Sherlock 1. Chapter 1

Written for a BBC Sherlock kinkmeme post asking for Sherlock and John being turned irreversibly into children.

Rating: PG-13 for dark themes (currently)

I own, quite sadly, nothing.

Summary: It was almost as if he had died, to look into the eyes of a three year old Sherlock and know that they no longer shared a past, that the memories lived on only in himself. But what if this time could be better? What if this time he could protect him? A Sherlock Holmes who grew up safe and loved? A John Watson who never heard the snap-click of a beer can?

* * *

Mycroft had increased the manpower of the watch on his younger brother the moment he laid eyes, however removed, on John Watson. He received reports of a flat mate, of a flurry of activity on Baker street, but the words were only basic observations, unwilling to write hypothesis, unable to comprehend the greater picture. Good help was so hard to find when your own standards appear to be to the rest of the world- super human. Of course he had a back check done on the Doctor, knew everything about the man, everything he had ever done and a fair idea of what he would do before he ever saw the first images from Baker Street, the first images of his baby brother in the presence of this man.

The news of the imminent flat mate came as something of a shock, if shock was an emotion Mycroft had ever truly experienced. Sherlock could, if he compromised his own standard for what he defined as a worth while case, easily make the rent. A handful of pieced together moments sending out the post with simple conclusions to cases could have afforded him more decadent rooms than he had chosen. And Mycroft had, although he knew the matter of pride would never allow it, offered more than once to pay for Sherlock's lodging. Money after all is nothing more than a pedestrian coil, it would be a simple matter to free his brother of such paltry thoughts.

When the first images of the duo came into his possession Mycroft did something he had in the course of his life rarely done. He second guessed himself. The facts were laid out before his eyes, tangible and real but it was so incredibly improbable that despite the evidence he found himself doubting the truth. He needed more proof to confirm.

It was a short video clip, the audio was so poor as to be inconsequential and long enough into the duos relationship that Mycroft knew he had, despite the miniature world crisis he had avoided in the mean time, let his priorities slip. A failure he would not tolerate in himself again.

An orange shock blanket hung loosely on his brothers shoulders, relenting to the need of those around him to protect while simultaneously displaying how unnecessary their insistence was. He was thinking aloud, his mind whirring. Mycroft could see the shock in his brother, the way it had slowed his mind, the way he had allowed the adrenalin to cloud his perceptions to be nearly comparable to the great unwitting masses. And then his eyes shifted and focused, he stopped talking, and for a moment he let the impenetrable mask he had worn all of their lives slip.

It felt like a horrible betrayal to witness it, like a voyeur watching the most intimate moment of a lifetime. Like unwittingly watching the act of your own conception.

Mycroft felt a blush rise on his own checks, feeling the moment as keenly as if it were his own, as if the thought in Sherlock's mind were being whispered directly into his own ear.

He witnessed the moment Sherlock was changed irreparably.

The moment he laid his eyes on John Watson standing across the street and knew not only what he had done, and what he was capable of, but what they would be together.

His face filled with something so incredibly human that Mycroft wondered if there had ever been a moment of such exquisite humanity written on his brother's cold features since the day their father had died.

The orange blanket, his succession to humanity, was pulled and held tight around his shoulders by purposefully shaking hands. He muttered a few lost words to the police inspector but his eyes were trained on the figure just coming into the background of the screen. His mind already there with him.

The two figures spoke for a moment, intense and calm and real. Like both had been just slightly uncomfortable while apart and had found something in each other which made a comfort of existing.

And then Sherlock did something Mycroft had not seen since they were very, very, young and the memories had all but faded from even his great mind.

He smiled.

He smiled as if he were actually happy.


	2. Chapter 2

Mycroft knew the danger his brother was in, knew that the men he was tracking had roots deep into places where the light of day would fear to tread. But there was no proof that these men, this surface of a much darker creature had access to the heart of the beast. The men Sherlock was tracking had never set foot in a level 4 hot zone, they had never gazed at the strains of virus under an electric microscope, never witnessed flesh die or mutate on a cellular level.

There should never have been any real danger.

But by the time he found the leak in his own department and…extracted him, by the time he knew what information had been divulged…

It is after all better to wound than to kill. To distract the enemy, make him tend to the fallen.

Sherlock had been given no warning, no clue that the game had changed.

He would never know.

Mycroft had sent every trustworthy soul, every marksman, every good man or woman under his control and even more telling, he had gone himself, but when he walked through the splintered door of 221B Baker Street the only people willing to look him in the eye were two small boys wrapped in each other's arms.

Mycroft quickly took in the scene before him. The two bodies which lay sprawled on the ground, no longer bleeding, bodies cooling as the processes of the body slowly dwindled and stopped, the small perfect holes in their chests, the pool of crimson which joined and engulfed them and seeped like a sentient creature closer to where the two children sat now engulfed in a sea of crimson. Darts devoid of their payload lay on the ground, one across the room where it had been removed and abandoned at the beginning of the ensuing fight, the other a stones toss from the boys, where the bloody imprint of small fingers could still be seen on the clean glinting metal.

The dried tears on their cheeks which had no brethren in clear dry eyes.

Mycroft felt the wave of grief crash over him, the nausea threatening to pull him under, sinking his body down onto a couch possibly contaminated with a level 4 hot agent.

Tearstained blue-grey eyes as piercing and terrible as their fathers peered at him from under locks of curling black hair from an ocean of blood.

These children had not had time to cry.

These tears belonged to the last moments of his brother's life, proof that the serum took cruel short minutes to work.

Long enough to fight, to try and protect the only person who had ever seemed to matter.

Time enough to fail. To watch the dart sink into soft yielding flesh.

Mycroft could see it in his mind's eye even as willed the images away and allowed himself the foolish human motion of pressing his palms into his eyes, willing it to disappear by force if not by mind.

Sherlock never cried. Not real tears. He swore that no one would ever be able to hurt him that badly again.

But he could see them even now over the bodies of these children.

