Desperation, Defence

Desperation. It was what drove people who would otherwise haughtily summon you to their offices to come begging for an appointment.

As Mycroft's assistants were highly skilled at implying to callers that Mr Holmes was out – out of the country, in fact – cleaning up the shit someone else had stupidly scattered everywhere (not in so many words, of course), it only fed the fear of those someone elses.

With the powder keg of those two-decade-old letters, and other incriminating documents he and Anthea had quietly unearthed, Mycroft sat pretty and made himself entirely unavailable to three of the most senior and influential voices in the Cabinet who had insinuated that he should be removed from his position. And that Eurus should be put down as if she were a racehorse who had outlived her usefulness.

The Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary, and the International Trade Secretary were the figures in question. The first two had their names on the Patterson letters. The third had no link with the case, but was a close personal and political ally of the Foreign Secretary, so had added his voice to theirs.

Prime Ministers, Secretaries of State and entire Cabinets could come and go with elections, scandals and changes in the wind, but Mycroft, who stood beyond party lines and loyalties, would not be done away with so easily. Only days ago, feeling raw and inept, he had wondered if he might fall to his enemies after all. But with the pieces of evidence firmly in his possession now, and surprising changes on the personal front that made him curious enough about their future developments, he decided he would plan to be around for some time yet.

When at last Anthea informed an anxious Foreign Secretary that "Mr Holmes has just returned to London and has back-to-back meetings all day, but he will have a break of about twenty minutes at his Whitehall office, during which you may be able to catch him there if you're lucky", Mycroft knew the man would darken his door at least ten minutes before the suggested time.

He did.

"Holmes," Eldon Pennyfather addressed him as he was shown into the Whitehall office where Mycroft oversaw the more superficial aspects of his Joint Intelligence Committee responsibilities. "You've been a hard man to reach."

Pennyfather was valiantly attempting to maintain the high-handed tone he'd used with Mycroft for several weeks. But he wasn't fooling Mycroft, who could hear and see a hundred small indications of fear that he would become a cause of embarrassment for their government.

Ten years older than Mycroft, Pennyfather had been acquainted with him since they were in MI6, and had tried to talk down to him from the start. Although the fellow hadn't been completely incompetent as a case officer, he had never been outstanding either. When he finally understood that he would never, in ten thousand years, come close to matching the depth and breadth of Mycroft's genius, and felt the bite of jealousy at his junior officer's rapid rise, he'd left MI6 and turned to politics as a career with a better chance of bringing him glory. He was intelligent and capable in his own way, but in the end, it was his talent for sucking up to the right people that had really paid off.

His rise, however, had been more than matched by Mycroft's own progression. Even in his elevated position, Pennyfather had feared Mycroft for his known power in the JIC, as well as the unknown authority and influence he was whispered to have at every level of the British government – no one whom Pennyfather was on friendly terms with had the security clearance to demarcate for him the exact extent and nature of Mycroft's power. When Mycroft had stumbled in the Sherrinford incident, Pennyfather had been quick to draw his dagger, only to have to hastily sheathe it when the problem of the Patterson letters became, for him, a greater problem than "that Holmes kid", as he had called Mycroft in MI6.

"Minister," Mycroft greeted Pennyfather formally from where he stood beside his desk, neatly aligning the edges of three documents and inserting them into a folder which he then locked in a filing cabinet at the side of the room. He gestured Pennyfather towards one of the chairs in front of his desk, which the Foreign Secretary seated himself in after a moment's hesitation.

"Holmes, have you any idea how many calls I've fielded from the Chinese ambassador in the past three days, or how many times Jane Hartson has harassed me from Beijing?" Pennyfather blurted out, trying for sternness, but betrayed by a tremor. "Not to mention I've begun to hear rumblings from the human rights groups who have, God knows how, got wind of the Zhu Zheng matter."

Jane Hartson – Britain's ambassador to China, whose appointment had been proposed by the previous Foreign Minister – had never been on the best terms with Pennyfather. His inconsistency, she had been known to say, exasperated her. And Luo Qifan, the Chinese ambassador in London, had a rather cold relationship with Pennyfather. As it happened, Mycroft was on excellent terms with both ambassadors, and Pennyfather knew it – which made him frantic for his assistance on two fronts: ensuring that the Patterson letters never saw the light of day, and calming the stormy diplomatic seas.

