Acceptance

"Look at these lovely pictures, sweetie!" Mummy cooed to Rosie on her lap, trying to draw the baby's attention to the photos splashed alongside the newspaper article that she and Daddy were reading together on the sofa. "Such gorgeous gold jewellery and jade bangles – goodness, to think they were stolen years and years ago and hidden away from the world! Now they'll be returned to China where they came from – do you know where China is, Rosie darling?"

"It's exciting that you and Sherlock got to see them with your own eyes when you helped with the Yard's case," Daddy peered over the top of the broadsheet to address John, as Sherlock was ignoring his parents in favour of his violin.

"Yes, but we were really much more focused on, well, the specific aspect of the case that Mycroft and the CID requested our assistance with," John explained, appearing in the doorway to the kitchen, where he was heating up Rosie's lunch on the stove. "So we didn't pay much attention to the treasures in the safe."

"The specific aspect you can't tell us about because it's strictly classified," Mummy noted, as she guided Rosie's little hand to one of the most brightly coloured pictures, encouraging her to look at it. "Which is linked with this other story on the same page, giving us more information about those two batty women taking the Chinese ambassador hostage at the May Fair Hotel?"

"I gather that it also has to do with this sidebar about a new deputy being appointed to the Chinese embassy under Ambassador Luo Qifan. It doesn't mention the fate of the deputy's predecessor. Interesting," Daddy remarked.

"I'm afraid it is all linked with the classified information," John replied before returning to the stove. "All I can say is that a puzzle urgently needed to be solved, and Sherlock pulled it off beautifully."

Testing his bow against the strings to see if he had rubbed enough rosin onto the horsehair, Sherlock toyed with a few musical phrases by the window while casually keeping an ear and half an eye on what was going on in the sitting room between his parents, John, and Rosie. The rest of his mind, however, was turning over last night's date with Mycroft, as well as reminding himself not to smile mawkishly for no good reason that he could possibly give Mummy and Daddy.

At first, it hadn't gone well. Despite the logical dimension of his brain believing it had accepted the less savoury facets of Mycroft's career, Sherlock was still smarting from what had happened in Soho and the hard truths they'd discussed afterwards. Mycroft too was tense and cautious, likewise not believing that one conversation could have straightened the whole problem out. So they'd struggled for what qualified as normality between them during the ride to the Chelsea restaurant and the initial part of their meal. Even that pale shadow of standard Holmes-brothers behaviour, however, deteriorated with the exchange resulting from their first proper sip of the wine Mycroft had selected to pair with their main courses.

"An excellent Barolo," Mycroft noted. "Possibly even more impressive than the one I tasted last evening."

"More impressive in what way?" Sherlock asked, failing to prevent a shade of tension from stealing into his voice at the allusion to his brother's wine bar date.

"Well, it's richer. Last night's 2008 was of course brilliant, but this is more pleasing to my palate."

"That's hardly an adequate critique, coming from you," Sherlock muttered. "You'd normally have trotted out half the adjectives in the wine dictionary by now."

"Some things are subjective," Mycroft argued. "The 2008 was Alfred Carr's choice, and he regarded it as the best he'd ever had. Whereas Lady Smallwood and I had, separately, savoured others that we preferred."

"What's he like, this old-new boyfriend of your girlfriend's?" Sherlock asked disinterestedly.

"Upright, kind, harmless," he answered, with the merest suggestion of a shrug. "Perhaps a little too cautious with Alicia, but he triggers no red flags. I honestly don't know that I'd be best placed to describe him, other than to say that he seems perfect for Alicia in many ways – he told her a joke that I could tell she genuinely found hilarious, although I fear I don't recall what it was."

"'Alicia'?" Sherlock echoed. "You're using her pet name when you're with me?"

"I'm sorry, Sherlock. It's just what I call her," Mycroft apologised, glancing around to make very certain that no people or cameras were in a position to overhear or see clearly enough to lip-read them. "I don't… it doesn't mean anything."

"That's what you've been telling me since last night," Sherlock said a little snippily. "I get the message."

"Perhaps the objective dimension of your brain gets the message, but do you accept what I'm saying, emotionally?" Mycroft asked with an edge of…well, something creeping into his tone of voice although he spoke very softly. Sherlock thought it sounded like exasperation.

