I jumped on the angst express and took a ride. Fair warning, lol


"Can I borrow money?" the note asked. "John will not be able to work for a while. We will pay you back as soon as he returns to practice."

Mycroft looked up at the boy shifting his feet on the rug, a black armband slowly losing strings to the attentions of one finger. "You are Jackson?" The boy nodded. "Did Mrs. Watson tell you anything about her message?"

"No, sir. Just that I was to bring it to you and either wait for a response or return with when she could expect a response."

He looked again at the scrap in his hand. When he had told Mrs. Watson to contact him at need, he had expected questions about planning the funeral, what would happen to Sherlock's things at Baker Street, if anything had been arranged for the Irregulars, or something similar. He had not expected her to request money. Sherlock had made provisions for the doctor, of a sort, and Mycroft had been planning to help them, but he had expected to have to do so discreetly. Mrs. Watson's husband despised borrowing. He would have forbidden the idea as soon as his wife suggested it.

Doctor Watson's appearance at the train station came to mind. The doctor would have forbidden it if he knew, Mycroft corrected himself. Haggard, dazed, almost lost, Sherlock's friend was a shadow of the man Mycroft had driven to the station a fortnight ago, and Mycroft had not missed the broken grief when he dropped them at Baker Street. The kind of grief Mycroft had seen on the doctor was the kind that could change to brain fever, but how ill could he have become to be unable to refuse his wife's suggestion? The doctor had been coherent, however grief-stricken, less than twenty-four hours ago.

There was only one way to find out, and he pulled himself out of his chair.

"Sir?" Jackson asked.

"I will deliver my response myself," he answered. "Come back an hour before dark in seven days. Sherlock left arrangements for the Irregulars, and I will at least have an idea of on what you can plan, if not everything ready to distribute."

Grief lined the boy's face at the name. "Yessir," he said somewhat thickly, turning away. More than one Irregular had disappeared into the alcoves lining that courtyard when they realized his news, and the few he had seen casing the streets since were too downcast to be doing anything but searching for much needed food. Those children thought more highly of his brother than Mycroft had ever known.

And the doctor might be taking this far worse than even Mycroft had anticipated. He hurried to the street, ignoring the strange looks he garnered for leaving hours before his usual time as he waved down a passing hansom. He had warned Sherlock to find a different back-up plan, that Doctor Watson would not react well. He had known that Sherlock would not enjoy the results of his deception, but he had had not foreseen this. He had not expected Mrs. Watson to need to borrow money.

The hansom's speed did nothing to quicken the journey, and it seemed an age before the carriage finally jolted to a halt in front of an eerily silent house. Mrs. Hudson answered his knock in a black mourning dress.

"Mr. Holmes!" She glanced towards the sitting room, then back at Mycroft in her surprise. "Were you searching for me, sir? I'm sorry. I haven't been home at all today."

"No, Mrs. Hudson. I was looking for the doctor and Mrs. Watson. Are they not here?"

"Mary is here," she answered, leading him to the parlor. "I will—"

"He can come in, Martha."

Mrs. Watson's voice carried faintly from the other room, and Mrs. Hudson waved Mycroft forward.

"First door on the left," she directed with a worried glance. "I need to check on the oven."

She disappeared toward the kitchen, leaving Mycroft to see himself to the sitting room.

"I did not expect you to come here, Mr. Holmes," Mrs. Watson said quietly as he reached the door, faltering only slightly on the last word. "I apologize if my message drew you away from something."

He paused briefly in the doorway. "I have told you to call me Mycroft," he corrected, trying not to stare at where she carefully offered the doctor a spoonful of broth, both of them wearing all black, "and I came because I could not imagine the doctor sanctioning a plan to borrow anything, even from me. I see now he had no say in the matter."

Doctor Watson sat almost limply in the armchair, his empty, hollow eyes staring through the opposite wall, and deep lines etched his face to age him almost as much as the vacant expression. He did not react to the spoon in front of him.

"Mycroft, then," she agreed, her voice still subdued. Setting the bowl on a nearby table, she took a moment to collect herself before continuing louder, "but only if you call me Mary. If you are willing to help us, we will probably see quite a bit of each other for the next several weeks."

She motioned him to a seat, never straying from her husband's side though she finally turned to face Mycroft, but the doctor did not seem to notice her presence. He had not even moved his gaze when Mycroft entered the room.

Mycroft still could not resist trying. "Doctor, can you hear me?"

A minute cringe was his only reply.

"Do not take it personally, Mycroft," she told him, apparently not seeing the flinch. "He has not answered me, either, nor even looked at me." She studied her husband for a long moment. "My father did much the same thing when Mother died. He eventually came back to me. I can only hope John will, too, with time."

"How long?"

Grief and worry pushed briefly past the calm mask she presented. "It is different for everyone. Father remembered how to eat in a couple of weeks, but he never stopped responding completely as John has. It might be a month or more before—before John returns." The last words came out nearly strangled, and she did not quite hide her fear as she looked down at her lap. An alternate phrasing nearly echoed through the room, no less audible for its silence.

"If John returns," she could have said. She could not be sure he would, and the distress trying to leak into her expression plainly announced her suspicion that he may not. Mycroft could only agree with her. The doctor would have recognized Mycroft's voice immediately, and the flinch could only have come from a reminder of blame. Her husband was more than grief-stricken. He blamed himself for Sherlock's "death," and his inherent goodness, as Sherlock had phrased it, agonized over the accusation. He was tearing himself apart from the inside.

"He has not spoken at all?"

She shook her head, looking back up at him. "Only an 'I love you' on the way from the station. He withdrew completely about the time we reached Baker Street. I keep watching for a fever, but there is nothing so far."

Nothing in more ways than one, Mycroft noted. The doctor may not be fevering, but he was not lucid, either. He breathed but did not speak, looked but did not see, and listened but did not hear. If not for the rhythmic motion beneath his shirt, the doctor would look dead. Mycroft's other brother might already be dead, though his body had not yet followed. The knowledge made his decision.

"You do not need to borrow from me," he told her instead of voicing it. "Sherlock set aside a certain sum of money for you both. I will transfer what I can to you by morning, and the rest will come over the next week or so as I sift through Sherlock's things."

Relief mixed with renewed mourning at the name. "Thank you. John would much rather use that than I borrow funds."

He was not sure the doctor would ever know, but he did not say that. He decided to let her see his concern as his gaze strayed back toward where Doctor Watson sat in his chair.

"Is there anything else I can do?"

She shook her head. "Money was my only worry. Several of John's colleagues have divided his patients, and Martha is helping with the house so I can stay near John. I dare not leave him for even an hour."

She did not need to voice why she could not leave him. The doctor might slip away completely if she did.

"I will contact the bank as soon as I reach my office."

"Thank you, Mycroft," she said again, standing to show him to the door, "and I am sorry for your loss. John and I are not the only ones who will miss Sherlock."

He tipped his hat in silent acknowledgement, and Mrs. Hudson waved from another room as he saw himself out. He would transfer a large sum immediately, but that was not the only message that would go out tonight. His contact would succeed in a week or so, and the death would be labeled an accident.

Maybe it would take less than a week. Sherlock needed to return before his only reason for this debacle died in his absence.


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