"You really didn't have to pick me up, Mycroft," John said as he settled himself inside the back of the black government car. "I could have taken a cab to your place. Would have saved you the time." He shut the door. The car pulled smoothly away from the curb into the flow of traffic.
After fastening his safety belt, he turned his head to look at Mycroft, silent in the seat beside him.
Mycroft sat rigidly in his seat. His habitual umbrella was propped upright between his legs and gripped tightly in his clenched fists. There was a far off look in his eyes as he stared at the handle, absently stroking it with his thumb.
But his face, John hadn't seen him look so serious, so resigned, since Sherlock's funeral.
Instantly, John was on edge, tensing in his seat. Anything that moved Mycroft Holmes to such a state was more than troubling.
"Mycroft?" John softly prompted, reaching out to touch the man's shoulder.
Mycroft started at the touch. He shook his head minutely, as though banishing whatever dark thoughts were plaguing him. A forced smile (John could tell the difference now, after seeing so many real ones) was pinned on his face as he turned his head to look at John.
"I do apologize, John. It's been a trying day, thus far. I'm afraid I was lost in contemplation."
Returning his hand to his lap, John relaxed, somewhat mollified. "Anything I can help with?" Not that John could really help much if the man behind the British government was rattled by a problem, but he always did what he could.
The smile on Mycroft's face took on a rueful tilt. "I'm not sure yet, John. I'm hoping so. But it is a matter I would prefer to take up within the privacy of my home."
John cocked his head slightly in puzzlement. "So… you'll tell me what's wrong when we get there?"
John was naturally wary of the other man's agreement. Mycroft never discussed work with him, insisting that John was safer kept out of state secrets. Though he hadn't specifically said that the issue was 'work related'...which more likely meant it was personal…
The part of John that loved creating doubt reared its ugly head. Maybe Mycroft wasn't as content with their arrangement as John had presumed…
He pushed the thought away as best he could. No sense in courting depression and ill will until Mycroft actually told him off, at any rate.
Mycroft fidgeted with his umbrella, staring off vacantly again. He appeared rather pensive. "Yes, certainly. I'm sorry about the change in our lunch plans. A rather pressing matter has arisen and I must ask for your utmost patience when…dealing with it."
John frowned. That didn't sound like a prelude to a break-up. What the hell was going on?
The car slowed, turning off the main road and into a private drive lined with trees. After a few seconds, John glimpsed a beautiful if plain-looking house on a modest estate. The drive ended in a cul-de-sac, in which the car parked nearest to the house.
The two released their safety belts and got out of the car. After shutting their respective doors, the car quietly rolled away out of the cul-de-sac and down the road.
Mycroft turned to John after watching the car vanish around a bend in the drive. "I must confess something to you, John. I've been keeping information from you for several months- information regarding Sherlock's death. When you came to me three months ago, you were angry with me, but not for the proper reasons. It's past time that you should be aware of them."
John felt his heart skip faster. What hadn't Mycroft told him?
Mycroft pointed to the front door with his umbrella before walking towards it. John was frozen for a few moments, his mind trying to wrap around what Mycroft had just said, before he followed the man, stumbling in his haste.
Passing through the doorway, John couldn't find it in himself to appreciate the Spartan beauty of his new surroundings, stunned as he still was by Mycroft's admission. Quietly closing the door behind them, Mycroft glanced at the mixed emotions on John's face before turning to the hall nearby, imperiously gesturing John forward.
It was only when they were halfway down the passage that John finally found his tongue.
"So-So you lied to me? You brought me here to tell me you've been lying to me? About what? Why did you bring me here for this?"
Mycroft slowed to a stop, his eyes tightly shut as he brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He was quiet for a few seconds, as though gathering his strength.
Patiently, John waited, trying to reign in the mixed ball of hurt, anger, and confusion inside him.
Lowering his hand, Mycroft opened his eyes and searched John's face and posture, reading John's emotions for himself better than if John had tried to explain them. Sadness filled Mycroft's eyes and John felt some of his anger slip away. Mycroft was openly distressed about the matter. Empathy made John want to draw the man into his arms, but Mycroft had yet to clarify why they were here-something John needed to understand.
"I brought you here because I respect you enough to not discuss a subject of this delicacy with you in a public setting. You deserve privacy in this matter, when the press has allowed you so little; and because I have physical evidence to prove the truth to you, which I believe you may need."
