A few miniature crisis's cropped up throughout the rest of the day, North Korea was making something of a nuisance of itself, but nothing that drew him away from his little charges for more than a few minutes. After their conversation things seemed to get a little easier.

They were more comfortable with him.

Less afraid that he would disappear.

Things would have to change. Their lives would be anything but stagnant in the upcoming weeks, already appointments had been set and pushed up, but now, in this moment, everything was alright.

Mycroft found that he could manage his usual amount of work while watching over his new charges. They were quiet when the mood struck them, always speaking in coded whispers and giggling in subdued laughter as if the sound of a full voice and true laughter might break them apart. But cohabitation, even in the same room, was easy. Their behavioral pattern was easy to distinguish and anticipate. Too much silence inevitably means that they are up to something, whether it is a tower to reach a glittering object or the rewiring of a lamp to make it 'better'. The sound of only one boy, whether it was a few stinted lonely words or a soliloquy in a quick flighty voice like the wings of a hummingbird, meant that impressions and memories were bubbling into their conscious minds and frightening them.

Breaks were no longer spent alone contemplating his brother's affairs or lamenting his current diet, they were spent in two-minute affairs when one boy or the other tugged at his trouser leg and in a bright chiming voice they described a new finding, some elaborate piecemeal tale before wandering back to their playmate, their family.

Dinner was a quick effortless affair, Sherlock taking small reserved bites as John kept up a continuous litany, turning moments which could hold great terror into bit back laughter.

It was nearly eight thirty and eyelids had begun to droop, and yawns had begun to interrupt rambling sentences when Mycroft heard the chime of his personal phone. A text.

'Still not their housekeeper, putting off taking down the fort will not make me do it dear.'

Mycroft blinked, read the message again, and laughed.

It was an unusual occurrence when people surprised him but this time he did not mind.

Mycroft bid the two boys goodnight at the entranceway to their fort, letting them crawl into its warm depths to sleep if just for one night.

If this was how they felt safe so be it. They would all need rest for what faced them tomorrow.


The ride was silent, the air surrounding them so filled with tension that it seemed somehow more substantial, as if air could weigh heavy in their chests, breaths weighed down by too much silence. Small overnight bags had been packed, essential items dragged into the front of the car with them, a bag of half crushed cookies used to bribe them into compliance and an orange blanket fell together in a tangle between the two children's chairs.

Unspoken words hung between them, tentative and fragile new trust kept them in their seats more than the forgotten cookies which crumbled between them. Any other children, less brilliant, less observant, less wounded, would not have understood, would not have even perceived.

The unrest and unfamiliar sickening twist of simply not knowing grew and changed within Mycroft.

It was no longer just the immediate future which had his genius mind in turmoil; it was the impossibility of the future which lay out before them.

They read in his face his uncertainty and a nameless word kin to fear, they heard in his voice things which he would never utter to their ears.

Despite his smile, his deadpan face which protected the secrets of countless nations, these two children had sensed his apprehension.

The combination of the two thoughts, of their continued trust in him despite their ability to see through his mask should have brought warmth, a feeling perhaps, of success.

A wave of sudden yet fleeting nausea burned through him as he turned his face to the window to hide the worst if it from them. The car lurched through a ditch as they wandered further from the main haunts of society and a cookie fell to the floor with a soft abandoned crunch. When Mycroft looked back at his companions two sets of eyes stared at him while betraying nothing of their own thoughts, small hands clutching over plastic and restraints to hold onto one another, fingers speaking of reassurance and fierce protection.

It would seem that undertaking the care of these two helpless innocents would be the most efficient diet plan he had ever had.

Unrest filled each of them like a contagion, each person passing it onto the next. But the little boys did not protest as they were removed from the theoretical safety of the car. Mycroft's heart nearly skipped a beat when he climbed out to find a small hand being offered to him.

Sherlock and John stood as they normally did, hands clutched tight between them, but huge brown eyes had focused on him, John's tiny hand being held out for him to take. Sherlock let out an audible breath of relief When Mycroft held the proffered hand, engulfing it in his own, holding John protected between them.

He had told the boys the precious little with which he dared. He had promised that he would protect them and that the people he chose for them to meet would not hurt them. He warned them that memories from before 'the accident' may come to them, that they might remember a face or a voice.

