"Mycroft? Where's Sherlock?" Greg squeezed Mycroft's big toe, which he had found to be a most effective way of waking him up.
"What do you mean Where's Sherlock?" Mycroft was feeling a bit groggy. He noticed the veins in his left arm were sticking out.
"He's gone!"
"Gone?" Mycroft stood up a little too rapidly, tangling his legs in the sheet.
"His rooms empty. And his coat's not there."
"Bloody hell!" Mycroft was already pulling on jeans and boots, foregoing underwear and socks in his haste. "We should have chained him up."
"I didn't realise that was an option." Greg, whilst aware of the seriousness having a Sherlock full of blood cravings roaming the streets, was slightly distracted by the sight of Mycroft pulling on a Guns and Roses hooded top and the rich smell of cocoa and coffee emanating from him.
"Where will he go?"
"Gregory. There is only one place Sherlock go. There's only one thing Sherlock wants." And Mycroft was gone out into the early morning.
Of course there was only one place Sherlock would go. Only one thing he really wanted. John. Mycroft knew that. He knew because something rather strange was happening. He could see inside Sherlock's head. He wondered if it was like that for Gregory. Could he see all of Mycroft's innermost thoughts? If he could, Mycroft took a little comfort form the knowledge that his Detective Inspector, as adorable as he was, would be unable to understand the particular shorthand of Mycroft's brain.
But inside Sherlock's head? It was like looking at line upon line of numbers and words in some complicated encyclopaedia. An encyclopaedia that a child had taken a thick red crayon and scrawled the word John on every page.
Mycroft found Sherlock in Baker Street. Sitting silently in John's chair.
"He's gone Mycroft." Sherlock didn't look up. Somehow he knew his brother was stood behind him.
"Yes."
"He didn't wait for me. I told him to wait."
"Yes."
"Why? Why has he gone?"
"Because he thinks you are dead. He cannot bear to sit here surrounded by everything you once shared. If I know John Watson, he will somehow think he should have died. That it's his fault. That if he had been a little braver, a little cleverer none of this would have happened."
"And what happens now?"
"Now we set to work and bring down Moriarty's little empire, so that everyone who is still alive can go on living."
"And what about me? What about John?"
"Once he's safe, perhaps we can come to an arrangement." Mycroft rested a hand on his brother's shoulder.
"And why should I trust you? After what you did to me?" The veins in Sherlock's arms stood up. The track marks from the countless injections of drugs lit up like neon signs on the pale flesh.
"Because I'm all you have now." Mycroft moved around to the front of the chair, so he was facing his brother. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head and pulled Sherlock's face into his chest. Into the small wound that had not quite closed. "Drink little brother. Drink from me."