"You're going to have to cry."

"Why don't you cry?"

As soon as it escaped from Faylinn's mouth she regretted saying it - there was a time and place for her 8 year old spoilt brat hysterics and this was not it. Mycroft shot a short but piercing look in her direction from the seat next to her, having been sitting with his head in his hands for the past ten minutes.

"Because." He took a deep breath, evidently trying to contain his frustration. They locked eye contact and Faylinn automatically knew what was coming, it wasn't as if she hadn't heard it before. "I am at the heart of the British Government. I babysit the free world and if I am seen to cry, there is a distinct possibility that it might fall apart."

She wanted to laugh in his face, tell him he was being ridiculous and that he was as much of a drama queen as Sherlock ever was, but again, it didn't feel appropriate. Today was going to be a long one.

Settling for the traditional eye roll, the youngest turned to look out of the window. They sat in silence, Mycroft pondering the day's strange arrangements and Faylinn unable to tear her attention away from the raindrops racing each other down the glass. The rest of the journey passed with this reverent quietness - not awkward, but full of thought.

To her surprise, Mycroft instructed the driver to remain in the car upon their arrival. The self proclaimed 'glue holding together the western world' ducked under his faithful umbrella and before Faylinn could protest, had opened her car door and was offering her shelter from the driving rain.

"Are you ready?" he said.

She simply nodded. Trusting herself to speak didn't seem feasible in that particular moment; she needed the time to compose her thoughts.

The small and select congregation were already seated in the church. The siblings trotted up the cracked steps in front of the building to join the wooden box in the foyer. The lid remained firmly shut, obviously. Mycroft took the time to shake his umbrella dry and upon his return, he knew something was wrong: Faylinn's facial expression said it all. He looked at her questioningly and when she refused to meet his gaze, a light bulb suddenly glowed deep within his grey matter. It hit him in the gut too. Purple forget-me-nots crowned the oak. Delicate and sweet-smelling, they were immediately recognisable to two people who had spent their childhoods surrounded by them. They had been the flower of choice almost twenty years ago, in that very same church, when all three siblings had stood together behind them. Mycroft vowed to have someone clearing their desk by the end of the day (his rage fuelled rampage through the office that evening was inevitable).

Not allowing for any further reflection, the music started. It was something generic that Sherlock would have hated - still did hate - the tense in which to speak of her brother still presented a challenge for Faylinn. That was something that would have to be fixed quickly. She took a deep breath as the coffin bearers from the funeral home began the march down the mile-long isle. As they stood at the back of the church she scrutinised the room.

He'd hate that. And that. And that. Especially that.

Both Holmes didn't dare look at the group that this whole charade had been constructed for, including Greg and Mrs Hudson. They were sat together with Molly Hooper, huddled as if shielding each other from the cold. In the pew in front of them, John Watson cut a rather sorrowful and lonesome figure. This was another blow for the members of the precession. Faylinn noticed that Mycroft had elected to focus on the royal blue carpet at his feet. She quickly followed suit.

The organ halted and Mycroft lead his sister to the seat that was on the opposite side of the isle to the good doctor. They gave polite nods to Mrs Scott and her husband. Upkeeping his image, the politician stared at the altar with an unreadable, steely expression.

Yet more painfully average hymns (which Faylinn's fingertips played from memory on the side of her thigh) and fumbling long speeches from the vicar followed. Faylinn intermittently threw a look towards John, who didn't seem to notice or care. He seemed to be biting incredibly hard on his bottom lip. She wondered if he too felt hostility towards Mycroft after being informed that the funeral arrangements were fully taken care of. Did he resent the generic melodies that filled the stone building, the prayers that held little to no relevance and the sad understanding attempted by the robed balding man reading them in the same way that she did? At least she could take comfort in the knowledge that Sherlock was alive and well, drinking all of Mycroft's tea and making a mess. John Watson could not be afforded such luxuries.

Mycroft's speech danced around the edges of nostalgia and sentimentality, but he was careful to keep his tone even and under control. He recalled light hearted stories, giving away only the titles, as if creating a flipbook or a film trailer of his brother's life. Childhood trips to Paris, cardboard pirate ships and from later life, phrases lifted straight out of a certain blog, including The Aluminium Crutch and The Six Thatchers. There were strategic and notable omissions: a black hole engulfed his early to mid twenties, the blatant jump from young to middle aged acting as further proof that Sherlock's adult life only officially begun when John Watson stumbled in to it. The cases the speaker had chosen, Faylinn also realised, were not the detective's most heroic or his most well known - they were the ones that had no known connection to Moriarty.