Smoothly seating himself behind his desk, Mycroft coolly considered the Foreign Minister's increasingly flustered speech.

"Hartson and the Chinese ambassador have hinted that the Chinese government wants to make a formal demand for Zhu Zheng's immediate extradition – they're extremely keen on it because they've suspected him of corruption and criminal activities for a long time, but were unable to implicate him during his father's trial in 2000," Patterson rolled on. "But if we give in, there's little doubt he will be sentenced to death in his home country. This will agitate the rights groups, as well as make us look as if we don't even have the legal and political sovereignty to retain for prosecution a foreign citizen accused of a crime in our country. On the other hand, if we don't extradite him, our relationship with China will be strained, and if that matter I sought your help about also comes to light, things will not be pleasant."

Not pleasant for you, you mean, Mycroft thought.

"Have you… have your teams… did you manage to retrieve those… letters?" Pennyfather asked, his urgency making itself obvious at last.

"Minister," Mycroft said, pitching his voice at just the right volume to force Pennyfather to lean forward and strain to catch every syllable. "Might it not seem ironic for us to act concerned about the possibility of a Chinese citizen at risk of being sentenced to death in his home country even as some of us insinuate that we should overturn Britain's abolishment of the death penalty so that we can execute a British citizen in cold blood, on our own shores?"

Eurus, put down like an animal.

"Holmes, if you're talking about the fallout from that island facility incident, that's nothing – that's over," Pennyfather said nervously, in a rush. "I'm no longer pursuing or even discussing the matter with my Cabinet colleagues – except to dissuade them from continuing with the proposal, of course. You have our full support."

"Indeed?" Mycroft asked coolly. "Then I believe you would have no objection to rescinding the instructions you gave Sir Edwin to bypass my team and submit reports only to you about the operations in Iraq and Syria, telling him that I might not be in the right frame of mind to process the information?"

"You've had a lot on your plate these past weeks…" Pennyfather began.

"Not so much that I can't see that the Iraq and Syria ops are a fresh can of worms you've managed to help pry open by not discouraging our assets from murdering British subjects on foreign soil. And it will create a public mess in a matter of months because it has already gone too far. At this point, all I can do is to mitigate the exposure and its implications, but at least I can mitigate it," Mycroft stated coldly.

"How did you even…" Pennyfather began. "Never mind. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Yes – I'll have them reinstate the usual processes."

"I have the document ready for you to sign," Mycroft said, all business, extracting a sheet of paper from a folder by his right hand and pushing it over the surface of the table to Pennyfather, as if he were sliding a chess piece over a board.

Pennyfather glanced over the document and murmured a protest: "This not only restores the existing processes, it extends your authority to…"

"Minister, I have secured the letters, and they will remain forever unseen by human eyes if all remains well with me and my team, which requires that I have the resources necessary to keep us all well and safe," Mycroft stated icily, aiming the barrel-end of a fountain pen at Pennyfather.

"But…"

"And I shall make two very cordial phone calls to Jane and Ambassador Luo to smooth things for now. It will mean that unless unexpected new developments occur in the Zhu Zheng case, they will plague you less, and may even help to forestall formal demands for extradition by soothing whatever feathers may be starting to get ruffled in Beijing."

Pennyfather signed.

Half an hour after the Foreign Secretary left the JIC office, Mycroft had more fun with his next visitor, Bernard Walbrook, the Home Secretary. Initially, they went through a similar game over the letters that Mycroft had played with Pennyfather, minus the diplomatic angle. But Walbrook, another former SIS colleague, had done something more insidious than Pennyfather. Anthea had dug up the truth a few days ago, when the Home Office gave Mycroft's team unfettered access to all its systems during those hours of Walbrook's greatest desperation to track down Carter, Zhu Zheng, and the letters.

Mycroft now slid out his declaration of war from the folder by his elbow and laid it on the desk in front of Walbrook, who was already looking red-faced about the Patterson case.

"I had wondered how the late Sherrinford governor dared, without authorisation, to bring psychologists and psychiatrists to my sister's cell," Mycroft said levelly. "Regardless of whether he had been brainwashed by Eurus at that point, his personality was such that I believe he would still have attempted to seek clearance from someone whom he thought should approve his proposal to have her studied more closely. A little research led me to this sequence of e-mail messages. It seems you cleared the requests. Without consulting me."

