Mycroft had been against the idea.
Unfortunately, no one had consulted him in advance. By the time he was made aware of the plan, the younger sibling was already en route, a fait accompli. There was nothing to be done but tolerate the mewling, skinny little thing, and all the interruptions and fuss that came with it. Mummy had called it Sherlock, and doted on its every gurgle, and Mycroft had begun spending much more time alone.
Gradually he got used to the new arrangements. He began thinking of the uses to which a young minion might be put, when it could walk and talk, and warmed considerably at the prospects. Then, when Sherlock was a year and a half old, the pattern had changed again.
The first night it happened he thought it was a freak event, a minor aberration in the clockwork running of the household. Sherlock, who had begun sleeping through the night almost immediately, woke and began to wail. His cries roused his brother, who attempted to filter them out with a pillow placed over the ear, but to no avail. After fifteen minutes in which no one came to comfort the infant and the shrieking did not ebb, Mycroft decided that if he wanted any sleep, he would have to see to it himself.
A light shining from his father's study downstairs had let him know where his father was; asleep in his armchair with his brandy beside him, no doubt. Mummy's door was open, her sleeping pills on her nightstand. Mycroft pulled the door almost shut as he crept past.
In the nursery, the nightlight revealed the brother standing at the rail of its cot and yowling, face red and eyes streaming tears. When it saw Mycroft it relinquished its grip on the wooden bars and held out both arms.
Mycroft gingerly lifted the child over the side, careful to keep a blanket between himself and the possibility of body fluids. He sniffed cautiously and determined with some relief that he would not be called upon to replace a nappy. At a loss for further alternatives, he sat down in the rocking chair beside the crib, baby still clutched in his arms.
The crying stopped.
Mycroft stared down in surprise, unsettled by the abrupt change. The baby, still breathing, looked up at him solemnly. He stood, cautiously… no tears. Only a solitary snuffle and a few blinks of wet eyelashes. The child had long, dark eyelashes, and eyes remarkably like Mummy's. They were strange to see in that tiny face. The dark curls, too, were like hers, and the long and graceful structure of the bones.
He took two steps toward the cot. The instant resumption of banshee cries nearly startled him into dropping the baby.
Mycroft hurriedly sat back down in the rocking chair and the noise once more subsided. He and his brother stared at each other.
Cautiously, tentatively, Mycroft began to rock. Little by little, the baby's head sunk onto Mycroft's ample shoulder. His eyelids began to droop closed.
They sat like that for more than an hour, Mycroft not daring to move the warm, soft lump in his lap for fear that jostling it would start those horrible sounds again. Eventually, though, he decided that Sherlock really must be asleep. He managed the challenging transfer from chair to cot with delicate finesse and retired gratefully to his bed.
The next night it happened again.
After a week or so he began talking to the child- in low, soothing tones, of course. He was sending the baby back to sleep, not conveying information. Still, it was pleasant, being alone in the nursery with the house still and dark around them, able to chatter, to speak nonsense if he wanted. He even came to appreciate, to some extent, the comforting warmth and the slow, even breaths of the baby as he drifted into slumber. In daylight nothing had changed; no adult discerned what was happening. Sherlock smiled at his brother a bit more, and Mycroft perhaps doled out a greater number of approving glances. That was all. But in the middle of the night those stubby arms reached for Mycroft, and found him.
The nighttime awakenings declined again as summer waned; by the time Mycroft had to return to school, they were infrequent. Still, he worried. There was no one else to do for the child what he had done.
He came home for the winter holidays to find that a wilful and contentious toddler had taken the baby's place, and the trend only grew with time. Sherlock became arrogant and spoiled, prone to sulking and tantrums and the most outrageous behaviour, things that never would have been tolerated from Mycroft had he ever been impertinent enough to try them. No one corrected Sherlock for it, and he himself never seemed to notice the appalling indulgence he received. He had no responsibilities, virtually no rules, and was perpetually hell-bent on breaking the few he did have- often with no consequences beyond being sent to his (hardly Spartan) room, and, of course, Mummy's distress, which did seem to have some shred of disciplinary power.
Mycroft tried not to let it bother him; after all, he knew what it was to be a child in that house. Sherlock didn't even have the benefit of their grandfather's genial presence, his conspiratorial smiles and meandering stories. A headstone could give no refuge from Father's disappointment, no courage when Mummy was unwell. Mycroft provided what guidance he could, even though Sherlock continually spat it back in his face; the youngest Holmes never learned to take correction well.
