The lights had been visible in the distance for what had seemed like miles, and the sight of them had momentarily brought back memories more than thirty years old, of warm, welcoming lights in the windows before the house had been plunged irrevocably into darkness. But as the car neared its destination, the source of those lights could be seen more clearly; the headlamps of the police cars, the temporary floodlights, the lanterns set up along the old country lane to guide traffic in and out of the site. The unmistakable indicators of a crime scene. That thought, of course, brought back other memories, of the night when the house burned so brightly it could be seen across the entire county.
His head was still pounding, and his cognitive functions still felt clouded and sluggish; he was there against medical advice, of course, but the notion that he should go home and rest was ridiculous. Or the 'rest' part was, anyway. He supposed that, in a way, he was home. Musgrave was the place he had thought would always be home, long after he finished boarding school and university, long after he moved away and embarked on a career. After all, that was how the house of your childhood was supposed to feel, wasn't it?
As he climbed out of the car, he looked across at the ruins. From this same distance, thirty-three years ago, he had stolen one final look, as the ancestral seat of the Holmes family – and everything in it – went up in flames. He could remember quarrels with Sherlock, in the years before, when Mycroft would inform his brother that one day the whole of Musgrave Hall would be his, and that he would turn Sherlock's bedroom into his office – or perhaps a room for one of his many servants. Sherlock would cry, of course, and go running straight to their mother. And then, one day, their sister set fire to her bedroom and changed the course of history.
Mycroft had returned to Musgrave just once, two days after the fire; his parents' distress and distractedness had made it easy to sneak away from their neighbour's house, where they had taken emergency refuge. He'd had a lingering hope that he could recover some of his more precious possessions, but he was only able to recognise his chess set from the brass latch that once held the box shut, and all that remained of his record player was a grotesque lump of coagulated metal and plastic. After that, there was no reason to go back – and he had rebuked a tearful Sherlock when his brother had begged to check on his own room.
He was on the verge of asking a police officer for assistance when he saw a familiar figure sitting, hunched, on the low, ruined wall that had once edged their mother's prized garden. Mycroft picked his way through the ankle-high grass that had colonised the grounds, feeling somehow off-balance without his umbrella; Sherlock slowly turned to face him as he approached. On the ground between his feet was a little graveyard of cigarette ends.
"So…how was your day?" Sherlock said, with a crooked smile.
Mycroft gave a short, wry laugh in response.
"It turned out far better than I came to expect," he replied. "We are both alive, for one thing."
When he had awakened in his sister's locked cell four hours earlier, his first thought had been for Sherlock. On the one hand, he wanted to believe that Eurus would spare her favourite brother, but equally, Mycroft could conceive that she would kill Sherlock and let him live, just so that he would have to live with the guilt. What he didn't expect to hear was that there had been no further fatalities, and that Eurus had been contained – and that Sherlock was still to be found at the scene of the final denouement.
"Something interesting for our parents' Christmas round-robin, anyway," Sherlock said. "Might even trump that fifty pounds they won on the lottery."
Mycroft carefully sat down on the wall a few feet from his brother (he wasn't really a sitting-casually-on-a-wall type, and wondered whether it was odd to cross one's legs). He noticed, then, that Sherlock's knuckles were still a mass of dried blood, his injuries as yet untreated.
"I..I trust John is recuperating?" he asked, watching Sherlock gaze at the sad, crumbling carcass of their old home, the past he had been forced to exhume.
"He went home to his daughter," Sherlock replied. "She's his best chance of a full recovery."
There was a pause, the gap in conversation filled by the crackle of police radios, the hum of the generator powering the lights and the emergency personnel calling to each other as they manoeuvred vehicles into and out of the grounds.
"I was surprised to hear from Detective Inspector Lestrade that you were…still here, after…everything," Mycroft ventured, "I thought you might have travelled back to London with John, that there were…places you might want to be."
He saw Sherlock close his eyes for a moment, saw him swallow heavily.
"I ascertained that she is safe, but…I-I'm not entirely sure that I would be welcome."
