Chapter 21: The Ties That Bind

Sherlock followed Irene down the stairs, trailing behind her form in a blank daze and putting one foot out in front of the other like an automaton. He had the surreal impression that he was disconnected from both mind and body, so that he could sense the fear as if it were a component separate from himself. For a brief time he was able to observe it with dispassion, but then that reprieve was gone and he lost any sense of detachment. He barely perceived his surroundings as they exited the building, crossed the pavement, then slid into the rear seat of the waiting sedan.

Irene spoke to the driver in what registered in the periphery of Sherlock's notice as a sharp, interrogative tone, but she seemed satisfied with the answer the man gave her, which Sherlock also didn't process. From the corner of his eye he saw her settle back against the seat, although her posture remained rigid and her hands were clenched into fists at each side of her lap as she stared straight ahead. She was still ashen except for the dark spots of colour that tinged each cheek, and lips that were pink from being on the verge of chapped.

The tension and anger she radiated were possibly the only things that could penetrate through the numb dread that had come to settle over him, and he was surprised at just how attuned he was to her state of upheaval. It didn't help that he was caught up by similar sensations himself.

When he saw her lift her hand to give a jerky swipe at her eyes something within his chest seemed to crack and fall away like a sheet of arctic ice, and he turned his face an increment towards her. Her jaw was set and yet her compressed lips were trembling almost imperceptibly, though it seemed that it was from fury just as much as fear. Even emotionally compromised, she made a striking, formidable sight.

He dropped his eyes down to the hand closer to him, balled up so that her knuckles stood out blue-white, and only inches away from where his own hand rested on the seat. His palm slid along the leather upholstery in a spontaneous reaching movement as the urge came over him to intertwine their fingers, though he balked just as the tips of his were about to graze the side of her hand. He scowled and drew his hand back with a low exhale, then balled it into a fist himself and looked out the window. He wasn't sure whether the motion had been borne out of a desire to offer consolation, or to seek it, but he wasn't willing to test what vulnerability might well up if he acted on the impulse.

The car began to roll forward, and when Irene didn't move from her silent, erect position his thoughts returned intractably to what had – against all odds – befallen his elder brother.

For someone who made a living by deciphering and explaining the inexplicable, he was unable to grasp that Mycroft Holmes could have been so catastrophically compromised. Nothing aroused his suspicion that they were playing into an ambush or trap in going to see him in hospital, and yet it was also impossible to accept that someone had managed to best his brother. It contradicted fundamental truths he had known about Mycroft since they were both children, when even then Mycroft had seemed god-like. Most people became disillusioned with their elder siblings as they aged, or at least their sense of hero worship diminished, but in spite of their fractious relationship Sherlock's never really had.

Growing up, Mycroft had always made everything he undertook seem effortless. Whether navigating social situations, translating obscure classics, or interpreting their parents' moods during the rocky period of their marriage that had so confused and affected Sherlock as a child, Mycroft triumphed without a hint of exertion. Sherlock had always struggled along in his wake, and though he could somewhat emulate his brother, he was an imperfect facsimile. Mycroft was the original and the blatant superior. Worse still, Mycroft was all too aware of that, and all too forthcoming with his observations of Sherlock's shortcomings. Sherlock had carved out niches in which he could outperform his brother, but in those cases it was only because Mycroft had deigned not to bother—didn't need to bother; he rested so comfortably on his other, nobler, strengths.

They had left behind childhood, surpassed adolescence, and one of them even approached middle age, and yet Sherlock still couldn't see behind the curtain much better than the common layperson. It was just as impressive as it was maddening. In fact it had not escaped Sherlock that a good portion of his resentment towards his brother stemmed from the fact that no matter how hard he, Sherlock, worked or how much he improved, Mycroft still retained both the aura and actuality of natural supremacy.

And yet Sherlock had to admit that their dynamic, as much as it could grate at him, had been beneficial. The majority of the population was to him who he was to Mycroft, and he might've been satisfied with only above-average achievement if it weren't for his brother. It was Mycroft who constantly pushed Sherlock – through explicit criticism and implicit example – to do better, to reach, to continuously strive for the highest level of distinction.

To that end Sherlock had attempted to frame and characterise his brother's abilities in a number of ways, but to his disgust he had only ever come up with metaphors embarrassing in their inadequacy and reductiveness. Nonetheless one concept persisted: that of Mycroft as a virtuoso card-counter in the casino halls of life. The same rules and odds applied to him as they did to everyone else, but Mycroft was able to discern the patterns and algorithms and variations and sub-sub rules that were imperceptible to everyone else, even Sherlock to a degree. He manipulated these invisible threads to work in his favour and serve his agenda so that he always prevailed in a way that was uncanny to the outside observer.

But Mycroft, he always knew which cards were to come into imminent play, knew the cards held by every player at the table, and could also keep track of those hidden up the sleeves of any covert actors not officially dealt in. Anyone whom he suspected of possessing a hand that could threaten him or his interests would be isolated, analysed, and neutralised. Without exception.

Until now, Sherlock thought, and the impossible incident forced him to consider the seriousness of the Moriarty/Moran business in a way that he hadn't for almost a year. As the memories had faded – prior to being churned up so forcefully by Ms Adler's return – the toll of the day-to-day desperation and loneliness of his time in exile had become muted as well. But now that he recalled that time again he realised that despite the hostilities between himself and his elder sibling, it had been Mycroft who had been his consistent contact and confidant, his lifeline. John had been inaccessible for obvious reasons, and Irene... Sherlock gave a reflexive frown, and averted his mind from that train of thought.

His brother on the other hand had been an ally—Sherlock's only ally. He'd acted aloof, yes, and so damned critical, but had also been accessible and useful on the few rare occasions that Sherlock had admitted to needing anything from him. In retrospect, even those brief and terse exchanges had been vital to Sherlock's ongoing well-being, and maybe even his survival. They had served to remind him of who he was, or at least who he had been, so that he didn't vanish inside the personas that inhabited that world of violence and constant danger. For those short times Sherlock had also been able to project his frustrations onto a familiar target rather than internalise them, and that had been more helpful that he could've known at the time.

