Author's Note

I'm really sorry this took so long, the next chapters to this and Hidden Motive should be up soon.

Bumblie x

Chapter 10

Mycroft held his breath as he walked down the corridor behind the nurse, his umbrella clutched tightly in his hand. It had been a present from his mother the birthday before he had left for university and one of the last things she had given him. He had debated keeping it safe, leaving in his in his house so that he could never lose it or break it or damage it in any sort of way, but that would be sentiment, and he was a Holmes. He knew his mother would have wanted him to use it anyway; it was what she had bought it for.

A yell that echoed down the corridor broke his thought and he drew in a breath in a strangled sort of gasp. The nurse obviously recognised the wailing too as she glanced back with an apologetically worried expression and picked up her pace. The noise continued as they walked until they rounded a corridor and stopped in front of a dark wooden door. It was old, like most of the furnishings in the hospital, and sturdy but opened smoothly when the nurse turned the handle. The noise level nearly doubled as they stepped into the room, but to Mycroft it barely registered as his eyes fixed on the figure thrashing on the bed.

Sherlock was neither awake nor truly asleep, caught somewhere between the two in a dream-world of panic and nightmares. His eyes were shut, still sticky from the tape of surgery that was yet to be properly removed and the tears that had leaked past his lids. His limbs were thrashing wildly, his right hand swamped in a heavy white bandage and a broken IV still taped into his left, whilst his legs wrestled beneath the sheets. The medical staff stood clumped around the bed, caught somewhere between restraining their patient to sedate him and stopping him from hurting himself further.

"Myc!" Sherlock mumbled as he cried, the word mostly lost between his sobs. "Myc, please help me, please." He was pale, though no more so than usual, but his cheeks were flushed and his curls stuck to his forehead, damp with cold sweat. Mycroft drew in a breath and stepped forwards, pushing past the nurse and only stopping beside the bed on which his brother lay. He reached out a hand, sending a glare at the doctor who moved to stop him, and hovered it over his brother, wanting so much to gather him in his arms as he had when they were tiny but fearing sending him deeper into his nightmare- filled panic. Sherlock called out again and Mycroft shut his eyes, knowing just how much his brother would hate to be seen like this.

"Sherlock?" He called quietly, his hand coming to rest on his brother's pale shoulder. Sherlock flinched away instantly ad he reached up, fighting at the hand which had touched him. His eyes were still shut but he was begging now, his voice mumbled by tears and heightened with terror. Mycroft held on, putting his other hand on his brother's head in what he desperately hoped was a calming matter. Sherlock recoiled further away, his body colliding with the metal railings of his bed with a clatter and turned his head away from the touch. He wailed again, pushing away at the hands in defence as he begged them not to hurt him.

"Sherlock? Stop this, It's just a nightmare, it's, Locket please?" he almost shouted, despair taking over his tone and his professional aurora all but gone. He felt so useless; there was normally something he could do, someone he could boss around until he got what he wanted but now there was nothing, his baby brother was thrashing in torment and all he could do was yell and plead and hope he would snap out of it. Sherlock flinched on the bed at the loud voice but then stilled, his breathing still harsh and so loud in the sudden silence of the room. Everyone stopped, the room all but turning to stone for mere seconds before the medical staff rushed forwards, and slid the needle smoothly into the IV port as they administered the sedative. Mycroft swallowed, both his breathing and hands shaky. He wasn't used to this, too feeling, and seeing his normally so emotionally controlled brother in such a state that he hadn't seen since they were children, since the day their mother had died, was getting to him. On the bed Sherlock stirred, his eyes flickering as he fought the anaesthetic.

"Myc?" he whispered eventually, his voice slurred from the drugs and rough from crying. He gazed up in confusion, his eyes barely focusing on his brother's face before they drifted shut again.

"I'm so sorry Locket," Mycroft whispered shakily as he pulled his hand from his brother's sweat-soaked curls.

It was nearly two hours later that Mycroft returned to the waiting area. The room was less empty than when he has left but was still quiet and still lacked the hustle and bustle of the typical state-funded hospital. John was still sitting in his seat, his hands clamped together in his lap and his eyes staring blindly at the chequered lino. He was tired, both mentally and physically and it showed clearly in his slumped posture and the dark rings beneath his eyes. He looked up briefly at the sound of footsteps, taking in Mycroft's worn appearance before his head dropped back to floor. Mycroft sat down beside him, resting his black umbrella neatly on his lap, the worn tip pointing towards the door.

"I'm surprised you didn't try to follow me, Doctor," He said eventually, his voice at that strange husky balance between normal speech and a whisper in the silent room. John grimaced but didn't look up. He had wanted to go, and it had taken so much strength just to sit there and ignore the urge to get to Sherlock, to help in whatever emergency the nurse had taken Mycroft to. He hadn't been needed though, and he could have just made things worse, that was all he had managed to do the evening before despite trying so hard to do what he had thought to be right.

"I wouldn't have been allowed; hospital policy," he said eventually, his tone empty. Mycroft chuckled blandly beside him, eventually drawing in a breath before speaking again.

