Prompt: A Christmas miracle, from sirensbane

A/N: Welcome to another prompt that could have been sweet and that I turned into heavy angst. Warning ahead for discussions of the general devastation of war, nothing too horribly graphic but, you know, there because WWI was generally terrible.

If you know anything about WWI you can probably guess where this is going.

Mycroft Holmes was not a sentimental man.

He believed in what he could observe, what he could see and hear with his own senses, when he had never trusted anyone else's save his brother's. He believed even more in what could be told from a good set of statistics.

Numbers didn't try to pretend to be something they were not. Statistics told the bare basics of a story, and a rational, intelligent observer should be able to marry those statistics with other facts at their disposal to paint a complete picture of the world.

Mycroft knew numbers. He understood exactly how they worked, what they would allow and what they would not. When a young, idealistic secretary or an ambitious Cabinet member had to be told that their plan would not work because the numbers could not make it work, they often countered with, "Well, if the numbers did this instead, we could." It had always fallen to Mycroft to remind them that the numbers did not do that, and that they would not. There was simply no use in wishing the numbers to be anything but what they were.

Numbers, he had to remind his staff often, did not lie.

Casualties: Battle of the Marne (6-12 September, 1914)

13,000 British

250,000 French

250,000 German

Casualties: Battle of the Aisne (12-15 September, 1914)

5000 British

10,000 German

French: Unknown

Casualties: Battle of Ypres (19 October-22 November, 1914)

58,000 British

86,000 French

135,000 German

Mycroft only had to hear a number once to remember it. His mind did the calculations automatically.

500,000 men killed at the Marne alone

90,000 British casualties since July

5 months of war

Mycroft Holmes was not an emotional man. He possessed little of the softer emotions, and numbers asked for none. They possessed none.

It was said that most men found it easier to comprehend, and mourn, the death of one than of millions. A million was just a number. One was your son, your brother, your husband.

Mycroft watched as one of his secretaries took a call from the war office only last week and collapsed on his desk in sobs as they informed him they had managed to find the body of his only son from No Man's Land, months after the last inches of land had been won or lost.

90,000 times over, to 90,000 families.

Mycroft thought bitterly that he was right. Numbers possessed none of the softer emotions.

Numbers, he realized for the first time in his long career, were cruel.

Cruel, and unrelenting. Every day brought new numbers, numbers Mycroft would be expected to glean some new information from. Cruel as they were, they were better than the casualty lists. Mycroft knew the numbers of the dead; he didn't need to know the names.

Only one. He asked to be brought the section of the casualty lists which listed the W's before it was sent for publication. He had an agreement with his brother that should Dr. Watson's name appear on the lists, he would hear it from Mycroft directly and not from the dreaded telegram.

He told himself it was a simple matter of repaying years of loyal service to allow his brother this one kindness. Every time he breathed a sigh of relief that Dr. Watson's name was not there, he knew that perhaps he could understand how one might be more than 90,000.

By Christmas 1914 Mycroft knew without a doubt that Germany would win. It was a matter of numbers; theirs vs the Allies. Germany had more, the Allies less, and fewer every day. He looked at the facts and the numbers and knew before any hint escaped the Tsar's palace that Russia would fall, either to Germany or to their own revolutionaries. Without Russia's troops, it was only a matter of time until all of Europe was overrun by the Axis. The only solution both obvious and utterly impossible.

The United States was the key. The only way for the numbers to work was if the United States added its strength, its numbers, to the Allies.

But Wilson was remaining stubbornly committed to neutrality, and it would take nothing short of a miracle to bring the United States into the war.

Mycroft Holmes did not believe in miracles.

If anyone ever had, he doubted they did anymore.

Christmas Day 1914 was a somber affair. Few had forgotten the way they had gaily assured one another that the war would be over by Christmas. Mycroft had not altered his routine in fifty years, and war was no exception. He spent Christmas Day, as he spent all his days, at the Diogenes, the only club that remained open on the holiday for the benefit of the unsociable men who preferred their Christmases spent in solitude.

Almost solitude. Perhaps he was simply getting older, but something had convinced Mycroft to invite his brother for Christmas Day, to take advantage of the Diogenes' excellent Christmas dinner.

"We never celebrate Christmas," Sherlock said on arrival. "If we truly can call it celebrating, this year."

"Come, Sherlock, I've not seen you for two years," Mycroft said. "Since you spent all that time in America." He had, thankfully, shaven off that dreadful goatee. "I've had precious little time for anything but the war."

