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Mycroft stared grimly at the screen before him. Should have assigned one of his staff to this task, really - trawling through surveillance clips collected from Father's estate was work meant for a junior analyst, beneath his paygrade for years now.
And yet here he sat, trying to decide which recording to watch first. As if he were back in his rookie days.
For the most part, of course, he'd delegated this project as expected. Hand-picked a team to comb through Father's extensive archive of home security footage looking for evidence of illegal activity, damning conversations, unknown contacts. Any information worth integrating into the ever-expanding dossier on his late Father's various political extortion enterprises.
One dataset stood starkly apart from the rest, however. The team processing these recordings in preparation for more detailed analysis had found that, with very few exceptions, the only notable events taking place in Father's private study involved Mycroft's brother. And for whatever nonsensical reason it had felt… indecent, somehow, to assign some underling to examine this footage. As if he'd be avoiding an act of penance.
And so, with a stiff drink at hand should worst come to worse, Mycroft loaded up the database of digitised footage and told himself he wasn't going to have any trouble watching through a few banal surveillance videos. Done plenty of this sort of work in his early days, after all. Analysing a handful of recordings collected from a single room in his childhood home would be of no consequence whatsoever compared to the scale of projects he'd typically been assigned back then. Bit of a dull morning, maybe. Nothing more.
All of the files in this batch had been processed already - trimmed of dead footage, cropped and sorted with incident time and location tags. Simple matter to filter for recordings from Father's private study, then sort by date. Considered going in order from oldest to newest, then internally recoiled at the thought of witnessing a small child subjected to the whims of Siger Holmes, and instead chose a file at random from down near the very bottom of the list. Late nineties, when he'd have already been a teenager. Easier to process.
Unfortunately, the instant the feed came up Mycroft realised he'd made a poor choice. Because, as he spotted the full date printed in the bottom corner of the main camera, it registered that this would have been the year he'd not come home over the holiday season. He'd been embroiled in a complex project in his new position with MI5 and hadn't wanted to risk losing grip on a few key contacts he'd recently developed. Despite having found this much more enjoyable than the usual routine of tedious family meals and hollow pleasantries, he'd nevertheless made a point of clearing his schedule to make the trip the following year. Sherlock had directed far too much vitriol towards him over his absence to risk skipping out again.
And that next year, of course, had been the year the blinders fell away. When he'd finally been forced to confront the reality that all the little troubling signs he'd cleverly rationalised over the course of his brother's life added up to one inescapable, monstrous truth. Leaving Sherlock at the mercy of their father hadn't been an option after that, so he'd convinced Siger to allow the boy to live with him in London for the remainder of his teens. They'd not made more than a handful of visits home thereafter.
Which meant, then, that this recording was very likely to depict whatever incident had caused Sherlock to treat Mycroft with such bitter contempt over the following months. An event which would alter the course of both their lives irreversibly. Lord have mercy.
On the flickering screen before him a video feed of excellent picture quality, given its age, depicted Father's study. Or, at least, the feed label proclaimed it to be STUDY-SOUTH-o1. Meaning the study located on the south side of the main house. Mycroft hadn't ever found much occasion to venture into this room, so the space was unfamiliar to him. Father's desk was a large mahogany affair in the late Georgian style he typically preferred, matching the rest of the office furniture. The security camera of highest image quality was mounted on the wall behind and slightly to the left of his desk chair, affording a mid-angle shot of the space directly in his working line of sight, with a clear view up to the leather chesterfield sofa and coffee table some metres off towards the bay window. A large, decorative world globe stood off to the side of the desk, partially cut off by the frame edge. To the right of this primary camera feed were several smaller inset frames, each depicting wide-angle shots of lower image quality covering different sections of the room, carefully arranged to ensure no blind spots. Microphones hidden around the space afforded a clear audio feed, with additional high-fidelity devices embedded directly into the desk and filing cabinets to detect any subtle movement of drawers or their contents. It was the surveillance system of a man whose wastepaper bin contained enough secrets to topple a dozen regimes.
