A/N: The idea for another chapter of this wormed its way into my brain while I was working on the other story and wouldn't get out until I wrote it. So here it is. Not as deliciously bleak of an ending as the old final line, but I like the symmetry.
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Mycroft had been phoned by the school three separate times over the day, two of which his PA had fielded, the last she'd practically bullied him into taking only for him to find himself immediately pulled away by urgent business. Something about an incident between Sherlock and a group of schoolmates. Another fight? For god's sake, it hadn't even been a day. Surely they'd no need to be ringing up the boy's guardian over every minor scuffle.
And so it was that he came to his flat at the end of a very long day, mind so abuzz with work matters that he hardly registered the doorman saying something about a guest having come round. Ugh. Well, whoever it had been they'd simply have to drop by tomorrow. He certainly wasn't in the mood for company tonight.
As he entered his flat, however, he realised with a sickening jolt that the doorman hadn't meant he'd turned anyone away - he wouldn't have been permitted to, because the guest had been accompanied by a resident. Sat by the coffee table overlooking the flat's overlarge skyline windows were his father and brother.
Mycroft stopped short for an interminable beat as he entered the room. Met his father's gaze. The man was sat in Mycroft's favourite chair, foot hooked over one knee and a glass of scotch in hand. Exactly as if he were in his own sitting room back home. He was afforded a polite smile, but some primal part of Mycroft's psyche could sense a sharp edge of irritation hidden underneath. Knew it was directed at him, at least partially.
And though he'd never been threatened by any adult in his life, was in fact now an adult himself and thus hardly in any real danger, he still found himself struck by a bolt of fear. Siger may have never harmed his eldest son, but he'd made no secret of the harm he was capable of doing should the need ever arise. Mycroft had spent his life subconsciously ensuring such a day would never come - perfect manners, perfect marks, the right uni and prescribed career. Safety in the form of slotting neatly into place.
Others, of course, hadn't the luxury of fitting into such a mould. Reluctantly he tore his eyes away from Father, trained them on the other occupant of the room.
Sherlock sat upon the sofa, locked into the familiar state of tense discomfort he always took up around Father. He spared Mycroft a single glance, then dropped into a vacant stare.
Nausea bloomed at the sight of blood - a cut on the boy's forehead which had been patched up some time ago and begun to soak through the plaster.
Focusing downwards revealed a crumpled shirt collar, a button near the top hanging by a thread, specks of blood and dirt on his sleeves… but the only sign of further injury was a splash of angry red over the knuckles of his right hand. Strike points. Won the fight, then, clearly. Must have been against the son of someone with the means to contact Siger directly. Someone Siger considered useful enough to agree to see to the matter himself.
Which meant someone devastatingly influential, of course. And within Mycroft's sphere, as Siger's decision to return Sherlock to his care with such a needlessly dramatic setup meant the man had doubtless managed to twist the situation into some deranged test of his eldest's diplomacy skills. Placed the blame on Mycroft's shoulders somehow, a bid to ensure his professional reputation would hinge on whether he could bring his chaotic little brother to heel. Fantastic. As if he hadn't enough on his plate already.
He kept the anger off his face as he turned back to Father. Packaged all the roiling emotions up and locked them away. No need for theatrics.
Siger took a calm sip of scotch and raised a brow at him. "Well?"
"Well, what?" Mycroft replied archly. He went to set his papers in their usual spot, determined to go about his normal routine as if his father hadn't invaded his flat.
"A bit of thanks would seem to be in order."
A dozen childish retorts sprang to mind, but he managed to pack them away with the rest. Calm. Collected.
"You weren't asked to intervene."
"Unfortunately I very much was," Siger said drolly. Another sip of scotch. "Your brother put two boys in hospital, one of whom happened to be Richard Davies' eldest son."
Ah, and there it was: Davies. Diplomat involved in the Moldova affair. Must have phoned Siger in a rage and demanded resolution in exchange for his continued cooperation with intelligence operations, hence why Siger had gone to the trouble of travelling out to Eton. Which, all else being equal, actually meant that Mycroft's failure to anticipate or prevent the incident had uncovered valuable information regarding Davies' activities. One doubted his brother would consider that sufficient trade-off for Mycroft having let the situation default to Father's oversight, of course.
