CHAPTER 64: AN ICY RELATIONSHIP
Giulia leaves the room last and finds Sherlock and John waiting for her in the corridor. Sherlock studies the tenseness in her features and clears his throat, ill at ease.
"Giulia, what you saw in there, erm..." he stumbles on the words. "Irene Adler, she..."
"Is your past," she completes for him and stretches her lips in a tired smile. "I get it. I'm sorry it took me an entire round to come to terms with that, which was quite hypocritical of me, especially after the previous round with Thomas. I guess it just caught me off guard, that's all. But I understand: we all have a past, we all have our stories, our demons. You don't need to explain anything to me."
"I don't," he agrees, "but I still want to. No more secrets between us. Once all of this is over, I think we should talk properly."
She nods pensively and repeats in a low trembling voice, "Once this is over."
Sherlock catches the note of uncertainty and gently asks, "Are you okay?"
She gives him a derisory look and moves her gaze from one man to the other. "Of course not. Are you?"
They both shake their heads, and she says, "Well then. What are we waiting for? The eighth round awaits."
As they walk down the darkened hall, John cocks a brow at her, confused.
"As much as time never seems to pass here, and horrors keep multiplying, I haven't counted seven rooms so far."
"We've only been through five," Sherlock specifies. "But the murders of both the nun and the tenor were the beginning rounds—Act I, if you wish. We are nearing the end now."
John drops his voice to a whisper to remain out of the hearing range of Moriarty's armed men standing in the corridor.
"How are we going to get out of here, Sherlock?"
His friend doesn't look at him when he replies sombrely, "We can't—not by ourselves. We can only hope for an intervention from the outside."
"Like what?"
"A miracle."
John sighs. Sherlock Holmes doesn't believe in miracles. He has a boundless belief only in his brilliant mind. There is just one person who could rival him in terms of intellectual powers and unlimited resources: Mycroft. Their last hope.
When they reach the end of the umpteenth corridor, they find themselves in front of a black door, and Sherlock stops for a second. It's not a pause of exhaustion or a moment to muster the courage. It's an instant of hesitation: Sherlock Holmes hesitates.
John distinctly hears him take a deep breath and hold it before pushing the door open. Unlike the previous room where the vibrant Mozart's sonata welcomed them, this new torture chamber is enlivened only by a continuous low buzzing in the background, but that's not the only difference. There are no glass walls, no showcases for caged hostages—just plain walls on all four sides, and a familiar screen on one of them. An interesting addition is a huge cylindrical structure at the centre of the room, draped in a theatre curtain screening it off. As always, there is a marble figurine on a steel table, next to a folder with a big question mark on the front.
Sherlock strides closer and examines the statue: a woman wearing a cloak embroidered with stars. Her eyes are turned skywards; she holds a globe in one hand and a compass in the other.
"Urania, the Muse of Astronomy," he says flatly, and a wrinkle appears between his eyes as he addresses the turned-off screen. "Though you should know, Jim, that I'm not a fan of the subject. Never cared much about the stars or the Solar System, and I don't count any astronauts among my friends. What would the threat be, anyway? Have you locked your next guest in a rocket to crash on the moon?" he mocks, nodding to the weird tube-shaped structure.
The screen powers on, and Moriarty's amused face appears on the monitor.
"That was indeed my original plan, but it looked a little complicated. I hope you'll forgive me for keeping things simple."
Sherlock snorts at that choice of adjective. Nothing is ever simple with the consulting criminal. He walks up to that bizarre mechanism and brushes his fingers against the soft fabric of the curtain.
"I see you couldn't renounce a touch of theatricality."
"Never. And once again, the curtain rises."
A mechanical arm lifts the velvet tent that slips up between Sherlock's fingers until he finds a pair of familiar blue-grey eyes staring straight at him from beyond a glass. The blood turns cold in his veins. Mycroft.
Inside a glass capsule, his brother is sitting on a chair, one leg crossed over the other, his back straightened, stiff. He holds his chin up imperiously, like the haughty portrait of a king looking down at the visitors from a museum's wall.
Giulia gasps at that apparition, but when John sees him, all his short-lived hopes collapse. No one is coming to save them now.
