawn' part. "Sp... spawn?"
"Yes, spawn." Dusky pink shudders and rolls, tightening, knotting, and fading until the beast has somehow folded itself into the shape of a red-haired man wearing a truly lurid pink three-piece suit. "Your mother's first-born and second-born were promised to me by her mother in exchange for a lover's draught to beguile an elf. We fae are not so restricted by mere species or shape barriers when it comes to procreation, after all."
Mycroft gapes, remembers Sherlock, and forces himself to just set aside all of his questions regarding this creature that claims to be his sire. "I am not here to discuss my parentage. This is about my brother, beast, and I am told you have an extensive library."
Ruddy lips part to reveal sharp white teeth. "Oh, so Gwydderig did make use of that, after all," the beast purrs. "Tell me about the phouka's child. Is he vicious? Capricious? Do disaster and havoc play in his wake?"
Mycroft snarls. Sherlock is a troublemaker, but he is anything but malicious, and hearing such things even implied about his little brother grates on Mycroft's nerves. "He is isolated and self-hating, never understanding why he is so different from everyone around him. He resorts to science and logic to explain the world. If Gooth... Guitherig wants his child to survive to adulthood without self-destructing—if you want to fulfil the bargain you obviously made with him—you will give me a way to keep his other nature from maturing and manifesting until he is able to cope with it."
The beast's smile only grows. "Oh, certainly, boy... but I'll need a favour from you, of course. Tis only fair. You may call me Ddraig for the purposes of our... transaction..."
Sherlock installs himself on John's couch with a huff, curling up on himself and muttering about how he is emphatically not in need of babysitting, much less rehabilitation.
John, knowing Sherlock will be unresponsive for the duration of his post-Mycroft sulk, deposits the little wooden box on the kitchen table for a closer examination. It's about the size of a ring box, but instead of velvet, it's made of what looks and smells like ash wood. Carvings as intricate as filigree cover the entire box; tangled amongst complicated Celtic knots, there's a motif of snakes eating their own tails. When John opens the little box with one claw, he's surprised to discover that the carvings cover the entire interior of the box, too.
The bauble itself is nested in a crushed wad of spring green silk. It's a tiny, spherical flask about the size of a large bumble bee; there's an equally-tiny cork pressed and waxed into the neck. Despite the fact that the cork is barely larger than a peppercorn, its surface is covered in miniscule ink drawings of the same tail-eating snake. The liquid in the bauble is coral pink, but there are onyx swirls of glimmering, opalescent something suspended in it. The swirls don't move when John nudges the box.
Whatever it is, John's not about to break it. God only knows what Mycroft might do if it broke. John shuts the little box and pushes it to the middle of the table with one paw, figuring he'll give it a closer look after he's had lunch.
Sherlock wanders in as soon as sounds of cooking start; John studiously ignores the staring whilst he very competently goes about preparing a venison steak without the help of opposeable thumbs.
The spell (because there's really no better descriptor for it, having watched its creation) is surprisingly... unimpressive.
Mycroft holds the tiny, spherical flask up, swirling the contents. A clear substance the colour of a blush wine swirls with diaphanous blackish streaks and opalescent clouds of miniscule points of light. "This is not what I was expecting."
"Magic rarely is," says Thraig. "The glass keeps the spell cohesive. Break it, and the spell is broken."
The gaze Mycroft gives his beastly mentor is evaluative, calculating. "Such a container was not needed for your end of the bargain. You will give me a case, at least, to make our arrangement somewhat balanced."
Thraig smirks. He produces a small wooden box, inlaid with velvet and closed by a tiny lock. "Good that you have enough wits about you to demand that. Do not forget our bargain, my dear little worm. You will return in twenty years to fulfill your half."
Mycroft nods, turns on his heel, and leaves the clearing and its deep, dark pool. The price is well worth ensuring Sherlock's continued health, and he's learned more about his own nature than Mummy had ever imparted before her death.
Having seen what he will eventually grow to be, Mycroft thinks he could do much better than some soggy, overgrown pond. Much, much better.
Sherlock flinches back as John cracks the lid from an older tanning bucket. "Good grief, John! What is that stink!?" he gasps, one hand cinching his nostrils shut and the other waving as if to ward off the scent. John chuckles as he dunks heavily-gloved hands into the bucket to haul out the softened hide. He spreads it over the tanning bench with a wet flop, grabs his scraping knife, and sets to work.
Predictably, Sherlock ceases his whining as soon as he sees what John is doing. The next hour is brim-full of questions, questions, questions—processes, methods, tools, uses, the reasons John picked up the hobby, and practically everything else to do with tanning and John's introduction to the craft are asked after, examined, cross-examined, and picked apart.
By the time the hide is ready to be strung up for drying and oiling, Sherlock has commandeered a pair of extra gloves, an awl, and a handful of the laces for the drying frame; he carefully punches holes and threads the laces through as John supervises. "This is what you've been doing for the last three years?"
John shrugs. "Some of it. Mostly I've just... been out." He guides Sherlock in hanging and tightening the hide in the drying frame. When everything that can be done is done, he unlaces his apron and shifts back to his natural shape (Sherlock openly stares during the process). "There were times when I'd go days or weeks without going back to the house, usually during the summer."
Sherlock follows John outside. "That seems extreme." John can feel the detective's intense, analysing gaze on him as he stretches and rolls his legs, shoulders, and wings. "Your wings are very large, considering your body proportions. Are you capable of flight?"
