The satisfaction from smacking Mycroft Holmes in his annoying smug face had lasted for a few seconds before the pain had started. John looked at his hand, seeing the telltale signs of a broken bone swelling the back of it. Hitting Mycroft had been like punching a brick wall. John would have bet everything he owned that Mycroft would have gone down like a felled tree. Mycroft just stood there.
"Are you quite finished? By all means keep hitting me but I'm a busy man and you only have a finite number of hands." Which made John want to hit him again. Mycroft caught his hand this time. His reaction lightning fast for a man who spent his life behind a desk. He leaned in to John Watson breathing deeply lips parted slightly. John looked into his eyes. He had never noticed before how very beautiful Mycroft's eyes were. John found himself leaning forward. Drawn into the blue depths.
And then Mycroft squeezed his hand. The broken one. The pain snapped John out of whatever he had been falling into.
"He's dead. And you don't care."
"On the contrary Doctor Watson. Now he is dead he is of even greater concern to me."
"You should have cared whilst he was alive."
"And where would that have got me? Venting my displeasure like you? Shouting at a world that has become deaf to protests? Lashing out? Really not helping you is it?" Mycroft sat down in the high backed chair. There was something about him that was worrying John intensely. But he just could not place a finger on it. John had gone to the Diogenes Club to beg Mycroft to stop the press. The incessant stories of the failed, deluded genius. He hadn't expected compassion from Mycroft. But he had expected more than a cursory nod towards sympathy.
He'd expected more. He'd always believed that Mycroft was not the heartless cold man the world thought he was. But it seemed the world was right and John was wrong. And now there was something else.
John was afraid.
And he didn't know why.
"If I were you Doctor Watson. I would go home. And forget about Sherlock."
"I was his friend."
"My brother didn't have friends."
"No. He just had one. Me. And it is my duty as his friend to miss him."
Mycroft smiled. And John knew he had to get out.
John was halfway towards home, the sunshine pouring down on him, like a blanket easing away the nightmares, when he stopped and looked at the ground. He looked at the people going about their daily business, the people that never knew Sherlock, never cared about him, but were happy to read all about it in the tabloids. All the people in the sunshine. And that's when John realised.
Despite the sun streaming in through the windows of the Strangers room of the Diogenes Club, Mycroft Holmes cast no shadow.