Warning: Violence towards children, off-screen minor character deaths, mid PTSD, depression, Mycroft's typical manipulations.
Author's note: I finally update after my abrupt absence in nearly a year. I'm terribly sorry to leave all of you hanging without any certain forewarning notes. But rest assure I will not abandon my fics.
Hugs and hearts to TemporarilySam for her wonderful feedbacks and supports.
Also thank you to every person who has spared their time to read/review/favorite/follow this fic.
4.
"Do you smoke?" Brandt looked up, slowly, away from his both cupping hands – holding a pack of cigarette carefully – and was greeted with curious, thoughtful green gaze of the silent child who had been sitting and watching ducks swarming around the small lake in the park for quite some time. He was adorned in a neat dark brown jersey blazer jacket over a woolen slipover, a white cotton shirt and black shorts. The child was like a mini scholar, his face solemnly still and his palms settling on his unopened leather-bound book. He regarded Brandt patiently, seeming unconcerned with the idle flow of the people around – every of the boy's contours was defined but faint in a way Brandt couldn't explain, blending into the background as if an unexpected plan-out punctuated line of painting brush.
Brandt's meticulous fingers stretched out to cover the pack from sight. The distance between the two of them was strangely calculated. Unquestionable and safe in case any good-intended passerby noticed a kid - who was well-dressed yet casual enough to be ordinary - and a man - who wasn't unsuspicious to behold with face ragged by unshaven stubbles, brown hair unkempt, and grey overcoat old and worn hiding week-long-unwashed clothes – seated together on a random park bench.
"I'm not fond of it," Brandt rasped after a moment of silent mutual contemplation, voice deep and scratching slightly. He had given Ellen half of the pack, letting her trade it off for some cardboards and half a bottle of terrible, dirt cheap whiskey. At least those burning gulps of alcohol had ceased her imploringly questioning stare a little.
His hands itched as the boy's eyes quietly darted to the wrapping hold he put on the fag pack, Brandt's shoulders going tense. "You shouldn't talk to complete strangers, kid," said Brandt, searching the child's eyes until they were lifted away and up to meet his as intended. His lips were formed into a non-threatening grin that was meant to ease. But his growing beard must have disturbed the purpose if those continuously observing and unaffected orbs were anything to go by. Brandt softened his gaze instead, palms relaxing little by little in force. "Where are your parents?"
The kid finally turned his head away, leaning his back against the bench in a slow amusing move that made him look sprawled and his chin nearly able to rest atop his chests. But he didn't seem relaxed, his limbs held awkwardly as though he was facing with tiredness too big for his little body and childish mind to work properly and reasonably. His feet couldn't even touch the ground.
"I'm tired," the child informed, his green eyes hazed over as if sleep and many other hardship had just suddenly come knocking and he was slumping down under all of the heavy weigh, "I run away for a bit. I know it's bad behavior."
The kid did look terribly guilty for doing it too.
Then the boy straightened up, stiff and attentive again. Brandt watched those green eyes narrowing pointedly at the ducks in the lake. "People sometimes would wonder about things like birds or their significance…," the unnamed child abruptly and particularly said, "Do they even have significance at all or their significance is one that is deep enough to be unfound in plain sight?"
Small fingers absentmindedly traced the hard cover of the book, "Like the ducks, you know? They can walk on the earth, and they can swim into the ocean. But they can also soar in the sky… Imagine how much freedom that is when they are allowed to roam between heaven and earth - A link that is powerful and fragile at the same time. If those abilities are mastered, they will be very formidable indeed. Because they create flexibility only we can dream of. The potential of small things which often goes unnoticed…"
The child smiled a discreet tilt of the mouth accompanied by a far-away look on his soft face. And Brandt let go of his pack, letting it fall forgotten on the ground and moving his head from a gunpoint, curling his upper body into a practiced movement with his hands gripping and hitting hard. He left the first, disarmed, man unconscious bending over the back of the bench as he hit the butt of the just stolen gun to the temple of a second, and delivered a kick right after to the third man's stomach. He jammed his fist to the third's face, knocking him out.
The shouts and screams of civilians weren't unheard. The police would be here fast. Brandt exhaled and locked eyes on the supposed-to-be-frightened child, but found the boy just stared back - resigned and apologetic maybe. Not scared. Or surprised. Even when there was a woman dressed in professional black skirt suit standing next to him – hands settling on one of his tiny shoulders.