He lad long enough left as himself to fail his partner, his friend.

Long enough to know their fate, whatever it may be, would be shared.

Long enough to say goodbye and at long last let humanity touch him and let the mask he wore fall in pieces upon the ground. To let that great heart show.

Long enough to break free of the past and understand maybe for the first time what he stood to lose.

Those tears were the last remnants of the brother he had lost.

Around him his teams were moving into position, carrying out their tasks but no one moved towards the two boys.

Mycroft let his hands fall from his face and knelt, his knees falling carelessly into the blood, the cloth wicking it up his leg.

Sherlock was no one's responsibility but his own. His to protect, and now, to care for.

He reached out, his hands encircling the child wrapped absurdly in a dress shirt and went to lift him but small hands fisted in soft cloth, arms went tight around the blond boy who had not escaped Mycroft's attention but had not been the focus of his pain.

The boy for his part fished his arms out of the swaddled cloth and through the neck of the jumper, pale arms wrapping around Sherlock's small chest, around his back and pressing their cheeks together with the ferocity with which they held one another.

For the span of a heartbeat Mycroft felt a thrill of something shining and unstoppable, something almost approaching hope.

Test results had been inconclusive. Some animals not seeming to retain their memories while others continued on in their daily routine with only the slightest hesitation in their actions to indicate rediscovery and subsequent memory regeneration.

Mycroft slid closer, deeper into the blood, reaching not with his hands but his arms by which he could grasp both boys.

His brother's name was on his lips, as he settled the two babes against his chest and in his lap. But the sounds were uncharacteristically frozen within his chest as he watched small delicate hand reach forward and touch the bare skin of the other boy in a moment of reassurance and tenderness.

The name died on his lips.

For once, Mycroft found he did not want to know.


	3. Chapter 3

Three more men were brought into his custody and subsequently disposed of. Each man he found led him back to another until the every individual who had known about the existence of Sherlock Holmes in the guilty syndicate was rendered mute. It did not improve matters but it made the situation at hand slightly more tolerable.

Terabytes of information came into his possession, teams of his own scientists and defectors from the enemy, the most brilliant minds the world had to offer where brought in, sequestered and told that anything in the world they needed would be theirs. But Mycroft knew better than to imagine a favorable outcome.

He had, after all, seen the biological makeup of the agent.

It had been less than a day, a mere 23 hours since he had taken Sherlock into his arms and the two boys had finally felt safe enough to collapse into a deep sleep.

Thankfully had stayed asleep the past 23 hours, a sleep which he was assured, which was both necessary and normal. Normal. Sometimes his scientists had the most peculiar sense of humor.

The boys had been returned to him by Anthea immediately after their examinations. He had been at loathing to let the boys fall from his site but his assistant was more than capable of watching two unconscious children. The medical data that had been attained was predictably unhelpful but at least minimally reassuring.

The weapon seemed to have dissipated from all tested bodily tissues, the process (he found himself unwilling to think de-aging) had halted after its initial effects and their young bodies seemed to be unharmed.

No official tests could be done to determine the exact age of the two but Mycroft remembered all too well how Sherlock looked as his very formidable three year old self. The battles that marked their childhood etched into his mind.

But now, as he looked at the two sleeping boys dressed in plain children's hospital gowns but blessedly free of blood laid upon his dark leather couch he fancied that perhaps things would be different this time around. They looked…angelic. Unlined, innocent faces wiped clean of lifetimes of hardships and peaceful in their slumber.

How could the Sherlock lying so quietly be the same boy to set fire to the kitchen on his third birthday?

* * *

The fleeting foolish hope of prolonged peace died when a blue grey eye peered carefully up at him. His small body unmoving, the rise and fall of his chest stilling as if he believed he could be invisible if only he lay very still. They both knew of course that he had been caught.

Sherlock abandoned all pretense of sleep, dragging his little body up to sit on the couch, his legs at first splayed out in front of him as young children are wont to do, unclad and childish feet unable to do more than touch the end of the seat cushion, and then as if disturbed by the open position folded them beneath himself. His dark curls framed his face in perfect ringlets and slid from his eyes as he lifted his face to view Mycroft unabashedly, eyes that made Mycroft wonder how much of his brother remained in this child with such ancient eyes.

They would have stayed like that forever, the two brothers separated by a lifetime and each unwilling to divest what they knew if not for the soft muffled whine from the other boy still asleep beside them.

Sherlock's mass of curls bobbed as he turned quickly towards John, two sets of cold blue eyes watching as a hand uncurled itself and reached out on the precipice of sleep and wakefulness, trying to find something to grasp onto.

Mycroft watched as the small boy who had stared so harshly at him moments ago reached out a tentative hand with the utmost care. They both watched as the blond shifted, uttering a childish coo of contentment as tiny fingers entwined and grasped and held onto the proffered hand.

There was a flicker of emotion hidden in a veil of black hair, a softness, before blue eyes were once again on Mycroft.

Bolstered by John's sleepy trust in him Sherlock now looked on Mycroft with annoyance and silent fuming frustration, as if he had willed the boy to wake. Another moment passed between them and Mycroft's chair gave a soft squeak as he shifted his weight.

His free hand flew to his face, a tiny finger pressed harshly to his lips with a pout that would have been masterful on an adult and became almost obscene on Sherlock's childish features.

Mycroft found that he had opened his mouth to apologize before he had realized what he was doing. He stopped abruptly and closed his mouth but it was too late. Blue eyes stared up at him; mouth still twisted in a frustrated pout but there was a glint in his eyes that was not there before. They both knew what he had been about to say, that he had fallen for it, smartest man in London defeated by the pout and wit of a three year old.

When their eyes linked Mycroft knew that their battle of wills was over, he knew what the first words spoken between them would be now that now that a lifetime stood between them and memories no longer bound them.

Sherlock looked down at his self appointed charge and tightened his hand almost imperceptibly around the other boys', looking up at Mycroft with a quark of his lips so very Sherlock it was equal parts scowl and smirk.