Struggling to overcome his shock and the paralysing feeling of molten ice sitting in the pit of his stomach, Sherlock furrows his brow at the screen.
"Sorry Jim, but I'm not following this time. What is my brother's connection to the Muse of Astronomy?"
"Let's just say he is the most powerful person in England. He moves the strings of the British government and Secret Service and even works freelance for the CIA. I'd say he aspires to rule the universe."
Everyone rolls their eyes, but nobody objects to that statement. On his part, Mycroft just straightens the lapels of his jacket.
"Flimsy justification, but I guess, after seven rounds, even you were running out of ideas," Sherlock jeers at him. "Anyway, I suppose that, as always, we need to identify the threat to his life and stop it somehow," he feigns a disinterested tone, but his eyes keep glancing back at his brother.
"Not entirely. I wanted this round to be special, you know, family treatment. For the time being, Mycroft Holmes is perfectly safe in his little glass bubble, which is actually not very different from his usual lifestyle. The genius in his crystal tower, far from the rest of the world, untouched, unattainable, leaving everybody out."
"Yes, yes. I'm familiar with my brother's standoffishness," Sherlock cuts him short. "But his life must be in danger."
"Oh, it will be, as soon as I finish providing you with all the details of this round. First things first, there's one simple thing you need to do to save your brother's life: solve a case." His eyes flit to the folder on the table. "Very fresh and quite puzzling, just as you like it. If you provide me with the wrong answer, I will kill your brother. How, though, is something you'll have to figure out in due time. I wouldn't worry about that for now. You need to focus all your energies on the case."
Sherlock is puzzled for a second, and then a flash of realisation blooms on his face.
"I see. You are exploiting the fact that Mycroft never approved of my work as a consulting detective. He thinks I would be of far better use if I worked for the Secret Service. I chose this profession to spite him, and now, I can only save his life by practising the job he so hates."
Jim nods from the screen, smiling blissfully. "Poetic, isn't it?"
Mycroft clears his throat and speaks for the first time, his voice muffled by the glass barrier.
"I hope you chose an enthralling case, Mr Moriarty, because Sherlock will only play for the love of the game and the thrill of the challenge—certainly not for me. He doesn't care about me. In fact, he has always hated me, ever since I left him to attend a prestigious boarding school in Swiss when he was a kid."
Sherlock arches a brow and fixes his eyes on him.
"For someone who has always claimed to be the smart one, you can be very obtuse, Mycroft." He shakes his head and continues in a low voice. "I didn't hate you. I was missing you."
Nobody has ever seen the look of utter surprise and confusion painted all over Mycroft's face.
"What—why?"
Sherlock tilts his head, annoyed (for the first time ever) at his brother's slowness.
"Do you really need to ask? You were the only person who could understand me, the only human being I felt I had something in common with. But you just took and went away," he hisses. It's been decades, but the wound of abandonment will never stop bleeding.
"It was for my education," Mycroft specifies, but Sherlock corrects him.
"It was your getaway, and I could never figure out why. All I knew was that I was trying my hardest to be close to you. I…" He sighs, fumbling for the right words, like a defendant about to plead guilty to an unspeakable crime.
"I looked up to you, Mycroft," he finally admits. "I had even stolen one of your favourite books about that advanced course on the cosmos you were taking at school… Oh." He glances at the marble figurine and murmurs, "That's it. That's the true link with astronomy."
On the screen, Moriarty puts his hands up innocently.
"Hey, I'm a good stalker, but not that good. I didn't know about this book, but I knew all about your ignorance of the Solar System—courtesy of Dr Watson's blog. I also knew that, unlike you, Mycroft Holmes is incredibly well-versed on the matter. It probably won't surprise you that most of the classified information about defence systems, satellites, and nuclear missiles relies heavily on aerospace engineering. I put him in the astronomy room to fan the flames of your sibling rivalry and antagonise you two. But this is getting so much better than I imagined. I should have brought some popcorn."
Mycroft hasn't taken his eyes off Sherlock the whole time.
"Why did you take my astronomy book? Just to annoy me?"