"Let him go," Brandt tightened his palms around the gun, but not raising it – His arm hung loosely and close to his body. Making him look less a threat – more like a promise of decisions. His tone was calm, a firm negotiating demand.
The woman was silent and unreadable, having a phone in her hand instead of any kind of firearms. But Brandt would not take any chance. She considered him with an unimpressed and scrutinizing air, and pushed the boy briefly and gently behind her, her stance protective and impassable. The boy let her.
Brandt narrowed his eyes. That was long for the police to get to a scene; and around them, there was no more people. He forwent the 'Who are you?' to, "What do you want?"
"It'd be considerate of you if you may come with us," the woman replied diplomatically. And Brandt didn't fight back when suited men appeared beside him, keeping his eyes unalterable on the boy for a sure moment – from his unafraid boyishly tender features to the smooth hand on his un-quivering lines. Unharmed.
The gun was dropped from his hand, and Brandt placed his palms out and up while the hired men led him past the child and the woman. Until they reached a black sedan and Brandt was hit in the head and blacked out.
When Brandt came to himself, his both arm were in the process of being tied up behind the chair he was currently sitting on. He slammed his head backward, hitting the nose of the man doing bounding duty. The rope hadn't had enough time to be tightened so its looseness was Brandt's immediate advantage. He swept up, and crashed the chair into another who had his gun pointing to Brandt's chest. As the first man recovered from his pain of a bloody broken nose and was reaching for his firearms, Brandt gave him a punch to the face again – sending him sprawling on the ground just like his colleague.
Then there was a tiny deadly dot of red light placed firmly on his heart; Brandt stood very still.
"Well, I must say I'm quite impressed with your performance, Mr. Brandt," said a man who had not been there moment ago, dressed in sharp three piece suit and leaning on his umbrella. Brandt had seen – worked under – men whose smile was just the same. A misleading and imperious stretch of pinched lips – emotionless and calculating. Lips that parted to name out orders, that counted the dead for numbers and plans – not individuals who once had an own life each.
Brandt flexed his hands slightly instead of answering, watching in return.
"One would wonder why a person with such potential like you had quitted his job – Without his resignation letter at that," the man continued, elegant fingers taking out a small black notebook, "It's said your team had been ambushed. Severe casualties. All men died – Except, yes, except, that you are standing here, very much alive."
The man's eyes minutely squinted, lines creasing along his temples – His perfected little tilt of lips in place, "You were declared dead eight months ago, even though your body had never been found among the retrieved corpses. So, understandably, there are many questions to your survival, as well as your homeless continued existence, Mr. Brandt. But most of those, I won't ask. Because I simply know the answers."
The man tapped the tip of his umbrella to the concrete floor of the abandoned warehouse. That one sound echoed ghostly through the dirty, empty space as though a thunderous judgment.
"How is the child?" Brandt finally asked, his voice low almost to a raspy whisper.
"Safe," the man said simply, regarding him with a new unreadable glint. Just one single word that contained many subtexts and significance. Brandt darted his eyes around swiftly without moving his stance. Sniper – no, snipers – detected. There were more than three; and his bullets would be fast enough to explode the flesh of the one who had the dot on him right now – Just wouldn't be for all the remained others. Under this circumstance, he was foreseen to be outnumbered and to stay put to actually listen.
Minimal escapes.
"What do you offer then?" Brandt looked at the man's deep gaze, tilting his head lightly like sharks smelling blood on the ocean of possibility. Because, despite the uncountable things Brandt had done and had known, no man would just take great length to bring him here for a small showdown of threatening facts and complex murderous attempts. All of these were for another intention - Intention that would not include his saying no.
"The child is safe," the man reconfirmed, his little not-smile gone and his eyes piercing through Brandt, "and I want you to keep it that way."
"You shaved," the boy said calmly, glancing at him briefly before returning to his drawing, "and dressed up."
Brandt shrugged, standing at the room's door and roaming his eyes around – papers and books clustering everywhere, spreading out on the carpeted floor like some kinds of personal unbreakable web. But beside all those, there was nothing to indicate this room belonging to a seven-year-old child - No personal stuffed toys or even spilling blocks of Lego. No brightly and unruly self-painted pictures or family photographs on the four blank walls. Just a neatly made bed, a closed-and-luxuriously-carved-wooden wardrobe, an old comfortable sofa full of plushy pillows and curtained high windows looking out the large backyard garden.
And there were hidden cameras. Cautious and various surveillances dutifully recording and watching them through computerized eyes and ears. A touch of paranoia or a measured caution for real danger?