Now the integral players were reversed, although John was still excluded. And even though Sherlock wasn't prepared to share with him the truth about Irene Adler, he still felt frustrated by John's absence. Somehow with his stoic best friend by his side Sherlock was always able to better cope. There were many reasons for that, of course, one of them being that Sherlock thought of John as a sort avatar who absorbed and filtered anything difficult on Sherlock's behalf, so that Sherlock could remain above it, unaffected and observant. For some reason experiencing these crises with Irene seemed to have the opposite effect, and exacerbate any rawness of feeling. Perhaps it was because she preferred to remain as impervious as he did, and so the emotions – having no vicarious option - turned inward. Or, perhaps there was another reason for it altogether.

A less selfish and more analytical part of Sherlock acknowledged that it was for the best that at that moment John and Mary were boarding a flight out of the country and towards relative safety. Granted, if Sherlock survived John might murder Sherlock himself for excluding him, but if Moran were somehow carrying on the work of his former master, it meant that John could be in as much danger now as he had been at the height of the post-Moriarty affair. At least then Moriarty had just been killed which had thrown his organisation into chaos, and Sherlock had ostensibly been dead. To make matters worse, Mary was drawn into the dangerous game this time as well, making the stakes even that much higher.

Though of course nothing else raised stakes quite as much as N—

He gave a small, jerky twitch of his head, rejecting that thought as well.

Still, he couldn't help but make a quick inventory of all the people affected by Moran's vendetta, and he was taken aback by how many he included without hesitation. It was a far greater number than the list of three Moriarty had presented on that fateful day.

He had told John then that alone protected him, but even at the time he had been abandoning the principle that had once informed his every interpersonal experience. He had said it more to achieve an end in the context of his plan than out of any lingering conviction. If anything, the inverse was more accurate – "alone protects you" – but it was (and had been) far too late to do anything about that. Now he had not only accepted the role of certain people in his life, but he depended on them. And because of the dreadful parity between that situation and now, he found himself needing once more to protect their lives from a threat he had incited.

Seizing on the task the way a drowning man would clutch onto a life-preserver, Sherlock set to work. He first made an anonymous, untraceable call to the Kent constabulary to report that there was a bomb in the Sevenoaks home where Lestrade's ex-wife lived with their children. Following this he forged an email from Mrs Hudson's nephew to say that her sister up in Hertfordshire had suffered a stroke and to please come right away. He followed up on this by hacking into the sister, brother-in-law, and nephew's phone settings to disable service from calls out of area.

He was about to set into motion his plan to remove Molly from town when he stopped, dropping the hand that clutched his phone down to his lap. Molly… Molly was different. Unlike the others, she had known all the details of the Lazarus plan. Not just known, but had been instrumental in ensuring his successful and discreet transition to that afterlife. He couldn't embroil her in this current situation, it wouldn't be fair for so many reasons, but neither could he bring himself to deceive her after what she had done for him last time he faced similar circumstances.

He scrolled to her contact information, and put his thumb on the call icon, but it stayed there for several moments. Then, with a distinct feeling of cowardice, he opened up the text message function instead.

Can you get out of town? SH

Her response was immediate, and exactly what he had expected.

What is it, I can help.

Warmth and regret swept through him in equal measure.

Could be nothing. Erring on the side of caution.

What's happened?

He deflected her question with one of his own. Can you take leave?

I'm not saying yes. But hypothetically how long?

However many days of holiday you have stored up.

Once again her response was immediate. Sherlock, that's a lot.

That's what I'm counting on.

And you're sure I can't help?

I'm sure you could.

But…

He sighed internally. But, so many things.

Trust me.

When she didn't answer, he typed and sent another word. He knew in the past she might have viewed it with mistrust, but he hoped now that she would know his sincerity.

Please.

The next text took longer to arrive, the suspension points that indicated typing flashing on and off, and Sherlock could picture Molly considering and then reconsidering how to answer.

If you need anything

I know.

He hesitated, then sent off, Molly, thank you.

When she didn't reply he put the phone down and frowned, perturbed. It felt as though Moran were causing Sherlock to have to scramble and play catch-up, rather than the other way around, as it ought to be. This was a disadvantage he felt keenly, and made even worse by the absence of his previous collaborator, Mycroft.

These weren't permanent solutions, and they weren't as comprehensive as the scheme he had devised to remove John and Mary from danger, but at least they did buy him some time. Like Sherlock, like anybody, his friends were made vulnerable by their concerns for their loved ones, but in his case he sought to capitalised on that for good. For additional security he emailed Andrea to state that security details must be placed on Molly, Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson, and should further measures be necessary (additional bomb threats made, automobiles breaking down, train services interrupted…), that they would see to them. It wasn't long before she texted her affirmation.

These tasks completed he expected to feel a sense of accomplishment but instead, with no further distractions, the shock of what had happened came rushing back towards him.

With a contrived, forced calm in the face of what felt like accumulating panic, he cast about for another way to engage his mind, his eyes darting to and fro unseeing as he considered his next step. When it occurred to him he let out a sharp exhale of gratification, and he turned to Irene, his demeanour more assured.

"The car will drop you at Guildford as planned, but I'll be continuing on to the locus."

She gave a slow blink that he wasn't certain was a sort of acknowledgement of his words. Otherwise she made no move, though it was the most recognition she had given him since they'd entered the car.

For some reason, he felt compelled to add, "There are precious few hours of daytime left and I need to see it fresh and in the light."

She still said nothing, and Sherlock didn't think he was imagining the tension rising between them again.

"Well, what is it," he said after a prolonged silence. "Don't hold back on my account."