Walbrook was now turning from red-faced to pale, and appeared to have lost the power of speech.

He went even paler when Mycroft added: "I'll do you the courtesy of informing you that I have given the essential details of these exchanges to the relevant members of the Cabinet Office, but have emphasised that no further action should be taken on this matter. After all, we can safely say that no one other than myself could have dreamt, before the Sherrinford catastrophe, how unutterably dangerous my sister was."

"Mycroft, I didn't realise…" Walbrook began.

"I know you didn't, Bernard," Mycroft stated.

Walbrook was closer in age to him than Pennyfather was, and when they'd been in MI6, he had behaved more like a peer of Mycroft's than a senior officer. They were still on first-name terms. But while they'd got along reasonably well in the SIS and after Walbrook had first moved into politics, they had inevitably butted heads after Walbrook had become Home Secretary while Mycroft was manoeuvring every thread of the services that fell under the purview of the Home Office. Walbrook had been particularly miffed by Mycroft's use of police resources, and had long suspected, although he had no proof, that Mycroft had pulled more than just a few law-enforcement strings over the years to protect Sherlock.

As with Pennyfather earlier, though, Walbrook had no defence to put up when Mycroft pushed documents over the desk for him to sign. These gave Mycroft final approval over every single staff and contractor appointment that related to Sherrinford, as well as over every visitor to the island facility. They also restored oversight to Mycroft's team in areas pertaining to MI5, the police, and visas and immigration that Walbrook had attempted to withdraw from him.

That was the second enemy down.

The third person Mycroft was ready to see that day was the International Trade Secretary, who was not implicated in the Patterson letters, but whose friendship with Pennyfather had prompted him to quietly lobby among Cabinet members for a legal way to end Eurus' life.

Mycroft had no incriminating documents against Ted Holt, who planned to retire in a few years. But what he had was leverage that could make the Chinese government more likely to look favourably on the new trade and economic deals Britain was proposing. Some of China's upcoming economic-technological development areas looked highly suitable for entry and investment by a large number of British companies looking to expand their reach in that market, and they wanted in. Which meant that positive feeling on China's side wouldn't be amiss.

Still, Holt had no very urgent reason to come knocking on Mycroft's door. However, he had undoubtedly been given a nudge by Pennyfather to do so, as Mycroft had hinted that he might be able to offer the Chinese government something that might make them… well, if not actively happy, then at least not disgruntled with Britain.

"Valuable historical artifacts?" Holt asked Mycroft.

"In the course of investigating a case involving a crime committed in London by a Chinese national, the Yard recovered a cache of jade and gold that includes what we believe to be long-lost jewellery that had belonged to Ming and Qing empresses," Mycroft revealed. "The Chinese government has been seeking these items for more than two decades, and we believe that these are the very items. They include fabulously elaborate gold phoenix hair ornaments that were almost certainly made for and worn by Ming empresses, and jade bangles of peerless quality in colour, clarity and carving, with designs suggesting that they were made for Qing empresses. They were, apparently, illegally exported from China decades ago, and as good as lost to the world. But now that we have them, and are in a position to return them, we should at least not be in the doghouse with this important trade partner of ours."

Holt sighed. "Eldon has hinted to me, although he did not go into much detail, that he may be personally implicated in a problem that could prove fatal to some of our trade deals if you don't handle this matter your way. In addition, I have just heard from Lady Smallwood the truth about how that security failure occurred on the island facility that I never knew of until a few weeks ago. Therefore, before you even ask, I'll say that I won't press the matter further with regard to this sister of yours – whose existence I also never heard of until a few weeks ago."

"Thank you, Minister," Mycroft said with just enough sincerity to keep Holt on his side, and just enough coolness to hint that he could, if he wished, force him to back down anyway.

"About the cache of antiques…" Holt began curiously. "The fact that you're proposing to return them means that this whole matter was never about keeping the items from China, was it?"