"Honestly? No," he replied frankly, feeling exasperated himself, but similarly keeping his voice down. "And that's just where she's concerned. I don't think it's fully sunk in for me that even now – now that we actually have us to think about – at some point, you'll be crawling into some diplomat's hotel-room bed halfway across Europe or wherever–"

"Sherlock, please – it very rarely happens – in any case… for work… I don't do any of that for amusement. Not in the past, and certainly not now…"

"You'd think someone as fucking brilliant as Mycroft Holmes would work out how to milk any bloody situation dry without having to resort to that primitive old tool of manipulative sex," he hissed softly but viciously.

"Sherlock…"

"I don't care if it rarely happens – each time it does, it's like you think you have to be some kind of damnable political prostitute for this country…"

"Sherlock!" Mycroft's voice was sharp despite barely registering on the decibel scale.

"… just selling yourself…" Sherlock ploughed on in a cutting whisper.

"Oh, you're one to talk," Mycroft snapped quietly. "I too could ask you just how many other people you offered to sell your body to for 70 quid just so you could buy another hit. Did you service half of London for drugs, or was I the only lucky chap you tried to whore yourself out to?"

Sherlock snatched his napkin off his lap. He was on the cusp of tossing it onto the tablecloth and storming out of the restaurant when myriad little observations he'd subconsciously registered earlier skittered across his mind, gathered themselves into a wave, and crashed into the objective half of his brain, sweeping away the miserable sandcastle of emotions he'd been unhappily building since last night. To cap it all, he saw a tiny, fleeting tremble of Mycroft's lower lip and instantly grasped everything behind that minuscule giveaway: not a tremble of anger, or resentment, or hatred, but a wobble of fear, misery, regret, and a belief that he had failed…

Sherlock slowly sat back down, the napkin still balled up tightly in his hands. Staring at Mycroft's face, he unclasped his fists, smoothed the crumpled cloth over his lap again, and took a second to properly process everything this time, even as Mycroft gasped barely audibly: "Oh God, Sherlock, I'm sorry…"

"Don't be," Sherlock said.

"I really am sorry…" He looked stricken.

"You were terrified last night, weren't you?" Sherlock ventured.

"What?" Mycroft, still off-centre, asked in response to the unexpected question.

"You've barely been able to answer my questions about Alfred Carr or what you drank after I left the bar last night. You've even forgotten what joke he told Lady Smallwood. Worrying about me distracted you so much that you could hardly spare enough of your fabled multitasking talent to focus on the lady's new man – at least not at your usual impeccable level."

"I…"

"You're slipping, Mycroft," Sherlock said gently with a tentative smile, in a kinder echo of the aftermath of his rescue from Serbia.

"Oh, Sherlock," Mycroft breathed, closing his eyes for a moment.

"The idea of losing me terrifies you, and you were terrified last night. You've been afraid all day today as well, but you've been holding it together for my sake," Sherlock murmured, swiftly analysing the collection of observations that he hadn't processed fairly in the last 24 hours. "You were willing to risk losing me as long as it meant I'd be safe. You were nowhere near as calm as you seemed when I appeared at the bar or when you visited me afterwards – you really feared that I'd break up with you. But you forced yourself to stay cold as ice, because if you hadn't, it would have compromised my safety, as you sensibly explained last night. You'd risk an outcome that would make you miserable as long as you could keep me safe from the law, from our enemies, from societal condemnation, from ruin."

"I…"

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"I… would risk… anything – absolutely anything – to protect you," Mycroft confessed shakily.

"Even us. After all this time, just to protect me, you're still ready to destroy what you've wanted most for years."

Finally steadying his voice, Mycroft said: "I'm no longer operating under my arrogant belief of the past that I was powerful enough to keep you from all harm. I know how vulnerable you are, even with my safeguards, and I will never knowingly do anything again to put you in danger that I can't extract you from. If I had not stayed where I was with Lady Smallwood last night, then calmly talked to you at your flat afterwards – I couldn't have saved you, because I would have been ruined alongside you, and I can't protect you if I'm lost too. So I had to, and yes, I would take the risk of driving you away, losing your love, as long as it meant you'd be well. But Sherlock – this is hurting you, and I didn't fully see last night how much it was hurting you. I don't want that. I'll find alternative ways on the diplomatic front – I'll get around these tangled political relationships I weave – it's not as if I'm getting any younger, anyway, and…"

"No, Mycroft," Sherlock broke in at once. "Stop it. No. What was I thinking? For God's sake, you of all people know the best ways to survive these tangled webs of espionage and politics and diplomacy. So if you know that the best and quickest way in certain cases involves letting someone into your bed in some five-star hotel somewhere, then do it. I just want you to come home to me unharmed. That's what I care about – everything else fades into insignificance."

