Sherlock had been thrilled to find the graffiti – or, at least, whatever passed as thrilled for him – and within an hour of their return home, he had printed out photos taken with his phone and taped them up to the mantelpiece above the fireplace. Emili was tucked into the couch with her laptop, reviewing every online article she had found that was authored by the latest victim, searching for anything that might indicate an involvement in something dangerous enough to get him killed. The detective was curled into his armchair, staring straight forward at the printed photographs. Emili wasn't entirely sure he was even blinking.
A door closing suddenly made Emili jump. Sherlock made no sign of hearing such a thing. Seconds later, footsteps started up the stairs quickly, accompanied by a man's voice shouting up towards the apartment. "Sherlock! Sherlock, you won't guess what I found when I left the surgery." Then, quieter, he added, "Well, maybe you will," as he recalled the man's stunning powers of being able to know everything before anyone else. "Is Em here?" The door to 221B was pushed open by John, who had a bag of groceries around his wrist and a newspaper held up to his face.
John was so absorbed with the paper that he didn't, at first, notice the positions of everyone in the flat. Emili wasn't sure he realized that she was actually there, because the newspaper was between his eyes and her. Either way, John was buzzing with excitement and alarm.
"The killer who walks through walls? He hit again last night! He-"
Just as he took the paper away from his face, John saw Emili, seated at the couch, and Sherlock, staring at the fireplace. The blogger took in the photographs being stared at, the identical yellow shapes, and Emili's slightly guilty expression, and then put the clues together.
"… You already found out, haven't you?" He sighed, his face coloring a little bit in embarrassment. He put the newspaper down with a sigh, the corners of the papers crumpling against his thighs.
The teen tried not to notice how pleased she was to have John back within the investigative committee as Sherlock "debriefed" them on their findings, pacing across the living room like a pissed off caged feline. John nursed a hot cup of grey tea that still sported gentle wisps of pale steam. Emili hugged her laptop to her abdomen while her brother ranted. Night was perilously close to falling. From the window out to the street, only the barest hints of colored lights were twinkling through the blinds, casting dancing shadows of soft golds and dark pinks on the glass and the kitchen table.
Emili felt the tiredness beginning to creep up on her. They had found a new victim and ascertained that there was a connection in the last day, which frustrated her, as it wasn't too much progress. Belying her determination to uncover the secrets of the case, her jaw stretched in a stressed yawn, forcibly reminding her that her sleep the night before had been interrupted and punctuated with discomfort and startles. Much as she hated to admit it, she wouldn't be able to keep her eyes open for much longer.
Their blogger looked to be in a similar plight. The tea in his hands was drifting steam up to his face, which kept encouraging him to let his eyes slide shut drowsily. Then, with the next pass that Sherlock made by the chair, the motion and the sound jolted John awake again, but only for a few seconds before his drink lulled him off again.
Emili tried to pay attention, but the words glided past like a lullaby more than a discussion. "The killer goes to the bank," Sherlock agitatedly summarized, "Leaving a threatening cipher for Van Coon; Van Coon panics, returns to his apartment, locks himself in, and, hours later, he dies."
The mental image of the bloody and disfigured face made Emili shift, waking her enough to participate. "Then he finds Lukis at the library. He adds the cipher to the shelf where he knows it will be seen, and Lukis runs home."
Sherlock stopped pacing, standing before the fireplace, his eyes flitting from image to image. Added to the collection was a cut-out of the article John found on the journalist's death. "Late that night, he dies, too."
There was something sick about the men being murdered after taking to their homes for safety. Someone's home was the place where they had the right to live peacefully, not to have their lives taken. Emili wondered what might have happened if, instead of running to sanctuary, they had stayed with someone else. What if Van Coon had put in overtime instead of taking off early? What if Lukis had gone to the police station? Was it possible they'd have survived? Had succumbing to their flight instinct been what led to their demise? A chill swept over the girl, not entirely because of the temperature.