"No, Minister," Mycroft confirmed. "The fate of the antiques was of no interest to us – until now, of course, when their reappearance and restoration to their land of origin could buy us goodwill. Our only concern was and is that it must never be known that individuals who now form part of our Cabinet, and who were members of our intelligence community in the 1990s and 2000s, ever knew a thing about the antiques. It becomes worse when, upon further questioning, we find that they convinced a deputy chief of MI6 at the time to back them up in their lie when they were asked in the early 2000s to submit a report on the Patterson case. The report went up to the MI6 chief, then to the Foreign Office, where it formed part of our government's official response to the Chinese government's queries about the antiques. And that former deputy chief can no longer be held accountable, because he not only retired some time ago, but passed away from lung cancer shortly after that."

"I see," Holt said thoughtfully. "Thank you for being frank with me about the essential facts of the case, Mr Holmes."

Third opponent down.

Others lurked, but these three held the most sway, and Mycroft could manage the rest to diminish the threat to Eurus' life and his own influence over British intelligence, security and diplomacy. He felt as if he'd just slain a trio of dangerous enemies in a single stroke – perhaps like the Norseman who was said in one version of the Irish myth to have beheaded the three sons of Uisliu – Noisiu, Ainle and Ardan – in one blow? Of course, in other versions, it was Eogan mac Durthacht, king of Fernmag, who speared through two men in one go – Noisiu, and Fiachu the son of Fergus, who had been the brothers' and Deirdriu's guarantor of safe passage to Ulster.

It wasn't a pleasant likening, unfortunately, for those slayings had come about through Ulster king Conchubur mac Nessa's dishonourable betrayal of the three brothers, Deirdriu, and Fergus. Mycroft was rarely on the side of people who behaved dishonourably. Nor was he much of a warrior. If Sherlock knew what grand mythological lines he was thinking along, he would laugh mercilessly and scoff that it would be a hell of a lot more appropriate for Mycroft to liken himself instead to the Brave Little Tailor who killed seven flies at one go.

But ever since Mycroft had left Sherlock asleep in his bed four mornings ago with a kiss on his cheek, then returned home late that evening to find him gone without so much as a note, his brother had given no indication of wishing to return to their former style of conducting their relationship through hostility, clashes and jabs.

On the other hand (with Sherlock, there was always a caveat) he had communicated nothing either about what their relationship was now, or would be. No exchange of endearments had been forthcoming, no heart-to-heart conversations, no requests for dinner dates, not even any surprise visits purely for sex, and certainly no flowers. Perhaps Sherlock, having satisfied his curiosity, had decided that was that.

How unusual, Mycroft mused. A one-night stand with my sibling, who will never be out of my life.

They never did things like anyone else, did they?

The buzzing of Mycroft's phone startled him from his thoughts, and for a second, he thought Sherlock was calling him. But no, that would have been too much to hope for.

"Hello, Mummy," Mycroft answered pleasantly, as he always did for his mother. "How are you feeling now?"

"I'm quite well, Myc," she greeted him with a briskness that told him she was trying to be her usual bubbly self, but was failing because she was worn out from having had to nurse his father through the flu for days, only to catch it from him and be laid up in bed herself. "There's still a lingering soreness in my throat, but nothing lozenges won't tackle. Your father's been very thoughtful and helpful, but he's still being racked by his pesky cough too."

"What can I do for you?"

"We were hoping to visit Eurus this Saturday. Would that be possible?" she asked.

"I'll speak with the interim governor to make sure, but there should be no difficulty," Mycroft said.

"Good. I don't suppose you and Sherlock were able to visit her in the last three weeks that we couldn't?"

"Sherlock saw her ten days ago, when I was out of the country," Mycroft replied. "But I was away for two weeks, and there's been much to do since I returned."

"Myc, I know you're always frightfully busy and terribly important, but she's your sister, and she can hardly come to you, can she?"

"I know, Mummy…" he began.

"I do wish you'd make more of an effort with her instead of leaving it all to Sherlock and his violin. After all, you're the one who kept her there all by herself."

She sounded weary and exasperated. Mycroft knew it was her fatigue and the lingering illness that were making her snappish, but it still wounded him. Not forgiven yet, then, am I? Far from it, it seems.

"I'm sorry, Myc," his mother seemed to become aware, in seconds, that she had perhaps been unfair. "I'm tired, and I'm still not well."

"I know," Mycroft said softly. "Please get some rest. I'll make the arrangements for Saturday, and I'll give you the time and the transport details once I confirm them."

