"Idiot. Bloody stupid idiot." Someone was shouting. Someone was holding him tightly. Someone was crying,

"Out of the way." Another voice, clinical, calm. A hand crushing his wrist. Holding some material to it. Pressure. "Call an ambulance."

And then a pair of green eyes looking down at him.

"Mikey. It doesn't work like that. Sorry. But it just doesn't." And blackness. Nothing. None of it was real.

Xxxx

Sherlock knew something was wrong when he had called to see Mycroft and the house had been empty. Not just empty. Abandoned. Everything tidied away. Mycroft was usually neat, but this was the wrong kind of neatness. It was oppressive and unnerving.

Sherlock searched the house, all the rooms the same. All tidy. Nothing to see. Nothing to read. Sherlock could never read his brother. It annoyed him. Drove him mad that he had to guess. He carried on to the top floor of the house, at one point the servant's rooms he supposed. A long corridor with tidy rooms on each side. And then he noticed the door at the end of the corridor. The door that was always locked. Only this time the key was in the lock.

Sherlock knew he needed to walk away. To forget about that door. He was certain he was not going to like what was on the other side. He had often joked with John that Mycroft probably had a hideously disfigured portrait of himself locked away somewhere in the attic, which reflected his evil inner self. He needed to walk away. He almost did. Until the door which was quite definitely closed, swung open. And for the first time in his adult life, Sherlock was truly afraid. And when he entered the room, he knew why. There was not portrait of Dorian Gray. What was in there was infinitely worse.

"John!" Sherlock bellowed as his brain slowly overloaded. He needed John. He needed an anchor to the world because he was certain any moment that the laws of Physics would stop working and they would all be thrown into space. He heard John's feet pounding up the stairs.

"What's wrong?" John had expected to find Sherlock standing over his brother's lifeless body, but instead found him fixed in the doorway to one of the attic rooms. Inside the room was pleasant, with a neatly made bed, bookshelves, pictures. John noticed a sarcastic looking Giraffe perched on a copy of Grey's anatomy. But surely there was nothing to make someone scream.

"Sherlock? What is it? What's wrong? It's just a room."

"No John. It isn't. It is not just a room. This is Nick's room." Sherlock gestured to the fluffy bathrobe on the bed. The embroidery on it: NJG. "My brother has a room in his house filled with things he has bought for his dead friend."

"I suppose it's his way of dealing with it. I'm not saying it's healthy."

"John, Mycroft left the door unlocked. He doesn't need to keep it a secret anymore."

"Yes but Mycroft would never... would he?"

"He tried before. The Christmas when he was seventeen. He got really drunk on Vodka and had to go to hospital and have his stomach pumped. I was the only one who knew he'd taken pills as well. I noticed them in the vomit all over his bedroom. No one else did." Sherlock said it flatly. "Everyone thinks he's so calm and collected. So cold. But he's not."

"Well where will he be?"

"There's only one place he'll be John." And Sherlock was running, taking the stairs three at a time.

Xxx

The blackness gave way to bright, painful light. Flooding in from everywhere. His head swam a little and he tried to sit up. Only to be pushed back onto the pillows by a gentle but firm hand. Yet again, John Watson standing vigil. He really was a good man.

"Steady Mycroft. Don't try to move, you might feel a little nauseous." Mycroft raised his arm to see a large bandage covering it. "Yes. Not one of my better jobs I'm afraid."

"Sherlock?"

"He's okay."

"I'm truly sorry John. But..." John blinked, remembering that evening before he met Sherlock when he had sat in his tiny bedsit with his service revolver in his mouth. He'd been too much of a coward to pull the trigger.

"It's okay Mycroft. You don't have to talk about it now. Or ever. You should. But you don't have to."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"Sherlock worked it out. Because of the key in the lock. Of the room. Nicholas's room."

"What? Where's my watch?"

"Pocket watch? Hang on." John reached across to the bedside table and handed Mycroft the watch.

"The key is on my watch chain." He held up the chain, the gold key dangling from it and glinting in the light. "And there's only one key."

Mycroft clicked his watch open and looked at Nick's picture smiling back at him.