John raised sleepy eyes to his roommate. "Why did they die, Sherlock?" He questioned plaintively, his voice confused and sorrowful.
Sherlock brushed his fingertips over the edge of a photograph from the library. "Only the cipher can tell us."
When Emili fell asleep moments later, it was with the ideas of ciphers and hidden messages fresh in her mind. She dreamed of using a computer to break the code, like the Allies had done about the Germans' Enigma system, or hacking through layers and layers of binary. None of these dreams made her feel any safer, as at several times, she looked into the screens of her computers and saw the reflection of a shining gun's barrel at the back of her head.
Emili was woken up kindly by a combination of John and the smell of spiced eggs and brewing tea wafting from the kitchen of 221B. The doctor shooed her upstairs after breakfast, where she had barely half an hour to shower, dress, and brush her teeth and hair before Sherlock was impatiently rapping on her door, demanding that she hurry. Time is of the essence, she thought irritably, spitting toothpaste out into the sink. So is hygiene, you energetic freak. It's seven AM. Go back to bed and pretend to be human.
After being dragged out the door by her wrist and carted in a taxi all the way to Trafalgar Square, she felt much more alert. She'd been to Trafalgar Square, of course – it was one of the first places she'd gone after Mycroft turned her loose on the city. However, she had lacked the motivation to enter the National Gallery. It was a large, impressive building, the front of which reminded her of an elongated version of the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC. The British flag flew high above the third story, and on each side of the entrance, huge red banners were draped down from the columned entryway and advertised their new exhibit.
She stayed firmly between John and Sherlock to avoid getting separated. It was a bright, beautiful morning on a weekend, so there were more than a few tourists making their way through Upper London to see all the sights. As such, the square was bustling. Emili wasn't looking forward to entering the National Gallery, positive that it would be jam-packed.
Sherlock spoke at his normal volume. Luckily, it wasn't as loud as an open and busy place could have been, but he only just drowned out a squealing six-year-old who didn't want to pose for the photo the parents wanted to take.
"The world runs on codes and ciphers, John. From the million-pound security system at the bank, to the PIN machine you took exception to, cryptography inhabits our every waking moment."
Emili thought back to her unsettling dreamscape and agreed. The binary code example had made a point. Electronics and technology were everywhere, and without the codes that ran them, the applications they used on a daily basis were rendered useless.
"Yes, okay," John agreed too quickly. "But-"
"But it's all computer-generated," Sherlock continued, not acknowledging that the veteran had something else on his mind that he wanted to ask. John scowled. "Electronic codes, electronic ciphering methods – this is different. It's an ancient device. Modern code-breaking methods won't unravel it."
If Emili had thought they could, she would have already taken it to Anthea or to Mycroft. People were dying over it; her independence wasn't as important as their help. "That part we get," she promised. Sherlock liked being told when he was right. She took the opportunity to hurriedly ask while he was letting her agree with him. "Where are we going? Who's going to help in the National Gallery?"
Sherlock waited for a beat. Emili narrowed her eyes.
"There's someone I know," he decided to disclose, looking straight ahead at the steps leading to the grand entry. "I need to ask some advice."
Her brother was the most prideful person Emili had ever met. Hearing him admit that he needed help just didn't happen. Her jaw dropped. No wonder he'd been ignoring the question. He wouldn't have wanted to answer it.
"What?!" John exclaimed, a silly grin growing on his face.
He and Emili exchanged a delighted look, taking far more pleasure in Sherlock's admittance than they probably should've. "Can you repeat that?" Em requested innocently, turning her head back to her left to look up at Sherlock hopefully. "I couldn't hear."
He huffed. "You heard me perfectly," he stated accusatorily. "I'm not saying it again."
John tilted his head back to smile at the sky. "You need advice!"
"On painting, yes," Sherlock specified, shooting John a dirty glare. No one would've expected Sherlock to be an expert on art, but at the same time, Emili had never really considered that he wouldn't be an expert on anything. The only reason he got away with his arrogance and pride was because he was scarcely incorrect. "I need to talk to an expert."
