Verba Non Suppetent

[A Loss for Words]

Taking care to keep the photos in the same order, Mycroft gently places them back in the envelope and returns the envelope to the drawer. He adds a few lines to the obituary describing Father as a man who loved his country and his family. (Clearly, he loved us at one time.) Sherlock will think him a liar, but right now he doesn't give a tinker's cuss what Sherlock thinks. Mycroft sends the obituary to the newspapers, and noticing the lateness of the hour, decides to get some sleep.

The next few days pass in a blur. Mycroft notifies Father's solicitors of his death and arranges a time for the will to be read. As Holmes Manor is now his, he prepares to put his flat on the market; however he won't officially do so until the will is read. (One mustn't appear greedy, after all.)

And then there's the matter of Father's eulogy. (As if writing his obituary wasn't difficult enough.) Mycroft wishes he could delegate this to someone else, but he has no choice. Sherlock had a stormy relationship with Father before he moved out of the Manor and no relationship with him after; he would never speak for Father. Everyone else in Father's immediate family is deceased. The only person who can perform this task is Mycroft, and he resolves to carry it out to the best of his ability.

The question looms: which Sigur should he speak about? The happy man Mummy fell in love with, who read to Sherlock and taught Mycroft to play chess? Or the shadow of a man who spent most of his time in his study, who foisted many of his parenting responsibilities onto Mycroft, who hid behind a wall of work after Mummy's cancer recurred? Presenting the deceased in a negative light simply isn't done at a eulogy, and yet, Mycroft has so few happy memories of Sigur that he could never make an entire speech out of them. Nor does he want to; ignoring the Sigur of later years is tantamount to lying.

Mycroft decides that he might as well keep the eulogy brief; Father never approved of flowery displays of sentiment (at least, not when Mycroft knew him). After writing and rewriting the same sentences what must have been a hundred times, Mycroft finally comes up with an acceptable eulogy.

My father was not an expressive man, nor an outspoken one. Much of what went on in his mind was and forever shall remain a mystery to me. He was never very adept at articulating his feelings for his sons, or his wife, or Queen and Country. But while he seldom spoke of how he felt, he demonstrated his feelings daily. His tireless work for the British government was borne both of patriotism and a desire to provide a good living and a good example for my brother and me. During our mother's long illness, he did not complain or fret. He kept calm and did what he saw as his duty: he carried on at work and threw every resource he had into her treatment. Indeed, his dedication to duty inspired me to follow in his footsteps. If I have one regret, it is that I never told him so.

There. Whether he's written a half-truth or a well-dressed lie, Mycroft isn't sure, but it will have to do. He checks his pocketwatch and sees that it's 1 AM. The funeral is in nine hours; he supposes he should go to bed.