"Shouldn't have had all those cookies."


	4. Chapter 4

Whether it was repressed memories imposing themselves over his new reality or the deductions of his young mind reassuring him that this man was safe Sherlock was slightly more forthcoming after he had bested Mycroft.

Given a panel of several names he was able to choose both his and Johns names accurately, even if he chose his own with the slightest wrinkling of his nose. When prompted he was also able to give Mycroft a rendition of his own name without a selection of choices but purely from memory. Mycroft had a suspicion that it was not memory loss that made Sherlock insist that his name was pronounced something along the lines of 'My-cough'.

But when asked what their relationships were, how they knew each other, Mycroft received a look of borderline panic.

Sherlock knew who he was but he was adrift without knowing his place in the world.

There was more than one instance where Mycroft believed he had pushed the child too far at last, that he would break into tears or cry for his mother but Sherlock had never been so ordinary. When the sensation of overwhelming panic flooded his eyes and frenzied his movements Sherlock would crush Johns hand in his own, and John, giving man that he was, would sleep on.

Sherlock had no recollection of what had happened. Mycroft prompted the boy to tell him what he did that day but he stayed mum on the subject. Subjects of far passed, last birthday, last week, brought on just the shaking of his head, the tossing of black curls striking his pale face. Innocent and painless unknowing. But to speak of Baker Street, of darts and syringes, to hint at blood, at bodies, of why John still slept so soundly even now, brought a dark look to his pale blue eyes. Like a shadow passing over the sun.

Mycroft pushed, wanting to know if Sherlock remembered the attack, if he remembered being an adult, remembered changing. But suddenly, heart-stoppingly Mycroft was reminded that however mature and brilliant he may act, the boy in front of him was little more than a frightened babe.

Mycroft had been debating whether to show the boy pictures of the crime scene his own living room had become when his attention was stolen away by a strangled breath. Sherlock had pulled his knees to his chest, tightening his white hospital gown around himself, burying his face in his knees and black curls.

When Mycroft reached out a hand to comfort, to touch his shoulder, his hair, Sherlock pulled away. Grey eyes clear and focused as they stared into him, peering above his legs Sherlock told him the only thing he did remember. The only thing he wanted to remember.

His baby hand reached out and grabbed John who had woken when his hand hold had been taken away. The blond had blinked sleepily between the two of them, taking a moment to watch and observe. But when Sherlock's hand grasped his with desperation he did not hesitate. It was less than a second for John to sit up and wrap an arm around Sherlock's curled form, placing his small body between the two brothers even as he woke from the depths of sleep. Sherlock unraveled his tangled body and pulled John into his embrace, protecting as he was protected.

Mycroft barley heard the words uttered in a voice so much softer than the Sherlock he had known.

"Mine."


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as John woke up Mycroft no longer existed for the little boy, no longer merited the breath he wasted to speak to him. All of his questions went unnoticed, or rather, ignored as two sets of eyes stared up at him as if he were nothing more intelligent than or less imposing than Big Ben towering above them.

It was when Mycroft turned to his computer to start the process of ending a life, the paperwork, the every lost thread of life that must be severed and tied that he heard the first whispers begin.

* * *

"John?" Sherlock abandoned his upset posture and folded his legs underneath himself once more, his voice coming in a soft childish whisper.

The blond boy nodded, letting his now empty arm fall to his side. His eyes darted between the boy in front of him and the strange man in the corner. Satisfied his companion was safe from the grownup who had upset him up he let his legs splay in front of him so that the tips of his feet touched the other boys knees and gave a little nod in response to the question.

Sherlock pursed his lips and a line appeared between his eyebrows, creasing in frustration.

"And you know me?" He had meant the words to come as frustrated as he felt but fear tangled with his voice, making it waiver ever so slightly until it sounded soft and fragile in the air.

" 'course." John offered him a smile and another nod, wanting to make the look of ill-suppressed fear fall from his friends face and wondering why anyone would ask such a silly question.

" You're Sher'ock."

The lines of worry marking Sherlock's face disappeared and the beaming smile he received from the sullen brunette was enough to prompt John into continuing.

"You're my…" His mouth fell open for a moment as if to speak but he could not find the words, he shut it abruptly, chewing on his lip as he tried to think. The smile was already fading from his face, the edges of his mouth turning down into a pout. He had not meant to upset him, he would rather do anything in the world rather than do that.

"You're my Sher'ock" He finished finally, deciding it was enough of an answer.

The brunettes' eyes widened until John could scarcely look away, his pale grey eyes betraying all the emotions his face barely registered. Finally with a small secretive smile Sherlock leaned forward.

"Tell me everything you know."

* * *

Three days had passed since the 'incident'. There was no progress from the teams of scientists, each expert baffled by what they were seeing, each individual awe inspired and petrified by the implications. No one on those teams knew that there were human casualties, he would make sure none of them ever found out. The terabytes of stolen research data held not even the vague idea of an antidote.

Even if they could find a cure by the time it was ready for human trials these children would be grown again. And even if by some miracle, by some chance of fate and terrible happenstance they found a cure, would it be better to bring them back to themselves when all the clues pointed at a second uninflected chance at life?

A John Watson who would never know the cold biting embrace of war.

A Sherlock Holmes who would not know what it meant to be utterly alone.

Mycroft had expected the boys to grow rowdy as the days passed and they became used to their surroundings and more comfortable with him.

But as time wore on the two boys refused to speak. After the first abrupt conversation with Sherlock he had been unable to draw a word from either of them, suffering their accusing glares in silence. He did not fear that they had digressed to the point of being unable to speak, in fact they seemed to have developed a language all their own. In the way that twins sometimes do the two boys had begun to communicate in a way even Mycroft could not decipher. A mix of broken words and whispered sounds paired with gestures and looks that seemed to speak novels of eternity.