John felt his heart rate spike. He inhaled deeply, releasing the air slowly through his nose in an effort to calm himself. "What's going on, Mycroft"
"It's Sherlock."
"What about him?" John asked behind clenched teeth, his temper flaring at Mycroft's vagueness.
Mycroft took a steadying breath. "He's alive, John."
John waited with bated breath for the other shoe to drop, for the punch line to fall, because this had to be a joke. Mycroft couldn't be toying with him like this, with this. He of all people had understood what Sherlock had meant to him, what his suicide had done to him. He wouldn't throw such nonsense in John's face-
The bottom of John's stomach dropped out as that thought hit him like a ton of bricks. Mycroft wouldn't pull such a petty, vindictive joke on John. When the man did joke, it was through subtle barbs and displays of wit. Brash awfulness was beneath him, not his style.
Which meant that Mycroft was telling him the truth.
Those three words danced in circles around John's heart, but he couldn't let them in because he had been there. He had seen the blood, everywhere, on the pavement, on Sherlock. Those alluring blue eyes had been blank and lifeless as his pulse. He had watched the heart-stopping fall and no one, not even Sherlock, could survive a fall like that. So much blood…
John felt his breathing pick up, on the verge of hyperventilating because this couldn't be real.
"What?" John felt the word fall from his lips, but he could scarcely believe he had uttered it, the word sounding so weak and broken.
Mycroft bowed his head. "I'm sorry, John."
John shook his head, shaken to his core. He extended his hand out towards Mycroft-whether silently asking for support or to keep the man back, John wasn't sure. "I don't, I don't understand. You're sorry? You just-do you know what you just said? That Sherlock is alive? What do you…?" John trailed off, overcome by emotion.
Nodding to himself, Mycroft walked the few meters to his study and held the door open for John.
John moved forward on shaky legs; a faint tremor ran through his right leg with every step. He froze just inside the door when his eyes fell upon the dark figure standing in the middle of the room.
Tall, pale, and immaculate as always, Sherlock Holmes stood ramrod straight as John stared at him in disbelief. His hair was shorn a little closer to his scalp and he was missing his trademark overcoat, but there was no mistaking those sharp-cut cheekbones and haunting eyes-eyes that held a wistful hope even as that stubborn jaw was set with determined willfulness.
Hardly breathing, John struggled to comprehend the sight before him. He desperately wanted to believe Mycroft, to believe the evidence before his own eyes, but all John could think of was blood on the pavement beside St. Bart's and of how perfectly normal the skull of the dead man in front of him looked.
"John."
Sherlock's familiar baritone uttering his name brought John's reality crashing in, wrenching a broken sob from his throat. He had thought he'd never hear that voice again. Panic and grief raged within him, overcoming the first stirrings of elation as the truth sank in gradually.
"John."
Sherlock took a step toward John and instinctively John stepped back, away from Sherlock.
Having yet to take his eyes off the man, John saw the pain that flashed across Sherlock's face at his retreat, swiftly hidden behind a mask of impassiveness. Part of John's heart twisted in agony for causing that pain. He knew very well the defenses Sherlock used to protect himself from society, but never had he needed to protect himself from John.
As strong as the urge to comfort and reconnect with his best friend was, John needed to understand how Sherlock came to be standing alive and well in Mycroft's house instead of decaying in the ground. He turned to Mycroft, pleading for an explanation without saying a word.
Mycroft's face was nearly as blank as his brothers, the both of them hiding their emotions from sight.
Anger rose within John. He was getting tired of secrets.
Mycroft cleared his throat before taking charge.
"Sherlock came to me for help after he pulled off his 'suicide'. Moriarty's organization had people in key positions to threaten the lives of Sherlock's closest allies. With no guarantee that they would disband upon Sherlock's 'demise', we operated under the assumption that these people- these assassins-would continue to endanger Mrs. Hudson, Detective Inspector Lestrade, and yourself.
With Moriarty dead, there was no one to rescind his orders. Letting these operatives remain free wasn't a risk Sherlock was willing to take. The simplest and most expedient way of eliminating the threat was by maintaining the illusion of Sherlock's suicide from St. Bart's rooftop.
Unfortunately, this plan of action meant an extremely limited number of people could be privy to the truth. We determined it was safer to keep you in the dark until such time all of the key players were tracked down and detained. The last known operative was arrested this morning. Barring a few legal trivialities, Sherlock can return to his life with a substantially smaller target upon his person."
