Mycroft sat in his chair, staring blankly into the darkness, a slice of uneaten cake besides him. Sherlock would laugh at him for abandoning his diet, but Sherlock wasn't here anymore.
He was dead.
A pang of grief shot through Mycroft as a fresh round of sobs rolled through him. He hated himself, it was all his fault. Five minutes unsupervised conversation between his sister and his brother's nemesis...and now he was gone. Gone forever, like his Uncle Rudi.
If it was any consolation, Eurus seemed distraught as well. Not only had she stopped communicating, she didn't pick up her violin or eat anything. Sherlock's death had rattled all of them.
Mycroft furiously dabbed at his eyes, before tossing the tissue to join the rest of them in a heap on the floor. Far away, a clock tower chimed midnight. He had already lost track of time. As soon as they had been rescued from Sherrinford and finished all the medical checks, Mycroft had excused himself from the police station and driven home, where he had sat and ate and cried and simply felt numb for the last...how long had he been here? He might've gotten up and moved a little, but honestly, Mycroft couldn't distinguish between what was real and what had happened inside his mind palace.
Rubbing his hands together, Mycroft attempted to sort out his feelings in a logical way, for the umpteenth time.
My brother shot himself in the head. How do I feel about that?
He died saving John and I. How do I feel about that?
I cried over his dead body. How do I feel about that?
It's all my fault. If I hadn't been such an idiot, he would not have died. How do I feel about that?
How do I feel about that?
The question rang and echoed throughout his brain, and yet he could not fathom the answer. He had spent too long running away from his feelings, and now he was starting to regret it. What if the only way to truly move past your emotions was to experience them unabashedly? His heart was ruling—no, imprisoning his head.
The truth was, Mycroft had always felt a desire to protect his younger sibling, no matter what a twit he had been. Whenever he found Sherlock high, he had taken care of and saved all his lists. Every time. The little maroon notebook held more than drug lists and incoherent phrases. It represented Sherlock's trust in Mycroft, and that meant everything to him.
"How do you feel about it?" A sudden voice spoke up from the darkness. Mycroft jumped a foot, knocking the cake to the ground with a clatter. He fumbled with the light switch, turning it on to reveal Sherlock, sitting in the chair opposite him.
"Jesus, Sherlock!" Mycroft yelped, his thundering heart struggling to slow down. "You almost gave me a heart attack!"
"No, you almost gave yourself a heart attack." Sherlock countered, a smirk on his face. "I'm not real."
"Brother—" Mycroft choked on the word. He swallowed hard, sitting up a little straighter. "Why are you here?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes, almost too familiarly. "Mycroft Holmes, you have been sitting here for the past two weeks, staring at a piece of cake you have no intention to eat and throwing used tissues into a filthy pile at the base of your chair, crying your eyes out over my death. It's clear you have no plan as to what to do. You're hoping my image will give you some direction."
Mycroft considered this. "I suppose."
"You need to visit Molly, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, but most importantly John. There's also the matter of the funeral and the estate."
"Estate?" Mycroft asked. "You mean that tiny flat and all your junk inside?"
Sherlock grinned. "Yeah, that estate." There was a moment of silence, then Sherlock stood up, his coat and scarf and hair just as perfect as it had been in real life. "I best be going. You have some phone calls to make, don't you?"
Mycroft opened his mouth to answer, but Sherlock had already disappeared.
Author Note:
Since John kept seeing Mary after she died, I thought it would be fitting for Mycroft to see Sherlock, as he was the person he loved most.