Speaking of his brother…
"Are you-?" Mycroft started, turning his attention to the boy. Siger cut him off.
"He's fine."
Mycroft turned an acid glance to his father, received a raised brow back. A placid sip of scotch. Unspoken message that he wouldn't be permitted to speak directly with his brother, and should stop trying lest the order be enforced by other means. A sick bolt of anxiety - he was drawing perilously close to breaking the pact, straying beyond the safety of perfection. Had to regain favour.
"Well, I trust your handling of the situation was… efficient." As he spoke his gaze strayed around the room. Wrinkled throw rug, a pen knocked off a side table, smudges on the window glass where a hand might land to break a fall. Reluctantly calculated how long his brother would've been alone with the man. A few hours, at most. An eternity.
"I should hope so, by this point," Siger replied with a snort. "Talked those morons out of expelling him a half-dozen times already, what's one more on the pile?"
He turned his gaze to Sherlock, who was still staring at nothing. A brief flash of something vicious in Siger's eyes made Mycroft's stomach flip, but it was gone in an instant. Replaced by easy nonchalance. The man snapped his fingers as if summoning a dog, and Sherlock blinked, refocussed, then in response to a small hand gesture reluctantly stood.
"Tell your brother what we've agreed upon."
Sherlock answered robotically. "I will remain in Mycroft's custody until such time as his negligence results in another behavioural incident, at which point I will be returned to Father's oversight."
Mycroft did his level best not to become unnerved, but it was a losing battle. He shifted focus to Father instead. Made a reasonable attempt at a glare despite primordial parts of his brain screaming to appease the man.
"I will not be relinquishing guardianship."
Siger's only reply was a bemused smirk, which was somehow more terrifying than any reaction Mycroft might have braced for. The man raised his glass to both take a sip and gesture lazily towards Sherlock.
"Tell me, Mycroft - what do you imagine led to your brother beating two schoolmates into the ground?"
Mycroft blinked, tried to think how to regain control of the conversation and quite soundly failed.
"He… picks fights. He's always done."
Siger chuckled. "No, my boy. Quite the opposite - his social incompetence drives others to violence, but he doesn't fight them. He knows the consequences of kicking up too much of a fuss."
Implications sat heavy. Mycroft swallowed. Siger carried on speaking without a care in the world.
"Evidently, however, his short time under your guardianship has already managed to shift his balance of motivation. He's lost all concern for punishment." Siger swirled his glass, considering Sherlock as if he were a puzzle to be solved. Sherlock, for his part, had slipped back into a dead-eyed stare. Swiftly snapped back to awareness however when Siger addressed him. "Sherlock. Explain your actions."
"I…" Sherlock hesitated, glanced at Mycroft. Swallowed. A tense silence, then he shook his head as if to say he couldn't.
A flash of cold fury in Siger's eyes, quickly masked by an exaggerated look of long-suffering exasperation. With one last sip of his scotch he set the empty glass down and got to his feet. Shifted towards Sherlock with an arm raised as if to give a friendly pat on the arm. Sherlock's flinch when the man's hand entered his field of view was gut-wrenching.
No blow came, however. Not even a pat. Instead Siger draped an arm across the boy's shoulders and drew him in close in a bizarre facsimile of a fatherly side-hug. Sherlock appeared to have no idea what to think of this. He fell to a fixed stare straight ahead, the faintest hint of baffled confusion.
Mycroft, of course, went on high alert. Sudden change of character, disarming friendliness. Setting up a trap.
"Well, it's no great loss for the moment," Siger remarked, giving Sherlock's shoulder a squeeze which might have passed for affectionate in any other circumstance. "Davies was never mission-critical, and I daresay that obnoxious brat of his deserved the lesson in humility." He flashed a bland smile to Sherlock, getting no reaction beyond a pale-faced stare. Siger behaved as if he found this quite normal, however, and turned his smile back to Mycroft. "We can't overlook the liability of your brother's unpredictable behaviour, however. If you continue to coddle him I'm afraid I'll have no choice but to step in."