Father's desk sat empty, for the moment, and a nervous-looking fourteen year-old Sherlock stood in front of it. By the slightly-too-short shirtsleeves Mycroft guessed the boy to be in the midst of one of the rapid growth spurts he'd had around that age, leaving him even lankier and more awkwardly-proportioned than usual. A fading bruise marred the skin around his right eye - not unusual at this age, he'd nearly always sported a facial injury of one sort or another throughout his teens. Mycroft had initially thought this to have been the work of their father, but when the bruises kept appearing following Sherlock's relocation to London it became clear he simply managed to get himself hit in the face by other students with impressive regularity. Troubling in its own way, of course, but perhaps less abhorrent.
Over the course of around ten minutes' quiet standing (which Mycroft had fast-forwarded through) the tense anxiety in Sherlock's stance had shifted by degrees into fidgeting boredom. An undercurrent of dull resignation in his expression implied being made to wait like this was nothing out of the ordinary, though he was still clearly growing ever more annoyed as the silence dragged on.
Finally a door opened on the other side of the room, and Sherlock snapped back to attention from where he seemed to have been idly running through a violin composition using his right wrist as a stand-in fingerboard. Siger strode through the room at a leisurely pace, cutting in and out of view of the various cameras, and took a seat at his desk. In this position the primary camera was behind his head, and the only secondary feed with a view of his face was quite a distance away, making his expression difficult to make out. Regardless, by his body language it was clear he'd chosen for the moment to behave as if Sherlock were invisible. The man took his time producing and arranging several items from the leather-bound folder in his arm: paperwork, stack of money to be counted, a pen.
By Sherlock's poorly-concealed look of frustration it was clear this was an ongoing habit of Siger's - summon the boy to his study, proceed to ignore him as a test of patience. Mycroft wondered vaguely how he himself might respond to such treatment, was forced to conclude he'd fail miserably. Probably would've made some scathing remark within the space of a minute; he'd never had much tolerance for time-wasting.
Sherlock, of course, was operating under much different risk/reward conditions than Mycroft would've been in his position, and was thus far more motivated to hold his tongue. Though doing so was clearly still quite a struggle, because by the time Father deigned to acknowledge his presence the boy's expression had slipped from polite attention into an indignant scowl. Such impertinence would surely be a punishable offence, Mycroft thought, but when he glanced to the smaller wide-angle feed the grainy image of Father's face just seemed amused.
"Well, get on with it, then," the man said in a jarringly upbeat quip. Between his tolerance of Sherlock's disrespect and the friendly tone of voice Mycroft found himself distinctly nonplussed - he'd not thought Father capable of being so… normal. He'd known the man to speak casually or engage in a bit of lighthearted banter on occasion, of course, but typically only for purposes of manipulation or some other obvious ploy, and never towards those he considered subordinate. Seeing him behave like this towards Sherlock, of all people, was extremely disorientating.
Sherlock, for his part, didn't seem fazed by Father's bizarre frivolity. He also didn't appear to have any expectation of being able to guess what the man was on about, because he asked for clarification almost immediately. Another clue to their usual dynamic, perhaps - Siger must have regularly opened with intentionally confusing or out-of-context statements to force an information disadvantage. Basic intimidation tactic.
"Get on with what, sir?"
"Explaining your marks this half, obviously." Father's tone remained uncharacteristically glib. Sherlock's complete lack of surprise over this brought Mycroft to an odd revelation that he and his brother must have had wildly different concepts of who Siger Holmes was as a person. To Mycroft, their father had been a picture of cold austerity, defined by authoritative calm and the subtle threat of danger. To Sherlock, apparently, he'd been a bit of a cheeky git.
Sherlock's brows furrowed in a perplexed, wary look. Evidently not a topic he'd been expecting.
"I, er… all A's? Sir?"
Siger chuckled warmly, which was somehow exponentially more disturbing than the upbeat voice had been.
"Indeed! Quite an abrupt upswing in academic performance, wouldn't you say?"
Ah. He was toying with the boy. Mycroft knew his brother must have started smoking around this age, likely having built up from the occasional nicked fag to outright dependency sometime around the start of the previous school term. A steady intake of nicotine would have driven a dramatic improvement in his ability to tolerate tedious lessons and coursework. Reflection of this in his end-of-term report was an unexpected tell he'd apparently not thought to account for.