The whole situation became intolerable over the Christmas holidays during his last year at school. Once more he'd been awakened by his brother, but this time it was not sound but smoke that roused him.
His stamp collection was burning.
For the first time in his life, Mycroft was impassioned to the point of physical violence. He'd sprung from bed and shoved his brother to the wall, pinning the wiry boy there with one meaty arm and raising the other. Before he could strike, though, the flinching cheek of the hellion, eyes closed in terror, became the rosy cheek of the infant in innocent slumber. He had stood, panting in rage, his arm still poised, and reminded himself that he was the older brother. The exemplar. The one of whom maturity and responsibility was required.
He'd lowered his arm and released Sherlock, thrusting the boy from his room and locking the door behind him. He'd watched the last flickers of the little fire in the metal box which once safeguarded his treasures, swept the ashes into a neat pile, and gone back to bed to stare at his ceiling until morning.
Father, who had always thought the hobby a waste of time, had determined that since few of the stamps were particularly rare and nothing else had caught on fire, an apology was all that was required. Mummy, who knew better what had happened, developed a migraine that lasted three days and was unable to exert her mitigating influence. Mycroft sprinkled the gathered ashes over his grandfather's grave and then sat a number of hours beside it, contemplating times and places he had never seen and never would, and the treacherous natures of peace and humanity. Then he had walked away. For several years thereafter, he had refused to acknowledge Sherlock's existence. It wasn't a particularly mature reaction, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
He had gone to university, prepared for his trade. In all respects but the one he'd been a model son. Life moved forward. Sometimes, mostly on the rare occasions when he'd had too much to drink, he thought of the infant and the dark, still house and worried.
After three years as his father's protégé, Mycroft came in to work one morning to find the old man cold and stiff in his desk chair, the brandy bottle open beside a stack of reports. Heart attack. He had summoned the authorities, processed the reports, and gone home to break the news to Mummy. That was also the day he started his first diet.
He spoke to Sherlock at the funeral, but received no reply, and was not unduly upset by that fact.
Two months later he'd received a call from the police.
It was a very near thing, that time. Mycroft was given ample opportunity to sit, ramrod straight in an ergonomically dubious plastic chair, staring at the ashen face and motionless body of his baby brother and analyzing the path that led the two of them to street pharmaceuticals and an Intensive Care Unit. His enquiry was complicated by the repeated intrusions of a disorderly array of memories involving his brother, the cumulative effect of which was highly unsettling but ultimately educational.
When Sherlock had awakened he had been, at least temporarily, too ill to be surly and Mycroft, no longer angry, had been too concerned to be stern. The severed ties between them began stubbornly to re-knit.
It was nevertheless a rocky recuperation. Mycroft was willing to acknowledge that his brother was trying, but he was still, in many ways, spectacularly immature. Despite his intelligence, his judgment was often poor - it proved especially so during the period following their mother's death. Sherlock handled grief even less well than he did boredom, perhaps in part because it was so unfamiliar to him. He was a singularly trying person to look after.
That fact no longer made his brother angry, however, even when he was forced to resort to extraordinary measures. On the other hand, when those measures failed… The incident now generally referred to as "A Study in Pink" had nearly made him very angry indeed.
It had also left him John Watson to study. Mycroft found himself curiously conflicted about the man, despite his surface suitability. Sherlock taking a flatmate was certainly a step forward, and that he should have found one who seemed not merely to tolerate but to appreciate him was frankly astounding. Adding in the man's medical and military training, the whole situation seemed heaven sent. For the first time in his life, Sherlock had a friend. Someone he would rely on, someone who could make him eat and make him laugh.
Mycroft couldn't quite pinpoint what about the situation irritated him so.
Likely it was his latent distrust of convenient developments. Life was not convenient. Or perhaps it was the nagging concern that having a partner for his ill-advised ventures would make Sherlock more reckless than ever. One would hope that a doctor and a soldier would be a moderating and responsible influence, but it wasn't necessarily so.
Still, it seemed to be going well. There was no denying that John Watson was a good man, or that Sherlock was happier since their association. Time would tell, and Mycroft would be listening in the darkness when it did.
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