Sherlock averts his gaze, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"I learnt the whole thing by heart in one night only to have something to talk with you about. But when the following morning, I came to your room to give it back, I found you packing your bags for a school in Switzerland."
Mycroft arches a brow at that confession. "I have always wondered what had become of that book."
"Burnt down to ashes," Sherlock promptly replies. "And I erased every memory of the stars or galaxies I ever possessed. All because of you."
"You did learn something that day, though," Mycroft recalls.
"Yes. It was the first time you gave me one of your favourite pieces of advice: 'Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock'," he mimics his haughty tone, then pierces him with a granitic look. "Why did you say that?"
An ancient curiosity swims in that question that he has been holding in the back of his throat for ages. Why that teaching? Why then?
"Because you showed to be greatly upset about my departure, and I deemed it necessary to teach you a valuable lesson."
"By turning me into a cold-hearted monster?"
"I just wanted to protect you. It was my duty as the older brother, and you were such an impressionable, caring boy. I had to save you from heartbreak and clouded judgement."
Sherlock scoffs. "What did you even know about sentiment or heartbreak?"
Mycroft stares at him for a second then lowers his gaze, without a word. Sherlock takes a step towards him. It feels like there is much more than a thin glass separating them. They have always been kept apart by a barbed-wire wall.
His voice drops to a whisper when he asks, "Why did you feel the need to leave, Mycroft?"
His brother keeps his eyes on the ground. "Because living with you was making me weak."
Sherlock exhales and steps away, turning his back to him. "Right. I suppose that my idiotic brain was slowing you down."
Mycroft whips his head up and snaps back, "It's not that, Sherlock."
"Then why did you leave?"
"Because of what happened two weeks before, on your birthday."
Sudden realisation dawns on Sherlock with a one-second delay. He remembers it. How could he ever forget?
They stare at each other for a couple of seconds as the same memory passes through their heads, though it has a very different meaning for the two of them, and Sherlock is about to find out what that day truly meant for his brother.
Mycroft averts his gaze and stares into space with a faraway look in his eyes. Then he recounts an event of many years before when he was just a teenager and Sherlock was a child.
Flashback to Sherlock's childhood
It was a freezing winter day, January 6th: Sherlock's birthday. Sherlock had just turned nine and was playing with the new microscope and chemistry set that his parents had given him as a present. He had been badgering Mycroft (soon to be sixteen) all morning, demanding to play together and get colourful chemical reactions. But his brother had completely ignored him, and Sherlock was chasing him around the house like a pesky sprite.
"Myc, would you do some experiments with me?" he begged.
"Leave me alone, Sherlock."
"Please. It's my birthday," he whined, shadowing his every move.
"Oh, is it?" Mycroft faked surprise. "Then why don't you behave more maturely and stop pestering me?" And he marched imperiously into his bedroom, slamming the door in his brother's face. He had always had that strut, even as a teenager.
Sherlock pouted but didn't give up. He went to the kitchen and experimented with some household products, using his brand-new beakers. It was on that occasion that he discovered that by mixing bleach and vinegar, you can get chlorine gas—'don't-try-this-at-home' warnings would invariably go unheeded with him. He poured the toxic mixture under Mycroft's door to drive him out. His brother bolted out in less than thirty seconds, coughing and covering his nose with his handkerchief, glaring at Sherlock with red, watery eyes.
His little brother smiled proudly at him through his goggles and sniffed to clear his running nose—by playing the mad chemist, he couldn't help but slightly poison himself, too. It was worth it, though: Myc was finally out of his room. Now he would play with him.
To his utter dismay, however, his brother was even less keen on spending time with him now. He reprimanded Sherlock for putting him in danger, repeating that chemistry could be very destructive. In hindsight, that piece of advice turned out to be quite useful for the future.
Sherlock was puzzled and upset. He thought his brother would appreciate his cleverness; he thought Mycroft would deign to glance at him, at least on his birthday. It hurt him that his big brother was always so quick to dismiss him.