Siger must have known of his youngest's new habit early on and chose not to intervene, likely seeing it as a convenient way to assess the boy's aptitude for long-term subterfuge. And now, after several months' observation, he'd decided to bring the exercise back round to lessons learnt. In his own cruel, psychopathic way, it seemed the man was trying to impart some sort of wisdom about consideration of unexpected variables in the execution of clandestine operations. How utterly strange to think he'd taken such an active role in parenting.
Of course, to Sherlock, this line of inquiry probably felt more as if he were being criticised for earning high marks, which must have been deeply confusing. He stared at Father for several long seconds, glanced away as if trying to decide how to respond, then reluctantly shifted his gaze back to the man's face.
"Um… a bit, I guess?" he finally hedged. Then a beat later added, "Sir."
Siger laughed again. "And what, may I ask, has prompted this sudden dedication to scholastic pursuits?"
Giving the boy an out - hinting he should take this opportunity to craft an excuse plausible enough to maintain cover. Sherlock, unfortunately, didn't appear to have any idea what Father was on about. Mycroft had assumed, at this point in time, that Siger would have long since made clear to Sherlock his intent to mould him into a field agent to complement Mycroft's desk role. Plainly the man had done no such thing. Perhaps he'd thought it best to keep the boy in the dark as a means to deny him the opportunity to render himself unfit for service should he object to that career path. Hadn't banked on harsh teaching methods driving him to substance abuse instead, leading to the same outcome.
As was typical when demands on his impulse control exceeded some arbitrary internal threshold, Sherlock's patience with whatever nonsense Father was playing at quite abruptly snapped. His face dropped from passably polite deference into a venomous scowl.
"Threats of being tortured to death tend to be quite motivating, sir," he replied in a voice gone flat with undisguised contempt.
Rather than the anger Mycroft might have expected in response to such insolence, their father simply… laughed. Not his usual coldly amiable chuckle, either, but something which sounded for all the world like genuine amusement. This dynamic of theirs just kept becoming more and more surreal.
Without bothering to reply Father stood up and looked down the pager clipped to his belt, making as if he'd just received some important message.
"I'll be gone five minutes, child. You are not dismissed," he said over his shoulder as he strode from the room. Sherlock watched him go with a vaguely bewildered glare.
Atop Father's vacated desk, Mycroft could now spot the trap - he'd left a stack of ten-pound notes alongside supplies as if intending to count the money, implying he'd not know how much he'd started with. He'd then needled Sherlock until he'd hit his self-discipline limit, got him to drop out of the obedient son routine, and promptly left the boy to his own devices for an explicit duration of five minutes. Overall an insultingly obvious ploy to tempt him into thievery.
Mycroft felt faintly ill. Surely his brother would've caught on? It was such blatant entrapment. But, then, the child was fourteen. And likely either already well into nicotine withdrawal or facing the looming threat of it shortly. And he'd never possessed more than a threadbare scrap of impulse control to begin with.
Of course he fell for it.
To his credit, at least, the swipe was subtle. Clearly knew where all the cameras were and took pains to mask his action under the guise of a bored fidget. Wouldn't matter, of course. Siger would have marked the notes somehow. He'd spot the loss immediately.
A duration of near-exactly five minutes passed, during which Sherlock looked to have quickly come to regret what had doubtless been an impulsive act, but didn't appear able to figure out how best to undo it without being too obvious. He kept glancing up at the primary camera (straight into the lens, which made it seem unnervingly as if he were meeting Mycroft's gaze), then down to the desk again, scowling at the polished surface. Clearly indecisive on the risk. Then, once he'd determined there was no good way to reverse his choice, he moved on to an internal debate on whether to be more angry with himself or with Father.
It was strange, seeing Sherlock's facial expressions so easy to read. Every thought seemed childishly exaggerated compared to the mannerisms Mycroft would come to know just a scant few years later. He'd really not interacted with his brother much at this age at all, he realised. Spent most of the boy's awkward early teens away at uni. At this point in time they'd have practically been strangers.
As Mycroft had predicted, Siger took only a passing glance at his desk when he finally returned, then settled back into his armchair. By the tilt of his head and Sherlock's apprehensive expression he'd likely fixed the boy with one of his cold, predatory smiles.
"Bold of you," he remarked casually.