"Thank you. Sorry, Myc."

"Please take a nap now, if you can. And take those lozenges."

"I will, thanks. Goodbye, love."

He ended the call and tried to steady his breathing. It wasn't working. Because no one could get under your skin like your mother could. ("Thou art my warrior; / I holp to frame thee.") However powerful and hard-hearted you had made yourself, your mother could home in unerringly on your weaknesses to rattle you, as Coriolanus famously knew: "O, mother, mother, / What have you done?"

Mycroft's victories over his enemies felt like very little now. The feeling would pass, of course. It always did, eventually. But for now, he knew some of the misery his foes must have experienced. Except that while theirs was the gnawing desperation of fear and guilt, his was the dull ache of not living up to his mother's expectations, and there was no one here who could defend him or show him mercy in the face of her disappointment with him.

Defence. A necessity, always, against Eurus.

Never let your guard down. Open yourself to her, but never lower your defences, he reminded himself. Impossible? No. I can pull it off. I, of all people, can do it. Lay myself bare before her without letting her see what must not be seen. Unlock all my barriers without ever letting her in. Offer my complete honesty to her without letting her know what must not be known.

Sherlock drew his bow across the strings, playing himself for his sister, as she did the same for him.

The last time he had visited her, he had done so alone after getting clearance through Anthea during the period that Mycroft had been away. He'd been unsettled, uneasy, and feeling unexpectedly angry with himself about his treatment of Mycroft, and he'd have been damned if he'd allowed Eurus to read the final truth of it.

So he had laid himself bare – the unease, the discomfort, the emotion – playing to inconsistent time signatures throughout, taking his expressions through agitato, mesto, forza, precipitato, feurig, sweeping through whole passages that never resolved, nary a rest between them, spiking into the sharps and flats. And not once did he allow himself to express Mycroft. He opened himself up to her, but raised the invisible ramparts of his heart by consciously thinking: John, John, John…

She had queried him, her violin sending out incomplete, unbalanced phrases inviting him to round them out with his beats, echoing his sequences partway and waiting for him to finish them in answer to her. He had responded honestly/dishonestly, playing his guilt, his repentance, his desire, extracting from his soul everything he had ever done to hurt John, so that at no point would he communicate "Mycroft" to her. She knew all about everything he'd ever done to John, so this was giving her nothing she wouldn't already have considered; she didn't know about his evolving relationship with Mycroft, and he planned to keep it that way.

But today, their parents were well enough to visit her again, and they were here, with Mycroft. Which meant that Sherlock had to work through the new puzzle of how to open himself to Eurus without letting her know about him and their brother, while their brother was right there with them.

Because from the moment he'd met Mycroft and his parents at the Whitehall helipad this morning, he'd sensed a brittleness in his brother that troubled him. Some of the chaos that had been in his head days ago seemed to have flown back in there. It wasn't work, or the letters – no, all that had gone well – Sherlock could tell from the set of his shoulders. It was something else, something Sherlock could read in the slope of Mycroft's back, the angle of his neck which he could see even under the scarf he had given him … was it about him, Sherlock? Having second thoughts about them? Surely not – not with that gentleness in his eyes when they rested on Sherlock before he tore his own gaze away. It was… oh. Mummy. Damn it.

But it was also Sherlock, wasn't it? He hadn't reached out to Mycroft for days, but that was because he knew he'd be at war on the work front. More importantly, Sherlock had known their parents would be asking for a visit to Eurus very soon, now that they were over the flu. He and Mycroft thus could not risk having even the shadow of a molecule of each other on their persons or on their psyches in a sexual way. Eurus would have detected it in a trice.

Sherlock ached to say something to Mycroft, and to hold him. But he resolutely did not speak to, look at, or touch him at all, though it agitated him to know that he probably thought it meant Sherlock was pulling away from him again. That he'd used him for sex and experimentation, then pulled away.

But it couldn't be helped right now. So in front of Eurus, the glass of her cell between them, he channelled his feelings instead into the image of that shield he carried with him at all times – John. He poured his distress into thoughts of the high points and deepest darkness of their friendship; his knowledge that there had been and still were times when John utterly detested him, but that was all right, because even through the loathing John never stopped loving him deeply; the moments when Sherlock despised John for his blind simplicity of thought, but that was all right too, because despising him for a few seconds at a time had never undermined Sherlock's unbreakable foundation of love and respect for him.