Adding insult to injury, Mycroft announced to his parents that he was going ice skating with his friends. Classmates would have been the exact term—he didn't have friends. To be fair, nobody had invited him, but he knew a group of his classmates used to ice skate on the frozen pond three miles away; he had deduced that much on multiple occasions. That day, even mingling with that hideous crowd of goldfish seemed a better alternative than being at the mercy of his nagging little brother.
Sherlock got offended. It was his birthday, after all; he, too, wanted to go ice skating and spend the day with his only friend—his big brother. So, when Mycroft went to the entrance to take his coat, hat, and ice skates, Sherlock slipped silently out of the back door and hid in the boot of their parents' car, knowing his brother would try to steal the car before his parents could stop him. As a self-taught, it had taken Mycroft only an afternoon to teach himself how to drive, one time when their parents had gone to a friend's house nearby. Sherlock had witnessed him rev up in the driveway a couple of times before he grasped the basics. Two hours later, Mycroft had become a skilled driver and had gone for petrol to cover up the consumption of his driving self-lesson. Their parents had never suspected anything.
That was why on Sherlock's birthday, their parents reacted with some second delay when they heard the roar of the engine in the garden. They came out of the front door just in time to see Mycroft turn onto the country road next to the house and disappear beyond the trees. They sighed; there was no stopping their firstborn, ever.
In the boot, Sherlock found an old picnic blanket and propped it like a pillow under his head, smiling to himself for anticipating his brother's move. He knew Mycroft would drive to the pond instead of walking: he was too lazy. The fact he was underage and didn't have a driving licence was a mere formality. They lived in the countryside, and the route to the pond was just a secondary country road, whose very existence the police probably ignored.
Mycroft put on a CD of a violin concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, humming to the cheerful notes of an Allegro. Lying in the dark boot, Sherlock suppressed his giggles. Mycroft loved to play the part of the serious admirer of the gloomy and melancholic Chopin's Nocturnes, but he secretly had a soft spot for the more upbeat pieces.
Mycroft parked the car in a gravel clearing near the frozen lake and joined his classmates on the ice. Despite loathing their inferior minds, ice skating—or rather, plodding clumsily on the frozen surface of the pond, as was what they were doing—didn't require extraordinary intelligence, and he could bear to be in their company for a while.
Sherlock slipped out of the car, unseen, and stared at that scene, simmering with jealousy. Mycroft wasn't friends with those people, but the mutual teasing for the poor performance on the skates and the mockery of whoever fell facedown was fostering some level of acquaintance. Those guys, who had always judged Mycroft as a haughty snot (which wasn't at all inaccurate), were glad to see him finally meddle with them mortals and coming dangerously close to laughing on at least two occasions.
Sherlock wanted what they had; he wanted to have fun with his big brother on his birthday. But he knew that if he joined them on the frozen pond, Mycroft would just make fun of him to look cool in the eyes of his classmates. He waited then, rubbing his hands together and stomping his feet on the ground to release some warmth. After half an hour, all the boys left, and Mycroft stayed alone on the lake, skating lazily in big circles.
Sherlock smiled; he could finally spend some time with him. He walked up to the shore, and since he didn't have a pair of skates on, he started gliding his shoes on the ice. He wasn't properly skating; he looked more like a crippled soldier trudging out of the battlefield. Mycroft hadn't noticed him, lost in thought as he was while his skates were leaving white traces on the pond's surface, like the sketch of an artist on an emerald canvas.
Sherlock pulled away from the shore, pointing towards the centre of the lake, where the ice seemed smoother and more polished, assuming it would be easier for him to glide on the soles of his boots there. What he ignored, though, was that in the centre the ice was also thinner. A few moments later, while he was traipsing towards his brother, the ice broke under his feet, and he plunged into the icy water, letting out a frightening cry that echoed in the nearby grove.
Mycroft turned his head in time to see Sherlock flail his arms in the air before his curly head disappeared under the rippling surface of the dark water.
"Sherlock!" he yelled and sprinted towards the hole, his blades darting on the ice.
Sherlock resurfaced one second later, trashing and trying in vain to claw to the jagged edges of the ice to hoist himself out. He was kicking his feet with all his strength to stay afloat, but his soaked clothes seemed hellbent on dragging him to the bottom of the pond.