"I'll work around it…"

"No. I'll never be your weakness again, Mycroft. All my life, I've been the vulnerable point through which too many people have been able to attack you. Never again. Don't you dare compromise anything just for me. Do what you have to do to get things done with the best possible result. For me, the most important outcome would be that you come home to me as quickly as possible, in one piece. I get it now, objectively and emotionally, so don't give it another thought."

"I'll… I'll try… but for now, please forgive me for what I said… before," Mycroft apologised again in a whisper.

"There's nothing to forgive. I think you have the right to know."

"No, it isn't my right – what's past is past."

"I want to tell you, Mycroft."

"Sherlock, there's no need…"

"You were the only one I ever offered to sell myself to. Later, at uni, and here and there, with people I met, we sometimes had sex just because it seemed like a good idea, but I never sold myself to anyone. You really were the only lucky chap I tried to whore myself out to," he revealed with a slightly awkward smile.

"Good Lord," Mycroft groaned softly, his cheeks reddening. "What did I do to deserve that dubious distinction?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Must be because you were my first crush?"

"Who on earth offers to sell themselves to their first crush?" Mycroft asked disbelievingly.

"It… seemed like a good idea at the time?" Sherlock bit his lips, embarrassed by the stupidity of his drug-addled teenage self.

"Heaven help us," Mycroft muttered, but a tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth, and the unhappiness dissipated.

From that point, the evening had gone smoothly. Although they couldn't reassure each other physically by holding hands or kissing in public, they'd stolen little touches – a foot pressed against another under the table, a finger lightly stroking the back of one hand behind the wine bottle, a whisper of skin against skin when Sherlock cut a sliver of his venison and put it on Mycroft's plate.

By the time they'd said goodbye to Dominic Marcini and left, they were desperate to get their hands on each other. With the privacy screen up, they'd fallen together in the car like teenagers feeling each other up in the back seat, manoeuvring carefully so they wouldn't rock the vehicle and make the driver wonder what was going on. Once inside Mycroft's house, they'd tumbled into bed and made love with a surprising amount of aggressiveness, then talked for hours with an equally surprising amount of snark-free gentleness towards each other.

Sherlock had left early in the morning, even before Mycroft got up to go work. He'd rung for a taxi, kissed a sleep-tousled Mycroft goodbye, slipped quietly into 221B, showered, dressed, and tinkered with an experiment involving a fabulously deformed lung Molly had sent his way. John, who had been up twice in the night to soothe his crying daughter, knew exactly what time Sherlock had come in. The doctor had looked somewhat uncomfortable for a second when they'd come face to face in the sitting room, but the discomfort evaporated once he patted Sherlock supportively on the arm and whispered over Rosie's sleepy head: "Tell me you didn't catch him on a date with someone else this time."

"No, it was just us."

"I'll punch him, you know, if he upsets you like that again."

Sherlock had chewed his lips to stop himself from grinning, but he'd dipped down to give John a peck on the cheek – which made John chuckle – and planted a kiss on the top of Rosie's downy head.

After breakfast, it was off to Waterloo station to meet Mummy and Daddy, and here they were now, asking him and John questions they couldn't answer about the case involving the Chinese ambassador and the treasure.

"Sherlock," Mummy was saying. "The hotel should be able to give us our room in about 15 minutes."

"Let's go, then," Sherlock said, putting his violin and bow down.

But just as Mummy and Daddy were handing Rosie back to John, a familiar step sounded on the stairs, its purposeful rhythm punctuated by the tap of an umbrella tip and the hurrying footsteps of Mrs Hudson a quarter of a flight behind.

"Oh Sherlock!" the landlady was calling out in her birdlike voice from halfway down. "Your brother's…"

By then, Mycroft had appeared on their floor and was walking into the sitting room with a mildly irritated expression on his face. "Sherlock, why on earth have I just learnt that Mummy and Daddy are staying at a boutique hotel with the utterly inappropriate name of 'The Hospital Club' instead of at my house?"