Sherlock's only reaction was a single, resigned exhale. Must have learnt over the years not to bother with denials or apologies. Logical, knowing Father's usual disposition towards grovelling. Without waiting to be told Sherlock flipped the banknote out from where he'd palmed it into his left hand and reached out to return it to its original place.
Quick as a flash Siger grabbed hold of Sherlock's wrist the instant it moved into range. Startled, Sherlock let go of the money and fixed Father with a questioning look. Siger shifted forward and, with painfully deliberate slowness, placed both hands in a precise configuration to either side of the boy's arm.
Sherlock didn't seem to recognise the intent of that hand placement. Mycroft, unfortunately, did. A flash of dread shot through his gut.
Father's arms jerked with sudden twisting force, and the high-fidelity microphone hidden under the desktop picked up a dull, sickening crack!
The silence was deafening. Mycroft watched wide-eyed as his baby brother, face so impossibly young, went chalk-white and turned a shocked, uncomprehending stare down to his own limb in Father's grip.
"Your stupidity never ceases to astound, my boy," Siger quipped with a surreal degree of levity given he'd just snapped a child's wrist.
Sherlock said nothing. Father released his grip, then leant casually back in his chair as if waiting to see what his victim would do.
It took a few long, motionless seconds before anything happened. Sherlock's brain rebooting after the sudden shock, one assumed. Once he'd regained the ability to move he took a few steps back, instinctively cradling the injury against his chest, then stood in stunned silence as if still trying to process what had just happened.
In his time with MI5 (and occasionally before, though one hated to dwell) Mycroft had witnessed many horrific acts of violence. Typically via surveillance videos such as this one, in later years perhaps more often displayed on the screens of live operations centre feeds, very rarely in person. He'd always found the wide range of human reactions to deliberate injury quite fascinating. There were those who screamed. Those who wept. Those who begged, or swore, or fixed their captors with a silent, vengeful glare.
And then there were the most fascinating group of all - those who did nothing. The stoics. Men and women so accustomed to pain it became second nature to shrug it off, dissociate fully if necessary, to deny their assailant even the minor satisfaction of drawing a reaction. Mycroft had always found himself torn between a sense of deep intrigue and feeling vaguely unnerved when confronted with those rare individuals. The way they could retreat so far from conscious awareness as to become empty shells struck him as uniquely disquieting. He'd often wondered what experiences might impart such a skill, the ability to snuff the light from one's own eyes.
Here, apparently, was some part of his answer. Because Sherlock was a stoic.
In retrospect, of course he was. Mycroft should have deduced that already, having witnessed his brother's face go abruptly blank in response to overwhelming stress several times by now. But, even still, it was an unexpected depth of horror to witness a young teenager, his baby brother, display such a profound underreaction to traumatic limb fracture. Sherlock hadn't made so much as a sound so far. Hadn't done much of anything, in fact, beyond remain standing ashen-faced before the desk. The light in his eyes had dimmed to a vacant, unfocussed stare.
Behaving as if all of this were perfectly normal, Siger hummed a tune to himself and set about clearing away the remains of his trap, then turned his attention to other business. He seemed content for the time being to let Sherlock remain frozen like a statue in front of his desk.
"Movement and sensation?" the man asked after a few silent minutes. Sherlock startled, blinked at him, then seemed to register the question and obediently shifted the fingers of his left hand. Despite this no doubt being excruciatingly painful his wince was limited to just a small twitch of facial muscles, nearly too subtle for the camera to pick up.
"Yes, sir," he said quietly, almost inaudible from the desk mic.
Siger's head lifted. Mycroft could easily picture one of the man's bland, unimpressed stares, with the slight condescending brow lift. After a seconds' pause he went back to his work, flipping a hand dismissively.
"Well, go and have a seat, then. No sense bothering Vasily."
Vasily being Siger's long-time friend and colleague, who during this period in time would have been living in a detached servants' cottage on the estate. During the Cold War the man had primarily served as a torture-based interrogation specialist, utilising the skillset of his prior career as an orthopedic surgeon to devastating effect. He and Siger had met during Siger's time working as a double agent for the Soviet Union, struck up as close a friendship as two men such as themselves might ever hope to find, and maintained their bond throughout the subsequent decades. For a period of several years following the fall of the USSR Vasily had even lived with them at the estate, Siger having offered him refuge in one of the old cottages while the political dust settled. This arrangement meant that Mycroft had, at one point, considered the man something of a beloved uncle. An illusion shattered with age, of course, but it remained difficult to shake an odd sense of nostalgia on hearing his name.
