Chapter 10: Mycroft Interferes (or, from his perspective, Intervenes)
It is early in the afternoon. Footsteps mark their measured way up the seventeen steps to the flat, and Sherlock knows it is Mycroft. This does not surprise him; he's been expecting it. Surely one of Mycroft's minions had noticed the giant wings, obscured as much as he'd been able, but still briefly visible on the CCTV camera that seems permanently pointed at his front door. He doesn't think he can keep it a secret, but he sure isn't going to help Mycroft figure John out.
Mycroft taps twice, politely, on the living room door, peering in at them as if this is just a social call. His faux smile is in evidence. "Sherlock," he greets politely, but his eyes immediately swing over to John, regarding him with powerful and inadequately concealed interest.
"Bloody interfering bastard," Sherlock mutters under his breath. But just loud enough for Mycroft to hear him. "Sticking your fat nose into-"
"Now, brother," Mycroft comes in, umbrella swinging from his left hand. "Etiquette, remember? Why don't you invite me in and introduce me to your new... friend."
John's eyebrows go up. He was unaware that Sherlock had a brother. The man is as tall as Sherlock himself, and primly dressed in a three piece suit. He holds a furled umbrella in one hand, as if it is a prop. Which it must be, seeing as how it hasn't been raining outside. The man's smooth, high forehead wrinkles a bit as his own eyebrow rises. He walks over and holds out his hand.
"How do you do? Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's elder brother."
"And not my keeper!" Sherlock snaps. Mycroft ignores him, waiting for John to respond.
John has remembered his manners along with his identity, and comes to his feet, holding out his own hand. "Nice to meet you, sir. I'm John Watson." They shake hands, and then there's an awkward silence in the flat. John stirs uncomfortably under Mycroft's penetrating stare. "Would you like some tea?"
"Tea would be lovely," Mycroft replies, at the same time Sherlock interjects, "No, he'll just be leaving."
But this is the game the brothers play; they both know their roles well. Mycroft will not leave until his curiosity is satisfied, and Sherlock needs his help this time.
A few minutes later they are all arranged in the sitting room. Mycroft is in Sherlock's chair, John in his own, and Sherlock is flung with abandon full length on the sofa, pouting, with one arm mostly over his eyes. They're slitted open, though, and keeping tabs on the scene in front of him.
"You've moved in recently, then?" Mycroft delicately begins the interrogation.
John already looks nervous. He doesn't know if he should say One week since I hatched; or Three and a half months since Sherlock found my egg; or, Four months ago, after I died in Afghanistan. Well, he's positive selecting the last one is actually not a good choice. He looks to Sherlock for guidance.
"He moved in last week," Sherlock says impatiently, tugging at the bandage wrapped around his hand. "He's recently back from Afghanistan, Mycroft. Why aren't you minding your own bloody business? Wouldn't you rather be eating some cake somewhere? Behind a desk, perhaps?"
Mycroft looks chiding. "But Sherlock. I've got the most interesting pictures to show you. I thought you might help me solve a little mystery." He pulls printouts of CCTV shots from a briefcase.
"I'm not interested in helping you solve your mysteries, Mycroft. Surely even with your limited intellect, you can do it yourself. I'm amazed you even managed to prise your significant bulk away from your desk."
John stays quiet, looking back and forth between the brothers as they snap and spar. He tries to see what pictures Mycroft is holding, but they are tilted the wrong way. Mycroft stands up and moves to sit on the sofa next to Sherlock, shoving his legs onto the floor. Sherlock hisses in discomfort, as his ribs are tweaked, but Mycroft ignores it. He spreads six pictures across the coffee table. Sherlock pointedly refuses to look, but John comes over and checks them out.
He sees photos of Sherlock bundling his mostly limp body out of a cab, then on the stoop to the front door. The next shot shows them struggling, and then there are a pair of wings stretching out, many feet on each side, although by no means fully extended. In the next frame, Sherlock's arms are visibly trying to contain and pull in the wings. John is concealed behind his body. In the last shot, the door is open, the two men are tumbling inside, and one long brown wing is thrust halfway over the threshold. A knife flashes silver in John's hand, diving unmistakably towards Sherlock.
All three men are silent for several breaths, then, "Would you care to explain?" asks Mycroft. He is looking, not at Sherlock, but at John. John's tongue flips out nervously, and he fidgets, looking over at Sherlock. Sherlock is no help. He keeps his face turned towards the back of the sofa.
"Hhmahem," John clears his throat. "What, exactly, needs explaining?"
Mycroft looks disbelieving, and then a tiny, genuine smile graces his face for a fraction of a second. "We could start with the wings. And then move on to the weapon, and the fact that Sherlock is clearly bandaged up and suffering from at least two knife wounds."
"Erm. Yes. Well, I stitched up his hand. And his side is really ok, just a few bandages for that."
"I am relieved to hear it," Mycroft sounds minimally sarcastic. "How did this happen?"
Sherlock frowns ferociously at John. "Don't tell him anything, John. Well. About that. We'll just. Hmmm." He sits up in agitation and stares gloomily at his brother. "I think we'll need your help." He sounds very morose about that. "John, here. Dr. Watson. Well, it seems that he's been declared dead in battle." He plucks at his fingers, finds them tapping rapidly against his leg. "Actually, dead and buried. And yet. Here he is."
Mycroft stays calm. "Right. And what does this have to do with wings and weapons? You'll give me the whole story, or none at all." And suddenly he sounds like the older brother of the past, bossing Sherlock around and threatening him with confiscating his chemistry set if he didn't behave.
Sherlock snarls. "Fine. But when I've told you, you need to fix the records, so John can have his life back. Ok?" He waits until Mycroft reluctantly nods. John pulls a chair near the sofa and has a seat as well. They all hold their mugs of tea and wait.