He lowered his barriers while keeping Eurus out, replying to her probing sequences with notes of the utmost clarity. Steadily, broadly, with feeling, he played his melodic answers to her almost entirely in the major scale, his part of the musical conversation impressing them all with an odd naivete.

Glass or no glass between them, Eurus had the keenest senses – East Wind that she was, working her cold fingers into every crevice, and Sherlock knew it. But as he'd stayed away from Mycroft for days, there was nothing of their older brother that she would smell on him, see on him, no marks, no traces, not an atom. Rosie and John were all over him – he'd made sure of that – and he had them and Mary on his mind as he drew out his sweetest notes. Everything clear, everything open, even, thoughtful, balanced, complete, adding only the smallest strain hinting at an undercurrent of sorrow for the mortality that weighed them all down.

Everything ends. We all end.

He paused and looked at her, asking her to tell him about her.

She quietened it down to pianissimo, offering him long, even phrases that were adagio, tranquillo, disrupted briefly here and there with tremulousness, conjuring a sense of balance and stillness occasionally shaken by uncertainty. "I am stable. I am not safe. I am well. I will never be well. I know everything. I know nothing."

He drew his bow over his strings in a maestoso response. "You are a goddess who knows all, you are a demon who mars all, you are a little girl who understands nothing of everything the goddess in you knows."

Still pianissimo, she gave him a passage, traurig, and he knew she was saying: "You are angry with me."

Looking directly at her, unwavering, he continued maestoso, mezzo forte: "A part of me will always be angry with you for killing the child who was my best friend."

Plaintively: "I know."

Steadily: "Another part of me will never stop loving you because you are in pain, you are unbalanced, you are still a child who is so lost, and you are my sister."

Solemnly: "I know."

Emphatically: "I am still trying to save you. All of us here in this room are trying to save you."

Impatiently: "You can't."

Forcefully: "We have always done what others can't."

With agitation: "I am the best at doing what cannot be done; you can't overcome that."

Confidently: "Even mortals sometimes outwit the gods."

Eurus lowered her violin and bow without answering him, and looked at all of them in turn – Sherlock, their father, their mother, and Mycroft. Then she turned away and set her instrument down.

Sherlock spoke out loud to her: "Until next time, then."

Their parents by now understood that Eurus was telling them it was time to leave.

"I love you, darling," Mummy said. "Never forget that."

"Sweetheart, we'll see you again soon," Daddy added.

Mycroft said nothing, and Sherlock said nothing more, before they left the cell.

They made their way to the administrative block, where Mycroft conferred briefly with the interim governor, then they collected their coats and cases, and made their way to the helipad.

No one spoke during the flight to Whitehall. But when they alighted, Mummy indicated that she would like to discuss Eurus with them. Mycroft's JIC office at Whitehall was not the most appropriate for family discussions as it was in an office environment, so he ordered the Bentley limousine with the four-seater passenger compartment to take them all to his bunker office beneath the Diogenes Club.

Even in the car, Sherlock could already tell that Mummy was gearing up to be unnecessarily optimistic. "She seemed better, don't you think, boys?" she asked, looking at them from her forward-facing seat while Sherlock and Mycroft maintained a slightly uncomfortable silence in their backward-facing ones. For such an incredibly intelligent woman, she was painfully blind when it came to her own children.

Their father tried to temper her optimism with a more realistic take: "There are ups and downs, dear – and I'm afraid there will always be ups and downs, never a steady progression."

This got their parents debating the matter between themselves, leaving Sherlock and Mycroft in relative peace, looking out through their respective windows. Sherlock was trying very hard not to reach for him, and he knew it was the same for his brother.

At the underground office, however, after a lamentably brief half-hour's distraction provided by the food and tea Mycroft had ordered in advance before they'd driven away from Whitehall, things rapidly deteriorated.

"Myc, there must be someone who can help Eurus attain some measure of stability so that she can perhaps move to another facility – I cannot bear the thought of my daughter spending the rest of her life in that awful cell," Mummy sighed, setting her cup of tea down on its saucer.