Mycroft was beginning to feel nearly as powerless as his brother. Nevertheless his brain conjured up the correct response, delivered in an appropriate tone of mild offence.
"I've not coddled him."
Siger snorted. "No, of course not. I'm sure this recent turn to delinquency has nothing whatsoever to do with your childish refusal to implement proper discipline."
"And what would you consider proper discipline?" Mycroft asked, his acid delivery transforming the question into a snide prompt for the man to confess his sins. Knew in all truth he wanted no such thing; much preferred to let the details stay buried, sketched out only by their aftermath. His mind had got ahead of him, however, and supplied the only good response to keep on even footing. Siger was aiming to unsettle him, that much was obvious. One found themselves obliged to pretend it wasn't working. Rules of the game. Even if Siger doubtless saw straight through his child's bravado.
Sure enough, Father gave him an indulgent smirk. Proud of his boy for saving face. The pleasant flush of satisfaction through Mycroft's psyche for having met expectations was, in retrospect, sickening.
"What would I consider proper discipline?" Siger spoke as if he'd just been asked an interesting question about some political event, or perhaps the local sports team. "Difficult to find anything that sticks in a child so recalcitrant, of course," he went on casually, still gripping Sherlock round the shoulders in a way which had begun to take on a subtle edge of threat. "The boy's got the attention span of a gnat, you see, so swift consequence is of utmost importance. Verbal admonishment would be simplest, except that he's prone to quite literally not listening to a word anyone says. Inflicting pain becomes the only real option for day-to-day affairs."
Mycroft was becoming rather distracted fighting back the urge to be ill - between the blood on his brother's face and the boy's thousand-yard stare in response to this topic he found himself scarcely able to breathe. Made a valiant effort to quash the roiling emotions, however. Had to keep control of something, even if only himself.
"I won't be inflicting pain on anyone, thank you," he bit out.
Father chuckled. "Ah, yes. Your unfortunate distaste for violence. Inefficient, but… workable, I suppose. Always the option of psychological pressure instead - exploit his phobia."
"Phobia?" Mycroft repeated, baffled. What could his brother possibly be phobic of? Lack of fear was arguably the child's core personality defect. The boy had gone and climbed a bloody building within the past week alone, for god's sake.
But Siger's smile took on a dark edge, his arm around Sherlock's shoulders tightening, and suddenly Mycroft understood. His brother had always been unreasonably averse to anything resembling physical restraint, often pitching childish fits over basic necessities like being asked to wear a seatbelt. Just another of the boy's irritating quirks, he'd always thought.
But now… well, now he really was fighting the urge to vomit.
He hoped the compulsive swallow didn't come off as vulnerable as he felt. "Let him go."
Predictably, Siger did no such thing. The three of them stood in stalemate for a long moment.
A shift from the corner of Mycroft's vision - his brother was beginning to tense up, hollow stare beginning to fill up with a rising storm of emotion. Anxious, to annoyed, to frustrated. A sidelong look to Father before a flash of white-hot rage. The boy's fists suddenly clenched at his sides, and Mycroft could only watch with mounting dread as he realised what was about to happen. Siger evidently knew the same warning signs, because as he glanced to the boy his face hardened to the truth of frigid steel beneath his genial mask.
Quick as lightning the boy whipped his arm up and drove the butt of his hand into Siger's nearest shoulder. Site of an old bullet wound which had left lasting damage to the joint, a fact Mycroft only knew from reading the man's personnel file. Couldn't imagine how his brother had learnt of that particular weakness, let alone how best to exploit it.
Upon landing the hit Sherlock immediately dropped and managed to duck out from under Father's arm as the man recoiled. Only made it a scant few steps before Siger's decades of hand-to-hand combat kicked in - he lost hold of the teenager only an instant before catching the edge of Sherlock's shirt, then his arm. Redirected his momentum to throw the boy into the hardwood, where he landed hard on his back. Siger then pinned him there by means of a heavy foot on a narrow, heaving chest.