At first he thought she would continue to ignore him, but a moment later her voice, low and knowing, came from the other side of the car, "It terrifies you, doesn't it?"

He stared straight ahead, but his jaw flexed in involuntary response.

"That's absurd. While there's real work to be done I can't be uselessly hovering about at some sickbed. I need to go over every bit of the site, because at this point it's all we've got."

"Mycroft's people will be doing that."

He gave a derisive scoff. "Mycroft's people. They're the ones who allowed this to happen in the first place. One of them died for his lapse. Clearly 'Mycroft's people' aren't to be trusted with this."

He was aware of the hypocrisy of his words, given he had just delegated his friends' security to Mycroft's people, but he opted not to examine it too closely.

"It wasn't just Mr Holmes's people who missed the signs," she pointed out.

"Obviously Mycroft was distracted," he said, certain that she would catch his implications, and feeling a petty morsel of satisfaction for it.

"And so are you," she answered, not reacting to the barb, and turning to look him in the eye. The firm, assured way she spoke did even more to unsettle his composure, and then she did something that shocked him. She raised her hand and stroked the back of his upper arm, before she rested it atop his forearm.

"I'm aware," he managed. The impulses to shake her off or let himself savour it warred within him, but meanwhile her touch continued to radiate heat into his skin, and the weight of her hand felt far heavier than it should have.

"His team will document everything," she said, and again he wondered – for the umpteenth time since they had met – what her current objective was.

"I require primary, not secondary data," he snapped, aware that his testiness was a defensive reaction from his uncertainty and her touch more than it was a reaction to her words. "I don't think I need to impress upon you how high the stakes are in this case."

He saw her face harden but this time she didn't reply, and the awkward feeling of having done 'not good,' and far worse, caring about it, rankled at him. But not enough to change his mind.

"It's settled," he said, and turned away.

Once more she didn't comment—she didn't need to, he'd heard the bluster in his voice too—and they returned to heavy silence.

Almost an hour later the car turned down an unassuming hedged road, and the change in velocity and road type caused Sherlock to resurface from his chaotic and disordered thoughts and see signs for the hospital lining their route. Immediately his every sense sharpened in a fear response, and the heavy sensation of dread pooled in the pit of his stomach.

"You can't put this off forever," Irene said to his left, and at the sound of her voice his heart-rate ratcheted up further.

"As I said, I'm of far more use in the field than I'd be playing grieving family member. And it's not as if Mycroft would be aware of it even if I did." As soon as he said the words he wondered if she'd call him out on his choice of words. She was clearly able to see through the pretence of coldness to know that he wasn't playing at all. The way his throat had tightened around the second sentence made it all that much more obvious.

Instead she said, "I wasn't talking about your brother."

"What—" he started with a furrowed brow, disconcerted. A fraction of a second later, realisation hit.

"Oh."

He didn't have any reference, personal or observed, on how to answer, and his mind stuttered uselessly for a few moments before he replied with a subdued, "I know."

He wondered if she had been 'not talking about his brother' before too.

The door beside her opened and she turned away from him, though before she exited she paused as if she were going to say something else. But he would never learn what that was, because what he had suddenly seen over her shoulder had blind-sided him and pulled the entirety of his focus.

He swore, both at the situation and at himself for failing to prepare for this eventuality, then flattened himself against the seat in an attempt to lean out of view.

"Get out," he commanded through clenched teeth, and she raised an eyebrow so that he added with exasperation, "Or stay in—just pick one damn it and shut the door."

He only succeeded in eliciting a bemused, disapproving look from her, and then it was too late. He swore again, and slumped in resignation as his mother and father, who had been standing just outside the main entrance, caught sight of him through Irene's open door and made a direct line towards the car.

How could he have been so idiotic to fail taking into account his parents, even after he had included them in his mental headcount? Distracted, indeed. Of course Andrea would've notified them as well, he'd been an idiot not to realise it. And with Irene here as well, for God's sake… He envisioned Mycroft's look of smug schadenfreude at this turn of events, and felt an irrational flare of anger at his brother both for that imagined (but unquestionably accurate) reaction, and for being the indirect cause.

It only took a glance towards Sherlock's parents and then one back at Sherlock for The Woman to piece together the situation, and the shine of understanding in her eye that usually preceded some sort of misbehaviour filled him with new foreboding. This unforeseen meeting could make the already hateful situation far worse.

"Irene," he said in as ominous a voice he could manage, but she was already out of the car and rising to her full height.

He shoved open the door on his side and circled the rear of the car at a brisk walk, but to his relief Irene simply stood aside as his parents approached, their expressions anxious and intense. After her moment of comprehension when there had been a flicker of life in her eyes, she seemed to have retreated back into her mind again and was no longer engaged in what was transpiring. It was disconcerting to see Irene so preoccupied when she was usually acutely present in a given moment and he was still wary, but after the week he'd had he welcomed anything anticlimactic.

Then, before he could prepare himself for it his mother was locking him in a tight, fierce hug, and was pressing her mouth hard against the plane of his cheekbone. When he was able to extricate himself he managed to dodge the worst of it with his father, although Siger did clutch onto his hand longer, and harder, than Sherlock would've preferred. He didn't want to pay too close attention to their fear and tension; it might derail the tenuous hold he had on his own control.

"Oh darling, so good to see you," his mother said with feeling, reaching up to touch his face where she'd kissed him as if to confirm he was really there, whole and intact before her. "Andrea said she'd notified you, but we… weren't sure if you would come. I was about to ring you myself, but here you are. Can you believe this? How could this have happened?"

"I don't know, but I assure you I'll find out," he answered stiffly.

His mother started to reply, but then stopped as she realised that there was a stranger in their midst, and she cocked her head towards Irene.

"Oh, hello, who's this? Are you one of Mycroft's as well?" she asked, somewhat nonplussed.

Irene blinked and raised her chin, but before she had the chance to answer, Sherlock cut in with a raised voice.