Mycroft heard an alarming creak beneath his feet and came to a sudden halt, turning his skates sideways in a perfect hockey stop. He held his breath to listen to the menacing squeak coming from the ice underneath him and squinted ahead. He could see that the closer he got to where Sherlock had fallen, the thinner the ice got. Had he approached at full speed, he would have plummeted into the water himself. He was so distracted, panicking about his brother, that he almost made a colossal mistake. He scolded himself inside his mind and recalled some basics of emergency intervention. Rule number one: never reach for someone by hand if you don't want to dive into the water yourself.
He shouted, "Hold on, Sherlock. I'll get you out of it. Just hold on."
Being careful not to crack the thinning ice he was on, Mycroft lay on his back and half-rolled, half-crawled towards the shore, while he kept talking to his brother. As soon as he reached the dry land, he took a tree limb and stretched it out to Sherlock.
"Grab the branch, and I will hoist you out," he instructed him.
Sherlock's little hands clung onto the branch, and Mycroft tried to yank him out, but the waterlogged clothes opposed an unexpected resistance, and he almost lost grip on the bough. Mycroft groaned and tried again, his cheeks reddened with the effort, his eyes misty with emotion. He wedged his heels into the ground and applied more force, managing to fish Sherlock out of the water. As soon as his little brother was lying on the ice near the hole, he advised him not to stand but roll carefully towards him. Shuddering uncontrollably, Sherlock followed his voice until he reached him on the shore.
Mycroft lifted him in his arms and carried him to the car. As soon as he laid him down on the passenger's seat, he noticed Sherlock's dreadful pallor and his inability to control his body movements. His brain immediately classified those signs as mild hypothermia, then his mind went blank.
"I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do," he repeated, spiralling out of control.
Sherlock raised his eyes to him, his pupils enlarged and barely responsive. He suggested in a whisper, "Maybe you could drive me to the hospital."
Mycroft nodded and fumbled in his pockets for the car key. The hospital! How did he not think of that?
He frantically started the car as Sherlock writhed by his side, wrapping his arms around himself.
"It's co—cold," he stammered through chattering teeth. "I can still feel the icy water on my skin… A thousand needles under my jumper… in my socks… everywhere," he raved.
Meanwhile, his brother couldn't get it into drive and was grinding the gears with a horrible screeching, risking burning out the clutch. What was wrong with him? He knew how to drive; he knew all about it. Less than an hour before, he had driven that very car on the snowy roads without hesitation. Why couldn't he do it now?
He barely noticed Sherlock wriggling out of his coat and whispering, "I should take these off, shouldn't I?"
The wet clothes! It was one of the first things he should have thought of.
Mycroft cursed the slowness of his brain under his breath and turned off the engine to help his brother. His emotions were clouding his judgement.
"Yes, yes. We should get rid of your damped clothes." He hurriedly ripped the zipper of Sherlock's water-soaked coat and tugged his jumper off his head, as Sherlock's frozen hands couldn't even unfasten the button of his trousers.
Mycroft took off his own coat and sweater and dressed Sherlock in his clothes warmed by his body heat.
"There's—there's a blanket in the boot," Sherlock mumbled.
His brother was so busy registering his slurred speech as another sign of mild hypothermia that he almost ignored his suggestion, thinking it was just a cold-induced reverie. Then his brain went over his words again, and he finally understood. Of course Sherlock knew the contents of the boot. That's where he must have hidden during the car journey to the pond.
He rushed to the back of the car and retrieved the old picnic blanket that had served as his pillow. He wrapped it around Sherlock's skinny, livid legs, but nothing seemed to lessen his shivers. Mycroft slid two fingers into the sweater collar, pressing them on Sherlock's neck. His heartbeat was getting slow, too slow. His conditions were worsening fast; he was entering a state of moderate hypothermia.
He sat again in the driver's seat and finally got the car moving, speeding towards the hospital. He kept glancing at his brother every five seconds, but all he managed to think was, Don't die, please, don't die. I'm sorry. Don't die.
Feeling his brother's gaze on himself, Sherlock painfully raised his head and curved up a corner of his trembling mouth in a bad replica of a smile.