All of this had transpired in an instant, meaning Mycroft had only the chance to shout "Stop!" and nothing else. He stood now in sudden stillness, trying desperately to quell a surge of terror.
"G-get off him," he was just able to stammer. To his great chagrin his father paid him no heed whatsoever. The man's face had twisted into a demonic snarl, a remorseless predator gazing down upon its prey. This was the monster Mycroft had spent his life trying to avoid by means of impossible perfection. His body felt paralysed.
On the floor Sherlock had managed to catch a few shallow breaths despite the weight on his ribs. He swallowed down a grimace and glared, defiant, up at Father.
Absolutely inconceivable. To be defiant in the face of a visage like that? To know the man could kill you without a thought and still find the bloody audacity?
And, yet, Sherlock had locked eyes with their father without so much as a flinch. Ruthless fury to bitter hatred.
There was absolutely nothing Mycroft could do - he could only stand petrified and hope he wasn't about to witness a murder.
An eternity passed before, mercifully, Siger's face smoothed over. He stepped back, straightened his coat, and turned a pleasant smile Mycroft's way. One could just spot the red-hot ember of rage burning bright beneath the mask.
No words were exchanged. Merely a polite nod to Mycroft's stunned silence, and Father turned smartly and left.
For a small eternity he continued to stand frozen, staring at the space where his father had just been.
The sound of his brother coughing finally caught his attention. He snapped himself out of what felt very much like a trance, looked down to the floor to find the boy had let his head flop back onto the hardwood, arms draped boneless over his stomach, eyes closed with a slight wince. The plaster on his forehead had come loose in the scuffle; a trickle of blood leaking from the reopened cut.
Swallowing back a flood of nausea, Mycroft knelt down and reached out to his brother. He'd meant to touch his shoulder, a silent offer of help getting up, but the second his hand came in range Sherlock's eyes snapped open and he caught Mycroft's wrist in a visegrip. They both froze. Mycroft found himself looking into the same vicious, hunted glare the boy had turned on Father.
Paralysed, again. In a question of fight or flight he'd always defaulted to freeze.
Thankfully the stalemate broke within a few tense beats - Sherlock's glare dissolved, shifted to something far more world-weary than a sixteen year old should have been capable of. He released Mycroft's wrist with a muttered, "sorry". Rubbed a hand down his face, then shook his head and set to pushing himself upright. Mycroft resisted the impulse to try to help again. Clearly the boy preferred a bit of space.
"What on earth are you apologising for?" he heard himself ask. The words came out sounding strangely detached, as if said by another. He felt unmoored, set adrift in a numbing sea.
Sherlock didn't answer. He'd stopped at the stage of having got himself sitting mostly upright, slouched forward over his knees. He'd fallen to staring at the floor between his feet, and the deep exhaustion in his eyes felt like a knife to the gut. Doubly so when Mycroft could think of nothing whatsoever to say. All he could do was kneel there, useless, as his baby brother took a quiet breath and let it out again.
"I didn't think he'd leave me here," he muttered, almost too softly to hear. He sounded almost… disappointed.
Mycroft frowned. After a brief pause to consider he let himself drop down from the half-kneel he'd been in to instead sit on the floor. Uncomfortable, especially in the suit. And horribly undignified. Some things were more important, however.
He'd thought Sherlock might glance his direction, make some snide comment about sitting on the hardwood like a child. But he didn't even turn his head.
"Did you… want to go with him?"
There was a long pause before Sherlock answered. "I don't know."
Not the response he'd been expecting. Internally he was running through every psychology text he'd ever read, trying to understand why an abuse victim would want to return to their tormentor. Pages upon pages of theories and explanations but none of it felt like it could possibly apply, not to his baby brother.
In the silence Sherlock closed his eyes, took as deep a breath as bruised ribs would allow. When he opened them again he appeared to have detached once more. No emotion beyond profound exhaustion.
"May I go to my room?" he asked quietly. Still hadn't lifted his head.
"... no one's stopping you," was all Mycroft could think to say. As the boy painfully pushed himself up to his feet, he remained sat on the floor.