"A client. But she's agreed that I'll put her case on hold for now, given... today's events."

He couldn't risk sending a warning look towards Irene – for her many other shortcomings his mother was well-versed in signs of deception after raising two exceedingly duplicitous boys – and so he just willed her not to contradict him.

Irene murmured, terse and not sounding herself at all, "Yes."

Then she did contradict him by looking into Sherlock's eyes with a weight incongruous with her being 'just' client, though whilst locked in that gaze Sherlock found himself uncaring, and for the smallest moment everything else faded away into background noise.

"Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, apologies for intruding," she said in a soft voice, and when she broke off eye contact the brief immunity he had found there disappeared.

She inclined her head then turned, reaching into her pocket for her phone as she did so. The void she left seemed more significant than the space she had occupied, and all three Holmeses watched her as she departed.

His mother's stare lingered even longer than Sherlock's, and when she faced her son again, a probing look had partially replaced the one of anxiety.

"So, who was that really?" she asked, and Sherlock felt a flash of mild alarm. His mother also had occasional, always inconvenient, bouts of canniness, and he very much could not deal with it at the moment.

"I told you," he said, and he hated the trace of petulance in his voice, "she's a client. She's got someone threatening her and her—er, reputation."

He had been about to say 'and her child,' (Rule 1: always adhere to the closest form of the truth when telling a lie) but something had stopped him from saying the words, since he was, in fact, referring to his parents' very own, and only, grandchild. One whom they hadn't a clue existed—whom he hadn't even had a clue existed until the day before.

He felt the blood drain from his face as that entire additional dimension occurred to him. Of course his parents would want to know their grandson – could he go so far as to wilfully deprive them of that?

And dear god, did the ripples of consequences for caring, for wanting The Woman, ever end?

Perhaps because they recognised the futility of it, neither his mother nor his father ever wheedled their sons about having families of their own. Still, it was obvious that the prospect would elate them both. They were always fawning over small children doing commonplace child things as if they were remarkable and didn't, in fact, happen all round the world every day, and when he was out with them he was often made to stop and suffer through their comments on all the "darling" miniature-sized outfits in children's shop windows.

Surely by now they had become resigned to simply listening as their friends regaled them of the joys of grandparenthood, but it was another matter for Sherlock to never reveal the existence of the child at all. Perhaps until very, very recently he might've rationalised that what they didn't know couldn't affect them, but now that he no longer felt resentful over his unexpected fatherhood, he didn't believe that. Knowledge, no matter how difficult or inconvenient, was always preferable to ignorance.

And what of the child himself? Nero could benefit from the stability of additional adults in his life, probably. Sherlock wasn't sure how that worked precisely, but he suspected it was one of those things—'conventional wisdom'. But unlike most general popular sentiments, which he found mawkish and irrelevant on the whole, perhaps there was merit to it… And it wasn't as if Irene had any support system in place herself. Whether her parents were dead or estranged, he had long-concluded through inductive reasoning that they weren't in the picture.

What, he couldn't help but speculate, might it have done for him as a child to have had the sort of support network he knew now? How would things have been different for him if the influential figures in his boyhood hadn't been cleaved into two discrete groups: his parents, who represented, in the simplest terms, emotional intelligence, and his brother who represented the cerebral. His younger self had had the vague impression that the two were mutually exclusive, in competition with and contradiction of one another. His mother had shown through the abandonment of her career for family that one didn't – couldn't – have both, but his brother had actively reinforced that and had also made it clear which of the two was the superior. Still, Sherlock hadn't really believed him—not until that one summer, when he'd come to learn the difficult way that Mycroft was, as always, right.

But if each of his family members had embodied a semblance of the two rather than being falling into one category or the other, would he have learned how to reconcile those things in himself? Would he have learned how to cope rather than how to suppress and compartmentalise one aspect of himself to facilitate the other? His face twisted in distaste at the distinctly Jungian tone of his thoughts, and he cleared them from his mind.

"Yes but what on earth is she doing here – now," his mother was asking in a slightly raised voice when he tuned in again. She sounded bewildered, but he narrowed his eyes at her with suspicion. He couldn't tell whether she was being innocuous or if she were digging.

"Not that it's relevant but we were on our way somewhere and I had the car redirect when Andrea called with the news," he lied.

"But that's not what she said to us, is it," she contradicted, looking to her husband, who gave a nod of confirmation. "She told us she'd sent the car over to your flat to pick you up. That's why I thought, another one of Mycroft's aides maybe—well, I mean, she certainly looks the part…"

"Mm, definitely Mycroft's type," Siger agreed, deadpan, and then despite the heaviness of the hour his parents exchanged an ironic, slightly humorous look, before turning their eyes back to their younger son.

Sherlock just glared back in disbelief, now at a loss as to what to say. It was remarkable how no matter his actual age, his parents, especially his mum, could reduce him to feeling twelve years old again. Of course he should have said she worked for Mycroft, it would have been the perfect cover story. He must have been more preoccupied with the all-too-pressing question of whether she really were a client or not, and he felt a traitorous tinge of colour start to infuse his cheeks.

At his expression his mother's eyebrows climbed towards her hairline, and after another exchanged glance with his father she said, "All right, we won't pry. Always so evasive, our boy." She amended, sounding more subdued, "Both of our boys."

"Let's get this over with, shall we?" Sherlock cut in, but it was with a ring of command he didn't feel. Instead a chill had begun to steal through him that had nothing to do with the forced air in Reception, and as he trailed his parents down the central hall it felt as if the soles of his shoes were transforming to lead. Each step felt heavier and cost more effort than the last, but he hadn't a choice. It wasn't as if he could tell his parents that he was only dropping off his 'client' at the hospital before visiting the locus; no, there was no pretext for him being there aside from visiting his brother. The investigation would have to wait, frustrating as the thought was.

