Sherlock stirred his mushy, lukewarm porridge around with his plastic spoon. He'd decided that there was only one thing more unfair than ordering him to put on weight and forbidding him to eat: ordering him to put on weight and giving him nothing except this repulsive gruel to eat.

He glanced up at the clock. 7:50am. Well over an hour before Mrs. Hudson was going to show up with something more palatable.

Ugh.

"How are we feeling, Mr. Holmes?" The morning duty nurse, a chirpy woman in her early thirties, had just popped her head in the door. Sherlock threw his spoon down petulantly.

"No, I can't eat this," he announced.

She clucked her tongue and came over to the bed. "Oh, dear," she said, in the sort of condescending way that put Sherlock's teeth on edge. "Not well?"

"I feel perfectly well," he snapped, even though he was in more pain than he'd been in the night before and was tempted, before her remark, to ask her for more pethidine. More nausea, too, but that was probably the inadequacy sitting on the breakfast tray. "If I'm to be putting on weight before I'm released, you need to provide something more edible than this."

She picked up his chart from the end of the bed and glanced at it for a few seconds in silence. "I'm sorry," she said, and sounded it. "You're on a restricted diet for today."

"So?"

"So there's really nothing else on the breakfast menu that you're allowed to have, except tea and juice."

Sherlock snarled, throwing the blanket onto the floor and promptly regretting it as pain gouged at his side. He drew in a sharp breath, guarding the padding over the incision with one hand.

"Oh, there you go, you've gone and hurt yourself." The nurse was urging him to lie back against his pillows. "I'm sorry about the porridge. I know the food around here is awful, but there's really nothing else I'm allowed to give you."

Sherlock, feeling the cool damp of sweat prickling up around his temples and hairline, looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. John was an early riser by habit. He would be up and active by now…

Then he was struck by another consideration.

Flinching in more pain, he leaned over to the bedside table and picked up his phone, flicking hastily through the address book and putting the phone to his ear.

"Are you -"

He held a finger up to silence her as he listened down the line for a few moments. "Mycroft, it's me," he announced. "… I'm fine. No, actually, I'm not fine. I'm starving. For God's sake, I need something edible and I need it now... I'd do it for you… yes, I would… Mycroft, if I starve to death it's going to be your fault…"

~~oo~~oo~~oo~~

'Now' wasn't possible; however, forty-nine minutes later Mycroft arrived on the scene bearing a green hemp shopping bag on one arm.

"So you haven't starved to death yet?" he asked sourly, putting it on Sherlock's bed-table and opening it. Sherlock propped himself up a little more, alert and sniffing like a terrier.

"Did you bring -?"

"The last time you demanded strawberry milk, you were six years old," Mycroft commented, bringing the carton out and handing it to him.

"It was also the last time I had surgery, as I recall. Tonsils." Sherlock fumbled urgently to open the carton, as if he couldn't wait another second longer. "Did you bring the chocolate?"

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "Yes."

"Excellent." Sherlock stuck the straw in his mouth; it really had been thirty years since he'd last demanded strawberry milk, and the flavour took him aback for a few seconds. Is that really what strawberry milk tastes like these days…? Still better than hospital porridge, though. He swallowed hard, then gritted his teeth.

"What's wrong?"

Mycroft never missed a trick.

"It's fine," he said as soon as he had a hold on the nausea that had flooded up into his throat. "Just… drank it too fast, that's all."

"You're supposed to be gradually getting back to normal, Sherlock."

"I'm supposed to be putting on three kilograms," he retorted. Nonetheless, he put the carton down on the table and leaned back against his pillows, taking as deep a breath as he comfortably could. "I need you to do something else for me today, Mycroft," he continued.

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "You assume I have both the time and inclination."

"You should. I'm sure it's going to be more interesting than your usual business. I need you to go to the Bartlett house and look around."

"The police have already done that."

"The police aren't me."

"Neither am I."

Sherlock paused for a few seconds. "I despise you for making me say this," he said. "But no, you're not me. You're... better than me. You see more, and you see it faster. You can also stop smirking, because I'm not saying this to boost your self-esteem… as if it needed any boosting. This crime's growing colder by the hour, Mycroft. There isn't time for me to get out of here before I can go and look myself. If everything has to be on hold for weeks, we'll never solve the murder. Adelaide Bartlett will probably be put on trial because of the circumstantial evidence, and you, brother, will not be popular with the French…" He looked up as the duty nurse came back in.

"What do you want?" he asked her ungraciously.

"Time to get up, Mr. Holmes." She smiled broadly, as if expecting Sherlock to be rapturous about the prospect. Instead, he looked at her in shocked silence for a few seconds.