"Yep," John replies with a smile. "It's one of the greatest things in the world, flying. When I'm not hunting, I'm probably up for a glide." His wings flex open and closed, as if in anticipation of imminent takeoff. "Sherlock, you have to understand. I... didn't have much left as a human. I have books, I have the laptop, I have a few games, models, puzzles, cooking, leatherworking... beyond that, what's keeping me in my human shape? What's keeping me indoors?"
Sherlock thinks about that. "Nothing, I suppose."
"Precisely."
John is surprised when Sherlock simply turns and leaves. He considers what was just said, tries thinking about it from Sherlock's perspective, and curses. He runs after the detective—they're not done talking yet, not by a long shot.
Twenty-one years later, Mycroft lies curled before the fireplace in his home office, pondering his options.
Maturing had not been enjoyable. Learning to change shapes had been less so, particularly because of the... changes that Thraig's bargain had wrought. He'd had twenty years to become accustomed to (and even learn to enjoy) everything—the scales, the teeth, the coiled-steel musculature, and the body as sinewy and lightning-quick as a striking snake—but on the twentieth anniversary of the bargain being struck, Mycroft had come perilously close to questioning whether the exchange had been worth it.
Granted, he'd had his suspicions about dragons in Parliament most soundly confirmed, and it wasn't like Gregory or the Lestrade patriarch had been any happier with the results of Thraig's machinations, but... it was wrong for Thraig to have forced such a thing.
Were it not for the bargain's terms and product keeping Mycroft and Gregory from taking direct action against Thraig, the foul, tongue-coloured bastard would have died a thousand deaths over the past year.
All too aware of looming deadlines, Mycroft knows he's going to have to make a decision. He can't let Thraig follow through with whatever it is he has planned—a year ago, Mycroft might have let him, but now that he and Gregory have endured and worried and waited so much... now that he's caught wind of what Thraig is planning... now that he actually cares... well, it just can't be allowed to happen.
The only people he trusts enough to have the combined talent and know-how to take Thraig on without succumbing to temptation or indiscretion, though, are his little brother and the army doctor.
That fact terrifies him more than anything ever has.
"If that wasn't what you meant, John, then why, pray tell, would you say it?"
John's exasperated sigh has a sizeable growl somewhere in its recent ancestry. "Listen, Sherlock. I'm not a genius. Considerably above average, but not a genius. Not like you. I... don't always say things right the first time." He paces nervously, trying to think of a way to say what he needs to without sounding completely ridiculous. He's never been good at (read: rarely even bothered with) self-expression outside of frustration or telling about Sherlock's and his escapades. "When... when you died—I know you're not dead, I didn't know it then, shut up—I tried to keep going. I got fired for something I didn't do—they just wanted me gone because I was associated with you. The press wouldn't stop stalking me. The flat smelled like you and looked like you and memories were everywhere. Even when Scotland Yard released the evidence proving that Moriarty was real, the press didn't let up. The Chief Superintendent's suit against me went through before it was found that he was accepting bribes from gangs known to be associated with Moriarty's network. I was broke, jobless, and plagued by night terrors. When Mycroft offered the cottage, I bolted.
"I got out here, unpacked, and spent about a month trying to be normal. By the fourth time I was chased to the village limits by gossipmongers and journalists, I looked at everything to do with humans and just thought to myself, 'fuck it'. Went back to the house, put away the groceries, walked out, stripped, shifted, and didn't come back for a month."
Sherlock looks understanding and guilty for a split second; he shutters the expression so quickly that John would have missed it had he not been looking. "Some part of me feels responsible for your misery; I am sorry to have... left you in such a lurch." The detective looks uncomfortable with the aftertaste of an apology. "Another part of me envies you."
"Envy?" John echoes. The apology was surprising enough; hearing that Sherlock envies him is almost surreal. "What could you possibly envy me for?"
Sherlock whirls, a gust of wind lifting his ever-present Belstaff into a dramatic, wide flare. He flings his hands out as if to gesture at all of John; the shadows cast by the canopy overhead dance over his face wildly, making his glasz eyes seem almost feral. "You! You aren't one of them! You... you're free of humanity, you're above it, you can leave it behind!" His hands fly to his head and tangle in his hair. "As a child, I could not imagine or tolerate fantasy—such things were beyond the laws of science and nature—but I wanted desperately to have some... escape. I wanted to have some incontrovertible reason why I was different. I wanted to be acceptable to the others in my class. I didn't want to be... whatever I was. Different, retarded, sociopathic; the labels changed but the onus remained the same. Isolation. I tried to drown that part of me that longed to fit; surely I could choke out whatever it was that made me human and separate myself of my own will, rather than being forced out."
John sidles closer to Sherlock and slowly, gently leans against his shins. It sounds like Sherlock engaged in a bit of cutting off his own nose to spite his face when he was younger, but that's too far in the past to be worth commenting on. "And now?"
"Now I am dead to everyone but you, Mycroft, Lestrade, and Molly. I am reviled and worshipped. I am something, but I do not know what." He sinks to his knees, lets John tuck himself against his side. "Now that I have succeeded in setting myself apart... I don't know that I like all that it entails." He closes his eyes tight. "Would that I could be like you."
John wraps Sherlock in one wing and thinks about Mycroft's secret. There will have to be another talk, he decides—some intuition tells him that whatever comes of it, it can only help.