The girl decided it had definitely been worth waking up. To make it even better, the National Gallery would have air conditioning – she could feel her hair sticking to the back of her neck already, and it made her feel itchy and hot. She and John both continued to follow Sherlock's lead, both of them giggling, just to meet the person who knew more than Sherlock about something, by his own admission.
When they reached the front steps, Sherlock took a sudden left. John and Emili both looked after him, puzzled. They were supposed to be going inside, right? Sherlock didn't slow down and didn't look back, so Emili sagged her shoulders and reluctantly pursued. Air conditioning or not, she still wanted to witness Sherlock, of all people, asking for someone else's expertise.
The self-proclaimed consulting detective walked all the way to the side of the building. It was a longer trek than it looked – the National Gallery was enormous. He took a right at the very end, turning down the side of the building and away from tourists and sightseers. A breeze was closer to the ground, and in the shadows from the building, Emili and John both cooled down significantly. Happier, they followed blindly while Sherlock led them down the length of the building, then took another turn to walk behind the back alley of the museum.
She heard the noise before she saw its source. A street artist was several meters down the back of the building, shaking a spray paint can. The pressurizing ball inside rattled obnoxiously in a can with a coppery orange top. John took hold of Emili's sleeve and dragged her a few paces away from where they had stopped, and when the guy uncapped the can and started to use it, she saw the fumes and thin mists of paint blow downwind towards where they'd been standing.
Sherlock watched impassively. John looked very noticeably upset by the turn of events, and he surveyed the vandalism with a hardly-contained grimace. The guy was using the metallic orange to tag his street name, Raz, in all-capital letters underneath the offensive depiction of a beat cop in uniform. He looked generic, dark-haired and white-skinned, late twenties to late thirties (it was hard to tell with the cartoony mockery). His irises were red and his nose was replaced with a fleshy pink pig's snout, and brandished in his hands was an elaborately-stenciled automatic rifle. Emili knew for a fact that beat cops did not, in fact, have crimson eyes, pig noses, or automatic rifles.
Raz (which was probably not his actual name) wore oversized cargo pants that were dangerously close to falling off of his skinny hips, combat boots not unlike Emili's that were splattered and dotted with paint, and a loose orange vest that had enough large pockets to carry and transport his art supplies. A scarlet baseball cap messed up his dark, ratty blond hair. He looked like he weighed about as much as Emili. His scrawny face, shifting, quick eyes, and his tension-riddled back made her think he was faster than a mouse when authority figures came by.
He didn't look at Emili or John, but took one glance at Sherlock's distasteful impression of his artwork and snickered. "Part of a new exhibition," he boasted gleefully, capping the spray can. His tag glistened wetly.
"Interesting." Sherlock deadpanned.
Raz spun around and caught a look at John's expression. He sardonically grinned at the blogger. "I call it Urban Bloodlust Frenzy," he taunted, clearly doing it to further bother the doctor.
"Catchy," John stated flatly.
Em bit her lip. She wasn't a huge fan of street art when it didn't serve a purpose. Unless there was a police brutality incident that she wasn't aware of, she didn't understand what the use was in drawing such a crude portrait of the civil servants unless he was just being spiteful.
Raz checked the black watch on his right wrist. "I've got two minutes before a Community Support Officer comes 'round that corner." He nodded to their right in the direction from which the trio had come. "Can we do this while I'm working?" Even as he asked, he bent down to the concrete and lifted two more paint cans. He put one in his vest and started to shake the other.
Instead of answering one way or the other, Sherlock offered his mobile. Raz peered at the photograph, stopped shaking the can, and tossed it at John. The blogger caught it out of impulse from having something chucked at him, and he surveyed the brand name with discomfort. Raz took Sherlock's phone after wiping his fingers on his pants.
"Know the author?" Sherlock asked, cocking his head.
Raz bit on his thumbnail and shook his head. "No." He rotated on his heels so the lighting in the back road was facing the same direction. "Recognize the paint, though. It's like Michigan hardcore propellant. I'd say zinc."