As he worked halfheartedly to reinstate them to their natural state and began to unrepentantly close down what had been the accumulation of two lives work the two children drew with the colored pens given to them from desk drawers, destroying the evidence of their creations before any adult dared to look. They spent nights laying together on Mycroft's large couch, hiding beneath the blanket they shared, pulling it over their heads to whisper into the heat of their shared darkness.

After a week the silence between them had grown cold and accusatory. The words felt thick and childish in his mouth, like a cruel ploy when he began to speak in front of the boys in a Latin he imagined they might not understand. As childish as it felt to separate them by yet another language at heart there was no reason to let the boys hear the reminder of blood and death and their own destroyed lives.

Alone with them he felt the silence building in the back of his throat, as if these hours, these days spent in his office were more poignant than they had ever been when he was alone.

It was time to give up.

Time to take them home.

He called Anthea into the room, ignoring the way Sherlock stared into him, ignored the way his small body was held unnaturally rigid, John as ever at his side, clutching his small hand. He needed preparations to be made, for their few accumulated articles of clothing to be packed, for child car seats of all things.

Sherlock was in a fury. He pulled at John, rushing them towards the table that they lingered beneath knowing that Mycroft could not reach them there. There was the rustle of paper and they emerged again, Sherlocks small bare feet stomping upon the carpeted floor, fist clutching at a paper so tightly that it was rippling in his grasp.

He stood as tall as his body would let him, his eyes fierce and blazing as John stood bravely if uncomfortably by his side. The drawing was offered to him.

Mycroft took the crumpled paper from the child's grasp and held it as if it were a priceless artifact and might disintegrate beneath the gentlest touch.

Johns work, obviously.

Days old. A picture which he had tried again and again without consciously meaning to.

Sherlock pressed his shoulder into Johns, not pushing him away but needing to be closer, to accuse more forcefully with all the words he refused to say.

Two men in blood. An ocean of red. And there in the middle two figures drawn so simply, so honestly. Two boys peering of the page, their smiles misplaced in the bloody landscape and seeping into Mycroft's mind.

"Why?"


	6. Chapter 6

Mycroft kneels so that the too serious eyes of the three year old in front of him are level with his own. His body protest weakly, every one of his years pressing heavily down on him, the pang of unfit muscles. That will have to change.

Sherlock is unrepentant, black curls framing his pale face so that he is deceptively beautiful, so seemingly innocent. A face Botticelli could have painted.

Mycroft looks into Johns clear brown eyes and is struck by the lingering pain set into them as integral and factual as their color.

He has made a mistake.

All the facts and clues and theories had taken over. A whirlwind of human panic drowned out by the supremely logical, statistics overshadowing what should have been apparent all along.

"There was an accident." His kept his voice soft and purposeful but free of superfluous inflection so often used on the young. He would not patronize them now.

The drawing hung between them like the Berlin wall, so light a thing that it hung delicately in his grown hands but it seemed to have the presence of a living creature, its red lines searing into the eyes.

"I should have been there to protect you. I should have kept them away from you." Mycroft searched their faces for a reaction to his admittance of guilt but they were as still as the paintings they resembled, ethereal in their stolidity.

A rueful quark of the lips threatened to ruin his own meticulously arranged expression.

They already knew.

Deduced in facts and human reactions, filtered through the minds and perceptions of a three year old.

What child would not know that an adult should protect the young?

"There was a chance, I had…hoped" He took a deep breath as if a great anguish had suddenly come upon him and settled deep within his chest. "-that through shock or the physical result of what happened you might forget. But you haven't, have you?"

The smile that he let curl his lips was bitter but the sadness and despair in his eyes did not hold a trace of pity.

"In fact if I am correct, and I presume I am, it is the first and last thing you remember of your lives excluding your time here." Sherlock tried so hard to remain passive but his eyes betrayed him, unused to hiding behind mental walls, defenseless; and Johns face had become so open Mycroft almost ached to look on him.

"You know people, names and personalities perhaps but not why or how you know them. Perhaps places will be familiar, objects, but none of it has a history." Mycroft knew the moment the words were out of his mouth that his conjectures were correct.

"It was cruel and unfair of me to keep you so in the dark." Some of the ache building in his chest faded at the admission. Never in all of their years together had he uttered these words to Sherlock, and now that it seemed too late the apologies came all too easily.

"Two men-" He laid the picture on the ground between them, letting the drawn pool of blood to spread across his own floor. "These two men -attacked you and they died for their mistake." He tore his eyes from the parchment, looking for some reaction in the boys but they remained a united force, waiting silently for him to continue.

"The darts, with which you were attacked, contained an unknown substance. I have people working on deciphering it but it is unlikely you will ever regain the memories you have lost." He hesitated for the fraction of a second, the span of a heartbeat. He knew how much they had lost, how meaningful those words should be, but they would never be made aware of it. "I am sorry."

The boys looked at one another, one of the looks that betrayed only the fact that entire conversations were being held in confident silence. Together, moving as one without any outward signal they turned back to Mycroft. Sherlock's purposefully blank face had dropped and the anger seemed to have been forgotten. For a moment he chewed on his bottom lip and then stopped himself as he drew his little shoulders up.

"And now?" He asked in a voice that tried so very hard not to be frightened.

"And now we go home." Mycroft let his knees sink fully to the ground, trying not to betray how hard his heart was beating, how his hands shook ever so slightly with nerves as he held out his arms in a profoundly human gesture.

It was John who took a tentative step forward and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around Mycroft's fingers. John who smiled as if everything in the world would be alright and stepped again, leading Sherlock into Mycroft's embrace.

* * *

After the confrontation the boys had deemed Mycroft worthy of speech, that is to say, Sherlock lifted the ban on conversing with him. Ruefully Mycroft wished that they had decided to do so after they had been strapped into their unnecessarily intricate car seats in the limo which had been modified to carry their new cargo.

Still feeling very much equal to his task of caring for two boys Mycroft had carried the children down to the car himself, unwilling to use the main elevator or watch them navigate their small bodies down the steep stairs.