There was a strange innocence to his tone, a gaucheness that Mycroft found oddly…moving. The car journey from the coast had afforded him a lot of time to reflect, and time after time he returned to the three minutes of hell that was the phone call. Never, not even when he was a child, had Mycroft witnessed such abject fear and terror in his brother's eyes, in his voice. Gone was the rational, calculating machine, and in its place a flesh-and-blood man faced with losing what he held most dear. Watching it play out, Mycroft had thought he knew what Molly Hooper's death would mean to his brother, but then he heard Sherlock say the words she demanded of him – and when he heard them, heard the naked, unvarnished truth of them, that was when Mycroft started to feel deathly afraid for him.
It was during that car journey that it dawned on Mycroft how stupid he'd been, how quick to assume. The inscription on a coffin plate was, of course, never a message from the coffin's occupant – it was intended for that person. Effortlessly, Eurus had discovered the secrets of Sherlock's heart, had known the truth before Mycroft did and, he suspected, even before Sherlock himself.
"You know that she had been trying to contact you?" Mycroft said.
Sherlock turned his head, looking as though he didn't trust what he was hearing.
"Yes, more or less from the moment Eurus terminated the call," Mycroft continued. "And when that didn't work, she attempted to contact me – and when that was unsuccessful, she finally persuaded Anthea to take her call. I spoke to her in the car on the way here."
"You…you spoke to Molly?"
The small note of hope in Sherlock's voice was tempered by apprehension.
"Yes, briefly."
Sherlock blinked, visibly girding himself for what might follow.
"Did you…explain?"
Mycroft felt a small smile start to quiver at the corner of his mouth as he recalled the conversation, which, as soon as it had begun, went in a completely unexpected direction.
"I was preparing to do just that," he replied. "To the best of my ability. But it seemed that Dr Hooper's primary concern was for your safety – she was worried about you, she…had deduced that all was not well."
As he had spoken to Molly, and heard a voice that was anxious rather than angry, compassionate rather than bitter, Mycroft had felt all of his well-rehearsed words desert him. Whatever it was that existed between this woman and his brother – and it seemed to defy common labels – it was strong enough to withstand Eurus' torments, and it had held firm against his own disdain and disparagement. And it persisted, quietly and patiently, even in the face of Sherlock's self-doubt. A remarkable, humbling thing indeed.
"What did you tell her?" Sherlock asked, swallowing. "Does she understand that I-"
"I didn't really feel it was my place," Mycroft said. "And in any case, I think she would prefer your version of events – when you're ready to give it. Although-" – he glanced across at the wretched-looking figure beside him – "I'm fairly certain that Dr Hooper already knew those words to be true. The surprise was in hearing you say them."
He watched Sherlock's face drop to his hands, echoing what Mycroft witnessed immediately after the phone call; when he slowly lifted his head again, it looked almost as though he was in shock, disorientated by the new information that perhaps cast everything in a fresh light.
"You didn't lose, Sherlock," Mycroft continued. "When Eurus devised her game, she greatly underestimated the players."
He had been, he knew, guilty of the very same thing. There was so much to make amends for that he hardly knew where to start. But if he could get this right, it would go some way towards atonement.
Sherlock let out a choked laugh, his breath hanging for a moment in the frigid night air.
"So, what now?" he asked.
"A car will take you home," Mycroft replied simply.
"I'm not sure that 'home' is structurally sound at the moment," Sherlock replied, with a wry smile.
"Not that home," Mycroft told him.
At this, Sherlock shot him a questioning look; he still wasn't allowing himself to give in to hope just yet.
"She's waiting for you," Mycroft confirmed.
His brother stared at him, dumbly, the lines that had ravaged his face suddenly falling away. He nodded slowly - perhaps, Mycroft assumed, trying to come to terms with what it might all mean, what the future on the other side of Sherrinford could look like. And judging by the look on his face, the possibilities were both terrifying and incredible.
"You should come back to London with me," Sherlock said, once they started to make their way towards the car. "There's nothing more you can do here tonight...or, well, possibly ever."
They both spontaneously turned to look once more at what remained of their childhood home. It was probably a little premature to ask Sherlock whether he might consider a renovation project in his future – but for the first time in over thirty years, Mycroft felt that he might one day have the opportunity to return to Musgrave Hall in very different circumstances.