Brandt looked behind his back, scanning the hallway then stepping fully into the room. He checked all three windows, leveled himself down to examine underneath the bed and opened the wardrobe for a quick but thorough look. Finishing, Brandt moved to sit next to the child's side, letting his stance relax slightly.
"You're Arthur," Brandt said, contemplating those blond strands, pale infantile skin and thin limbs – He looked small even for his age. The face, which stared at him from the picture in the file Mycroft Holmes had given, hadn't been able to show all of the fragility of this little person. Though, the eyes had remained clear, innocent - yet still too knowing. There was no probable reason Brandt could come up with to explain as to why someone would want to hurt this kid. But Brandt had been living in the dark long enough to know it would not spare even a child.
'Arthur' didn't deny or confirm his sentence. Instead, he drew on. When he was done, he lifted his paper for Brandt to see Brandt's own tall, ragged figure in surprisingly recognizable scrawling lines. There was a carefully-penciled pack held in painted-Brandt's hand.
"You're Brandt, William Brandt." the boy noted back, "Nice to meet you." And Brandt tilted his lips up enough for a small careful smile.
Arthur sometimes woke up at three in the morning, when the sun still slumbered at the edge of the horizon, the air chilling, and the surroundings a simple scene of quiescence. Brandt watched him sitting on one side of the bed, little shadowed head titling slightly as if listening to sounds whose notes only he could hear. Brandt sat in the darkened corner of the sofa, unmoving and listening himself to soft breaths and mysterious mind-wanderings.
But there were times when Brandt blinked his eyes to early morning lights streaming in the room after a brief rest, and found Arthur curling in his spot still, dreaming away. Those times, the child wouldn't get up until the sun rose high in the sky, opening his eyes slowly and furrowing his brows like he was confused for a moment. He often looked as though his whole tiny body was aching to his bones, soft groans frequenting his stretching movements. Yet, Brandt never heard the boy complain once. He would just frown when Holmes examined his every tired line and made an almost concerned – but mostly disagreeing – noise in his throat, as they were seated for their daily lunch.
"I will not take the pills, Mycroft," small jaw clenched, determined and firm. It was strange for a child to do that. Mycroft Holmes set his own jaw with a nearly long-suffering gaze – like he had been dealing with this kind of stubbornness for the whole length of his discrete life. A sort of interaction that could wear out even the most steely and experienced of patience. But Holmes would not simply sigh. The silence of his body language drew out an intended exhalation better than any sounds erupted from his thin lips.
Brandt looked on, silent as a sculptured sentinel and doing analyses of his own.
Then, there were days, on which Arthur ran to the bathroom at nights and threw up every substance he managed to store in his stomach into the toilet.
("This gentleman here is one sweetheart, and deserves a nice cup of tea," Mrs. Teagan announced merrily as she pushed one fried egg to each of their dish which had been covered almost fully with perfectly cooked bacons and matted potatoes. Brandt's early coffee had been denied when he shook his head from a breakfast offer – which resulted in the absolutely disapproving and scandalous scowl on Mrs. Teagan's face and a stern ushering to the nearest chair. Arthur had smile just a tiny bit at the treatment.
Mrs. Teagan poured for Arthur a steaming milky cuppa as said, smiling fondly at the boy when he thanked her and sheepishly picked at his food. Brandt stared at the child's wandering fork and hesitance. He cleared his throat just loud enough for Arthur to look up at him, then slowly took bites of his bacons and inclined his head at Arthur's barely eaten share. Arthur narrowed his eyes, the searching glint not unfamiliar or any less sharp than Holmes'.
Brandt grinned a little, his always ready stance softening, and Arthur squinted at him with a curious, disgruntled tilt of a baby bird. After a moment, the child sighed, as though put upon, starting at his breakfast again. Deliberately and nothing short of awkward. Mrs. Teagan breathed out a soft sound like a sob of relief.
"Well, someone deserves a cup of coffee it seems," Mrs. Teagan harrumphed, darting a grateful upward line of lips at Brandt.)
Each heaving was a racking shudder through flesh; and Brandt's hands were suddenly not large enough while facing the truly helpless figure of a seven-year-old child. The halls in the mansion seemed empty and dark, loneliness hanging over like a long dried corpse.
Brandt's calloused palms rubbed quivering bending back, smoothing matted blond strands out of sweaty forehead and cheeks and pale soured mouth. His features felt too rough for behaviors so tender and caring, as though a wrong touch would shatter this fragile creature into pieces. Soldiers might fear, but soldiers could never retreat. So Brandt figured out how to cradle and whisper reassuring nothing.