Sherlock begins. "I found John as an egg. Down in the basement." He challenges Mycroft with a glare, but Mycroft remains silent. His face is incredulous, but he doesn't interrupt. "He hatched 93 days later, with a blank slate. That was a week ago. But beginning yesterday, memories have been bleeding through, and just this afternoon he recalled who he is. Was. Is." Sherlock bends his head and scrubs his hands through his hair, agitated, taped white gauze flashing through dark locks. "And he remembers the shot that killed him. We think." John instinctively rubs at his chest, and can feel the ghost of pain in his leg. He looks perturbed.
"You'll want proof, of course," Sherlock says. "Probably the computer's finished running the DNA comparisons with the database by now, so we can see that." He looks at John. "John, laptop."
John rolls his eyes, but stands and walks over to the desk, sweeping the laptop off and tossing it at Sherlock in one smooth movement. Sherlock catches it with a glare, and pops it open. He continues talking as he runs through menus on the screen. "The egg bit is documented in detail, with pictures, in my lab notebook. But that never goes beyond this room." He levels a very serious look at his brother. "Do you understand that, Mycroft? Never. Or you will have an enemy you may not be able to destroy."
He waits. John waits. Mycroft is silent, considering. Obviously something very fantastic is going on here. Fantastic as in fantasy, sheer fantasy. So his two choices are, believing in fantasy, in which case a promise is primarily meaningless, or finding out how Sherlock is wrong, in which case his promise is invalid. "Fine," he agrees.
Sherlock continues. "When John... hatched... he had a couple of new skills." And he goes on to detail the knives and the wings.
"May I see?" Mycroft politely requests. But to John it feels more like an order or a threat. Sherlock grimaces at him, which means, We don't have to like it, but do it anyway, so he does. He stands and moves a couple steps closer. He twists the knives into existence in his palms and offers one (only one, because he's a soldier, and doesn't trust this man) to Mycroft.
Mycroft takes it and holds it as if he's familiar with a knife, which surprises John, as he looks like such a toff. He curves his fingers around the leather-wrapped hilt and says, "Standard issue military blade. Ten inch. Ka-bar." John flexes his hands again and both knives disappear.
Mycroft jumps a little as his hand is suddenly emptied. Sherlock smiles, smug. "Where did it... they... go?"
John shrugs. "I don't know. Back where they come from. I just pull them," he twists again, "and there they are. I can't explain better than that." Mycroft looks surprised, and Sherlock bares a toothy, aggressive grin. John says, "It's the same with my wings." He shrugs minutely and the wings are there, between one whisper and the next, fluttering brown and soft and vast, and then holds them still, curved near his body. He twitches his shoulders again, infinitesimally, and they vanish. Mycroft's face is colorless, slack with shock, and he stares hard trying to find the illusion.
"I've done tests," Sherlock says smugly. "X-rays, scans, DNA and other analyses. Nothing to be found." Although Sherlock himself isn't very happy that there's no explanation for John's existence, much less his extraordinary abilities, he is indeed happy to baffle Mycroft. He swings the laptop towards his brother. "Here. DNA's a match for Dr. John Watson, recently deceased. I'm so glad we've got a DNA database for the military."
Mycroft looks at the results and leans back. "Show me again," he demands.
By the end of an hour, John has gone through many iterations of Extant and Elsewhere, both wings and knives. Mycroft, and Sherlock too, circle around him, questioning why his wings can go through his clothes, how the knives can leave and then return. It represents a complete repudiation of physics as humanity understands it. John doesn't try to explain, because he doesn't have a clue. The Holmes brothers are more likely to figure out why this can happen than he, certainly.
Mycroft finally says, frustrated, "What are you supposed to be? An angel or something?"
John snorts. "Not likely. I'm still me. I'm only me. Just with some new... facets. Anyway, is an angel likely to cut up his... friend? By accident?"
Sherlock is surprised at the warmth he feels when John calls him friend, and he keeps his face utterly expressionless in response. Feelings make him uneasy. "You were having a very difficult time," he explains. Stiffly. Pompously. Trying to soothe. "All your life's memories were coming back to you, and when I grabbed you, you initiated the fight or flight response. Thus the knives and wings."
John stills for a minute, and then begins to giggle. "Fight," he repeats. "Or flight." He thinks of knives and wings. "Or both," he laughs. Sherlock begins to laugh too, relieved to hear his friend content, and the absurdity of the impossible situation crashes on him, as if it's been held off for the past week. He can't stop, and John's laughter escalates until he's doubled over in his chair, wheezing and wiping tears off his cheeks.
"Sorry about cutting you," John chortles as his breath hiccups through a laugh.
"It was nothing," Sherlock snorts back, flapping the bandaged hand in dismissal.
They eventually settle down and lean back, panting slightly. Mycroft has watched the whole debacle without cracking a smile. Evidently, he doesn't get the joke. John and Sherlock look at each other, look at Mycroft, and begin to laugh again. The planet, after tilting wildly, seems back on its regular axis again.
When Mycroft leaves, it's with an admonishment to behave circumspectly, and a promise that he'll see what he can do to upgrade John Watson's status to alive and retired instead of dead. Of course, he plans a thorough investigation of him as well, worried that enemies have somehow (supernaturally?) managed to get a spy into the Holmes brothers lives. Sherlock knows Mycroft's plans, but is unconcerned. He knows John is exactly what he says. He just doesn't know how or why.
Sherlock and John order takeaway and lounge around the sitting room, lax with relief, days of stress released with laughter. They eat, utterly comfortable, side by side on the sofa.