"What? No."

"Yes. You need to get up and moving as soon as possible. You've been cleared to get up to the bathroom and have a shower this morning, as long as you're careful not to get the dressings wet."

~~oo~~oo~~oo~~

"Ow!"

John, exiting the lift a few minutes later, quickened his step toward the doorway of Sherlock's room. He found him standing at the end of his bed, clinging to the foot-rail with one hand and petulantly flicking away his nurse with the other. Mycroft stood looking on near the window, arms folded.

"What's going on?" John demanded.

"John," Sherlock got out. He was sweating and white-knuckled. "They're making me walk and it hurts."

John, remembering similar ventures in mobility after being shot (both times), resisted the urge to smile. "Yeah, it certainly does," he agreed. "But pneumonia and deep-vein thrombosis hurt worse. Hold up."

"You said that pain is a sign that you should stop doing whatever hurts," Sherlock retorted, exhaling with a shudder.

"Physical therapy is different," John said. "Come on, you don't want to be supervised in the shower, do you? Or worse, a sponge bath? 'Cause I'm not doing it, and I'll bet a year's pay Mycroft's not doing it - so it's going to be some poor nurse."

"Yes, that would be me," the nurse agreed placidly. "And you've already told me four times how much you hate me, Mr. Holmes."

John rolled his eyes. "We'll talk about that later. In the meantime, you do need to move. Just a few steps."

"Did you go to the morgue?" Sherlock demanded, ignoring the look on his nurse's face.

"Yes, last night."

"And?"

"And I'll tell you what Molly thought once you've had a shower and you're feeling a bit more normal."

Faced with the impending news, and the very real possibility of being sponge-bathed, Sherlock shuffled forward for a few painful steps. Finally he was close enough to the bathroom doorway to reach out for the door frame. He turned.

"Stop staring," he said, though it was unclear whether he was speaking to John, Mycroft, the nurse or all three. "And don't hurry me."

Once Sherlock had slammed the bathroom door shut, John glanced across at Mycroft. "I could tell he wasn't going to like that much," he said. "I just hope a decent hot shower will put him in a better mood. Mrs. Hudson will be here in an hour. She doesn't need to put up with that." He stifled a yawn into his hand. Mycroft raised one eyebrow.

"Difficult night with Charlotte again?" he enquired.

'Charlie' was so deeply ingrained that John took a second to work out who Mycroft was referring to. "Oh, she wasn't that bad," he said. "Only woke up twice. If we could get her to stop screeching like she's being murdered when she does…" He shrugged.

"While Sherlock's otherwise preoccupied," Mycroft said, "I'm going to go to the cafeteria for some coffee. I suppose you could do with some?"

John looked suddenly wary. "Mycroft," he said. "The only time you ever invite me to have coffee with you is when you're on one of your stupid power kicks and want to try to bribe or threaten me into doing something. So which is it this time? Bribe or threat?"

"Neither," Mycroft said innocently. "Though as it happens, there is a matter I'd like to discuss with you…" He glanced toward the bathroom door, behind which the shower was running at full pelt.

"Oh my God," John groaned, putting his face in his hands for a second. "Fine, okay. Let's get whatever it is over and done with, shall we?"

~~oo~~oo~~oo~~

But Mycroft, curiously, seemed in no great hurry to begin. They'd reached the cafeteria and were sitting at a table, mediocre cappuccinos in front of them, before Mycroft drew something out of his inner jacket pocket and silently passed it across to John.

John took it, looking blankly at the rectangular piece of paper in his hand. "It's a cheque," he said.

"Well spotted."

"Made out to me."

"Yes."

"For ten thousand pounds, Mycroft."

"Yes."

John fixed Mycroft with an obstinate stare until he sighed and shut his eyes for a moment.

"Happy birthday," he said at last.

"Yeah, my birthday's not for a fortnight. You know that. And you gave Sherlock a watch for his birthday, and it wasn't worth ten thousand quid." John leaned back in his chair. "Come on. What's this about? Done something you know I won't like, trying to buy me off again?"

"Not at all. I do owe you, though. Dr. Grantham told me yesterday that if Sherlock's surgery had been delayed by two or three hours, he probably would have died."

"That's not a reason to give me this," John countered. "You've never put a price on your brother's life before now. And I don't think I need any extra reward for not letting Sherlock die on his bathroom floor, just because his appendix inconveniently ruptured at one in the morning -"

"John -"

"No, this is something else." John shook his head. "Something else you need to explain. What do I want with ten thousand quid? I'm waiting to hear it."

