Mycroft was laying down. On a bed. To his left something was hissing, beeping. And someone was holding his hand. Mycroft knew he was going to have to open his eyes. He was going to have to see where he had woken up this time. He choked. There was tube down his throat. The hand left his and moved to the back of his head as the tube was removed. The hand's owner making reassuring noises. Male. Obviously medical. Strong. Hands average size. Mycroft opened his eyes, clinging to the desperate shred of hope that somehow he would wake up and it would be Nick stood beside his bed.

John Watson smiled down at him. His eyes had dark circles under them from lack of sleep, but otherwise, this was John Watson as he should be, chunky and solid. Mycroft was back in what he thought of as the real world.

"Sherlock?" his voice was croaky and sore.

"He's gone to get coffee. He was driving me mad."

"He's alive?"

"Unless he's managed to piss someone in the cafe off."

"He's alive." And that meant Nick was dead. Still. Again.

"You knocked yourself out on your kitchen cupboard. But unfortunately you were on your back. You stopped breathing before the ambulance got there. It was touch and go for a while."

"Ambulance?"

"Yes. Anonymous 999 call. Sherlock's got recordings of it. You've got two of the biggest men I've ever seen in my life outside the door right now. There's some question whether it was an attempt on your life."

"By hitting me on the head with a cupboard door?"

"I didn't say it was a sensible question."

"You need to listen to the recording Mycroft." Sherlock was stood in the doorway. His grey eyes were narrowed into slits.

"He needs to rest." And the enduring look of quiet determination on John's face dared them to argue.

Xxx

Even though none of it had been real, Mycroft couldn't help but feel as though he had lost Nick for a second time. He understood that in that moment of desperation when he had to choose between pulling the trigger and killing everyone, or letting a dangerous criminal go to kill innocent people, in that moment Nick had simply chosen for him. Nick had pulled the trigger. Nick had shouldered all the blame.

Mycroft looked at his face in the mirror. His thin face, with its china blue eyes and gingery stubble, and a neat row of stitches above his eye. He looked down at his slender waist and his rather boring black silk boxer shorts. He wandered around his tidy, empty, dog free house. Just because something wasn't real, it didn't mean you couldn't miss it. Mycroft laughed to himself. How ironic that it was only as he lay un-breathing, dead, that he could find a few moments of happiness. Perhaps that had almost been a glimpse of heaven. Perhaps the dead didn't stay dead after all.

Sherlock found his elder brother in deep contemplation in the study.

"Mycroft. I've bought the recordings." Sherlock indicated the laptop under his arm.

"Do I really have to listen to them?"

"Yes. You really do. Because I don't understand them."

OPERATOR: Emergency Services. Which Service Please?

CALLER: Ambulance please.

OPERATOR: One moment.

AMBULANCE: Hello Ambulance service.

CALLER: There's been an accident at 23 Coniston Gardens, Kensington. A man called Mycroft Holmes has knocked himself out. He's going to stop breathing.

AMBULANCE: Hello? Hello?

But the line was dead.

They sat in silence. Neither wanting to be the one to speak the obvious, painful, impossible truth. Eventually it was Sherlock who spoke.

"I've tried to analyse this. Scotland Yard have put it through every software programme they have, and it's genuine. I have tried to eliminate the impossible. But this time I can't. The only explanation is Impossible."

"What does John think?"

"He just spouts some fluffy sentimental rubbish about more things in heaven and earth. Idiot."

Mycroft played the call again. And again. And with each playing of it he became more and more convinced that he was listening to a sixteen year old Nicholas Garrideb calling an ambulance to save Mycroft's life. And that was impossible.