"I'm afraid rehabilitation is beyond her," Mycroft said carefully. "She can perhaps arrive at some equilibrium if she accepts her life as it is, but she can never be permitted unsupervised contact with people who cannot mentally defend themselves against her – and that covers nearly everyone apart from myself and Sherlock."

"Of what practical application is your ability to mentally defend yourself against her when you don't ever speak to her when we visit? You're the only one of us who never says a word to her! Why can't you say something kind?"

"Eurus wouldn't want to hear 'something kind' from me, Mummy," Mycroft smiled thinly.

Her temper was already frayed from the lingering effects of the flu, which were harder to shake off at her age. She set the cup and saucer down on the table, then snapped at Mycroft: "I don't think you're trying hard enough! What's the use of all your genius if you can't even help your own sister? She's been locked up in one place or another since she was five years old! Five, Mycroft! It's horrible to think how desperately frightened and lonely she must have been! I still don't fully understand this – once Rudy told you she was alive, how could you not have told us?"

"Mummy," Mycroft said calmly, although Sherlock could see how pale he was turning. "You and Father had mourned her for ten years by that time, and had made your peace with her death. We had ceased to discuss her, not only for Sherlock's sake, but also for our own. Did you expect me to rip open every last one of your old wounds and have you mourn her all over again? Because by then, the little daughter you had known was well and truly dead, and the person she had become was not the Eurus you had loved."

"Mycroft Holmes!" Mummy cried. "All you do is spend your days and years playing at being awfully important to the rest of the world, while your own sister rots in a prison cell. Your political games mean nothing – are nothing – if you can't save your own flesh and blood! You truly are terribly limited in your abilities and options, aren't you?"

Mycroft was barely holding it together. Sherlock could see how hurt he was by their mother's words, and he couldn't endure it any more.

"Mummy! That's enough!" Sherlock thundered, shocking them all into stunned silence at the sheer fury in his voice. "You have no idea – no idea – how much Mycroft has done for Eurus after the damage Uncle Rudy caused. You don't have a clue how much he has done to keep you, and Dad, and me, and the whole fucking world safe all these years. You haven't the least idea, have you, that NO ONE in the entire world could have done better by Eurus than Mycroft did? You don't know how much he's sacrificed for all of us. How much he loves all of us. You just don't know, do you?"

"Sherlock…" Mummy sounded dazed.

"Please leave," Sherlock told his parents. "Please. Now."

"Oh, Mycroft, I'm sorry…" Mummy whispered. "I didn't… I'm sorry, Myc. I wasn't thinking…"

"Dad, please take Mummy home," Sherlock said firmly. "I don't think she's recovered from her illness yet."

Sherlock rang Anthea at once from his mobile phone, asked her to make sure the car was ready right now at the Diogenes to drive his parents home to Surrey, and strode to the office door. He opened it, and held it open, glaring at their parents until they picked up their coats and his mother's handbag and walked out of the office in time to see Anthea hurrying down the narrow passageway towards them.

"Mr Holmes, Mrs Holmes," she greeted them politely. "I'll walk you to the car."

"Goodbye Mummy. Bye, Dad," Sherlock said firmly. "Anthea, please ensure that no one disturbs Mycroft by phone or in person for the rest of the day, even if World War Three breaks out."

Anthea stared at him in astonishment for a few seconds – most probably because she had never heard the word "please" from Sherlock. But she promptly recovered and nodded to indicate that she understood, and would make sure no one bothered Mycroft.

He stepped back into the office, shut and bolted the door behind him and turned to face Mycroft, only to be caught completely off-guard by the look of utter surprise on his brother's face.

They stood there, metres apart, staring at each other for several seconds as Sherlock read it all over Mycroft: He'd thought Sherlock didn't care about him. Oh God, he'd really imagined, at least for a while, that Sherlock had just used him for sex and dropped him like a piece of burning coal. And he'd never, in his wildest dreams, expected that Sherlock would ever stand up for him against their mother.

"Mycroft," Sherlock whispered, covering the ground between them in three long strides and lifting both his hands to gently cup his brother's face while pressing his forehead to his. "I'll never let Mummy do that to you again. I'll never let her be that wrong about you again."

Mycroft was shaking, and this, in turn, shook Sherlock to the core. Mycroft, his Colossus, his tower of ice, was shaking because nothing could shatter you like family. Nothing could break you like love.

"Even if no one knows, I know," Sherlock said softly. "I know you."