"Well, they wanted to…"

"Myc, darling, it was our decision," Mummy said, taking over the conversation – which she really needed to have with her eldest. She went up to Mycroft and drew him into a hug as she continued: "We're always imposing on you, and we've rather been taking you for granted of late – or I should say that I've been taking you for granted. We know you're burdened with work, yet you're always taking the trouble to have us driven everywhere. Besides, the hotel looked lovely on the website, and it would be a nice change…"

Sherlock knew that Mycroft and Mummy had talked on the phone a few days ago. He knew Mummy had apologised for her unreasonable expectations with regard to Eurus. They'd made up. But this was the first time they'd seen each other in person after that day at The Diogenes Club that had left Mycroft so upset, and Mummy was still feeling guilty.

"It's completely unnecessary for you and Daddy to stay anywhere else when you're in London," Mycroft protested. "You know the house, you're comfortable in it, you were familiar with it long before I was for years before Uncle Rudy left to me, so it's the best place for–"

"It's good to change things up once in a while," Mummy smiled, her left hand still resting on Mycroft's right arm, and her right hand patting his cheek softly. "And you love having your own space, so when we're not there hounding you about one thing or another, asking you a hundred questions, isn't that good for you too?"

"What are parents for if not to harass and hound us?" Mycroft huffed, still annoyed. "I must insist that you cancel your room reservation and stay at my place."

"It's perfectly fine," Mummy assured him. "We're watching the musical with Sherlock this evening, and we're going home by train tomorrow morning. We won't be in your hair at all."

"You're only staying a night?" Mycroft asked. "I've arranged a visit to Sherrinford for tomorrow morning."

"Oh, Mycroft," Mummy breathed, pulling him into another hug. "We didn't want to ask this time – you never say a thing about it, but I know it's a hassle for you, and we imagine Eurus isn't exactly delighted by our visits either."

"It's not a hassle, Mummy," Mycroft said softly. "She's all by herself there, so it's good for us to make regular visits."

"Myc, my love, I'm so sorry for what I said on my last visit," Mummy said with feeling. "I do know that you've done more than anyone ever could for your sister. Sometimes I get emotional about her because I'm her mother, and I still wish you'd told us about her once Rudy revealed the truth. After thinking it through, though, I can understand why he convinced you that telling us about her would only cause us more pain. Occasionally, the emotional side of me will wish that we could do more for her. But Myc, if it were you in trouble, and I found out about it – though you never tell me anything – I'd feel exactly the same, because you're my child too, darling."

Sherlock could see that Mrs Hudson, standing in the entryway to the flat with her hands clasped under her chin, was about to burst into tears of sentiment. To avert that catastrophe, he hastily steered her back downstairs and even made her a mug of tea before going back up to find his family in agreement that Mummy and Daddy would stay at the hotel tonight as planned. After visiting Eurus tomorrow, they'd stay a night at the house.

So Mycroft's car took them to the hotel to check in, and he had lunch with his parents. His driver-cum-bodyguard hovered near them as the café Mummy and Daddy chose wasn't a pre-approved location for him to safely spend time in. (Unlike Marcini's, which was frequented by peripheral royalty, high-ranking politicians and the most discreet celebrities, and was therefore a reasonably secure spot with its own safeguards.)

That evening, Sherlock, John, Mrs Hudson and Rosie had an early dinner with Mummy and Daddy in Covent Garden, after which Sherlock reluctantly accompanied his parents to the theatre, where he only just managed by the skin of his teeth not to utter out loud a string of insults against every act of the musical.

"Oh, stop fidgeting," Mummy scolded under her breath in the theatre, patting his knee. "You used to love Abba songs when you were a child."

Sherlock nearly choked at that horrifying revelation, and was rendered even more speechless when Daddy leaned over and confirmed it with another whisper: "It's true – you did. You even used to dance to them."

He was in hell.

But if he was to be fair, other than the hellish, cheesy songs that his parents surely had to be gaslighting him into believing he used to shake his "cute little bottom" to (Mummy's words, nightmare), the day was a good one, on balance.

It was the next morning that held real danger, when they visited Eurus. Sherlock played his violin as usual, but from the start, she kept breaking off her own playing and frustratedly dashing off bars that even their parents could tell were her demands for Sherlock to play "himself", and not notes that spoke of someone else.