He reported back to Holmes about those days and saw well-constructed contours constricted into something stiffly and terribly human, because in the nights when the nightmares closed in and the monsters clawed out from scared mind, Holmes' sheltering wings and shadow were taken away to foreign borders and political demanding.
Small fingers had trembled whilst clutching at his white shirt, grasping for a stable lifeline, for answers Brandt didn't have – for safety Brandt's found slipping gradually. The hands clasping behind his back hid – buried – the disheartened falter Brandt had against these unexpected dangers - His shudder under the probability of failure he couldn't afford.
Brandt had to force the sounds of explosions and cries and desert burns out of his mind. For he couldn't turn back time to the warehouse, where his abandoned hope and purpose were brought forth in an abandoned place, to tell the impeccable-but-desperate-all-the-same man to turn the red dot into a clear kill. Because Brandt had been ready for months, sinking down a hole of mud like a slow free-fall.
In the end, even when he hadn't feared the cold blare of bullets, his thoughts reddened with the blood of his comrades, his skins burnt in dirt and sand and shame; Brandt had said yes.
There were days of eerie strangeness, days of dragging drowsiness that left Brandt's fingertips frozen in relief being caressed by steady breaths from little nostrils, days of fright and forced calm when everything was closing in until the world just solely existed in those sorrowful, pain-ridden but hopeful green eyes as tears carved trails into puerile flesh like proof for suffering. And there were days the bottoms of bottles were as if siren calls, tugging the fated, weathered sailors to the depth of their end – sailors from whom storms and struggles hadn't been able to rid life that seemed easily to be taken by mere desire and hopelessness –; days his calluses itched for the press of trigger, his eyes staring unreadable and disinterested at psychological questions and note-takings whilst the echoes of battles were ringing in his ears.
('I only ever know how to be a soldier.')
But, everyday – everyday, a small figure walked along his side, quiet and tentative. Green gazes looked at him in reluctance of hard trust, not judgments, while hands reached out and held on his unafraid, determined like a fire that refused to be blown off existence. Thin body Brandt learned to embrace and assure when terrors came, and to protect when dangers struck.
In the end, Brandt stayed.
Arthur dreamed of endless field and wings feathering it. Green stretched unceasingly and undaunted, the dancing surges of grass under the whirls of wind strong like flexing sturdy and lean muscles – full of life and power in movements undeterred.
He floated even with his feet on the ground, dirt clinging to soft naked flesh and Arthur felt freshness in every fiber of his being. It was very vibrant.
So he chased, ran and reached after the birds that had been startled into flight. Flapping sounds rattled up to the sky as if pouring rain which could never touch the earth, leaving his fingers hovering in the air – trying to wrap something now forever out of reach.
He watched the birds flying away, until the deep and high horizon above bared its width to his eyes. The field spread on and the heaven was vast. Arthur stood a lonesome figure in between.
No one heard when he cried, tears fallen.
The Ferris wheel stood white and wondrous in distance, like a widened dream sparking under the sunlight of reality, hazing Arthur's eyes over if he stared at it too long. He wanted to loosen his grasp on Brandt's hands, but back-up plans and crimson cautions discussed in the privacy of Mycroft's study held him in place. He couldn't quite think of a time when he possibly had visited somewhere like this with anyone – when he was tall and grim and yearning much.
("I have thought of going to many places," the figure in the dark of his mind whispered, sitting far away but clear enough Arthur could taste his prolonged sorrows and questioning wanting, "I had never had a problem with traveling alone, back to centuries I ruled the reign of oceans and just missed only my Queens' presences."
"You met him," the round waves of memory rippled underneath their feet, Arthur feeling detached to every of it.
The other smiled, "I met him," and years and years of closeness and connections rushing in like hasty breaths brought Arthur tears for losses he couldn't quite understand yet felt nonetheless. "And I started missing baby blues and clueless questions and untainted spirit. Starting missing hugs and warmth. I'd doubted. I'd crumpled under my own emotions. I hate it. Then, I want it back."
The larger, lonely being watched him, face undeterred even with too many feelings clawing at its edges. Arthur was saddened, but having long accepted the fear.
"And I keep wondering.")
"Do you want to try?" Brandt asked, always thoughtful despite all nonchalance and calloused smoothness.