The eulogy concluded with a story from early life, one that Faylinn had never heard before.

"My brother, in his never ending quest to reach his professional and intellectual peak, often gave others reason to portray him as a cold, unloving machine. Despite my personal denouncement of sentiment, I would like to make it clear that this is not how I wish for him to be remembered. He deserves a better, a bigger legacy than that. Because, you see, Sherlock Holmes was a man who wanted always wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to help and to do his upmost to make a difference. His career choice of course reflects this, although I would like to illustrate his desire to please with a different tale. When he was five years old, Sherlock visited my bedroom in our family home. This was when teddy bears were the still best kind of sidekick and before he had learned to tame his famous black curls. He was a confident child, as I'm sure you can all imagine, so I naturally found his anxiousness concerning - he was worried that he would be unable to fulfil his new role as a big brother, worried that the skills required would not come to him naturally enough. Whilst the subsequent years have not been free of trials and tribulations, I think I can say with some certainty that his concerns were unfounded." He flashed a look at the woman in front of him, now alone in the front pew. "Sherlock has thrived as a big brother and, if I may speak for everyone else here today, he has thrived as a friend. Anyone permitted to enter his tight inner circle would be capable of recognising that. Sherlock Holmes certainly impacted up on every life he played a part in. I am incredibly proud to say that he enriched mine. "

The addition of 'friend' was clearly aimed at those on the left of the church and in particular, John Watson. Perhaps Mycroft had finally understood that extracting the doctor from the loop was unnecessarily cruel?

A handful of sentences embellished his point further. However, Faylinn found herself unable to focus on them; tributes like this would never be heard in Sherlock's presence, or indeed anywhere beyond the stained glass, stone and marble that constituted this place of worship. She was lost in the previous anecdote, for a moment breathing in the smell of the second bedroom on the very top floor of their country house, with the large bay window and the broken door handle. Imagining a pre-Faylinn Sherlock. The nostalgia made everything feel very real, as if the past was able to illuminate the present, pulling everything in to a sharp focus.

An ominous sting in her eyes forced her to look away. The eldest Holmes collected his notes from the lectern, the scuffling of creamy parchment deafening thanks to the outdated microphone. Faylinn shuffled along to allow him to sit down. Through this short, silent process, Mycroft was able to gain a closer view of her features. Two beads of water raced down her cheek. Giving her a reassuring look, he casually reached in to the breast pocket of his suit to retrieve a handkerchief, never once looking away from the flickering candle rested on the altar. She received it gratefully - it was a relief to know that she did not have to hear him gloat. Her tears had escaped not as a result of Mycroft's request, but because she had momentarily become convinced of her own lie. Method acting in the extreme.

Pulling herself together (the proximity to Mycroft made her back straighten and thankfully, the tears dissolve) she dutifully responded to the words of the vicar - expressions fell out of her lips and required no thought. This was a hangover from those childhood Sunday mornings spent in the village chapel.

It was a short walk to the burial site. Faylinn learnt that her brother had specifically requested a plot that was sheltered by an aging oak tree. As a so called 'chief mourner', she was forced to lead the procession, sandwiched between the coffin that was void of a body and a score of individuals that mourned for it. The eyes of friends, landladies, housekeepers and old schoolmates who pretended to be devastated bore down on her back. Until the prayers finally resumed at the grave side, ripping their attention away, the weight on her shoulders made it feel as though she was actually carrying the harvest oak box.

Faylinn simply wished to disappear. She blinked away images of herself jumping, plunging in to the damp muddy black hole that the mourners currently framed. She would slide down and away from prying eyes. The void, convenient and inviting, taunted her, no more than two steps away.

The youngest member of the Holmes family smiled weakly at Molly Hooper, after realising that her gaze had unwittingly fallen on the registrar. Perhaps predictably, Molly looked rather flustered as a result of this accidental arrangement. Staring at her polished pointed shoes quickly became the safest option available to Faylinn.

The staged funeral, the play without a rehearsal, was now entering its final act. The wake would follow. More acting. More unbearable sorrow. It was at this point that Faylinn envied her brother - even whilst squatting on Mycroft's sofa in his pyjamas, Sherlock was capable of bringing the world to its knees. How typical of him, to be too busy for his own funeral.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed it. I found this one rather difficult, but it was something I really wanted to do. I would really love to get your opinions on it...

Thank you for reading!