"Hey, Myc. Could you turn on the heat, please?"
"Of course, of course."
Mycroft had to force his eyes off his brother's face to focus on the road while he chastised himself for letting panic take over and obfuscate his usually hyper-logical, detached mind. Why hadn't he thought about the heat? It was so banal, so obvious. He was having the typical panicked reaction of an ordinary person, a beginner's mistake.
With trembling hands, he pressed all the buttons and levers on the dashboard, accidentally turning the CD player on. The joyful notes of the violin concerto he was listening to earlier filled the car. Sherlock's pale lips hinted at a smile, and he snuggled up to his brother, begging for some warmth. Mycroft put an arm around his shivering shoulders and held him tightly, desperately hoping the heat of his body would pass through the thin fabric of his shirt and transfer to him. Through the mist of his panic, a gloomy thought snaked through his mind. That was the first time he hugged his little brother. And it threatened to be the last, too. Maybe his own warmth wasn't enough to keep him alive. Painfully ironic: he was too cold-hearted to save him.
He drove mechanically, incapable of forming any straightforward thought, at the mercy of a single, endlessly repeated plea. Please, don't die on me.
He glimpsed at his brother and frowned at his closed eyes.
"Keep your eyes open, Sherlock. You can't lose consciousness. We're almost there. Just hold on."
Sherlock cracked an eye half-open and whined feebly, "I'm cold and tired."
"I know. Lethargy is a sign of hypothermia," Mycroft replied. How could he sound so stuffy even in that despairing situation?
"But you can't close your eyes. Keep them open. Do it for me," he added in a softer voice.
He looked around the car, trying to find a distraction or a conversation topic, realising another woeful truth about their relationship: he had never had proper conversations with his little brother, if not to mock his inferior intelligence and slowness. Now, though, he was being the slow one.
His eyes landed on the CD player, and his face lit up.
"You have been studying the piano for three years now, haven't you?"
"Yes, but I hate it." Sherlock grimaced. "I don't like pressing down the keys. It's boring."
"Alright, but you are learning to read the music, right?" Mycroft insisted, and Sherlock shot him an offended look.
"Read? I can decipher symphonies by ear and identify all the notes."
"Well, then. I challenge you: can you name all the notes of this violin concerto?" Mycroft nodded at the music streaming out of the speakers.
Despite being almost frozen to death, the younger Holmes would never throw a challenge. While Mycroft was agonisingly pushing the car forward through the last miles to the hospital, Sherlock played along and kept naming the notes of the melody in an increasingly lower tone, until his words were nothing more than a thread of voice. He lost consciousness while still humming to the tune, right when the gleeful sound of the violin was hushed up by the painstakingly loud sirens of the ambulances, welcoming them at the entrance of the hospital.
Mycroft carried Sherlock in his arms inside the A&E, abandoning the car in the middle of the service area. That was the last time he had ever driven a car.
It was a curious fun fact very few people knew: Mycroft Holmes, a high-ranking officer of the MI6, had a helicopter's pilot license and had been appointed as a Royal Navy submariner, but he did not, in fact, have a common driving license. He knew how to drive, and that traumatic experience made it impossible for him to forget. But since that day, he had categorically refused to sit in the driver's seat of a car ever again. That was why he had several black cars with personal drivers. It wasn't pretentiousness, at least not entirely; it was out of necessity.
As for Sherlock, since that day, he had stopped celebrating his birthday. That was why no one knew when he was born, not even John.
End of flashback
Mycroft finishes up his story, staring into his brother's eyes. "When you woke up 24 hours later at the hospital, the second thing you said was that you wanted to ditch the piano and learn to play the violin. I suppose since it was the last sound you heard before you lost consciousness, you instinctively associated it with life."
Sherlock smiles at that memory. The sound of a violin had always inspired his thoughts.
Mycroft scrunches his face in a grimace. "That's not the association I made, though. To me, it was connected to death. To your near-death."
"So this is why you can never bear to be in the same room as me when I play," Sherlock suddenly realises. "I've always thought you despised me as a violinist."
"Well, brother dear, you are not Paganini, but you are not half-bad either. The point is, you and the violin, it..."