Father, here, would have meant he didn't consider the fracture severe enough to go to the trouble of summoning Vasily to evaluate it. He intended instead for Sherlock sit and wait until such time as Siger deigned to do something about the disabling injury he'd inflicted.
Looking to be operating on some sort of auto-pilot Sherlock moved back to take a seat on the edge of the chesterfield's hard cushion, still cradling his arm. After a long moment spent staring robotically straight ahead his blank mask finally cracked. No doubt the break was rapidly growing more painful as adrenaline subsided and swelling set in. He grimaced whilst leaning forward into a curled slouch over his knees, hiding his face from view.
Several silent minutes crept arduously past. Siger busied himself examining documents with an air as if he considered this a perfectly reasonable activity to prioritise over his son's urgent need for medical attention. By the slight movement of Sherlock's back visible against the dark leather of the sofa Mycroft could see he'd begun to draw a series of deep breaths, which looked to be becoming progressively faster and less evenly spaced. He'd seen his brother descend into full-blown panic enough times by now to recognise the signs of impending hyperventilation. Siger apparently knew this signal as well, because he lifted his head to look at the boy.
"Oh for god's sake," he snapped, apparently deeply annoyed by the sight of a child slipping into traumatic shock in front of him. "Have the good sense not to fall on the bloody fracture, at least."
Hearing Father swear was jarring, but Sherlock was either used to it or too preoccupied to care, as he just nodded faintly. He let himself list to the right until he'd flopped over with his face pressed into the sofa's leather seat, wrist clutched tightly to his chest, then promptly brought his legs up to curl into a ball around the injury. Default protective reflex.
Siger breathed a supremely put-upon sigh and reached down to a panel on the side of his desk to press one of several intercom buttons there.
"Василий, мальчик снова получил травму," he intoned when the connection beeped to confirm receipt. A deep voice on the other end replied by immediately launching into a very rude, very Russian diatribe on the theme of being interrupted in the middle of work, but Siger cut the connection without waiting for the rest. Seemed he'd decided to bother Vasily after all. Small mercies.
Almost twenty minutes of nearly-identical footage followed. Logically, Mycroft should have fast-forwarded again, but an irrational sense of guilt stayed his hand. He couldn't quite suppress a ridiculous thought that his baby brother on the other side of the camera lens hadn't had the luxury of fast-forwarding through this. He'd spent every second of those twenty minutes under the judging scrutiny of Father, curled into a miserable ball in a vain attempt to mitigate a worsening injury. What right did Mycroft have to speed things up? Ease a bit of his own suffering watching these events unfold? He'd survive a bit of a wait, just as Sherlock had.
Instead, during the idle time, he reflected on Siger's motivations. An injury of this nature was too significant, and inflicted with too much precision, to have been some simple sadistic whim. No, Father must have been planning to do this from the start, and likely whether Sherlock fell for the trap or not. To what end, though?
Sherlock had, around this time, taken extraordinarily well to symphony. Made principal second the previous year, concertmaster that year, and had even recently expressed some interest in carrying on to play professionally. Not a career trajectory Siger would have found amenable to his plan of pushing the boy into espionage. Siger had never held much respect for music, despite having once been a reasonably talented violinist himself. He'd also been of the staunch belief that a good spy must have some manner of practical education in an area not directly related to the craft, such as science or politics. Perfectly reasonable on his part, then, to force Sherlock off this burgeoning virtuoso path before he became too invested in it. Redirect him towards academics.
Couldn't simply forbid the boy from playing, though. Even Siger must have acknowledged Sherlock's capacity to become fundamentally uncontrollable if pushed into outright rebellion. Better to engineer a way to make him feel responsible for his own fate, then. Put him out of practise long enough to kill the ambition by means of some ostensibly avoidable punishment, thereby leveraging self-loathing to undermine the boy's natural recalcitrance. It was a logical, if revoltingly psychopathic, plan.