As they moved into the bowels of the building they passed over a dozen men and women in dark suits, conferring in low and urgent whispers with each other or on their mobiles. One man looked up as they passed and his expression first registered surprise at seeing Sherlock, then some urgency.

"Ah Mr. Holmes—! If you have a moment we need to discuss—"

"Not now," Sherlock's mother cut in fiercely, her stride never breaking. The man lowered his eyes and stepped back, but Sherlock looked back over his shoulder with a sort of frustrated longing as they continued up the hall.

Sherlock tended to avoid the above-ground levels of hospitals but he had a particular dislike for Major Trauma centres, even before one of them had contained his comatose brother. They were the confluence points for two things he abhorred: irrational disorder and tedious bureaucracy—not to mention they were rife with rampant emotions. It was his policy to send John to speak with clients who had been injured during the course of an investigation, whenever possible. He stuck to the cavernous, silent chambers of hospital sublevels where scientific inquiry and order reigned, as opposed to the chaos of the imprecise and ephemeral science of sustaining or restoring life. He had to admit that his distaste had a distinctly more personal feel now, though.

Several minutes later his parents' paces slowed and they took identical deep, fortifying breaths, but he didn't need such cues to know that the next room held Mycroft. The massive guards flanking either side of the entrance had given that away far in advance.

The shorter and stockier of the two opened the door and waved his parents through, though the other stepped forward and prodded a blocking hand into his chest when he followed. Without bothering to hide his impatience he stated who he was, and yet the hand remained in place, and the guard demanded to see identification.

Sherlock's annoyance was quickly replaced by his realisation that this could be a gift—his final chance to get out of seeing Mycroft. He was experiencing an extremely strong aversion to crossing the threshold, and he had to fully acknowledge now that his motivations for investigating the scene rather than visit Mycroft were more complex than wanting to allocate his time well. Straightforward fear, irrational as it was, drove him as well, because if he saw his (previously infallible) brother in this state with his own eyes, the situation would gain the weight of truth it mightn't have otherwise.

Within the room his parents had turned and his mother was beginning to swell with indignation, but before Sherlock could say that he wasn't carrying any ID with him, the decision was taken out of his hands. The guard who had opened the door said he recognised Sherlock, and the other one relented and dropped his hand. With no other recourse remaining Sherlock entered the dim room, but his feet dragged as if he were moving forward in a nightmare.

Mycroft, who had always towered over him in height and intellect during childhood and who continued to tower over him from the lectern in Sherlock's Mind Palace, looked diminished and inconsequential in unconsciousness. He was reduced in more than just a physical sense, and visceral dread plunged through Sherlock as he realised that it was due to his perception that there was something absent that had always made Mycroft the profound force he was. The sight was even worse than Sherlock could've anticipated, and his diaphragm clenched like he had been punched.

Beside him he heard his mother suck in another small shuddering gasp and he felt her wrap her arms around his shoulder and hug him, but this time he allowed it. The touch helped somehow; it rooted him in reality rather than the spiralling, snowballing comprehension of what losing Mycroft meant. What really losing him—previously impossible to fathom, let alone understand—really meant.

He stood just inside the doorway, unwilling (…unable…) to follow his parents as they moved in closer, and he watched in silence as his mother sat down and took hold of his brother's limp hand.

"They-they said they think he has a chance," his father said in a faint voice from off to Sherlock's right. "But they can't say what he'll be like… If he'll be the same… If…" His words trailed off into nothingness.

Sherlock's mother let out sharp exhale that was almost a sob and squeezed Mycroft's hand, but Sherlock found that any words of his own were lodged inside his throat. Instead a single thought cycled through his mind over and over.

This time, Mycroft, the East Wind has come for you.

The room, his parents, the beeps and hisses emitting from the equipment hooked to Mycroft: all of it fell away as he looked from their joined hands up into his older brother's still, pallid face. Suddenly Sherlock wasn't feeling twelve out of any filial guilt, but because that age had also marked a crucial turning point in his life, when he had made the conscientious decision to become just like Mycroft, who never seemed to feel emotional pain over anything, who never suffered. Because he had been twelve when that incident had occurred and he had learned first-hand of the personal toll of death.

More so than Mycroft, Sherlock's interests had veered towards what his mother had termed 'the morbid', and as a child he'd been fascinated with any dead animals (birds and frogs mostly, but also the occasional small mammals such as mice or hedgehogs) he'd find on their property. From a young age he had kept journals that marked rates of decay, insect predation, and the scattering of remains as time passed. But that examination of death had been cerebral and academic, and had nothing to do with the concept of loss. He had been attracted to it with a child's innocent curiosity and naivety.

That had all changed the summer of 1989.

It had been a warm, dry summer, and the weather had been exceptionally conducive to the local beetle population. Sherlock had spent the holidays observing various species around their property, tracking their movements, keeping notes on their diet and foraging habits, and taking photos with the 35mm Minolta Dynex that had been his birthday present from his parents that January.

On that particular day he had caught sight of the rare and impressive specimen, Lucanus cervus or the Stag Beetle, near their back steps, and he had rushed into the house to grab his camera. When he'd returned he was elated to see that the beetle hadn't scuttled out of view, and for over an hour he was totally engrossed in his observations and photography.

The sound of his father's car screeching into the front drive had registered at the edge of his attention but hadn't disrupted his focus. Siger's frantic shouts of "The dog, it's the dog!" had. His heart lunging into the pit of his stomach as realisation clicked in an instant, Sherlock's eyes had darted up to confirm that the rear door was wide open. In his haste and excitement to document his sighting of the beetle, he had neglected to latch it behind him.

With a throat starting to choke closed and eyes beginning to burn with tears, he'd pelted around to the front of the house. At first he hadn't seen anything wrong and he'd allowed himself a brief moment of relief, but then Siger had opened the rear door of the car and Sherlock had nearly stumbled to his knees. His beloved Irish Setter Redbeard was wrapped in his father's overcoat, sprawled across the backseat and bleeding from the mouth. It was obvious that he'd slipped past Sherlock without Sherlock even noticing, and had been struck by a car on the front road.