No longer guarded and carrying the heavy burden of his first memories so closely to his heart John was proving to be…effortlessly endearing. He let Sherlock chatter to him in their secreted language, always seeming to offer a sweet smile or tightening his eternal hold on the other boy at exactly the right moment, even ensconced in Mycroft's arms.

Bolstered by his success Mycroft waved off Antheas offer of help to strap the two children into their seats. Believing that John would give him no trouble he set the boy down in the car and set Sherlock into his seat, ignoring the suddenly sullen expression on his face as he pulled the straps over the small chest.

If John had been poorly suppressing a smile and giggling behind his hands while Mycroft strapped him in it was, he believed, a fair assumption to have imagined they were both simply overly tired and showing the ill effects.

He realized quite suddenly with a sick feeling that was becoming all too rapidly the norm that he would have to reevaluate his aptitude with the current situation and his ability to singlehandedly care adequately for two children.

John laughed freely as Mycrofts eyes darted from the empty child's seat to where Sherlock had accessed the control panel to the front cab and was currently trying to wriggle his small body through the open glass pane and into the drivers' seat.


	7. Chapter 7

He would have to have one of the guest bedrooms modified to accommodate the two children. He had thought fleetingly of giving the boys two separate rooms, he certainly had the space, but when Sherlock had only chosen to settle in the car when his seat was placed within an arms reach of John the idea of even an illusion of separation had become intolerable.

The two boys lay thankfully asleep, small bodies disappearing into the king sized mattress, the dark duvet swallowing all but the hint of gold and black tangles upon the white pillow they shared.

They were safe and protected. No criminal knew where he called home.

That knowledge did not stop him from taking his laptop into the room and settling into the oversized armchair in the corner.

Not only did he need, as loathing as he was to admit it, advice. But there were two lives which had gone off the map, and even in a life as closed as Sherlock's there are people to leave behind. Some people who could perhaps, under the right circumstances, be entrusted with a fragment of the truth.

Mycroft was pulling up phone records, surveillance logs, and reports from placed informants, trying to ascertain how much time he had to contact each individual before a feeling of unease finally interrupted their menial thoughts. He had just barely sent out an email from John's personal account informing the Yard in a hurried and yet polite manner that they would be out of town for an undetermined amount of time when he heard it.

It was a sound that had filtered through his unconscious mind as the boys rested rooms away from where he worked, and had driven his subconscious to keep them with him despite everything. A sound which instilled a deep, terrifying need to keep them where he could protect them.

But he could not protect them from their dreams.

The screen on his laptop flicked black in front of him, unused for exactly seven minutes under his petrified hands.

The room fell into darkness, the world becoming one of deep subdued blues and the milky gleam of white and silver.

He had let his emotions overtake his mind, let the barriers erected to protect himself shield him from what was happening before his very eyes. He was failing him all over again.

Sherlock twisted restlessly in his sleep. The blanket twisted in his legs and crumbled in on itself, betraying its contents, the face of a child twisted in a nightmare, black lashes stark against too pale cheeks.

The sound of his soft, subdued sobs had only ever held life when the logical mind had gone to sleep and the last vestiges of forced strength had disappeared. The sound was bitten off and choked, as if even ensconced in sweet darkness and oblivion he fought the unseen with bitter resolve.

Mycroft sat trapped beneath the machinery of his adult life and the onslaught of memories from his own youth as the sound of crying and the glisten of unfelt tears reached into his mind and remorselessly pulled into garish clarity the childhood he had tried so hard to rise above.

He should protect him.

He should have protected him.

Sherlock writhed on the bed, small limbs tortured. Only feet separated them, a measure of space, and yet the pressing of years pinned Mycroft in place like a butterfly pinned to the table, his pounding heart beginning to drown out the soft gasps of his baby brother.

Another thrash, another haunted memory come dream, brought a small curled hand against the baby flesh of Johns chest.

Unseen but undeniably true, brown eyes opened into the darkness of the night, waking into the strange twilight of years and time. Small, delicate hands which had not yet felt the ravages of war or worked desperately to revive the fallen reached out like a streak of moonlight or the tentative whispers of a dream to lay on Sherlock's twisted face.

The sound, the soft terrible echo of lifetimes passed, dissolved under the child's innocent touch. Eyes, which would be in this light, the most stunning shade of grey ice blue, opened to find the only person in existence who continued to make any sense.

Two small hands brushed away the fading evidence of tears and held him in the unselfconscious way we forget as we age.

There was, in the air, the comfortable silence of the breathing of small children, the heavy comfort of wet salt tears and warmth which inexplicably could be felt on the skin and in the mind.

There was only one sound left as the moment broke and the two boys fell into one another, lost once more to the press of blankets and tangling arms. A single sob the likes of which Mycroft had never heard.

It was not the sound of despair or of secreted pain, but the resonance of sweet cathartic surrender and wordless comfort.


	8. Chapter 8

When at long last Mycroft's heart had stopped pounding and the sounds surging to the forefront of his mind had been mastered and subdued he lay the laptop down and escaped the room where two boys lay if not peacefully, than restfully asleep. Hours had passed and the first milky steams of sunlight were filtering into the room to dance into the crevices of lingering darkness.

As seemed to be happening all too often in the past few days and so rarely before in the long years of his life, Mycroft found himself changing his mind from the resolute course had had already set. His priority would not be informing those left behind, or putting away in secreted vaults the remnants of a life forsaken, or even the work which had dominated the majority of his adult life.

His priorities had changed in spite of the rest of the world which may need him. Two little boys needed him more.

He would not fail them.

The room in which they slept was barren, the clothes in which they lived were ill fit remnants from the grown children of employees, the toys with which they played were broken cell phones and printer paper, pens and books written in languages they had never heard of. They existed in a world without material comfort, with nothing tailored to them except for themselves.

Two calls had to be made. One was simple. Instructions to an employee who was grateful to hear from him and more than willing to help. It was as simple as sending a car and the transformation would be underway.

The second call required significantly more self sacrifice and dedication.

