"Right." Greg rubbed his neck briefly. "I want you to tell me it all, from the beginning."
Mycroft nodded and sat back. "Okay. Well after John took all of those pills, there was another attempt on his life." Greg didn't say anything. "Sherlock spoke to him about his own attempt and John left for work with the promise that they would discuss it further when he returned that evening. Well, that was the plan but Sherlock ended up with a case." He paused looking at Greg's face realising. He closed his eyes and sighed.
"What?" Greg leaned forward. "What's wrong?"
Mycroft opened his eyes. "Promise me that you won't blame yourself for it."
"For what, what did I do?" Greg's voice was suddenly panicked.
"That's what I'm talking about, you didn't do anything but Sherlock ended up on a case and I know you, since you're the one that gave it to him then you'll end up blaming yourself for what happened and it wasn't your fault."
Greg breathed in. "Not my fault?"
"No."
"Okay then, if you say it wasn't my fault then I'll try not to blame myself but I make no promises until I've heard it."
"Fair enough." Mycroft shuffled a little. "When Sherlock got back from Chelsea, he said?" Greg showed a little glint of recognition. "He found John sitting in the dark…" Mycroft paused. "With a gun in his mouth."
Greg's eyes widened. "Wha…"
Mycroft put his hands up. "He managed to talk him down, obviously, but things just wouldn't get any better and Sherlock knew that one day he would be too late. He text me, he said 'I need your help but you can't tell Lestrade'." As Mycroft lowered his hands he felt a little weird calling Greg that and it was subtly clear that Greg felt weird hearing it.
"And what did you say?"
"I told him the truth." Mycroft took a breath. "I said that it depended what it was." Greg nodded. "I'm sorry but like you said, he's my broth-"
Greg put his hand up and Mycroft fell to silence. Greg laughed a little but not from amusement and Mycroft looked on a little worried. "I know you'll do anything for him but just hearing you say it like that is, uh… a little… I don't know how to take it."
There was a sad silence in the room for a little while.
Eventually Greg rubbed his hair and turned back to look at Mycroft. "Okay then, what did he answer with?"
"He said 'Saving John Watson's life, once and for all'." Greg then made a gesture for Mycroft to keep going. "We devised a plan, I argued with him a hundred times over, not even stating the obvious, I told him-"
"What's the obvious? Don't skip over parts, Mycroft. This isn't a film, we can't just skip to after this and hope everything will be 's obvious to you is not always obvious to everyone else."
The elder Holmes unbuttoned his waistcoat and laid it over the arm of the chair next to him as he spoke. "Apologies. I argued with him that it was a ridiculous and overly dramatic idea, the poor man was in the state he was in because he already had one man's life on his conscious and did he really expect that having another would do him any favours. He argued that I was only saying all of that because I didn't want to lie to you and I told him that he was half right – I believed everything I was saying and I didn't want to lie to you. And then we got into this massive argument about how could I actively risk one man's life to stop inconveniencing myself."
Greg watched as Mycroft unconsciously shuffled onto the end of the couch pulling his feet up onto the cushion so that his whole body was facing Greg, stretched his arms down around his legs until he curled his fingers around his feet. Greg turned a little to watch him, it wasn't often that Mycroft got genuinely upset and Greg was still getting used to it involving him.
"I spat abuse at him about how he didn't think about that when he decided to take his own life for real and that risking my happiness was not inconveniencing myself rather that the whole existence of my happiness was an inconvenience to him. I shouldn't have said that because I know that isn't true but I was mad. How could I not be? The first time in a long time that I was happy and he wanted me throw that away for a stranger and then I felt awful because that stranger was John and…" Mycroft sighed and hit his head off of his knees. "I made him promise something awful."
"Made him promise what?" Greg turned a little.
Mycroft lifted his head and his eyes were red. He paused. "I made him promise, I said that he had to promise if we were going to do this, to fake his death and keep it from you and John, that if we were really going to do this and to prove that it was about John and not about anything else."
"What else could it be about?"
Mycroft grunted and hit his head again. "I don't know! I don't know what I was thinking." He looked up. "I was just so wound up between the thought of Sherlock committing suicide again, whether it was real or not, and the threat of John killing himself. But the thought of lying to you and maybe losing you was just… I just… I don't know."
"Mycroft, what did you make him promise?" Greg leaned forward, getting more anxious.
Mycroft looked to Greg for a second before he finally said it. "I made him promise not to come back."
Suddenly Greg felt sick.