0000000000
The drive back to London was mostly passed in silence. There was certainly not a shortage of things that needed to be address and discussed - and silence between them was a state almost unheard of - but Mycroft suspected that that they were each trying not to disturb the other's hard-earned peace.
Occasionally, he would catch Sherlock's expression in the reflection of the window. Already, there was something different; an openness, the absence of any kind of façade. Mycroft had glimpsed this before, of course, on other occasions when the mask had slipped, but the difference now was that apparently, Sherlock didn't care if he saw it.
As they neared their destination, Sherlock started to shift in his seat, to fidget with his cuffs, with the seatbelt, with anything to hand. He needed now, Mycroft understood, to banish all fear and insecurity, and to find within him an entirely different kind of courage. The car stopped a short distance from the flat, on a street that - following a brief but intense burst of police activity a few hours earlier - was once again quiet and at rest, without even a shred of police tape to show for it.
"What time is it?" Sherlock asked, distractedly.
Mycroft lifted his pocket-watch from his waistcoat; beside him, Sherlock's gaze was fixed on the outside of the property, no doubt caught in that paradox of impatience and apprehension.
"Just after one," Mycroft replied.
He saw Sherlock swallow.
"Perhaps…perhaps it's too late."
He can't have failed to notice, Mycroft reflected, that the living room light in Molly's ground floor flat was still on.
"I am fairly certain that it could never be too late, Sherlock," he replied.
Sherlock's brow was furrowed, but a smile flickered across his face.
"What about you?" he asked. "You're not going back to the office now?"
Mycroft felt he detected genuine concern in his brother's question, and he wondered how long this brotherly amity would last (it would surely bring about a dangerous imbalance in the universe for this to be the new normal?). He thought about what would await him at home; the grandeur, the vastness, the seclusion – all the reasons for which he had bought the house somehow, tonight, held a lot less appeal. Instead, his mind was drawn to the business card he had safely tucked away in his wallet several weeks ago.
"I…I had an offer from a friend a little while ago that I may take up," he said finally, noting the look of amusement and mild scepticism on his brother's face.
They were both, he reflected, taking a voyage into the unknown. Mummy would never let them hear the end of it.
Speaking of whom…
"I'll have to talk to our parents first thing in the morning," Mycroft said. "Bring them up to London for so that…everything can be brought out into the open." He saw Sherlock grimace and added, "You needn't concern yourself with any of it, Sherlock. The responsibility is wholly mine."
"Of course I'll be there," Sherlock replied, almost before Mycroft had finished speaking. There was a resoluteness in his brother's demeanour, and Mycroft nodded his thanks.
He then ventured, "I suppose it's probably too early to be mentioning grandchildren? It might, perhaps, help to smooth the waters."
Sherlock let out a bark of tired laughter – but there was something in his eyes, a kind of happy incredulity. None of this would have seemed even remotely plausible even twelve hours ago, and yet…
With a last glance out of the window, Sherlock opened the car door and climbed out, fastening the button on his jacket and dragging his fingers through his disordered tangle of curls. Mycroft was reasonably certain that his brother's appearance wouldn't have any bearing on the welcome he would shortly receive – plus he suspected that, fairly soon, it might be rendered irrelevant anyway.
"Give Dr Hooper my best," Mycroft said, leaning across the seat so that he could be heard.
Sherlock glanced back at him.
"Give her yours, too, Sherlock," he couldn't help adding.
Sherlock pursed his lips, one eyebrow raised.
"We may both be a little tired for that tonight, but I'm willing to see what happens."
Mycroft rolled his eyes.
"I think you know perfectly well that wasn't what I meant."
He pulled the car door closed, and watched as Sherlock crossed the road and walked up to the front door, pausing for a long moment before reaching up to the knocker. Within a couple of seconds, the door was opened and Molly Hooper's face was illuminated by the light from her hallway; she was still wearing the striped jumper, her hair still tied back, as though no time had passed. Mycroft could see words being exchanged, his brother's head bowed slightly, the pathologist looking earnestly up at him as she spoke. Then, her expression softened into a tentative smile; she slowly reached out to take his hand, gently drew him inside, and closed the door.
Finally, against all the odds, Sherlockwas home.