"Won't you cradle me if I try?" Arthur sullenly muttered back, eyes fixing on the giant wheel, fingers squeezing. "Security measure, little man," Brandt bent down to scoop him up, lifting him until Arthur was above the milling crowd and wrapped his arms around Brandt's neck. Brandt's right palm stretched to cover most of Arthur's back and his posture slightly curled in, sheltering.
"Can we go now?" The blond haired child urged, and his older companion smiled in patient agreement. They were just half the way to the ticket booth – Brandt murmured their inputs once or twice through his tiny earpiece to other agents scattering around, keeping a close guard (Mycroft hadn't been pleased with Arthur's idea of venturing outside, not to mention in a packed place. Mycroft's thinned lips and disapproving frown wasn't fast enough to declare a ban before Brandt's ready intervention directed the argument to a new direction, which led to a stern agreement of immediately high security for the trip and made the well-concealed worry in Mycroft's gaze intensify.) –, when a man bumped into them. Brandt waved off the man's frantic apology, which was uttered meekly from under his shadowing hat, and adjusted his grip on his charge. Arthur's gaze chased the retreating mousey form of the stranger, something unsettled twisting in his guts.
"What's wrong?" Brandt enquired, noticing his distraction, hand instinctively making soothingly rubbing gestures. Sometimes Brandt just felt so solid and warm, Arthur only wanted to close his tired eyes and drift off to an exhausted sleep, trusty enough to let his walls down, his mortal flesh bare and his hurts consuming. The uninterrupted whirls of his thoughts buzzed quietly against his awareness, rattling his nerves and grapping his senses. Arthur had been so much better at controlling the flood of memories, mental dams built up as strong and sturdy as the desperate hold of his will and as experienced as the worn edges of his constantly battered mind.
Mycroft had helped along the way, presence offering a much-needed calmness that his maelstroms were anchored by, words spoken with trenchant intellect piercing memories into thousands facts of distant things belonging to history only, hand sweeping his sweated forehead gently as though miseries could be bottled into salted minims and swiped away by meticulous fingers. But, sometimes, Arthur felt as small as the body contained him, his shoulders burdened like the whole world perching on them, crushing and unforgiving – His other self waited, vast and dark and thoughtful.
So the boy buried his face into Brandt's shoulder, and shook his head, allowing the ex-soldier to carry the weight for just a little, little while.
The ride after that was easeful, with Arthur pressing his face against the glass, watching the cluttering ant-like people below and the spread of sky and sea dancing endlessly in front of emeralds, and Brandt sitting on the opposite seat, silently observing everything. It was strange to be high enough to feel like being able to touch the clouds and to see the wholeness of sceneries, yet not enough to be among the heaven, unreachable and unconcerned. The notion of the Ferris wheel suddenly stopping its cycles, hovering most of its passengers in mid-air, appeared in Arthur's brain. Because then, amidst the panicked chaos, Arthur might have some more minutes to spare in this tempting isolation before Brandt found a way to break all of them free.
(Mycroft Holmes picked a man like William Brandt for a reason.)
By the time they got out of the wheel, Arthur had felt less exposed and more relaxed, even Brandt's lines easing a little. So when a syringe needle was dexterously slid into the back of Brandt's neck, freezing the bodyguard in his spot on the bench they'd situated themselves, Arthur stared horrified at the stranger from before standing right behind them. Brandt's eyes looked straight at Arthur's facial features; and Arthur glimpsed a slight panicked widening of irises before Brandt's body became stilled, locked up underneath the drug's chemical grasp. Whatever in the syringe, it did its job perfectly; because in others' point of view, Brandt was just simply sitting there with him unmoving, not even a flicker of emotions betraying anything.
Arthur watched an unhinged smile leisurely crawling across the stranger's face as the man whispered, his voice low and pitching like a mad melody, "Snipers, boy." There was a sure promise of splattered brains if Arthur dared step out of line.
Arthur willed his fingers not to shake, and nodded to seal the deal. And right then, a gun fired into the air, people screaming and the man, who lived in madness, created it and loved it, laughing gleefully as if he was going to enjoy ripping frail wings out bloody when he gently squeezed Arthur's neck, bringing forth flashes of lies and murders and darkness. Someone whistled to the tones of Bee Gee while people dropped dead like notes blotted darkly down on a twisted music sheet.
Arthur gasped painfully, a sole tear rolling down his cheek as hot and frigid as hurt and anger. Moriarty tightened his hand, saying as though singing, "We are going to have so much fun."
"Mark 1, lost contact-"
"Mark 2, 3, DOWN, EMERGENCY-"
"Control isn't answering-"
"Control? Control! Can you hear us?"