Sherlock

Mycroft says it's the way I suspected. He was working, and couldn't be disturbed. He got all my calls and rather than phone he decided to come over. He is still brushing off the shoulders of his suit. His expression is not even that of the old distaste, the look I'm so used to, so many years of standing up to it. I can take the old distaste. This isn't that. It's not disappointment either, or sadness, that can be put out of mind with false blame and 'how dare he'. None of that. Tonight it's just something like hate.

"I thought you were dead," I tell him. I don't think it's the first time. He mustn't have said anything to answer it yet, because I still feel the need to tell him. "Mycroft, I thought you were dead."

"Don't be ridiculous, Sherlock."

That's not an answer. There's no honesty or reality in it; I need him to say something that makes it better. He's sitting in front of me and I still feel like he might be out there dead somewhere. But he's not going to. He doesn't think he needs to. He's sat there at my table, staring as though I'm speaking in tongues. Me, I can't sit, I'm stuck pacing, back and forth and back again, because he just doesn't – just won't… I'm losing words like blood. They're gushing from me, along with everything attached to them, haemorrhaging sentiment. I keep losing the words. Someday it'll be as though I never knew them.

"Well, who is then?" I say, just to make him talk. "Dead, that is. That person, what's his name… Underwood, him?"

Mycroft looks down at his hands. If eh only would have done that before, when we were talking about him… But it's now. Looks down and says, "Clayton's dead, yes."

"Cut the first name bollocks out, you hated the man."

Blithe, blasé, "Only lately. He was shot. Expertly, in public, and in spite of a sizeable armed guard, both overt and covert. Sound familiar?" Of course it bloody does. He didn't have to ask that. "The gunman, this time, was pursued, but evaded capture. There's been no communication, no one's claimed it, no statement of intent."

"And where have you been all day?"

He looks up again, flinching like I just asked about the football results. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Just answer a question, for once in your life!"

Shouted. Shouldn't have done that. He thinks it's all just narcotic. It's hysteria. Why should he pay any attention, take it seriously? But between you and me I am more sober right now that I had any desire to ever be again. Ever since I walked into him. Though it didn't get the chance to last all that long, whatever the feeling, relief or joy, whatever it was, it was strong enough and went through me fast enough to flush out the rest. Like I didn't think I'd need it anymore. But now he's giving me that look again; me as scum, me as everything he isn't, me as everything he thought was gone. Now I've shouted and he 'knows better' than to even care.

We were doing so well, him and I. I'm not imagining that? That really happened?

"I was," he finally begins, calm and level and very deliberate, talking me back from the ledge, "giving a full debrief on the operation to date."

Oh.

Reporting in. All that secrecy and back-stabbing, now it all has to come out. Now that one of their own is dead, they want all the details yesterday and a solution five minutes from now. One bullet and the 'department' starts acting like one. "How very painful for you all. Wasn't Diogenes the one who didn't mix well with the other philosophers?"

"It was a randomly assigned name."

"Then somebody very high up is doing quite a bit of snickering."

Here's another perk of being high (as though another were needed); Mycroft now thinks he's automatically higher. Metaphorically speaking, of course. He now thinks he can say to me, "For heaven's sake, Sherlock. A man is dead."

Instinct is to cry out, Finally. But in these last weeks I have had such a wonderful teacher in Mycroft. It simply wouldn't do to let him down. "He's out of your way."

At least the superiority goes out of his gaze. So does everything else. Stunned, maybe, but from here it just looks hollow, as though Mycroft had emptied out. Everything just vanishing out of him. I do hope so; a lesson in return. Repaid; after all he's done me a favour. Mycroft has taken a lot of silly illusions away from me lately.

Still pacing, I turn away from him and his fixed eyes. "The real question," I say, thinking out loud, "is who else this fresh murder serves."

"That much, I had thought, ought to be clear." He's shooting for supercilious, but can't get his nose far enough in the air. What's left him with his head down, I wonder…

"Hm? The… bad guys as it were? Forgive me, Mycroft, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Reveal yourself to a new party, set up a meeting, promise riches and then have him killed? He hadn't given them anything, had he?"

"Not that we know of."

"Just say 'no', Mycroft, nobody will hold it against you. You see my problem, I'm sure. Why have him killed? He was still nobody. He knew nothing about them, no threat and so far as you know had nothing worthwhile to offer up to them. No, I'm sorry; it just doesn't make any sense to me."

Or to him. He knew that coming here. But he couldn't have walked up to his masters and said, 'This murder does nothing for anybody except me'. Then I definitely wouldn't have bumped into him in the rain. I'd never even have known where to lay flowers, more than likely. He's been telling the same story all day, over and over, blow-by-blow. 'Falling for his own line,' is the phrase.

"Of course," I sigh in the end, "there's someone I could ask, might shed a bit of light on things." Oh, look at him. Look; like a child on Christmas morning. The threat of a lump of coal hangs over him still, but in his heart there is elation new-sprung and only waits to be triggered. "What?" I ask. "Come on; we're a bit old for me hold off out of spite."

A pause, while he thinks that over. Then, "Forgive me, but do you mean you would have taken this on anyway?"