"And you will, if you'll let me get a word in edgewise," Mycroft said, with just a hint of ice in his voice.

John subsided, but Mycroft seemed to be hesitating again. He stirred his coffee for a few seconds.

"I was ten years old when Sherlock was born," he said at last. A disappointing revelation, at least to begin with. John had known that for years. "Our father wasn't even in the country at the time. I was told that he was in Milan on business. I was fourteen when I learned he was actually in Majorca with his mistress."

"Bastard," John commented.

"Rather." Mycroft clinked his spoon against the side of the cup. "Though by the time I discovered the truth, I wasn't surprised. I suppose you have this idea in your head of Sherlock and me growing up among innumerable servants hired to cater to our every whim?"

John considered this. While he knew that the Holmes family were wealthy, Mycroft had a point. He couldn't remember ever hearing Sherlock refer to a cook or a maid or a nanny… just one babysitter. "Well, it goes with the territory, doesn't it?" he asked.

Mycroft shook his head. "Our mother was a capable woman who wanted to run her household on her own. Servants were not part of her upbringing. The Devereaux family are artists and intellectuals and freethinkers, but they don't have a lot of capital." He shrugged. "Given our father's philandering, she was also probably against giving him too many opportunities with female staff. Or so I've always gathered. They were married for twenty-three years, but I don't think he was ever faithful to her."

"Okay, just where is this going?"

"It was only after our mother died that I realised how severe her post-partum depression was after Sherlock was born." Mycroft was stirring his coffee around again. "I do have vague memories of her before that, and she was different then. Never exactly a cheerful woman, you understand. Not in her nature, and she had a very demanding government job that took up a great deal of her time. Clever woman, indeed... in a time when women of her class weren't particularly encouraged to be clever. After Sherlock, she… well." He shrugged. "She never really recovered. And I can't help but feel that she may have… had a better relationship with both of us if her condition had been recognised and treated promptly. But we didn't know. I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't know," John said. "You were only a kid. You think Molly's...?"

"I think it's a possibility that's better prevented than repaired," Mycroft said stiffly, looking down at the cup on the table. "When I saw her here yesterday, I saw a bewildered and socially isolated young woman who has no confidence in her ability to care for Charlotte."

"Hey -"

"And I've no doubt you're doing your best for her," Mycroft spoke over the top of John's protest. "But the events of this week alone should be a demonstration that you are only one man, and your area of expertise is not in cognitive therapy."

John looked down at the cheque in his hand again. "So this… is money to send Molly to therapy?"

"I believe it's called 'Parents Counselling', and it would do you good to go with her." Mycroft took a sip of his coffee and handed across a small green and white business card. "As a matter of fact, I think it may be a requirement of the service. I've used several therapists at this particular clinic before, for various reasons. I can vouch that they are professional, discreet and effective, but they're also expensive. That should cover six months, by which time I hope that Molly is a more confident and happy mother."

"Mycroft… come on." John folded the cheque and held it back out to him. "I can't take this. This is a lot of money…"

"'A lot' is relative."

"You just got done telling me the Devereauxs aren't rich."

"They aren't. The Holmeses are, and I have a comfortable income in my own right. Harley Street is the best in the country, but it also carries a price tag of one hundred and sixty pounds per session."

John did a quick calculation. "Then I only need half of this," he protested.

"You have a sister who -"

"Oh, no." John shook his head and slid the cheque over to Mycroft's side of the table. "No, Mycroft. I wouldn't have Clara pay for Harry's rehab, you're certainly not paying for it."

"You're determined to dictate who should and should not pay for your sister to get well."

"She is well," John protested. "She hasn't had a drink since Charlie was born."

"No," Mycroft agreed. "Or at least, she hadn't when I last saw her. But surely you're aware that there is no such thing -"

"No such thing as an ex-alcoholic, just alcoholics who are on or off the wagon," John recited. "I know. I've heard it a hundred times. Look… I really appreciate this, Mycroft. I mean, I do. But Molly and I are hardly paupers, so we don't need charity. You want to talk about how we were brought up? Well, I was brought up to not take cheques from people, even if they are filthy rich. I think if you… hey - "

Mycroft had pushed his chair out and got to his feet. "You know what they say about gift horses," he remarked over his shoulder as he put his hand out for the cafeteria door. "Though I suppose I should be grateful that you didn't hit me this time."

"Mycroft -"

But Mycroft was gone; the door shut with a heavy thud and a jingle of door-chimes behind him.

A/N- Yes, I know the ACD stories had seven years between Mycroft and Sherlock… but the ACD stories also had Harry as a man. Since there's no BBC info on the age difference, I made it larger, to reflect the age difference of the actors.