Emili hated to say it, but she was a little bit impressed that he could recognize the kind of paint from a photograph.
"What about the symbols?" The brunet prompted further. "Do you recognize them?"
Raz snorted (like the pig-officer, Emili pointedly thought) and passed the phone back to her brother. "Not even sure it's a proper language."
Sherlock stared down his sort-of acquaintance sourly. "Two men have been murdered, Raz," he gravely stated. "Deciphering this is the key to finding out who killed them."
"What, and that's all you've got to go on?" The tightening of Sherlock's jaw answered the question for him. Raz pointed to the pocket the phone had disappeared in. "It's hardly much, is it?"
"Yes, go ahead," she sarcastically invited. "Rub it in."
Raz rubbed his hands off on his pants again. "I'll ask around."
"Somebody must know something about it." Sherlock insisted.
Emili agreed that the odds were high that someone else knew what it meant, but she also had to consider that two people connected to it had died already. If she were the third, then she would probably keep her mouth shut for fear that she'd be the next victim.
"Oi!"
All at once, the four of them turned to look in the direction of the furious shout. It was a support officer, like Raz had said, in a bright neon yellow vest. His face was pink and he took into a sprint, lunging down the side of the building to reach them. Emili grabbed at John's wrist impulsively to get the hell away, but the doctor just frowned at the cop, puzzled. Emili sighed and let go of him, resigned to staying where they were. Unfortunately, Sherlock and Raz hadn't gotten the memo, because they were both pounding down the street and haring away from the officer. Raz left some of his paint cans behind on the ground.
When the man caught up to them, he was puffing unattractively. He drew himself up high, taller than John and Emili both, and raised a hand to wag a finger at them condescendingly. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! It's the bloody middle of the day! This gallery is a listed public building!"
John's eyes widened as he realized what the problem was. His jaw dropped and he stole a peek at the graffiti. When his eyes went, so did the officers; Emili winced as the man's face turned even darker and his voice went lower in a barely-audible growl.
"No, no, wait, wait, it's not me who painted that." John held both of his hands up to demonstrate his innocence, only to realize that he was still holding the spray paint that Raz had thrown. He looked at his hand, shocked, and dropped it straight to the ground. "We're innocent! I was just holding this. For-"
It was then that he realized they'd been abandoned. He ground his teeth. Emili patted his shoulder.
The officer kicked over the cans left standing up by the wall. "A bit of an enthusiast, are we?"
Emili turned her eyes to John, questioning. The man looked pained and angry, but although his mouth was open and his expression indignant, he had nothing more than he'd already said to refute his involvement. The officer had to have seen Sherlock and Raz running away, but to release them just because they said they hadn't vandalized the building would've been negligent and irresponsible of his duties. People lied all the time. Emili sighed, resigning herself to a trip to the station.
"Look, I'm just going to get my wallet, okay?" She warned peacefully ahead of time. She reached behind her with one hand and fished her wallet out of the back of her jeans. "I have some ID." She opened it and took out the government-sponsored ID with her name and information. She wasn't really supposed to have it, but Mycroft insisted that she have a way to validate who she was if she ever needed to get in contact with him or Anthea. She knew that it could open doors for her, so she carried it on her person. "I guarantee you'll want to contact my legal guardian before you arrest me, so just keep your hand off your baton unless you wanna prove there's a point to this tag here." She indicated Raz's piece while offering her ID card out with one hand.
The man took it skeptically, yanking it out from between her fingers. He looked between John and the card closely, worried that they might take the distraction as an opportunity to bolt. He squinted at the name.
"Mycroft Holmes?" He asked, making a face.
"Yeah," Emili affirmed quickly, nodding. John went along with it, relaxing slightly. Mycroft could make anything go away (even people, Emili suspected, though he refused to dignify that with confirmation or denial). "I'm his little sister. And I'm a minor. You take us back to the station, right, and you call Mycroft before you decide to start laying on any charges."