It was the only time his dad had ever been rough with him; in his haste and distress he had grabbed Sherlock by the nape of his shirt collar and had practically thrown him into the backseat next to Redbeard. He had already got behind the wheel and shifted into first gear when his mother came bustling out of the front door, throwing a coat over her housedress and looking stricken.

All Sherlock could remember of that dreadful car trip into town were tear-blurred images of Redbeard's unfocussed, dilated eyes and the irregular heaving of his gleaming sides, and that when Sherlock had stroked a hand along his face to comfort him, Redbeard had managed several meagre licks of Sherlock's fingers before his head had flopped back down again.

Sherlock had latched desperately onto the hope that that meant the dog would recover, that Sherlock wouldn't be responsible for the death of his best friend, and for several days Redbeard had clung onto life. But in the end his parents had made the difficult though merciful decision to have Redbeard euthanized, and feeling the life waning from his body as Sherlock held him in his arms had been the most difficult experience of Sherlock's young life. He had hated his mum and dad for it but he had hated himself far more, although he had certainly not let the critical learning opportunity go amiss.

The pain of that loss had carried a weight that Mycroft's reproof never really had, and he had finally understood what his brother seemed to have been born knowing: every person must make a decision on how to expend their energy in the finite time allotted, and caring is both a hindrance and a disadvantage to anything of real value. One could not have it both ways. With several marked exceptions he had managed to practice the spirit, if not the letter, of the ideology.

Or so he had thought. Yet here he was again, looking down onto the face of someone he loved, someone who was on the brink of death—because of Sherlock, and the consequences of his caring.

The past began to flicker in disorientating overlaps with the present, and as he stared at the still and contused eyelids of his brother it was as if he were also staring into the blown-wide eyes of Redbeard again. His younger self was mentally commanding those eyes, begging them, to refocus and regain their lively spark—standing in proxy for the adult who couldn't quite articulate the same feelings, though he experienced them just with at least as much force.

As the recrimination and panic pounded through him Sherlock took a few unconscious steps backwards, and then for the second time in a matter of days he wheeled around and all but sprinted from a room. He ignored the soft, startled calls from his parents and strode down the hall with the tails of his coat streaming behind him, not towards any given destination except away from that cramped, dimly-lit ward. For several moments he blindly groped about in his pockets for cigarettes before he remembered that he'd quit again, and he let out a sharp, wordless cry of frustration, then slowed his steps and came to a halt in the middle of Reception. He almost wished that the sense of disembodiment and derealisation would return, because even though it had been unnerving, the numbness was far better than this.

"Mr Holmes?" a voice asked, and Sherlock dropped his hands and looked around to see Mycroft's PA Andrea regarding him. She wore her usual blasé expression, although a minutely raised eyebrow revealed her surprise at the manner in which she'd found him.

She paused to allow him to straighten his coat and collect himself, and he swallowed in a concerted effort to slow his breathing.

After a moment, she said, "I've just shown Ms Adler to her son. Are your parents with Mr Holmes now?"

He stared at her uncomprehending, and it took several seconds for her words to make any sort of sense.

He blinked hard, and struggled to find his voice. He still wasn't fully present there in the central hall; the image of his brother's feeble form lying under a hospital sheet continued to monopolize his attention.

"Yes—yes."

She gave a curt nod but continued to look at him, and he recalled what else she had said.

"And…" he said in a low, faltering voice, "Ms Adler, she's all right?"

"Yes." Andrea studied his face, then shifted her body back in the direction she'd come. "I can show you there as well, if you'd like."

"No," he said, too abrupt and too loud. He continued at normal volume, "I… I need to get back to…"

She just stared up at him with an even, bland face, and yet he got the impression that she was evaluating him in some way.

His brother had once said that she made an exceptional soundboard, and Sherlock could now see that quality in her. He experienced something similar with John, his 'conductor of light,' except he thought that Andrea's unruffled, composed demeanour far better complemented the personality of his brother. She provided a (deceptively) blank canvas upon which Mycroft could project his thoughts, but she was perceptive and savvy enough to marshal those thoughts with the subtlest of micro-expressions. In her own way Sherlock suspected that she was every bit as skilful a manipulator as Irene Adler, and even more powerful than The Woman had ever been.

Although she may never again have the chance to either help or influence Mycroft.

Control, control, he commanded as that thought threatened to undo his veneer of composure. One side of his mouth gave a sardonic twist at the concept.

What control? For the duration of this entire affair he had been a position of reacting rather than acting. Outside, ungovernable factors had been in control, not him, and he found that just as disturbing as any of the other developments.

So change it, he ordered himself. Turn it around. Take control now. His first reaction to the thought was annoyance for its glibness, but then it was replaced by a realisation, and his eyebrows raised.

One primary factor that had been acting upon him was his own fear: for his friends' safety, of Moran's return from the dead and the corresponding fact that he had outwitted Sherlock, of The Woman's sentiment towards him, and of course, of his unanticipated fatherhood. To shift things in his favour and regain his capacity for rational thought, he needed to first and foremost confront and overcome those fears.

Starting with Nero—now.

His heart pounded wildly at the thought and his thoughts launched into double-speed to try to find another way, but his insight was sound. It was time to meet his son.

He shot a look outside and saw that the sky was fading into a dusky late-afternoon indigo, the last rays of sunlight slanting down at an angle through the thick flange of trees in front of the hospital. A quick calculation told him that even if he left for the locus now he'd be arriving onsite after the onset of darkness. The team would be setting up klieg lights soon, and so there wouldn't be much difference between investigating at ten or two at night. It was perfunctory, but it was the final bit of rational justification that he'd needed.