Mycroft hoped in the darkest part of his heart that they would not.

The light was not worth the darkness.

They knocked on the door but it was unnecessary, cameras had followed their slow ascent up the path, old eyes doubtless stealing a first glance at new bodies. It was a member of staff who opened the door and led them into a living room much like his own, aesthetically beautiful and wholly untouched.

None of them made a move to sit.

John held his hand tighter and Mycroft wondered if it was a reaction to the way Sherlock was holding him.

These were not the rooms in which they spent their adolescent years, nothing to trigger a memory or rouse the breath of a feeling. No ghosts hid in the dark corners of these rooms. The house of their childhood lay buried in memory, it could have burned to the ground, its rooms turned to dust, and its hallways barren save for the lives of spiders for all the years it had been abandoned. None of the furnishings were reminiscent of those long gone years; these rooms were the same as his own only a handful of days ago, perfectly impersonal.

Mycroft wished that he held both boys hands in his own.

The moment she walked into the room every eye fell on her. She was handsome, the kind of woman you hesitate to call beautiful because of a strength of character seemingly intrinsic within her physically. There was a hitch in her step, a moment so quick and small it would have been lost to the blinking of an eye, but it was there the moment she laid eyes on his charges.

Mycroft looked into blue eyes as familiar as his own.

"Hello Mummy."

She nodded her welcome, her acknowledgement to Mycroft, but her eyes were on Sherlock. There were a million repressed questions waiting on her lips, questions she was not sure anyone would want to the answers to.

Impossible to wish your child would remember nothing.

To forget you.

To forget everything and start anew.

Like nothing had ever happened.

Like you never happened.

In the span of a breath she collected herself, her lips smiling, her long delicate hands reaching out as she knelt on the floor as if she might touch the black unruly curls but hesitating, hands falling to her side, fingers empty and curling around nothing.

In Mycroft's hand John fidgets, holding him a little tighter, the soft whining sound is both distressed and disarming. Blue eyes and a face too much like Sherlock's turns to the small blond boy, softening as John takes a shuffling step closer to Sherlock, pressing their shoulders together, hiding their hands between them. Protection and comfort in the uncompromised innocents of his touch.

"What handsome boys you are." Her voice had been meant to sound welcoming and reassuring, perhaps a little hard, something authoritative and adult and sure. She never meant it to come out as a strangled, choking, breath. She cleared her throat as if the problem was purely physical and smiled harder.

"I have been working on some samples Mycroft gave me." She seemed to relax into the thought, into something tangible and real and quantitative. Her eyes lit up. Where there was once trepidation existed the spark of assurance that comes with unadulterated fact, knowledge so pure that you can exist within it. Her lithe body, so coiled and tense before, seemed to ease ever so slightly, like the falling of heavy armor, as she prepared to give them her results.

"All of Mycroft's tests, all of his scientists were right. They missed nothing." She smiled the way another mother might when bestowing a wrapped present on their child, knowing that this gift would mean the world to them, that this would be the toy which would follow them into adulthood. The well-loved teddy bear, the scrap of faded blanket. Her hand rose again, not reaching, not stretching to touch, but offering, long white fingers beautiful and delicate. "It is as if the accident never happened at all." Her smile curled as emotion overrode the falseness, her slate grey hair falling into her face, framing her high cheeks, true happiness glistening in her grey eyes. "You are perfect."

Fingers stretched. Reached.

Sherlock took a step back, his face dark, curls hanging into his brilliant eyes, waiting in silence until John stepped back with him, his little hand still stretched out to hold Mycroft's, their bodies falling into the cast of Mycroft's shadow.

She did not notice the way his breathing had grown shallow and fast, or the way his eyes darkened and pupils became pinpoints in an ocean of hard blue. She did not recognize the signs of fear building in her own child. She could not touch him to feel the clamminess of his skin.

"Not accident." Sherlock looked into his mothers eyes. He did not recognize the nuances of her face or the tenor of her voice. He looked as her the way he had once looked at suspects, as if he could see past the physical and into her very soul, as if he could take her most jealously guarded secrets and bear them into unforgiving light.

He shook his head as the word rose to his lips unbidden. A word which echoed from the destroyed memories of the past and infused itself into his new life in blood and tears.

"Attack."