And it had worked. Sherlock had indeed dropped out of symphony and applied himself to school with enough dedication to eventually attend Oxford. Mycroft hadn't known the impetus for this, at the time, apart from Sherlock's vague claim of violin having been 'too boring'. He'd had little motivation to pry further; this had been the period where Mycroft's attention had been near-fully consumed finishing university and launching his career, and Sherlock hadn't said anything to him about a broken wrist. They'd not seen each other in person until holidays the following year, by which time the fracture would've fully healed, leaving Mycroft none the wiser. What a horrifying implication regarding what other injuries he might have overlooked throughout his brother's life.
Back on screen Sherlock remained folded up in his protective ball, favoured defence mechanism since childhood. Over the past few minutes his breathing had begun to hitch every few breaths, as if drifting back towards a panic state. But then with a single deep breath he abruptly went still again. Hadn't passed out - muscles still tense. Must have managed some trick to force himself to calm down.
And with that innocuous detail came a fresh stab of guilt, because the idea of his brother being able to do such a thing reminded Mycroft of their conversation when he'd phoned the boy on Christmas that year, just a day or two after this incident. Sherlock's breathing had kept catching oddly before he'd go silent for a moment and return to sounding normal again. He'd claimed he was suppressing the urge to yawn because Mycroft was very boring. Mycroft had bought the lie, self-absorbed idiot that he'd been back then. Though, perhaps in his very minor defence, Sherlock had gone to significant effort to mask any obvious signs of distress. Deflected personal questions, engaged in their usual banter. Hadn't tried in the slightest to tell his big brother anything was wrong.
… because he'd not thought telling him would accomplish anything.
And the terrible thing was that Mycroft knew, deep down, it wouldn't have.
At twenty-one years old, how would he have reacted to his baby brother claiming Father had snapped his wrist with the casual ease of a man cracking an egg? Stop being dramatic. Blinders still fully engaged against the reality of the situation, he'd have thought it nothing but an absurd lie invented in an effort to make him feel guilty over skipping out on family Christmas. He'd not be able to bring himself to entertain the notion of his father being physically abusive until the following year, when every clever explanation he'd invented to paper over the unthinkable truth burnt away. Sherlock's behaviour around their father between the ages of thirteen to fifteen, when Mycroft largely hadn't been present in his life, had undergone too dramatic a shift to be dismissed any longer - from the silent discomfort of their childhood to blatant, undeniable fear. A change likely driven in large part by this very incident.
From the boy's timid behaviour at dinner, to his hateful glare in response to Siger's criticism of a piece Sherlock must have worked enormously hard to regain the ability to play, to his panic over Mycroft thoughtlessly threatening to tell Father about having caught him smoking. All of it could be easily attributed to the events depicted in this scant hour of surveillance footage.
Good lord, of all the files to have chosen.
A new voice drifted into the scene, finally breaking the horrific stillness. Mycroft felt a preposterous wave of relief on recognising Vasily's deep rumbling bass - as if the arrival of a former KGB interrogator might somehow improve the situation. Obviously he understood now, with age and access to classified intelligence, that the man had been every inch as cruelly sadistic as Siger. As a child, however, all Mycroft had known was that Vasily gave him gifts of Russian sweets whenever he visited and was always happy to spin outlandish tales of Soviet political intrigue. What to do with fond childhood memories irreversibly tainted by the reality of who the adults in one's life had been was a problem he'd not yet mustered the strength to address.
Vasily was a stout, muscular man with a thick black beard, bald head, and sharp brown eyes under bushy eyebrows, and though his English was reasonably fluent he nearly always chose to speak Russian, as he was doing now.
"Alright, I am here. Convincing our friend downstairs to wait nicely was no easy trick, but he should be fine for a time." Vasily strode into view of the camera, clad in sweat-damp vest and trousers as if pulled away from some strenuous physical labour. He casually wiped a spatter of what may have been blood off one of his bare arms as he spoke. "So what stupid thing have you done now?"
Siger turned to him and leant back casually in his chair. He raised a hand in vague indication of Sherlock, who was still curled up in a pitiful ball on the sofa.
"Tried for a clean radius fracture, may have splintered a bit," he replied, also in Russian.