Paralysis had set in once more. Couldn't bring himself to move, to speak. To take any action which might risk a turn for the worse.
All he could do was watch this brother leave.
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It was half past eight in the evening by the time he finally returned home the next day. He'd not meant to be out so long, but his current skillset and focus area tended to demand his presence for any discussions related to the Chechnya conflict, of which there had been several. Being roped in to consult with the Americans about their bloody spy plane hadn't helped matters, but he was glad of the opportunity regardless. Always eager to expand further into Chinese relations, given the trajectory of Russia's current regime.
Scraps of political intrigue swirling about his mental space were enough distraction to temporarily put the events of the previous evening out of his mind. It wasn't until he'd stepped through the door of the flat and saw his brother's coat on the hook that he was hit by recollection of yesterday's scene in full detail. A knot of sudden anxiety in his gut. Where was his brother? Had he been wrong to leave the boy on his own all day after such a traumatic event? What if he'd run off?
With the very thought, of course, he realised it was absurd. Sherlock hadn't anything to gain from absconding into the city. They both knew Father had the means to track the boy down no matter how far he fled. No, he would be home. Skulking about the flat somewhere, sullen as any other teenager. Working through his emotions in solitude. Hopefully.
Details jumped out as Mycroft ventured into the sitting room. A spot of blood on the floor from yesterday had been wiped up, the smudged window cleaned and throw rug straightened. Laundry set aside to be collected by the housekeeping service. Smell of coffee from the kitchen.
As he approached the latter room he spotted his brother stood leaning against the counter. The boy's face was in profile, leaving visible his expression of quiet weariness. He held a cup of coffee in his hands and was staring into the middle distance, clothes the loose shirt and trouser affair he typically wore round the flat. Without the defining structure of a shirtcollar his shoulders seemed far too thin for his frame. Willowy.
"Ahem," Mycroft cleared his throat, just to make his presence known. Sherlock startled and looked over to him. The cut on his forehead had progressed to the beginnings of an ugly bruise.
"Oh, erm… hi," he muttered. Dropped his gaze for a fraction, then gave a jerky little shake of his head and raised it again as if forcing himself to maintain eye contact.
Mycroft frowned in response. Couldn't help but get the sense the boy was behaving as if Father's strict code of social conduct suddenly applied between the two of them. Despite his formidable interpersonal analysis skills he couldn't make sense of it.
"Kindly drop the false decorum. It's unsettling," Mycroft drawled as he moved to examine the coffee pot. Wanted to know who'd prepared it. To his surprise he saw no evidence to suggest anyone but Sherlock had been in the kitchen all day. "Did you make this?"
His brother just nodded in silent confirmation. Mycroft poured a bit into a mug and experimentally took a sip. Didn't drink coffee regularly enough to have strong opinions on the matter, but it seemed quite good, especially for a dark roast. Which itself was baffling, really.
"When did you learn to make coffee?"
Sherlock blinked, shrugged. "I don't know."
Belatedly the penny dropped. Father preferred dark roast.
"Father taught you," Mycroft concluded unhappily. Did his best to keep the tide of anger in check. Wouldn't help anything to get snippy over coffee, of all things.
Sherlock fidgeted with his mug. "Oh… yeah, probably."
"You don't remember?"
Another shrug, dropped eye contact as the boy took an awkward sip of coffee. Buried in his mannerisms was the implication that there were a lot of things he didn't remember. Or, perhaps more accurately, had managed to forget.
Alongside that dark thought came a tide of others - all the things he'd been successfully burying whilst distracted by work. He'd witnessed the violence now, or at least a snapshot of it. Saw the ease with which Siger threw his son to the ground, the resigned acceptance in the way Sherlock had picked himself up again. No trace of shock, surprise, anger. That had been a fully normal reaction, to him. Precisely what he expected.
As usual, Mycroft's gut met such revelations with a wave of nausea.
"It was… wildly inappropriate, you know," he started, for once in his life having failed to plan his words before he said them. Sherlock glanced up questioningly, so he valiantly struggled to clarify. "Father hurting you like that. I'm… sorry I let it happen."
