July 12th, 2005
Mycroft's POV
Thirteen days, he thinks as he gets on the plane to take him back to London. It took thirteen days to deal with this situation because too many people apparently forgot how to think and use common sense. A lack of common sense is far too common, it really should be called uncommon sense. More than half of the situation could have been avoided with a little forethought. Of course, that didn't happen.

He had been right on schedule to get home when things had suddenly went pear shaped because two of the people there decided that the path selected wasn't good enough. The next three days had been spent trying to straighten the mess out, four more were spent re-negotiating, and the last was spent making sure no one was going to change their mind like that again.

Over all it had left him very frustrated and wanting to drop the whole lot of them in the antarctic without protective clothing.

Now he is on his way home, hopefully during his absence the two agents that are watching over his brother haven't decided to do anything foolish. While Gray has been updating him with periodic emails, Moriarty has not, and that makes him leery.

It's an eight hour flight back to London. He plans on using that time in order to review the questions that his brother wrote out and the doctor typed up. That shouldn't take too long. Then he can formulate answers for the questions and write them out. Once he is done with that he plans to take a small nap so he can be rested for his day. Perhaps he will make an appointment with the doctor for first thing in the morning, that way he can discuss how John thinks his brother did while he was away.

First though, the questions.

Pulling the folder out of his private binder, he flips it open, grabs a pen, and prepares to start answering questions. Instead he finds himself reading them several times, realizing anew exactly how badly he has messed up with Sherlock.

The primary question asked is why. More than half of the questions are variations of that single one. All of them tie into motive and reasoning. Things he thought were completely obvious but apparently were not to Sherlock. Normally his brother is not this slow.

Yet, is it really Sherlock being slow? As much as he hates to admit it, many of the questions tie directly into his behavior since leaving for university and starting his adult life. He had not wanted Sherlock in his life, so he had cut his little brother out. Now he is discovering exactly how much damage that did.

As he writes out his answers, he finds many of them are the same, even though the wording is slightly different.

He definitely wishes to discuss this with John before discussing them with Sherlock. Surely his brother does not doubt him this much. It has to be a mistake. They weren't that close as children. Why would his behavior have affected Sherlock so much?

His mind whirls with questions, distracting and unsettling him.

"Sir," his PA murmurs, drawing his attention from the file sitting on his lap.

Glancing up, he meets her worried expression with a bland one, arching a questioning eyebrow rather than speak.

"You should get some rest. It has been at least thirty-six hours since the last time you slept." She informs him softly with a small smile, "I've been told to take you home and not allow you to work for twenty-four hours at least."

He inclines his head, agreeing since he knows arguing with her won't do much good, she takes orders to keep him healthy very seriously.

"Please make arrangements for me to speak with Doctor Watson at his earliest convenience." He remarks, closing the file on his lap without another glance.

Why he seems to be the bases of nearly every question Sherlock has asked. That's unsurprising as it was his brother's favorite question as a child as well. More than that, if he bases everything said during the mediation with John through the lens of why, it makes so much more sense.

Perhaps he should take a few days to just spend with Sherlock. He has plenty of vacation time saved up as he never uses it. He never uses his sick time either, so he has that saved up as well. Perhaps it would be best if he took a more active role in his brother's healing process. These are all things he wishes to discuss with the doctor, along with how his brother did while he was gone. He trusts John's assessment of it to be far more accurate than anything Moriarty or Gray may report.

"Sir," she agrees quietly.

Closing his eyes, he decides to take her advice and rest. Soon enough he will have to deal with the questions, and more so, the answers. It would be best to be well rested and ready to deal with this as if it is one of the most important negotiations he might ever have to perform.

There's a bit of an update to my updating schedule, it won't affect this story, but it affects the rest of them. Since reviews have dropped since I went on a regular schedule, I am going to switch back to updating as I get things done and have focus instead. However I also plan to try and complete each story, or as complete as I possibly can without feedback before I begin posting. Once I get the story ready, when it would have originally be updated on the schedule is when I will update it. I still won't be doing more than two stories any given day, disregarding tumblr prompts.

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