Vasily made a noise of disgust. "Splintered! Look at you, Siger, nothing but a shit amateur."
"What can I say, I'm out of practise," Siger conceded with distinct amusement.
"No, no. You've always been shit at fractures," Vasily replied dismissively. "That's why I got so good at setting them, to save us the embarrassment of anyone else seeing your work."
Vasily took a heavy seat on the sofa next to his erstwhile patient and attempted to pull Sherlock's arm out of his protective ball, but succeeded only in triggering the boy to curl up more tightly like a prodded snail. The man clicked his tongue in annoyance and turned instead to dig through the medical bag he'd brought along.
"You want him awake? I have some new paralytics."
"No, use something reliable. Not in the mood to discover another paradoxical reaction."
Vasily chuckled to himself as he drew up a syringe of some medication. "Ah, no? But that was so funny! Little scrap of a boy trying to fight the both of us." Casual as anything the man injected whatever drug he'd chosen directly into Sherlock's upper arm through his shirtsleeve, eliciting a startled flinch. He then stowed away the syringe, retrieved a pad of paper from his bag and began industriously taking notes - whether on Sherlock's injury, or their 'friend' downstairs, it was impossible to tell.
After a minute or two broken only by the rustling of paper picked up by the desk microphone, Vasily spoke up again. "You know, I had actually been thinking more about that recently. We really should have predicted such a reaction to that sedative class. Exact same as the father - becoming savage instead of docile. Do you remember?"
"Yes, Vasily, I remember," Siger bit out irritably.
"I'm sure you do!" Vasily laughed as he bent down to retrieve a stethoscope from his bag. Balancing his notepad on one thigh, he set the bell of the scope against Sherlock's back in a few places, jotting down whatever he'd heard - evidently not taking notes on the condition of their 'friend', then, but creating an impromptu patient chart. Mycroft would have to ask the document recovery team if they'd come across any handwritten Russian medical records.
"The look on your face when he got you with that scalpel, ha! You nearly snapped his neck!" Vasily went on, chuckling to himself fondly. "Ah, I am glad you didn't, though. That would have been such a waste to kill him so quickly."
Siger didn't seem interested in reminiscing with his friend over shared fond memories. Instead he returned to the documents he'd been reviewing, allowing Vasily to busy himself once more with his charting. Mycroft, meanwhile, found himself obliged to perform a tiny bit of actual work in recording a timestamp and brief description of the past few lines of conversation - Vasily and Siger alluding to having personally tortured Sherlock's biological father to death was exactly the sort of information which made watching these recordings worthwhile.
After another short silence Vasily finished whatever he'd been documenting and set aside his notepad. Beside him Sherlock's tight ball had relaxed considerably as the sedative took effect, allowing Vasily to extract the boy's arm without resistance. He set to examining the broken wrist with the air of a man grading a student project.
"Bah, Siger! A whole piece broke off, you clumsy bastard," he groused as he manipulated the nauseatingly flexible bone. "This will need imaging if we're to avoid loss of function."
"Ah, well. Curse of overconfidence." Siger replied with an offhand shrug. "Have you time to see to it?"
"In truth, no! Our friend downstairs needs attending to." Vasily huffed a long-suffering sigh and bent down to retrieve materials from his bag. "But it seems that task I must now hand off to you, my friend. Your British doctors will insist on plate fixation or some useless shit for this, we will be stuck undoing their mistakes if I don't go."
With that, he splinted Sherlock's arm with deft confidence, then hefted the boy up into his arms bridal-style. Knowing Vasily's usual mannerisms, Mycroft had half-expected the man to throw the child over his shoulder like a sack of produce. Vaguely grateful to see Sherlock had been afforded some small measure of care, at least.
"Since I am so kindly doing you this favour, however, you will get someone else for followup," Vasily said as he headed towards the door. "This boy's Russian is dogshit and I will not practise medicine in English."
"Reasonable," Siger conceded. "Morris should be reliable enough." He appeared to be packing away his work in preparation to take over care of whatever 'friend' Vasily was referring to - doubtless a captive from some rival group or agency. As Siger joined his friend in leaving the room Vasily bumped into his side playfully and said something inaudible. Just a pair of old mates off to handle errands. Daily lives of psychopaths.