He felt his brother's hands come up to rest on his waist, thumbs smoothing over the silk of his shirt. Their faces already in contact, Mycroft angled his head and touched a kiss to Sherlock's lips. Sherlock kissed him back, tenderly, protectively, feeding him courage, giving him heart. It was almost non-sexual, in a curious way, despite their tongues tangling and hands starting to roam. It felt as if they were simply making contact, connecting, telling each other without verbal words: "I'm here. Right here. For you."

Mycroft eased out of the kiss, wrapped one hand around the back of Sherlock's head, curved the other over his right hip, and slowly pulled him in until they were resting their heads on each other's shoulders. Sherlock's hands went around to the smooth, silky back panel of Mycroft's waistcoat, and they just held on, breathing the scent of their skin over their shirt collars.

"They're not entirely undeserved, you know, Mummy's accusations," Mycroft murmured. "It's not as if I wouldn't have known how to disobey Uncle Rudy and gently break the news about Eurus. But I wanted to avoid all the emotional untidiness. And it's true that I did prioritise my responsibilities to the world over my family – I put you at risk repeatedly. I could also have reached out to Eurus on a much more emotional level instead of treating her like a weapon – or worse, like a dog of war I could parcel out rewards to."

"Mycroft, that's…"

"Oh, Sherlock, I'm not under the illusion that connecting with her childish emotions would have healed her or saved her – she was beyond that from the beginning. She was born brilliantly, fatally flawed. But perhaps it would have tempered her viciousness a little. Maybe fewer people would have died in this last catastrophe."

"Don't second-guess yourself. It's not like you. Eurus was and is unbalanced. She is my sister, and I will protect her, but I know, you know, and she knows that she's a monster, and there was never any way to predict how she might have responded to anything."

"We're each monsters in our own way, aren't we?" Mycroft huffed a little bitterly. "God, no wonder Mummy feels so bloody disappointed."

"Shh. She loves you. You know that, don't you? She loves you so much, and she's always so damned proud of you."

"Funnily enough, I do know that," Mycroft chuckled.

"She just gets tetchy when she feels unwell and helpless and thinks she isn't doing the best she can for her daughter."

"That she does."

"And if we're all monsters, then she's the monsters' mother."

Mycroft laughed. "Which of us is Grendel, then?"

"We're a Cerberus-like version of Grendel?" Sherlock suggested.

Mycroft laughed again, a sound that Sherlock had never thought in the past would fill him with joy.

They leaned back and looked at each other through eyes that were the colour of a stormy day, then they dipped in for another kiss, one with the delicious flavour of Mycroft's brief, hard-won laughter on his lips, and luxuriated in its warmth.

Sherlock felt something shift between them as they explored each other's mouths as if kissing were new to them. What had changed was that Mycroft had never dreamt, or dared to hope, that Sherlock would ever be on his side; and the discovery that he was seemed to make Mycroft soft, and warm, and open. But not in the fatalistic way of before, when he hadn't appeared to care if Sherlock would damage him or destroy him, as long as it was Sherlock doing it. This was the openness of assurance that his brother, his lover, was not only with him, but would act in defence of him.

He slowly began to undo the knot of Mycroft's tie, and Mycroft helped him. Sherlock's fingers next felt their way methodically through the waistcoat buttons from top to bottom, carefully slipping the pocket watch chain free, and Mycroft's hands just as methodically saw to Sherlock's shirt buttons.

They moved apart to look at each other again as Sherlock slipped Mycroft's waistcoat off him and put it and the pocket watch carefully on the desk beside them. As he undid his brother's shirt buttons, and Mycroft tugged Sherlock's shirt out of his trousers, Sherlock asked: "What would you like me to do, Mycroft? What do you need? Just tell me."

Mycroft, working at the fastenings at the waistband of Sherlock's trousers, offered a smile that Sherlock had never seen before – a remarkable blend of mischief, desire and adoration. And he said: "Do with me whatever you will. That's what I need."

"Are you sure?" Sherlock asked doubtfully, knowing how much Mycroft needed to be in control.

Mycroft reached up to caress Sherlock's face and draw him in for another kiss before he eased him back to say: "I think I can trust the hero who came to my defence like no one else in the world ever has, to do whatever he pleases with me."