Mycroft closed his eyes. At night, when he closed his eyes in exhaustion hoping that a depleted body would stave off dreams and festering thoughts, and all the times during the day in which he allowed his mind to wander he saw in his minds eye two boys in blood. He heard the screams that had yet to be remembered.

He took another breath and reminded himself that he had created and stopped wars, that he had made a thousand calls which would be more important individually than the sum of a more ordinary individual's entire life.

A shout and the thump of two sets of feet were the only warning he received before the door ripped open and two boys came tearing out with smiles upon their faces and their hair in sleep mused tangles. They disappeared as quickly as they had arrived but the thunder of ungraceful feet betrayed their position until they reemerged a moment later into the hallway struggling with their arms full of couch cushions and blankets. The door to the bedroom slammed behind them with a finalistic thud, the wood muffling the sound of their frantic chaos.

Mycroft flipped open his phone and looked at the image on the screen.

Mummy would not be pleased.

* * *

The older woman was escorted into one of the living rooms which had the lingering feel of a museum, priceless and untouched. Three cardboard boxes followed her into the room and lay about her feet as if her personality had simply imposed itself on the landscape. She stood when Mycroft entered the room and a motherly if upset smile graced her lips.

"I presume they are safe then? You were not exactly revealing on the phone. And with circumstances as they are…I do worry dear."

Mycroft ignored the comment and glanced at the boxes, half wishing he would not have to discover the contents. The sound of children was muffled by the layers of thick insulation and there had been no trace of the duo since they had barricaded themselves into their room hours ago.

When the woman made it clear by her posture she would not let the conversation continue until she had been reassured Mycroft gestured at a chair and sat down heavily himself.

"I assure you your tenants are safe Mrs. Hudson, but it seems that our situation has changed somewhat."

With a satisfied nod the woman sat and picked worriedly at the hem of her sleeve, hands accustomed to being busy, to endless cups of tea and reassuring touches. She had seen the disaster at 221B before the scene had been managed, it would take more than words to assure her.

"I will no longer require you to report Sherlock's activities to me but I hope that you will be amiable to a slightly modified contract." She frowned at what she thought was obviously over obtuse language, impervious it seemed to the self important and ominous manner in which he held himself. He continued undeterred, Sherlock routinely surrounded himself with surprising humans.

"For the time being I would like to keep the flat untouched, paid for in cash at whatever routine basis you deem most satisfactory."

"And the boys?" Mrs. Hudson continued to glance down into one of the boxes from which Mycroft could see the white chalky gleam of a human skull. Worry was evident in her voice.

In another time Mycroft would have been amused to hear his brother referred to in so familiar and childish a way but now it seemed an ironic and painful reminder.

"Will live with me. There has been, as you know, an incident. I trust I have your utmost confidence on the matter?" She nodded distractedly, bracing herself for the worst, body physically tightening against the knowledge.

"My brother and John Watson have been exposed to an unknown agent. Physically they are sound but their memories are unreachable to them."

Tears glistened in her eyes but did not fall, a shuttering breath entered her chest, inflating her thin body.

"There was another…more profound side effect of the toxin." Mycroft continued hesitantly. He had not fully anticipated the loyalty and affection this woman seemed to bear for his brother. For a fleeting moment the factors of her age and health entered into his mind. "They have both for all intents and purposes...become similar in approximation to possessing three years as a human child."

The silence hung between them and for a moment there was nothing. A slow deliberate blink was the only reaction he received.

"Come again?"

"They have become similar in approx-"

The woman held her hand up in a show of dismay and pause, a frown creasing her face, her lips animating but betraying no particular emotion.

"Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are…three?"

Mycroft nodded. Pleased that the information was finally understood.

"May I-?"

Mycroft stood and wordlessly showed the way down the hall. If one listened very carefully the sounds behind the wall were of whispers and subdued laughter.

When they opened the door the room within was unrecognizable from its former state. A fort had been erected in place of the bed. The furniture had either been discarded and shoved against the walls or put to use as supports and barricades. The structure stood inexplicably as tall as Mycroft but the tunnel inside of it was small and twisted, low to the ground and suitable for only the body of a child. Mycroft knew without looking that the two boys would predominantly inhabit the far corner, safe and cocooned in the world of their own making. A million layers between them and everything else.

Curious eyes peered out at them from the folds of blankets deep within the structure, safe in their watchtower. Eyes locked and held, gazes unwavering and yet not a word was uttered, not a greeting or a condemnation. They were not children playing a game, they did not yell of opposing armies or try to rally the newcomers into their service. They were two sentinels hiding deep within their castle studying for the first time a woman who may or may not spark a hint of memory within their effected minds.

Mrs. Hudson said nothing, she made no excuses as she left the room only to come back with a bright orange blanket tucked into her arms. She bent carefully, her dress folding beneath her as she lowered herself to the floor. She settled the blanket onto her lap, carefully touching the edges, smoothing the cloth as she let herself be examined.

There was a shift within the fort and a small hand pulled the edge of a blanket away from the impromptu doorway, blue eyes finally taking in what she had done in her short absence.

A small gasp of surprise broke the silence of the fort, and an even more surprised child seemed to find himself in the opening, reaching out for the familiar blanket, body and subconscious racing past the conscious mind.

He was still dressed in his too large pajamas, the legs cuffed and trailing over his feet, dark curls mussed and hanging in his face, stark against his pale cheeks. He was reaching out before he could stop himself, hand hanging frozen in the air, silently asking to be handed the object, but unwilling to take the last step out to take it. He had eyes for neither of the adults, his gaze fixed on the blanket.

Mrs. Hudson raised the shock blanket just a few inches but it was enough. Sherlock stepped forward and grasped the material, pulling it against his chest and wrapping both arms around as if it might be taken away. For the first time since emerging he looked at the woman who had given him his treasure, whose lap the unfolded blanket still partially lay on.