The man shot his hand down quickly. Emili was worried briefly that he was going to throw her ID card out of annoyance. "You've got to be kidding me-!" He started to burst lividly. A vein in his throat popped out. "Being some government employee's sister don't give you the right to go 'round defacing public property!" John's shoulders slumped. Emili rolled her eyes up at the sky. "Does that mean my kid brother can go tagging his name all across the city?"
"Like I said," she repeated, forcing herself to be patient and calm. "Call my brother."
Emili had listened to Katy Perry, watched teen dramas, and seen western movies with her dad, and yet none of them prepared her for how utterly boring a holding cell was. After being fingerprinted, she was put in a holding cell. They separated her from John – they said it was because they didn't want them to conspire any ideas. Emili was pretty sure they just felt like being petty. She rolled her eyes so hard she swore she almost sprained them.
For the next couple of hours, she entertained herself as well as she could. They'd taken her phone when they searched her with a metal detector wand and she didn't have anything else on her person that she generally considered entertaining. She didn't even have any gum to chew. If the bench against the wall had appeared to be cleaned at least semi-regularly, she might have tried to take a nap and blow through the time.
Altogether, she wasn't worried that Mycroft wouldn't get her out. Although he might be horribly amused by the issue, if it got back to the Holmes' matriarch – which it definitely would, if Emili found out he left her here longer than necessary – he would never hear the end of it. It would be ten years later and still brought up at family dinners. She was just starting to get irritated that he was really taking some liberties and biding his time, when all she'd done was get framed for something because she wanted to help stop a killer. It didn't seem fair. She was quickly figuring out that life wasn't fair but she was a teenager and she was allowed to be temperamental.
There was no clock for her to look at, so she had no accurate way of gauging how much time had passed before the door to the holding block clinked open. The tread of the booking sergeant's shoes were worn down so that they didn't make much noise but for a tiny squeak on the linoleum, but the elegant clacking of polished, firm, sophisticated loafers made her open her eyes and look as far to the right as she could. After several more paces of that distinct gait, the girl saw Mycroft come into sight, along with the sergeant.
The sergeant looked disgruntled and gave her a disgruntled, almost mocking look, like he was judging her hard for having her rich big brother clean up her mess. Mycroft looked like he'd come off of a TV set, his suit jacket worth more than everything Emili had on combined, his posture perfect and his outfit immaculate. The worst part, though, wasn't what the sergeant clearly thought: it was the awful smirk that her oldest brother wore, the one that promised she wasn't going to be allowed to just forget this had happened.
Em stayed quiet while the sergeant slipped the key into the lock and opened up the cell. It was roomy enough for one person for a couple of hours, but it needed a good clean and she couldn't wait to escape. The sergeant took his key, gave Mycroft a lingering stare full of distrust and a willingness not to cooperate, and left with a grunt about getting the old one.
"What about John?" Emili asked after the door back to the main body of the precinct had closed.
"Being taken care of," Mycroft answered primly without hesitation. Now that they had some privacy, pretenses were dropped. His professional, polite demeanor matched the smirk he'd had – gloating and arrogant and kind of bossy. "Out with a warning, I should think. Nothing work putting on any permanent records. However, if you insist on pursuing this decidedly un-civic pastime, might I suggest that eyesore beside the gym on the east side?"
Emili pursed her lips and tried not to let it get to her. She failed. Mycroft knew how to tease and he knew how to be rude, whether or not he ever liked to admit that he did, to an extent, know how to socialize like a human being. "You know perfectly well that we didn't do what we were arrested for," she accused, glaring and crossing her arms.
"Sister mine, how are you ever going to learn responsibility if I continue to pay your bail?" He asked her, his taunts wrapped up classily with a bow of feigned concern.
"You've seen my sketching." She deadpanned back at him. "Do you really think I'm somehow that good with a spray can?"
Mycroft finally let his infuriating smirk fade from his face, looking down to his toes briefly while he let out a satisfied chuckle. "No, I suppose not," he allowed, looking back up with a smaller, but no less aggravating, smile. "Your motor skills could use some improvement."