He swallowed then gave Andrea a terse nod, and despite the immensity of that decision he might as well have been agreeing to a cup of tea, for all of her reaction. She turned to lead the way at a brisk pace, her heels clicking against the hospital linoleum, and the staccato sound was only slightly slower than his racing pulse. This time none of the men and women standing vigil interrupted them, and instead they parted like the Red Sea before her path.

They passed the main doors and through them Sherlock observed the waiting car. It wasn't too late to change his mind, but he knew he wouldn't, because in fact 'control' here was an illusion. There was something greater than conscientious decision compelling him towards the far wing of the hospital. It was both the equal and the inverse of why he'd fled Mycroft's room; where there he was repelled, here he was drawn in.

Still, it was far too soon before Andrea came to a stop in front of a closed door, crimped the corner of her lips at him in a not-quite smile, then turned again and left him standing alone in the corridor.

He stared at the unremarkable door, made of layered composite, reinforced with stainless steel, and marked with a great number of dents, scuffs, and various transferrants. Automatically dozens of observations poured into his mind, but none of them gave him any insight into what he might find on the other side, or how it might alter things – alter him – forever.

Again he told himself that it wasn't too late to turn round. He'd fulfilled his familial duty visiting Mycroft, after all, and he hadn't even intended to do that much when they'd arrived.

But while this might be put under such a heading, he wasn't standing in the hall out of any obligation. As he'd already grasped, something else had lead him to this threshold—or perhaps many things had: the thousands of minute steps he'd taken over the course of the past few years. Taken alone they were so small as to be almost unnoticeable, yet when threaded together they had brought him a great distance.

It hit him with the force of a case-related epiphany that the change to him wasn't going to come in the form of some external factor waiting on the other side of the door. He was standing outside this particular door because those changes had already occurred. Nero, the living proof of that, wouldn't even exist for Sherlock to meet had they not done.

No, you still haven't quite got it, his mind admonished.

Then it came to him. It wasn't that he had changed, because he had never been and never could be the 'Ice Man' his brother was. It was far more accurate to say that the numerous layers of pretence and defence that he had constructed through the years had begun to fall away, one fortification at a time—one person at a time. So for him the salient message had never been 'caring is not an advantage,' because that rested on an impossible premise: that caring or not caring was ever something that Sherlock could choose.

A far more relevant prescriptive was 'For every risk taken, ensure that there are iron-clad safeguards in place for those that it puts in danger.' And that was one which he had long-since internalised, and had practiced since the day he'd stepped off the ledge at St. Bart's.

At that he felt a burst of determination and anticipation, and he reached out and grasped the handle of the door.

For three more seconds he rested his hand on the knob, feeling the coolness of the metal press into his palm and adrenaline kick its way through his body, and then he took in a deep breath and gave a wrenching turn of his wrist. The latch released, the door opened, and for the second time in ten minutes he stepped over the threshold of a hospital room towards some sort of reckoning.

It was as dim as his brother's, but the electronic pulse of the EKG monitors and the drips of the IV tube that had permeated Mycroft's room were absent from this one. The effect was that the low light made it seem like a secluded refuge, distant and apart from the chaos of the rest of the A&E wing, rather than a clinical ward. Still, Sherlock felt the opposite of relaxed. Blood was thrumming through his veins and his breathing felt tight and short, and the palms of his hands itched with perspiration and nerves. He swept his eyes over his surroundings in small darting movements, but when they found Irene's figure his flight instinct vanished.

She turned towards him, and though he knew she must have spun around to see who had entered the room, her movement seemed as slow and graceful as a pendulum swing. When she faced him their gazes locked together again, and after a moment of surprise at seeing him in the doorway, there was understanding as well as the gleam of something else in her expression. Through her eyes, and the deep connection he found there, the stillness and peace of the room managed to steal into him further, and brace him for what he knew would come next.

Summoning all the strength of will he could manage, he detached his gaze from Irene's and dropped his eyes to the child clinging to her arms. Nero had lifted his head from where it had been burrowed in his mother's shoulder at the sound of the door opening, and the child's upturned face met Sherlock's look directly.

For an instant his rapid heartrate arrested in shock; Sherlock was staring directly into his own eyes. All the recognition and familiarity he had ever found in Irene's became literal as he looked into the pale grey-gold irises fringed with long dark lashes of his son.

At once his defence mechanisms kicked in, and he narrowed his eyes and began to catalogue everything he could about the infant before him.

Besides his own heterochromia, Sherlock spotted his father's hairline, his maternal grandmother's small right-cheek dimple, Irene's nose and skin tone, and other features he couldn't identify and therefore attributed to The Woman's recessive contributions: connected earlobes and hitchhikers thumbs, to name a few. But the baby was also left-handed like Sherlock's father, in the process of teething, slept through the night more often than not, was partly subsisting on solid foods, and apparently had a predilection for mushy peas—one thing which he most certainly did not inherit from his father.

His ability to observe and analyse didn't last long. He had just a few seconds of respite, but then he saw that Nero had the identical trait of quirking his left brow as The Woman, and unfamiliar feeling rushed over him. It subsumed all of his previous fears, but replaced them with new and far graver ones in the process.

He didn't turn on his heel and bolt this time. Instead, in spite of the weakness in his legs, he deliberately walked forward, towards Irene and towards their child.

When he came to a stop several feet away he found that proximity wasn't enough, he felt compelled to actually hold Nero as well. As he drew even closer the child huddled against Irene and hid his face in her neck, but after only a moment he lifted his head again and turned at the waist towards Sherlock, a look of mingled curiosity and interest overcoming his shyness (from his recent trauma or personality? Sherlock thought fleetingly, suspecting the former). Nero lifted an arm and pointed at Sherlock, then looked up at his mother, clearly demanding an explanation, and she smiled at him.

Sherlock stared at the pure, un-cynical expression on Irene's face, and was even more astonished when, after only a brief hesitation, Nero beamed back at her, showing his gums and four small teeth. Sherlock's incredulousness shifted into a feeling of something close to exhilaration when he discovered what else his son had inherited from him.