Sherlock betrayed nothing of his thought process as he examined the older woman, his cherub lips pursed in such a manner that Mrs. Hudson found herself not only believing this extraordinary tale, but wondering how much of the Sherlock she knew remained in this child. Sherlock allowed himself the smallest twist of his lips, a flash of emotion as he disappeared into the fort, clutching the orange blanket tight as it trailed behind his legs.

The fierce whispers of John echoed clearly around the room, the meaning was lost to the strange new language which seemed to morph between them as smoothly as gas twisting in the air, a language evolving a thousand times faster than normal, digging them deeper into themselves.

They heard the moment John saw the blanket, the moment not only of understanding but recognition ignited in his mind. Mycroft knew better than to hope, than to imagine the two small creatures remembering more than that a particular object meant comfort or safety. But the knowledge, that loss of hope was a reminder, a stab in the heart he had so long pretended to be without.

The wisp of fabric brushing fabric and subdued whispers served as a prelude to their appearance at the entranceway. Sherlock emerged first, all black curls and blue eyes, fearless as he led John by the hand, waiting as the other boy emerged from the narrow passage.

Mycroft felt the ache in his chest lighten and seep deeper into soft tissues of his body all at once.

Sherlock had thrown the orange blanket over his companions' shoulders, the blanket like a cape or the trail of an obscene wedding dress in his wake.

In the perfect infallible logic of all three year olds the magic of a safety blanket meant that beneath its weave no harm could come to you.

Sherlock was protecting his John.

Johns wide brown eyes flicked across Mycroft and towards the new woman who sat in front of him and drew Sherlock under the blanket with him, his arm coming over his shoulders in a wave of orange.


	9. Chapter 9

It was not clear if John or Sherlock remembered their former landlady. They never muttered a sound which could be the child-speak version of her name, they did not look at her and expect the things she had once come to mean to them. They never asked for tea, never looked on her and saw in their minds eye the one decent meal they might have that week and most importantly, whether for better or worse, through memory loss or secrets, they never asked about an abandoned flat and pools of blood.

Despite the ambiguity of their memory of her it was quite clear that in their own way they trusted her with a sudden ferocity which they had only granted, in their own stinted way, Mycroft. It could have been the residue of wasted memories seeping to the unconscious part of their minds, or the years of experience she had both with children and Sherlock himself, but Mycroft found himself hoping that it was something less brilliant and calculating. He swept the thought away as ambiguous and childish but the feeling it created within him lingered.

Maybe, like true children, they simply loved the woman who had inadvertently brought them their first impromptu Christmas.

It was like being a child again, watching this familiar boy with a shock of black hair dissecting the world around him. He watched the thoughts cross his face, the ideas that lingered behind his eyes and in the span of a heartbeat clicked. Beneath the blanket which draped around them like a garish robe Sherlock clutched Johns little hand tighter. The smile on his face was blinding and sudden as he ran as quickly as his tangled legs would take him down the hallway he deduced the blanket had come from.

By the time the adults breached the doorway Sherlock had escaped the confines of the blanket and was half inside one of the boxes; his little legs dangling as he dug through the contents for a particular treasure which had inevitably caught his eye. The next box over John was pulling items off of the top of the pile, hindered by the waves of cloth which Mycroft was sure he wore still only as a concession to Sherlock's mental wellbeing. Every item in his pudgy baby hands, whether it be an upside down medical text or a worn scarf, brought a new bout of irrepressible giggles.

It was in the midst of this joyful chaos that Mycroft witnessed how much these two had chosen to trust Mrs. Hudson, the first time he understood how pivotal she may prove to be to all of them all.

Sherlock had pulled a human skull from the box with a triumphant yell, letting his body fall gracelessly to the floor, uncaring about the discomfort it may have caused because the skull itself was safe in his arms, tucked against his chest like a teddy bear. He held the thing at an arms length to study it, eyes tracing over its features as if he could read its former life in the structure of its hollowed cheeks and cranial sutures, like greeting an old friend and knowing they had lived a good life from the laugh lines etched deep around their mouth.

Mrs. Hudson settled herself carefully on the floor between the two boys, eyes filled with affection as she watched their infectious joy.

Sherlock saw the touch coming, the worn hand reaching out towards him but he did not run or shout or squirm away. He continued to examine his skull, affecting nonchalance, pretending that he did not care what the adults were doing even as every fiber of his being was focused on the woman beside him. There was a moment, almost instantaneous and obviously involuntary, in which his whole body froze as fingers tentatively touched his curls, but when the moment passed his focus returned to the skull which he now hugged against himself.

She was allowed to touch him.

In less than the span of an hour she had accomplished what no one but Mycroft had been able to do.

As the skull was placed lovingly to the side and Sherlock threw himself back into the mass of treasures Mrs. Hudson was allowed to cuff the end of his pants so that he would not trip, when he sat she was permitted to run a gentle hand through his unruly hair and remove the tangles which had formed. And through it all he had played his part so well that she had no idea the privilege she had just been granted.

Even watching this strange display and fully comprehending what it meant for his brother to have done it Mycroft nearly stopped her when she turned her eyes on John, a sharp warning on his lips. It was curiosity, the novel feeling of actually not knowing the outcome and a mix of despairing hope which froze the words in his throat.

John had just pulled a thick jumper from the box, his other treasures discarded and strewn all around his splayed legs. He was laughing softly, burying his face in the soft material which trailed over his lap when a hand stretched out to touch his golden hair.

It would be an understatement of the greatest misfortune to say that Sherlock froze when he understood what was about to happen. It was closer to the truth to say that it was as if he had suddenly turned to stone, heart and lungs thick and unfeeling, blue eyes as cold as ice.

John laughed freely as he let the jumper fall into his lap; pulling the fabric for no reason, save for the simple joy of manipulating the world around you and watching it react. If he saw that Mrs. Hudson was reaching for him he gave no indication of it in the tone of his laughter or the free, honest way in which he seemed to take the world around him.

It was split second before contact and Mycroft found his mouth open, words nearly spilling out when he saw it. There was a smile on John's face, a smile not put there by material things or fleeting thoughts. It was just a fragment of their language; the tiniest glean into their shared world.