Hell and damnation, but despite his attempts to keep John foremost in his mind, Eurus was starting to work out that the emotions he was channelling through his instrument were a cover. She argued with strong notes, and he played to her. She objected stridently to that too, and he tried to play for her again. She drew out a series of angry, agitated passages, and he tried again. Over and over, he attempted to convince her that he was expressing his soul, but she wouldn't believe him. His heart stuttered and sank when she lowered her violin, stared hard at him for a whole long minute, and then, without moving her head, turned a baleful gaze on Mycroft.

Sherlock froze, violin still pressed against his neck, bow immobile in the air. He didn't dare turn around to look at his brother. He couldn't. That would have ended them in an instant. Surely their brilliant, demented, terrifying sister hadn't pieced together that his heart belonged to their eldest brother… could she? She looked so angry. And hurt. And… helpless.

Helpless?

Eurus' glare metamorphosed into an expression of bitterness, then neutrality, and finally resignation. When she slid her eyes back towards Sherlock, she didn't have to play a single note for him to read everything on her face, in her eyes, and in the merest twitches of her downturned mouth. She was communicating with him through something other than music, other than words, and he could understand the minute shifts of her body language perfectly: "After all this time, you still adore him, brother?"

Sherlock couldn't answer. He remained stock still, terrified that he had given Eurus, in all her incandescent genius and amoral viciousness, the worst possible weapon against him and Mycroft.

He didn't need to answer, though. She knew, didn't she…? Did she?

Her expression turned shockingly sad as she lifted her violin and bow into position again, and drew out mournful strains that told him: "I tried to tear you apart. I broke your bond when he failed to save your friend. Why should you have adored him so when I was ten times more brilliant? Still, you've overcome it. I could tear you apart once more. But won't you both only come back together again, stronger?"

Sherlock finally unfroze, tilted his head to keep his instrument in place and held the bow poised over the strings without making a sound, thinking desperately hard with his head and his heart. At last, he had an answer for her that came at the problem from another angle, as Mycroft had so often taught him by example. He drew forth a low, steady, sober but broad sequence that told her: "We are your brothers. Both of us, together, will always protect you. Together."

Her reply of tremulous notes made their way to his senses: "I tried to destroy you."

His firm, tangential response: "We will keep you together."

Her warning: "I will always be the scorpion who destroys that which tries to save me. It is my nature."

His declaration: "We are monsters, the three of us. Our poison only feeds one another."

Eurus smiled at that – actually smiled – drawing a gasp from Mummy. She opened her mouth and spoke out loud for the first time in months, saying four simple but cryptic words that could be interpreted several ways: "Never let me go."

Sherlock, with equal ambiguity, replied: "Never."

"I can give you no recompense in this life," she said. "Perhaps in my next."

"Let's finish this one first," Sherlock told her.

Then, startlingly, Eurus spoke in – of all things – pitch-perfect Mandarin: "他是甘露之惠, 我并无此水可还. 他既下世为人,我也去下世为人,但把我一生所有的眼泪还他,也偿还的过他了."

With that, she set her violin and bow down in the receptacle through which items could be passed in and out of her cell, and turned her back to her family, dismissing them.

"What did you say, darling?" Mummy asked her, when she had recovered from her shock of hearing her speak. Eurus offered no response, so Mummy turned to her sons: "What did she say, Myc? Sherlock?"

Sherlock turned to Mycroft for the first time since Eurus had indicated that she knew what they were to each other. Mycroft looked pale, but Sherlock saw no fear in his eyes. Perhaps, just perhaps, she either hadn't seen the full nature of their bond, or if she had, she seemed to have decided to let them be. And those lines she had quoted, maybe, just maybe, were the closest thing to an apology or expression of gratitude they would ever receive from her.

"Let's talk outside," Sherlock told his parents, as Mycroft nodded and ushered them out of the area beyond Eurus' cell.

Once they were in the office he used whenever he visited Sherrinford, Mycroft told his parents: "It was a quotation from the Chinese novel, A Dream of Red Mansions."

"Did she ever learn Chinese?" Daddy asked in astonishment.

"According to Uncle Rudy, when Eurus was still a child and they hoped that she might yet be rehabilitated, they continued her education in any subject she showed interest in – mathematics, physics, biology, the political sciences, philosophy, literature, languages, music – anything she was keen to learn. I have no doubt that she read important literary works in many foreign languages as well as in English, and she has evidently retained everything she learnt."