John glanced back and forth between the two men, absorbing this information.
Sherlock made no attempts to approach John again and was silent as the grave through his brother's rehashing, his gaze fixed on John as the doctor listened to the overview.
John licked his lips, clenching and unclenching his fists. The initial shock was wearing off and anger was slowly taking its place. Seven months of lies and heartbreak. John wasn't sure how to process it all. "So you're telling me Moriarty is dead? You didn't think to, I don't know, mention it to me? When did that happen?"
"Just before I called you, John." John jerked his head back to Sherlock. "I told you it was a magic trick."
"AND THEN YOU JUMPED OFF A BUILDING!" John shouted, his temper getting the better of him before he could restrain himself.
Mycroft sighed. "I wanted to tell you, John. I wanted to give you that little piece of mind, but it was easier to cover up Moriarty's real suicide, promote Sherlock's faked one, and explain later than it was to leave the press with a murder-suicide. The resulting media disaster would have made wrapping this up twice as difficult."
John pinched the bridge of his nose. He was going to have one hell of a headache by the end of this honesty session. "And the body?" John asked, though he was only vaguely interested. It was just a tiny detail compared to the iceberg-sized ones floating around him at the moment.
"Cold storage, until we deem it necessary to dispose of it. It may come in handy in the near future, in restoring Sherlock's freedom. We haven't worked all the details out yet. Everything came to a head today. Sherlock only just arrived in London a few hours ago. We hadn't expected our little crusade to be concluded so soon, but by chance Sherlock cornered Moran early this morning. He thought there was no need to wait any longer for your 'debriefing'."
John frowned at Mycroft in confusion. "Moran…?"
"An assassin," Sherlock explained. "One of three Moriarty assigned to kill those closest to me. Moran was one of his chief minions and was the sniper delegated to you."
Taking a calming breath against his rising emotions, John addressed Sherlock properly for the first time in months. "So you went to ground to flush out Moriarty's people. You deliberately let me think you were dead while you went about catching them. You couldn't have said one word to me?" He looked back and forth between the brothers, making sure Mycroft knew he was being included in his inquiry. "You couldn't have spared me at least some of the pain I went through?"
He rested his gaze on Mycroft. "You saw what I was going through and you never said a word. Was I not trustworthy enough?"
The angrier John got, the more resigned Mycroft seemed to become. "It was never an issue of trust. It was about your safety and the safety of the others. Regretfully, it seemed kinder to give you the chance to work past your grief. Should something have happened to Sherlock to end his quest, would you have wanted to grieve twice for him? Knowing that he died attempting to keep you safe from Moriarty's remnants?"
The words were like knives in John's heart and he fought the pain of every one of them.
"I would have preferred," John choked out, "to have known the truth. I would have preferred to have not thought- on a near daily basis- that I had failed him, failed my best friend and partner. I would have preferred to have not endured the pain of examining every single moment of those last few days, wondering what would have happened if I had done something, anything, differently had I been there for him!"
"It was for your protection, John," said Mycroft, sadly.
"My protection," John trailed off incredulously, shaking his head.
He brought a hand up to briefly cover his mouth while he absently looked around the room. The hand dropped as he turned back to face Mycroft with tears of frustration gathered in his eyes.
"My protection, even though it seems to have been more for your protection, keeping your loose ends where you can see them. You brought me here to let me know that all the pain, anger, and doubt I've felt over the past seven months was in vain, utterly useless. Collateral damage accepted for the big picture. You, of all people, knew what I was going through, what I could have done, and you did nothing. Said nothing. I just…I can't…" John's voice broke on a sob.
Concern drawing his features, Mycroft took a step toward John, reaching out to touch his shoulder.
"Brolly!" John shouted, retreating from the outstretched hand.
Mycroft froze, understanding in his eyes as he lowered his arm and stepped back, nodding in acquiescence.
He made no move to stop John as he slowly backed out of the room. Sherlock wasn't so complacent.
"John," Sherlock pleaded, confusion and hurt in his eyes.
The tears that had been welling fell freely down John's cheeks as he shook his head. His breathing hitched in his chest with the need to get out, to get away.
"I'm sorry, I need to….I can't…" He gestured vaguely to the room before him, to the ones causing his throat to swell and choke off his words. Without another word, John turned on his heel and strode swiftly as he could down the hall, Mycroft's quiet acceptance and Sherlock's devastated face haunting his thoughts.