Emili had known it would be bad, but she wasn't sufficiently prepared. Even though she knew he was trying to get under her skin and make her feel embarrassed, it was still working. Mycroft had a talent of making people uncomfortably second-guess themselves, she supposed, which came in handy at his job at times but was a real unnecessary kick in the pants when it came to family life.
Him criticizing her of not having motor skills in a jab really hit something home with her. Maybe she got in trouble, but at least she was out doing something instead of fielding calls from a desk all day. She doubted he'd ever gotten his own hands dirty a day in his life. What right did he have to start passing judgments on how she handled herself?
"Says the ass that never lifts a finger," she muttered rebelliously, feeling her face heat up angrily.
Emili thought that she had been quiet enough not for him to hear, but apparently, she was wrong. Mycroft's voice sounded arch in that way it took when he was insulted and wanted to behave as though he was above taking offense. "I assure you that I lifted several fingers," he told her, looking to the top of her head closely. "At least five, in fact, as I signed to assure my power of attorney."
There was a long pause from both of them. Mycroft awaited a retort, while Emili tried to figure out what she could say (if anything) that wouldn't give up her higher ground. Mycroft kind of had her there – he took care of her, made sure she had everything she needed. She probably owed him a little more for that than just what she did, telling his parents he was a doting, loving, affectionate figure in her life.
"Yeah, well…" she mumbled, sighed, and uncrossed her arms, letting them drop down so her hands hung at her thighs. "Thanks for getting me out, I guess," she said quietly, regretting that she had to be the bigger person. "Couldn't you have been any faster?"
Mycroft's smirk grew by a fraction. "I did try, but it's very hard to move quickly when I have no practice lifting my fingers."
Emili just sighed and kept her head down. She knew when she had lost. She was getting out of jail free – literally, she didn't have to pay anything and it wasn't going to come back to haunt her when she applied for schools or jobs. Mycroft didn't have to completely wipe it from her record, so she at least owed him a few wins with just the token fussing.
When she didn't rise up to the bait, though, the pause became uncomfortable, with neither of them knowing what to say if they weren't going to bicker back and forth. Mycroft claimed she irritated him like no one else, but Emili wasn't sure that was quite it. She was convinced he actually enjoyed the bickering. She was quick enough to keep up with it, social enough to know which buttons were off-limits for pushing, and familiar enough to read his reactions and tell how she was doing. She gathered from watching him at work that not a lot of people were very comfortable talking back to Mycroft Holmes, so having some free human interaction with someone who he couldn't fire was likely enjoyable.
They waited for the sergeant to come back with John so that they could leave. Mycroft led the way back to the lobby of the precinct and Emili chose a seat by the door, where she could get a slightly fresher breath of slightly less stale air. Mycroft put the tip of his long umbrella down into the thin carpet and leaned lightly on it, hand wrapped tightly around the grip.
"Comment est votre cours de langage?" Mycroft asked, looking down at her briefly and then turning his head away to survey the surroundings. She was certain he'd looked around at least five times already and could have made a very close guess at the receptionists' relationship status, zodiac sign, and movie preferences.
Although she was surprised, Emili played along. What else could she do? This was part of the deal, anyway. "C'est ça va, je fais bien," she answered with a halfhearted shrug. Mycroft's words came out more smoothly and faster, where Emili had to take a second to think about them and she didn't have the accent down. Still, she understood the spoken language and she coherently responded in it. "Il m'aide que mes frères le parlent," she added halfheartedly, feeling like it was pretty pathetic if she couldn't demonstrate a slightly higher level of vocabulary than 'I do well.'
Mycroft nodded in some sort of vague approval. She sat and he stood and someone else came by in handcuffs, being nagged by a young woman that followed, though not in handcuffs. Life went on. Emili wondered what was taking so long to get John out.
"We're pretty awful at the sibling thing," she noted oddly.
