Behold: a chapter that displays a secretBAMF!Mycroft! Bout damn time!

The Look

10

Summer vacation, again.

Now seven years old, Sherlock stared blankly at the wooden paneling in the wall opposite him. There he was, in a room he wasn't supposed to be in, in a chair he wasn't supposed to be in, thinking.

What reaction would chlorophyll have to bleach?

Maybe, if injected into a living specimen, the subject would turn a bright, unearthly white…

Damn. His thought processes were at their finest when his head was the lowest point on his body (encouraging blood flow to that spot) but that was impossible, considering the room was filled with delicate artifacts.

Vaguely, he registered the sound of Mycroft- in the room adjoining his- turning a page in a book.

Almost absently, he scanned the room. There was that little warp in the paneling, the smudge in the ceiling where the painter had been caught distracted… the dip in the wood where his father had slammed him up against the wall…

Absently, he slipped his fingers under his hair, feeling a scar that stretched as wide as his spread fingers as if a blade had been neatly laid across the skin.

Scars on the skin and below it, Sherlock thought, sighing quietly, stretching, noting without understanding when his knuckles brushed a crystal vase mid-stretch. He extended his arms a bit more, and-

-smash!

Horrified, Sherlock recoiled, but the act was done; the vase was shattered.

He stood, mind racing, trying to find a solution in the few minutes he had as Mycroft walked into the room.

"It was an accident," he practically pleaded. "I swear, it was an accident- I forgot it was behind me for an instant and then-"

Mycroft, his eyes cold, icy cold, stepped forward just as Kerran stormed into the room.

Their father's gaze latched onto Sherlock, and he bared his teeth, ignoring Mycroft as the elder Holmes boy put a protective hand on Sherlock's shoulder as the younger froze with fear. Mycroft pushed him behind his back, and stepped forward even as his father prepared to shove him aside.

"I did it."

Sherlock's eyes, already white, went even wider. Mycroft stood resolutely, waiting.

Option One: Kerran would either turn, favoring his older son, and walk from the room. Crisis averted.

Option Two:

The fist struck quickly, hitting Mycroft's right cheekbone solidly, knocking the boy off his feet.

Immediately, as Sherlock stood paralyzed, Mycroft slowly, purpose in every motion, gathered himself off the floor.

His fingers pressed to an already-forming bruise, he gave his father a look that would be permanently emblazoned on his brother's memory.

His grey eyes as hard as winter ice, Mycroft Holmes showed such disgust, contempt and intolerance in that instant that Sherlock shuddered.

I will not stand for this, that look said plainly. By God, if you do that again, I swear, I'll fight back.

Dignified, having won the battle, Mycroft walked from the room.

Sherlock sprinted after him.

For a moment, when they were safely in Mycroft's room, the door bolted, Sherlock couldn't find any words to say as Mycroft hunted out an icepack from somewhere and pressed it to his face, hissing quietly.

"Hurts like a bitch, doesn't it," he commented to Sherlock as he sat on the edge of his bed. "I never quite realized. He's got a solid arm on him, doesn't he?"

Sherlock stared.

"Why?"

Mycroft had closed his eyes. Now he opened one of them again. "Why what?"

"Why did you do that? You could have just stayed away and let me take the fall for it."

Mycroft sighed, and opened his other eye, taking in his younger brother. Holding yourself uncertainly. Not sure what to make of me. Shaken, but awed.

"I'm your brother, Sherlock," he said plainly. "That's what I'm supposed to do."

*

It was just before they left that another event that caused Sherlock to hold his brother in even higher esteem happened.

Freshly bruised, three fingers on his right hand (and one of his left) broken, Sherlock was woken out of a light sleep by the sounds of furious shouting downstairs.

He raised his head from his knees [he'd fallen asleep curled into a ball, again] sharply, like a startled dog, and shrank back into the chair.

Raised voices meant that they were mad, and when they were mad, that meant pain…

Mycroft's eyes snapped open, and he quickly got out of his bed.

By the sounds of those voices, the hard, angry words that they could catch, their parents were on the verge of blows, possibly a homicide…

He yanked a drawer open, and to Sherlock's shock, from its spot on a neat stack of papers, took out a sheath with a hilt neatly nestled into it.

Mycroft wrapped his fingers around the handle of the knife, drew it, and watched the blade glitter in the moonlight.

He put the sheath on top of the drawers, and went to the door.

"Draw the bolt behind me," he ordered, the sounds of his steps going down the stairs.

Sherlock considered only briefly before lunging out of his chair, creeping out the door, and with the utmost stealth, sneaking down the stairs.

He wouldn't let his brother face that alone.

With a dramatic flair, Mycroft turned into the room, towards the argument.

Sherlock watched nervously, prepared to spring into action, but well-hidden on the stairs.

"Stop it, the both of you!" Mycroft shouted, the blade halfheartedly concealed by pretended to tuck his hand in his pocket. "Can't you hear yourselves, yammering like jays over trivialities? What is the point?"

Kerran turned, lividly furious as Lydia's eyes widened, awareness creeping into her brain.

When his father's hands reached for his throat- and neither the elder or younger brother had the slightest doubt that their father meant to kill- Mycroft drew the knife in the shard of a second and pointed it at his father's throat, the tip lightly pressing against the skin as first, then more firmly.

"Don't you dare," he said softly. "I swear, if you so much as touch me, I will slit your throat right here and watch you bleed like a stuck pig. And please, give me an excuse. I would so love to do it."

**