Sherlock just blinked at him. Didn't look to know quite what to do with that statement.
"Um… it's fine?" he tried, looking baffled. "I deserved it."
Good lord. What an absolutely hideous thing to say.
And, yet, the boy didn't look like he'd been fishing for a reaction - just sipped his coffee again and studied Mycroft's appalled expression with mild puzzlement, as if the horrifying nature of his own words hadn't occurred to him.
"You did not deserve that," Mycroft snapped.
Sherlock shifted to looking very confused. "I… what? You saw what I did, you were standing right there."
"Justifiable self-defence does not warrant-"
Evidently his brother wasn't finished speaking, however, as the boy just carried on directly over Mycroft's words.
"... honestly it's lucky you were, I got off really light for that. Last time I went for his shoulder he-"
Sherlock stopped mid-sentence. Mycroft, having cut himself off when he realised his brother wasn't listening, now watched with faint alarm as his expression dropped into a vacant, empty stare.
The concept of traumatic dissociation was nothing new to him, of course - he was an intelligence analyst, for god's sake, he'd more than enough psychiatric knowledge to grasp on an intellectual level what was happening. Primal defence of the human brain, shutting down surface-level affect to prevent a panic cascade.
Not a surprise to find his brother had developed such a coping mechanism. He'd have been trained into it from earliest childhood by Father. Ever disdainful of emotional displays. And then had it further reinforced… by Mycroft.
In his brother's absent gaze he now saw a hundred little moments between them. Every time Mycroft shushed him, told him off for snivelling, every moment he'd dismissed concerns and refused to engage with outbursts. How his brother had become more withdrawn over the years, stopped having tantrums, stopped showing any emotion at all really beyond annoyance or bitter sarcasm. And how grateful Mycroft had been watching it happen, thinking the boy was growing more mature.
Hesitantly he reached out to touch his brother's arm. Sherlock blinked with the contact, life returning to his gaze, and took a sip of coffee as if nothing had happened. He spared a bemused glance down to Mycroft's hand before shrugging it off and wandering over to lean against the edge of the kitchen table.
"Erm… anyway," Sherlock continued. No hint of concern, nor even acknowledgment of what to him must have seemed a brief gap in awareness. Plainly he'd grown so used to it he hardly noticed anymore. "Sorry for shouting at you the other day, Myc. That was inappropriate."
"You don't-" Mycroft cut himself off, frustrated, and shook his head. He'd somehow only just clued in to what was likely going on. "For god's sake, stop."
A hint of anxiety flitted across his brother's face. "Stop what?"
"Being so bloody agreeable!" Mycroft snapped. As if confirming his unvoiced deduction his brother dropped the casual stance almost immediately, fell to something much more guarded. This only served to make Mycroft feel worse. He did his best to prevent the unease translating into anger, as was his usual habit. Wasn't even sure why he was upset, to be honest - wasn't this exactly what he'd wanted? His brother being pleasant for once? But it felt horrific, somehow. He wanted the petulant brat back. His real brother, not this wretched automaton.
Sherlock was staring at him. All trace of affability had gone from his stance, leaving him tense and guarded like a cornered fox.
Silence stretched far too long between them. Finally Mycroft could bear it no longer and bit out an angry sigh before turning to set his mug smartly atop the counter. As with countless prior spats between them he turned to head off down the hallway. Get clear of this mess of destructive emotion and reorient himself in solitude.
Same as the last time, though, he looked up and caught the reflection of the kitchen in the cabinet down the hall. A ghostly mirror image of his brother suspended in the glass. Watching Mycroft leave with an expression far worse than any glare would've been - resigned acceptance. This was what he expected, now. What he thought he deserved.
Mycroft stopped. Every instinct in his body told him to flee from the gathering storm of anxiety. With an almighty force of will he forced himself to turn back around instead. Found his brother watching him. Tired, faintly puzzled. Holding the coffee mug in both hands like a shield. Wine-red stain of bruised knuckles stark over white ceramic.
Feeling as if he were taking a stand against some towering foe, he drew a deep, steadying breath, and met his brother's eyes.
"Do you… want to play a board game?"
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