"Mycroft, the last thing I wish to discuss is the war," Sherlock said forcefully. "At all. It is all anyone talks of, and if I am to spend Christmas here, at least allow me to sit in peace and tell you about my bees. Perhaps we can deduce your fellow club members, as we used to do."

"Do forgive me," Mycroft said, after a pause. Sherlock was rarely so emotional. "It is all I have done for the last five months. I find I cannot put it aside."

"Do you think I can, so easily?" Sherlock asked. He paused. "If I go out to the cliffs on a quiet night I can sometimes hear the guns from France. Watson writes of the most dreadful conditions. I know we thought the turn of this new century meant the end of an age but-"

"We did not think it would end in iron and blood," Mycroft finished softly.

"Precisely," Sherlock said. He studied Mycroft closely. "You look dreadful, Mycroft. You really should retire."

"Sherlock, if I could not leave all the years before this how can I go now?" Mycroft was not prone to false modesty. He knew he was indispensable because he had made himself so. "We would not have a chance."

"Do we?" Sherlock asked.

Mycroft could not, and did not answer. He did not need to. Sherlock could read the answer in his face. "Must you ask me that?" he asked. "There are many factors, Sherlock. They all must come together in the right way. In that respect, there is always a chance, even a small one."

It might be true. Mathematically, it could be, if realistically the chance was so small as to be nearly impossible. "You sound hopeless," Sherlock said.

Mycroft did not answer, grateful for once for the interruption of the page boy with a telegram. He read it, and then read it again, unable to believe what he was reading.

"Mycroft?" Sherlock asked. "Mycroft, what is it? Is it Watson?" This last was said fearfully, in a tone of voice Mycroft had never once heard from his brother's lips.

"No," Mycroft said slowly. He almost could not believe it, but the report was straight from the front. It had to be true. "It is a report from the front. All over the front. Sherlock...the fighting has stopped."

"What?" Sherlock asked, taking the telegram from Mycroft and reading it himself. "A truce? Who called for that?"

"No one," Mycroft said, in a daze. "No one. Well, the men, on both sides, I suppose. The Germans, and our troops simply...put down their weapons."

"Exchanges of trinkets, meeting in No Man's Land to sing Christmas carols, allowing the troops to find and bury their dead," Sherlock read aloud from the telegram. He laughed aloud, the sound ringing out unnaturally in the Strangers Room. "Mycroft, it says they've organized football matches! Where is this happening?"

"All over the Western front," Mycroft said, reading the list of locations given in the telegram. An army - no, both armies - simply refusing to fight. Climbing out of the trenches to meet on No Man's Land. Called such because no man who climbed onto it could live. Until now.

Facts, numbers, cost expenditures; nothing Mycroft had ever seen had led him to this. He doubted anything could have. A Christmas truce. All the thousands of men on both sides, who had lost friends and comrades at each other's hands, all over the front, spontaneously deciding to lay down their arms for the holiday? It was unheard of, impossible. He sat down heavily, dazed.

"Mycroft?" Sherlock asked. "Are you alright?"

Mycroft was silent for a moment, thinking of the tallied casualty figures he received nearly every day. As long as this truce went on, he would not receive any more. "Football," he said. "They're playing football in No Man's Land. The English, the Germans…enemies one day, comrades the next." It was enough to bring a lump even to Mycroft's throat, and he swallowed quickly. "I have never seen anything like this in all my years of service."

Sherlock smiled. "It is the season for miracles, is it not, brother?"

"You, Sherlock, believing in miracles?" Mycroft asked gently.

"Well, when what I see and observe tells me there is one, then it must be true," Sherlock said. "Even you cannot deny that."

Numbers did not lie. The numbers of troops that had laid down their arms, totally separate from each other; that was not a lie. The number of places this had taken place, simultaneously but with no coordination, that was not a lie either.

Mycroft Holmes had never believed in miracles.

He had also never denied the truth.

The truth was this could not be anything else.

"Perhaps, Sherlock, we will see an end to this war after all," Mycroft said. "And on earth, peace and good will toward men."

"Amen, Mycroft," Sherlock murmured.

A/N: Casualty figures are as accurate as I could get them. There's still a lot of discrepancy and unknowns; I took the numbers from the era of the First World War if I could find them, as that's what Mycroft would have had.

The Christmas truce was, of course, a real thing, during which troops on both sides all over the Western Front simply laid down their arms, called a truce and refused to fight. It's probably the most famous anecdote to come out of WWI and one of the few real-life Christmas miracles I could think of.