"Sherlock," she told Nero.

He stared back at her for several seconds, his brow bent in concentration.

"Shull," he repeated in a small but confident voice, and Sherlock's breath caught at hearing his son for the first time.

"You've certainly captured his interest," Irene murmured. She looked over at him with playful approval dancing in her eyes, though that other, more complex emotion remained as well. "You should've seen him when he met Mycroft – almost total apathy."

Several abstract rejoinders floated into Sherlock's mind (he's as clever as he looks, we have something in common already, if I had any doubts as to his paternity…), but he found that he had not yet recovered his voice.

When her words were met by Sherlock's silence the teasing spark faded, but before she could speak he gave a dismissing shake of his head, and took yet another step closer so that he could feel the warmth radiating off of both of them.

"I've- I've never…" His voice was still barely more than a rumble and sounded halting and hoarse, as if he hadn't used it for ages. That was fitting; he felt that if anything, experiences rather than the arbitrary passage of time determined aging, and it was as if he had matured years since he'd made the decision to enter this room.

Irene understood, and she closed the small remaining distance between them. She then eased Nero out of her arms and into Sherlock's, which he held out with unprecedented trepidation. He wasn't concerned he'd drop the baby, that was absurd; this fear was related to something far less nameable, and welled up from some chasm within him.

Though Nero's breathe quickened audibly and he made a small noise of apprehension and reached back for Irene as she shifted him, he didn't put up any real fuss. The moment of transfer passed by in both overlucid clarity and rushed blur, and then Irene was stepping back from Sherlock, and the child was in his arms. Nero was heavier than Sherlock had expected, and his muscles automatically flexed in reaction to the unanticipated weight, so that his hold around the infant tightened.

More than knowing that Nero existed, more even than seeing Nero with his own eyes, holding his son finally drove home that Nero was real, an actual individual, not a mere concept and not just a tool for Irene to use as leverage. And though he was a man accustomed to parsing through and making sense of great quantities of information, even the densest and most complex data he'd ever processed could not prepare him for the onslaught of emotions brought on by cradling his child for the first time.

Because it was so familiar to Sherlock, he was first able to identify the selfish, ego-centric aspect: how Nero made him feel—as a new parent, and as a man. There was the overwhelming sense of pride that he had somehow procreated this perfect, perfect child, but there were more complex, much deeper sensations at play as well, and he felt his throat tighten with unexpected sentiment. Concepts of mortality, of personal legacy, of worldviews he should pass on, all vied for his attention.

And Irene… this changed things between them, or at least it built upon the foundations that were already there. She would always be The Woman, the one he desired despite all reason and rationale, his match and his foil in equal measure, who had cured a specific loneliness he hadn't even known he'd felt until he'd met her, who had excited his body as effortlessly as she'd stimulated his mind…

But now she was also the mother of his child and he was the father of hers; they shared something even more exceptional than mutual talent and brilliance, and even more important than the singularity of their bond. Nothing could negate this thing they had accomplished, this child they had made together, and it was a profound relief to Sherlock that he would never again question whether he'd exaggerated the events of Karachi in his mind, or wonder if his feelings were disproportionate to hers. Even in the event that his fears were founded, which he now doubted, they would be eternally linked through their son.

As his mind raced along with his heartbeat, trying to understand the deep and primal emotions resounding through him like bells of St Paul's on Easter, one thing became clear. The main source of pride he felt was not for himself, or even The Woman, or for what they had achieved together, or what parenthood had the potential to make of them.

It was for Nero. Nero was far greater than the sum of his parts, and much more than the proof of his parents' unique connection or the embodiment of Sherlock and Irene's complementary strengths. He was sui generis in his own right.

At that Sherlock's eyes refocused on his son's face, who in turn was leaning back to peer up into Sherlock's, his eyes round and his mouth ajar. To Sherlock's astonishment, he could see signs of the mental process that he recognised at a fundamental level. Nero was far from the embryonic, blank slate that Sherlock had always dismissed a child of his age as being, and instead he saw that Nero was clearly taking in and rapidly processing everything around him – Sherlock in particular. It was Sherlock's own scan in literal infancy, and he stared back dumbfounded, so that father and son were each locked in thrall of the other. A new emotion jostled in on all the others: remorse that he hadn't been able to watch this progress, hadn't been present to see the glimmer of awareness and acumen develop in his son's eyes. He should have responded to Irene's postcard, but he vowed with a vehemence that took him aback with its ferocity: I will not miss any more.

His resolve turned even steelier as he recalled the active threat against those he loved, and the instinctive fears he'd felt for Nero when he first laid eyes on him came roaring back. More than anyone—more than even his friends, his parents, John and Mary, than Mycroft, than Irene—Nero must be protected. His readiness to kill for his loved ones should the situation call for it had escalated into something else now: an imperative.

Without looking away from his son's face, and in a tone that was now low and hard Sherlock said, "Moran. He has to die."

Without hesitation and just as steely Irene replied, "Yes."

At that Sherlock finally raised his head, and over the dark, messy curls of their son they shared a blazing look of accord.

For the first time since the time surrounding Karachi Sherlock felt that he and Irene were not only no longer antagonists but one united and indivisible force, and he was filled with a scornful sort of pity for Moran.

Then Nero stretched upwards and pressed his small dimpled hands to either side of Sherlock's face, and Sherlock stared again into the demanding and inquisitive eyes that mirrored his own in so many ways. The intensity of the moment blazed through both his mind and his heart, and it was suddenly as though a lever had been thrown and a room that had previously been illuminated by a small but brilliant array of lamps was now flooded with stadium lights. In that moment there were no shadows and no dark corners, there was only brightness, only Nero.

Thank you to everyone who is still interested in and reading this story after such a lengthy hiatus - I so appreciate it Xx.