"Of course. I'm bored, remember? Need a distraction. Come back in the morning," I tell him. "You can have her when I'm finished."

Jim

I think the waiting got to us all. That's how I end up, second day running, with an indulgent, restaurant breakfast. And the best part is, Moran has nothing to complain about this time, because he's with me. Dani too, and all of us half-slept and mumbling, talking, but not to each other. Me mumbling, "I'm going to end up like a beached whale."

Moran mumbling, "Beats Sugar Puffs, I suppose…"

Dani mumbling, "Must stop off at Poste Mistress, don't let me forget."

Breakfast is as tasteless as the conversation. This isn't the chef's fault. It's Holmes'. I could be eating blue cheese and pickled herring and old socks and not taste anything. We're all sitting here, spent and lost like people late returned from holidays, and where's he?

No, honestly, I'm asking a question. Answer me. Is he hiding in a crowd with an unlikely red-and-white striped bobble hat on? Are him and Carmen Sandiego having it off at the top of a Shanghai pagoda? He's playing cards, isn't he, with Shergar and Lord Lucan, and Elvis-Who-Ain't-Dead…

Christ, when he's mine, I'm going to have him chipped.

Now, if you lend any credence at all to Danielle – "Oh, and Church's, for you, I'll show you when we get there…" – and her theory, which I don't, but if you do, Mycroft has had plenty to time to warn his supposed 'nearest and dearest'. They could be halfway to Tokyo by now. Even if you were listening to her, which I'm not, that excuse has run out of time.

If, on the other hand, you follow Moran's teachings, then we're really in trouble. And I don't mean 'we' as in us around the table, I mean we as a country, as a race. Because if the gents in charge of us can stay shit-scared for a full twenty-four hours without somebody else stepping in to take over, we are done for. A big red button is going to get pressed elsewhere in the world and those who should be acting will be sat in the cupboard whistling Rule Britannia with their fingers in their ears.

That is, until a big heart-throb type American comes and leads them out by the hand. But let's not get onto world politics here. It's boring, and it's useless, and anyway it's got nothing to do with what's under discussion i.e. Mycroft Holmes and his possible cowardice.

I'm not kidding, but if that man should be found in hiding, trembling at my very name, not only will I let Moran kill him, but I'll let him and Dani torture him beforehand. Actually, I'll have a doctor on hand, and when they torture him into cardiac arrest, I'll have him shocked back into this world. I'll have him nursed back to health by an incredibly wonderful Mary Poppins type, and just when he's getting back on his feet, I'll roll a guillotine in and kill her in front of him. I'll leave the head in there too, for a couple of days. No, more, for a week, and no food either, and when he's fallen that far, I'll let Moran and Dani back in to start it all over again. And it will not end until there is nothing left in him that might be considered the mind of an adult human male.

Is that an overreaction?

I'm sorry, it just makes me really angry thinking of that possibility. Because that's the only thing that could really ruin this, is if Mycroft doesn't react at all. I never planned for that.

One of the reasons I hate chess, actually. Chess is supposed to be this perfect microcosm of life, and especially of battle. And maybe it is, if you're into all this horseback-and-swords approach, but that's not how battles are fought these days. Chess is too simple. Literally, it goes black-white-black-white-black-white-checkmate. But in life, in real battles, in work like this, there's another eventuality.

It goes something like white-black-white-black-white-black-'Woah! Okay, mate, that'll do, see you later…' If Holmes just steps off, lives to fight another day? Well, see above re: torture and defibrillators and Nightingale nurses.

Find myself mumbling, "I really should have a guillotine. Just in case."

An almost-related mumble, not quite a reply, from Danielle, "Paris. We could go antiquing."

Moran can hardly close his mouth when he chews. Doesn't help that he keeps talking through it. I wish to God somebody would just glare at him from across the room. He'd snap out of it then. Get all self-conscious and correct everything. If he was here on his own, that would happen. I think it's me, y'know, my comparative refinement. He comes in under the good auspices of that and all the looks I see pass in his direction say something like 'Aaw.' Like he's a child or a pet, and all because I've got all my shirt buttons done in the morning.

"Office," he's barely-saying. "We look like we've been in the office all night."

"We've been in the office for most of a month," I tell him. Try not to snap. Sort of do.

"But, like, we had a Powerpoint to finish for the big board meeting or something." He must have run out of Peep Show episodes, moved on to The Office. Some big life development like that. I'm sorry I missed the transition.

Dani manages to look at him when she speaks. Could be paying attention, but from the way her eyes are rolling over him, I'd say she's still just plotting this imaginary spending spree she's dragged up out of her dreams last ni- Rings. Phone, rings, ringing, it's there, it's ringing. I snatch for it before I remember it can't be my voice and draw back. Danielle hooks over it on the table. Then shakes her head. "It's not him."

No. It's not even ringing, really. It's a text.

Moran puts down his knife. That was the first he'd lifted it, when that faux-ringing started. I'm not commenting on his table manners or anything, more asking myself what exactly he intended to stab.

But the rush helped. We're straightening, all three of us. Dani tips her head, says sweetly, "Not to alarm anybody, but I may be about to be kidnapped."

"'Bout fecking time." They both glare round at me. I clear my throat. "I mean… you know what to do alright?"