The surveillance feed fell still.
Mycroft sat silently, filing away all the new information. Amending his understanding of the ultimate fate of Mummy's affair partner, refining his mental models of his brother's psychological profile. Trying to suppress a suffocating upsurge of guilt for having not removed his brother from that environment sooner.
A gentle ahem from his office entrance interrupted his increasingly-despondent thoughts. He glanced up to see his assistant standing in the doorway. She was eyeing him blandly over the top of her mobile device - doubtless knew exactly what grim task he'd set himself to, didn't approve in the slightest. Not that she'd ever drop decorum to say as much, of course.
"Your cousin's requested a meeting with you," she informed him without preamble. "Given the current… situation, I've taken the liberty of pencilling her in for this afternoon."
Mycroft furrowed his brows slightly. She had to be referring to Reine, his eldest maternal cousin. None of the others were in a position to be requesting formal meetings. And - his heart leapt a bit - it had to be something to do with Sherlock. Nothing else would have prompted such a dramatic rearrangement of his schedule without prior approval.
"Thank you," he breathed in a tone perhaps more sentimental than he'd intended. "Reine's agreed to our security requirements?"
"No." His PA fixed him with a level stare, as if challenging him to criticise her judgement. He would never. "We're leaving primary site control to her team. Given her relationship to you and the urgent nature of the matter to be discussed I felt it a reasonable concession."
Mycroft let out a quiet breath and nodded. Under normal circumstances he'd never entertain taking such risk - meeting sites had to be cleared by his own security staff as a matter of basic protocol, absolute lunacy to leave his safety in the hands of anyone else. His assistant was right, however. In this singularly unique circumstance, bending the rules would be permissible.
Reine Cauchois was the first of five grandchildren on his mother's side, just over a year his elder. Mycroft's status as her 'little cousin' would drive familial interest in his personal wellbeing, and her current role within the family hierarchy would ensure she'd not risk any action liable to compromise his government position. In recent years she'd successfully manoeuvred herself into the position of protégé to their grandfather, and was now poised to take control when the elderly man finally let loose his iron grip over the family business. A simple shipping logistics firm, according to most paperwork - in reality a multinational enterprise specialising in smuggling, assassination, and contract espionage. Mycroft had utilised their services to complete missions of a more politically sensitive nature on several occasions now, when ties to the British government needed to be kept minimal, and naturally preferred them over similar groups due to the family connection. Reine understood the benefits of this nepotism perfectly well, and also knew that the relative lack of interference she enjoyed from the British government relied on Mycroft's influence. She could be trusted to protect him.
Hopefully she planned to let him know she'd taken it upon herself to protect Sherlock, as well. Preferably without having already recruited the boy. Mycroft had hoped to avoid his brother being drawn into that lifestyle.
With a very small sigh he flashed his assistant a tired smile to signal his silence hadn't anything to do with her. She already knew, of course.
"Very well," he replied. "Keep me apprised of any changes."
With a curt nod, she turned and disappeared back through the door.
Mycroft leant heavily back in his chair and allowed himself a moment to close his eyes. Well, that would be one worry off his plate at the very least. Reine would've contacted him through less formal means for news such as a death. Calling a professional meeting implied there were delicate logistical matters to discuss. Which meant Sherlock must, if nothing else, be alive.
Unfortunately, it also meant Reine must have decided Sherlock was no longer too risky to recruit. Despite a clearly developing interest in the boy's abilities over the past few years they'd been holding off approaching him while Siger still held potential sway, out of prudent concern for how easily he might be used as a mole. Mycroft had hoped this arrangement might continue under the assumption he'd hold a similar level of influence over his brother, but of course Reine would have unique insight into the fact that Sherlock really didn't give a damn what Mycroft had to say about anything. Moreover she'd know exactly how much Mycroft could be made to buckle under threats to Sherlock's safety, rendering him an even more lucrative asset. The only saving grace was that, in theory, the woman's own protective streak should keep her more ruthless tendencies in check - Sherlock was her youngest baby cousin, after all. She'd never let him come to harm. Or so one would hope.
Straightening back up, Mycroft finally took a resigned sip of the glass of scotch he'd been holding this entire time.
Good lord, what a mess.
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