It was a few days before school started that Mycroft made his announcement at dinner. The Holmes parents already knew, of course, but he hadn't yet told the children. Not even his brother – who was, as it happened, was the closest to him, despite the distance that there seemed to be between them.
He waited until dessert had finished, and the plates had been cleared up, and then stood up and cleared his throat. 'Mother – Father – you know what I am going to say, but I shall say it, because Sherlock and the others ought to know as well. I – well, I have signed up to join the army.'
Though Mrs Holmes had already known this, she then sniffed and clutched at the handkerchief in her pocket. Mr Holmes looked very serious, but a little proud. The children meanwhile stared at Mycroft in shock.
'You're going to war?' asked John at last, in a very small voice.
Mycroft nodded, and could not meet his eyes.
Just then there was a crash. Sherlock had stood, and, with fury blazing in his eyes, he had pushed his chair roughly towards the table. He glared at Mycroft for just a moment before storming from the room.
There was, perhaps, a greater silence following this than following Mycroft's announcement. They all stared after Sherlock, astonished by this unusual display of some great emotion, some emotion he usually kept entirely bottled up.
Mycroft cleared his throat again, rather less confidently than last time, and asked if he might leave the table, to go to Sherlock's room and see if he was all right. He was granted permission, and Mycroft left the room.
'Why must he join the army?' asked John, who looked close to crying. He did not much like Mycroft – he and Harry found him dull, sarcastic, almost misanthropic – but he couldn't bear to think that he would go to war, to fight, to kill, perhaps to be –
A soldier, for God's sake! Joining the army was like attempting suicide, or at the least dicing with death. It was a horrible thought. Why did Britain have to be at war? Why did Mycroft have to join it?
Mrs Holmes, though visibly upset, smiled bravely, and with more than a hint of irony. 'He would have been conscripted anyway, eventually,' she said, as if that was in any way reassuring. 'He discussed it with us, though: he said that it was what he wanted to do, that he wanted to defend Britain and help in the fight. He's always been a patriot, our Mycroft.'
And she didn't say anything else for the rest of the evening.
Sherlock Holmes did not invite his brother in when he knocked on the door, but Mycroft came in anyway, silently, pensively. He found Sherlock on the hearth-rug by his unlit fire, his face buried in Redbeard's fur. He wasn't crying, but he was still trembling with whatever emotion it was that had struck a dagger through his heart.
'Brother mine,' said Mycroft at last, and his voice faltered.
'Mycroft,' said Sherlock in a muffled voice.
'I leave in three days,' Mycroft said. 'The day before you return to school.'
'I know.'
Mycroft did not ask how Sherlock knew. He supposed he must have deduced it. Sherlock still hadn't looked up; Mycroft was just a little disconcerted, because it was one of the only times in his life that he hadn't the slightest idea exactly what his brother might be thinking.
'Will you have to fight?' asked Sherlock at length.
Mycroft shrugged, feigning nonchalance. 'Perhaps. It depends on what is required of the forces. How the war pans out.'
'Could you do it, Mycroft?'
Now Sherlock looked up, and his face showed that he was more perplexed than anything else. Mycroft stared at him; he knew what Sherlock was asking him, but still said evasively: 'Do what?'
'Kill someone. Could you do it?'
There was no response. The silence that descended upon the room then was stifling. The two brothers hardly dared meet each other's eyes.
'If he was an enemy of Britain,' Mycroft said at length, 'yes.'
'I don't think I could,' Sherlock mused, and looked down at his dog, taking his face and furry ears in his hands. 'I have enemies, but I couldn't kill them.'
'Childhood squabbles are different to international conflict,' Mycroft said with a somewhat forced chuckle.
'They're not when it comes down to one man against another.'
It was evident from Sherlock's tone of voice that he did not know whether to believe what he was saying or not. For the moment, he was presenting a devil's advocate, so that he could study every side of a matter that entirely confused him.
'And if your refusal to kill a sworn enemy was seen as cowardice, indeed treason?' Mycroft asked him then.
Sherlock did not reply.
'But this is not what I meant to talk about when I came in here. God, Sherlock,' he sighed, 'you think too much. What I meant to say is –'
He swallowed. He had planned these words for ages, and now, when it came to it, he couldn't force them out. What was stopping him? his own self-esteem. He couldn't reveal any weaknesses, not ever: it made him look bad, it made him stoop from the confident, aloof self he was so proud of.
At this long hesitation, Sherlock turned back to Mycroft, and his mouth twitched a little. 'If it makes you feel any better,' he said, 'I'll miss you too, dear brother.'
He could scarcely believe he'd said it, he could believe it even less when Mycroft scooped him up in his arms and hugged him tightly and genuinely for possibly the first time in his life.