"But what did those words mean?" Mummy asked.

"In the novel, those lines are spoken by a being in the spiritual realm who began its existence as a plant," Sherlock took over the explanation. "The plant was diligently watered with dew by a heavenly attendant. The plant grew and was transformed into a girl. When the girl learnt that the attendant who had cared for her wished to enter the human world to experience life as a mortal, she chose to do the same so that she could repay him for his kindness. The lines she speaks essentially mean: 'He fed me with dew, but I have no water to give him in return. As he has gone down into the mortal world to become a human, I too will go down into the mortal world to become a human. Perhaps I can repay him with all the tears I can shed in the course of my life there.' In the novel, the girl was born in the human world as Lin Daiyu, who shed a lifetime of tears for the cousin she loved, Jia Baoyu, the human incarnation of the heavenly attendant."

"But what did Eurus mean by those lines?" Mummy asked despairingly.

Sherlock looked at their mother and said thoughtfully: "It's up to our individual interpretations. However, the essence of it seems to be that she can't do us any good in this life, but perhaps she can in her next. She was a little girl whom Mycroft and I turned into the East Wind. The East Wind turned into a monster. And the monster implies that in her next incarnation, she would like to repay the debt of tears she thinks she owes us."

Mummy began to cry, asking: "She's not telling us that she's going to die, is she?"

"I doubt it," Mycroft said with an encouraging smile. "Your daughter is much tougher than she looks. We all are, Mummy."

Her face crumpled against Mycroft's jacket, but she also nodded in agreement as he put his arm around her and stoically allowed her to vent, in her tears, her confusion and mixed feelings: alarm over what might be ominous words from Eurus about her well-being; hope that her speaking at all might mean she could attain some stability; sadness that she was so far beyond their reach; and gladness that the words she had chosen hinted vaguely at a wish to repay the care her family had given her, even if she could never do so in this lifetime.

Once Daddy had calmed Mummy down, Mycroft asked the new Sherrinford governor to please walk his parents out to the helipad. He and Sherlock would follow in a minute.

"Of all the literary works in all the languages in the world, she chose to recite lines from a Chinese novel, the same one Zhu Zheng made reference to on the gold bar. If there are no coincidences, that means she knows about the case and our involvement in it," Sherlock murmured to Mycroft urgently, once they were alone.

"Perhaps it is a rare coincidence – I don't know," Mycroft admitted in a whisper. "She's been allowed no access to news from the outside world since she was re-incarcerated, although a mind like Eurus' can put together a more complete picture from hearing scattered whispers than most other people can with access to full information. But more crucial than her knowledge of the Zhu Zheng case is what she knows about us. If she knows everything, does she plan to give us away? I've barely come to terms with what you told me last night about John working it out by himself. Now, Eurus."

"I don't know if she will give us away," Sherlock said. "But what she's just communicated to us is as good an admission as you're ever going to get from her that she accepts you've defeated her. She hated how close I was to Victor, so she killed him. She hated how much I adored you, so she used her murder of Victor to double as the stroke that would sever our connection. But ultimately, she's failed, and she knows it. My instinct says she will let us be."

"If she changes her mind like the wind?"

"We'll overcome it together," Sherlock promised, giving Mycroft's hand a squeeze before they opened the office door. "We'll become Aeolus, who had the power to lock up the winds, and this time, my Odysseus won't have a foolish crew who lets the storm winds out of the bag and wrecks their own voyage – somehow, some way, we'll keep her from destroying us, and keep all our secrets under wraps."

Then, walking close enough to brush against each other, but not so close that it would raise questions in others' minds, they headed for the helipad to join their parents.

Notes:
The quotation in Mandarin that Eurus recites from Cao Xueqin's A Dream of Red Mansions reads this way in hanyu pinyin: "Ta shi gan lu zhi hui, wo bing wu ci shui ke huan. Ta ji xia shi wei ren, wo ye qu xia shi wei ren, dan ba wo yi sheng suo you de yen lei huan ta, ye chang huan de guo ta le."

Once again, for reasons of unwieldy length (my bad), what ought to be one chapter needs to be split into two instalments. So this part is Sherlock's perspective, and the next will be Mycroft's, which will form the final chapter in this story.