"We're still on speaking terms," Mycroft added his point of view quietly. With a long inhale, he switched his umbrella to his other hand. "From my experience, we've been doing rather well." Emili did have to nod agreement at that. No one had to kidnap her just to get an update on how her life is going, although she was pretty sure she would take it to that extent if it meant keeping a boyfriend from meeting her unbelievable family. "Speaking of, where is that brother of ours?"
"God knows," Emili grumbled. At the reminder of Sherlock's flight, she felt like her tentatively neutral mood had been soured. "He ran off and left me and John with incriminating evidence."
"Yes, I am noticing a trend." Mycroft sighed irritably and vented. He would never admit that that was what he was doing, but when he extolled the many faults of someone, he was venting, just like Sherlock vented about how stupid Anderson was or how uptight and proper Mycroft acted. "He has no sense of responsibility," Mycroft accused. Emili kept her mouth shut on that one. "And he still thinks he shouldn't have been cut off."
On that one, it was hard to hold her tongue. Sherlock had never really cared about money, she didn't think – not since it became possible for him to be content without drugs. "He doesn't care about money," she defended loyally. She thought back to the huge check John got from Sebastian and how Sherlock had totally dismissed it. Someone who bothered much with money wouldn't blow it off like that. "He's found something better to do with his time than coke."
"Prancing around the city, dragging around a formerly-crippled army doctor and a little girl too curious for her own good?" Emili looked up to tell him off for the rude epithets, but instead snorted indelicately. He had his nose wrinkled like he'd smelled something foul. It was a funny expression to see on her prim and composed brother. "Better?" He repeated and canted his head from one direction to the other. "That depends on how you think of him now."
"He helps people," Em still remained on Sherlock's side of the argument. Although there were things she liked about Mycroft, Sherlock was her preferred one. He was on her less, and though he didn't look out for her as much, Emili didn't really want a parental figure. She wanted a friend. "He's not risking his life in an alley to get a fix, so yeah, I call that better."
"Helping people." Again, Mycroft said it after her like she'd made brussels sprouts for dinner. "And that's why you're letting yourself be led like a blind puppy!"
"I'm not!" She protested, snapping her head up to look at him, startled. They had been having what felt like a serious talk about Sherlock, but suddenly things were getting focused back on her, and Mycroft was basically on the offensive.
"What were you to have done if I had been out of the country?" Mycroft posed to her, flexing his hand around the handle of his umbrella. She saw the tendons in his hand move and the way his knuckles were pale. "Wasted away in a jail cell?" He guessed distastefully. "Our parents are very strongly hoping you turn out more like me than like Sherlock. I would hate to inform them of your recent decent into juvenile delinquency."
Emili ground her teeth together. Sometimes she hated the position she was in, living out of 221A above her brother and his roommate, because it gave Mycroft that control over her. He could take it away – worse, he could inform someone else who would take it away and whine to everyone about how bad of an idea it had been the whole time.
Mycroft seemed to sense that he had touched a nerve, and he continued with barely a long enough space between points for Emili to take one long, deep breath and sigh. "Continue with your grades and you can continue as you wish." He said, his tone shifting to one far closer to boredom, like Em was accustomed to. "Be more discerning in the choices you make. You may not need to be a role model for Liza, but there are still people who have personal interests in your securities."
Emili cocked her head and stared right up at him, trying to make eye contact. "Am I talking with one of them now?" She asked seriously, managing to lock irises with him when he looked down while sweeping his eyes over the chairs, debating over whether or not he wanted to take one after all.
Mycroft didn't smile. He never let himself smile because of other people, unless he was smiling because he got pleasure or entertainment out of their failure. So it certainly wasn't a smile that Emili saw. If anything, it was a muscle twitch that happened to make his lips look like they were fractionally smiling for less than a second. That was all it was.
"If you can't work that out for yourself, Manta, maybe I should return to calling you a pink fish." Mycroft suggested, somehow sounding less condescending than his words in a ridiculous, once-in-a-lifetime twist.
A/N: Apologies for the unintentional hiatus.