"Triggers a painful memory."
Mycroft nods. "And not just that. It triggers guilt."
Sherlock frowns, confused. "Guilt? You saved my life."
"I know you have always remembered it that way. That is how you have always interpreted it, since the moment you woke up in that hospital bed."
Sherlock ponders that comment for a second. "Wait. What was the first thing I said when I woke up?"
Mycroft holds his gaze for a second too long; his eyes give away an old torment tearing at him from within.
"You opened your eyes and looked for me. You ignored our parents, stared at me and said 'Thank you'. You thanked me, but for what? Almost killing you?" he shouts.
Then he sighs and massages his forehead. "Do you know what I kept thinking as I waited for you to wake up? I beat myself up for being a terrible brother. If only I had given you a tiny bit of attention, if only I had played with you for just ten minutes, maybe none of it would have happened. If I hadn't ignored you on your birthday, perhaps you wouldn't have felt the need to follow me to that bloody pond."
Sherlock steps closer to the glass; there is a trace of endearing concern in the furrow between his eyebrows.
"You can't hold yourself responsible for that. It was an accident. It wasn't your fault I stalked you to the pond or that I was reckless on the ice."
"What about what happened afterwards?" his brother snaps back.
"You kept me warm as best as you could and drove me to the hospital. You saved me."
"No," Mycroft yells, and despite the muffling of the glass wall, his voice carries all his heart-wrenching anguish. "You saved yourself, you kept yourself alive. I kept panicking. You had to remind me to get rid of your wet clothes and drive you to the hospital. You even had to tell me to turn the heat on in the car. You were nine years old and suffering from hypothermia, and you had to guide your incapable sixteen-year-old brother, who couldn't even think straight in those moments."
"Technically, you were still fifteen that day," Sherlock corrects him, but Mycroft doesn't admit excuses.
"My weakness—my very affection for you—almost cost your life, and..." his voice gets stuck in his mouth, choked up by shame.
"And the thought of my loss broke your heart," Sherlock completes his sentence, before realising, "That's when you vowed never to feel anything anymore. And two weeks later, before leaving for a far-away boarding school, you passed that lesson on to me."
Mycroft glances at John and Giulia for an instant. Apparently not.
Then he sighs. "You finally have your answer, brother mine. I left to protect myself because I cared, and when I care, people risk getting hurt. But you should know that already." He gives him a patronising look, and his tone turns flinty when he says, "It is the same for you."
Sherlock can't hold his brother's gaze and lowers his eyes. Regrettably, against his better intentions, he does care. That is the whole point of Moriarty's torturing game.
As if summoned by those thoughts, Moriarty intervenes. "Such a touching story." He clasps a hand to his chest. "A remarkable family memory. I wish you two had bonded sooner, so this round would be truly excruciating."
Sherlock fixes his eyes on the screen and lets his poker face obscure every emotion. He walks up to the table, studying the folder with the question mark.
"Let's cut to the chase, Jim. What is this case?"
"Before I present it to you, I have one more rule. I gave you a chance to talk to your brother, but I know how clever he is, and how useful he could be in the solution of this case, so I'm afraid I'll have to cover him back again."
The mechanical arm lowers the velvet tent to cover the cylindrical structure where Mycroft is trapped. Sherlock looks into his eyes until the curtain hides him from view. Jim doesn't miss the intense exchange of glances between the brothers.
"Don't worry, Sherlock. I'll let you give him one last glance just before you provide me with your answer. Who knows, maybe you will even witness as he dies in front of your eyes."
Sherlock glares at the monitor, but Moriarty just types something on a tablet.
"One last touch, to stop Mycroft from eavesdropping on your reasoning. I was undecided about the music, but your lovely reminiscence just gave me the greatest idea for the soundtrack of this round."
At that moment, some violin music fills the glass capsule, making it impossible for Mycroft to hear anything that is said in the room. He can only listen to a violin quartet over and over. A slap in the face.
"Now, we're ready to begin."
Author's note: Dear readers, being a huge admirer of Mycroft's character, I chose to dedicate this chapter to his relationship with Sherlock. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and the use of a flashback to their childhood.