"I think both you and I know the validity of that excuse," he said with a sigh. John grunted in reply and sat up, turning to properly look at the man beside him, his eyes finally focusing on the red scratches on the back of his hands. They weren't deep, no blood was drawn, but they were randomly placed in lines of three or four crossing over the back of Mycroft's hands and disappearing under the sleeves of his blazer. John had seen scratches just like them times before, he'd had them himself sometimes too; Military patients were often combative when they awoke from aesthetic.

"They've sedated him now," Said Mycroft, quietly, his tone barely above a whisper. "He woke before they had assumed he would, he came to too quickly and panicked. It's his past, they think, he would have built up quite a resistance to that sort of thing over the years". John nodded silently, the thoughts of Sherlock and drugs whirring in his mind before he spoke.

"Mycroft, why did Sherlock turn to drugs?" The elder Holmes appeared to tense at the question but he continued anyway when the other man made no move to speak. "People don't just turn to drugs for no reason, there's always a reason, no matter how well it's buried."

Mycroft didn't move, his posture like marble. He opened his mouth and then shut it again as though having second thoughts about what he was going to say. When he did speak his voice was carefully controlled. "Do you think we should find somewhere a little more private to have this conversation, Doctor Watson?"

A short walk later John found himself back in the first room they had waited in, the one where Sherlock had sat in the chair like a frightened child and fiddled with his hands. It was only hours ago, however many John had given up counting, but it felt like days had passed since then, and weeks before that they had been sitting in the flat, John trying to decide the best ways to confront his friend about his suspected broken wrist.

Mycroft locked the door behind him and settled stiffly in a chair, his back ram-rod straight. John took a seat opposite him and waited, his hands rested in his lap. The light was brighter in the room than before, the open curtains letting in the clouded light from outside.

"Sherlock's always been different, ever since he was a child," started Mycroft all of a sudden, his eyes focused on John and his fingers picking at the hem of his black umbrella. "But none of that seemed to matter to neither the other children nor the teachers when he was in Pre-Prep. That's up until the end of year two, "he added, noticing John's puzzled expression. " He was always clever, so much more intelligent than his year group and in the end he was moved up a year. But as I said before, the problems started when Sherlock started Prep school. He was a year younger the other boys in his year group already, and just as smart as the eleven year olds at the top of the school in Upper Three –year six to you. He made enemies with them easily, telling them deductions about themselves and each other; he didn't understand they didn't want to know, he was just telling them the truth. They bullied him horribly, Sherlock would tell me at first, say the mean boys didn't like him, but then he stopped talking and shut himself up in his room, always reading or sitting in his mind palace.

"It got worse after Christmas, until he broke his wrist at school. He never spoke about it, still no one knows exactly what happened, and still it's a mystery on his medical records. It was me that noticed it, he was only eating with one hand, the other cradled on his lap. He used to eat with one hand most of the time anyway just to annoy Father, but never with his left, always his right. Mother spent more time with him after that, she moved him to another school and he became happier, started speaking and playing his violin again once his arm had healed. He bonded with our Mother over the next three years, it was she that really taught him to play the violin, she began to understand him, I think.

"It all want wrong again when our Mother died. It was sudden, a car crash, she was there that morning and gone by lunch. Sherlock shut himself up in his room for days after he was told, playing sad songs on his violin for most of the time. Things did get better afterwards, slowly as they always do when someone that close dies, but they improved. That September Sherlock started Senior School, and at the same time I left for university leaving Sherlock alone with Father. He saw it as abandonment, that I had left him behind because I didn't care about him anymore. Sherlock was never close to Father, he was just too free-minded, they only ever spoke to argue.

"Sherlock started senior school badly, he had been abandoned by both Mother and I and left with a Farther who didn't really care. He was bullied again too, defending himself with deductions much like he does now and shutting himself up in his mind palace. I wrote to Sherlock that year but he didn't reply, I hadn't really expected him to; he was too stubborn to forgive me that easily. He ignored me mostly when I returned home that summer, and I was frankly too self-interested to notice. I left home after that year, and the next time I saw him he was shallow faced and silent, a mere ghost of the child he had once been.

"I don't know when it was exactly that he turned to drugs, but when I returned home one summer he was a different person, a stranger. He had stopped speaking again, but not in the same way as before, and he spent a majority of the little time he was home in his room. I thought he was just in his Mind Palace originally, it took me quite a while before I realised it was drugs." Mycroft sighed, his eyes fixed on the window. He stayed silent, his hands clasping his umbrella and his expression numbly blank. A small knock sounded at the door and John silently pushed himself to his feet to unlock it.

"Um, Mr Holmes it awake now, if you would like to see him now," she said nervously, her bright eyes darting between John and Mycroft who was still facing the window. John opened his mouth to reply, wanting so much to see Sherlock but unsure if that would help or complicate things further.

"Go, John; he would undoubtedly reject my presence anyway," Mycroft said blandly, his gaze still focused on the window and his tone empty of emotion once again.