It was the smile which meant everything to his brother.

Old and delicate fingers threaded through blond hair, taming wild unkempt tangles and John spared her the most fleeting of glances, a baby smile, but to Sherlock he gave a look which let the detective breathe again and his body fall from the posture of fierce protectiveness in a world of imminent danger.

Mrs. Hudson laughed easily as John pulled the striped jumper over his head to hang like a dress over his body.

Her hands moved to pull the cloth down around him and it was not what happened that astonished Mycroft, but what failed to happen.

Not the kind of scream which followed you into tormented dreams in the darkness of the night.

Not the desperate scrambling of legs and arms clumsy with the adrenalin of unadulterated panic.

Not a single object was shattered as it collided with flesh; there was not even the dull thump of tiny, desperate fists.

Sherlock settled to the floor with his skull held tight against his chest and a corner of a shock blanket covering his foot. John smiled again and in the silence that passed between the two boys were a hundred million things which Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson could never guess.

Sherlock let her touch his John.


	10. Chapter 10

Together, with three boxes of the most peculiar toys for three year olds, Sherlock and John turned the formal, immaculately despondent living room into a jungle of artifacts of life. Thick jumpers lay strewn like colorful islands in an ocean of books and gadgets. Two swords lay heavily on the fireplace mantel, sheaths pushing candlesticks out of the way in a half hazard way that seemed to loan life to the dull wood beneath. Sherlock bemoaned the loss of those particular toys but a deep, heavy gouge in the coffee table and few years off of Mrs. Hudson's life was more than enough reason to put up with the short lived tantrum.

John had adopted the idea of putting every article of clothing he found onto his small body. Only a few shirts had made their way into the boxes but on John Sherlock's long sleeved shirts seemed to be like super hero capes tailored for giants. A familiar scarf that still smelled of late night chases through London's streets completed the layered ensemble, encasing John's neck and obscuring part of his face.

Sherlock for his own part had adopted only a single piece of clothing, a thick cream jumper which he had pulled from deep within a box, disregarding it's more colorful counterparts in favor of this seemingly bland article. Sherlock pulled it on, his thin shoulders coming out of the neck line, and settled in beside John, the two of them slowly deconstructing and recreating Sherlock's lab equipment into more interesting shapes.

An hour longer and John seemed to be melting within the confines of his cloth prison but completely unwilling to be rid of a single item. The smell of bleach had lightly seeped into any item which had the misfortune of being in the main living space when the area was cleaned and it burned their noses and throats with the lingering exposure, and Mycroft had a suspicion that more than one of Sherlock's possessions had been exposed to experiments which, while none of them wanted to know the exact components, all of them could smell on their skin.

Without bringing up the idea of an extended and modified contract with Mrs. Hudson regarding her new theoretical position as helpful babysitter for fear of another long drawn out explanation of what she would and would not do, Mycroft let the woman's maternal instincts kick in. If he inflamed those instincts with a comment or two of his own it was only for the general well-being of the children.

Mrs. Hudson stood with more ease than she would admit if one were to inquire and plucked Sherlock from the tower he had been creating behind Mycroft to reach the swords. The boy squirmed in her arms in attempt to get back to his creation but she seemed to ignore him, waiting until he admitted defeat to settle him on her hip, the sweater pooling around his hips.

The clock chimed in a deep informative way that spoke of old-time clock makers toiling over a work bench and genius engineering. Normally Mycroft would take his perfectly formulated, low-caloric lunch break now, or in more recent times have the boys be brought bowls of porridge which they would subsequently ignore but Mrs. Hudson turned to the boy in her arms, waiting until blue eyes locked with her own.

"Are you hungry dear?"

Memories of recent lunches gone by clearly ran through his mind. "No."

"Did you have breakfast?"

He blinked, looking to John for answers but the look on his face was the same, slight curiosity with an overwhelming need not to be forced to eat something Mycroft made.

"…no?"

Her frown at Mycroft was quick and obligatory but her smile for Sherlock was more than genuine.

"You mean the two of you have not eaten all day? Well now that will not do, what would you like?"

Sherlock looked at her with mouth slightly agape. This was not something they remembered discussing before. When she turned to John the boy was ready for her, unusually shy as if he might be denied, a blush rising on his cheeks in a mixture of overheating and uncertainty.

" 'nanas?" He asked sweetly, pulling the scarf away from his mouth with his fingers so that she might see his hopeful smile.

"Alright dear." She bent and offered her free arm to John, the boy wobbled into her embrace, trapped beneath the weight and mess of his wardrobe. "Bananas it will be." She huffed laboriously as she balanced the two little boys but when Mycroft held out his hand in offer she clutched them tighter, not as a show but as an unconscious action as she replied in the negative, her hold on them becoming an almost embrace.

As adults the duo, as misanthropic and broken as they were, had inspired unparalleled loyalty. As children it seemed the world was very much in trouble if they had as much as a gaze and a smile.

The walk to the kitchen was thankfully short and the boys stayed put on their knees at the small table used by the staff, stilled by curiosity as they watched their former landlady rummage through the stock of food.

Mrs. Hudson waived off the offers of having the actual kitchen staff make lunch, delighting in the response her every action drew from the rapt children.

Of the two boys it was Johns face who lit up when liberal amounts of peanut butter was applied to his toast and whose eyes grew large and round when slices of banana finished his sandwich. His hands reached out as the plate was placed in front of him but just as his fingers brushed the sandwich he paused. Carefully he removed the scarf he wore, rubbing it against his cheek for just a second before placing it delicately on the table.

After this moment of calm sentimentality there was no stopping him. Peanut butter coated his hands and face equally and bananas slid onto the floor with a soft squelch, telling in a way which words could not how long it had been since he had had a decent meal fit for his age.

Sherlock watched John with more interest than he showed his food, looking at the creation if not with disdain then with intense disinterest. He allowed Mrs. Hudson to roll the sleeves of his jumper to the point of his elbows and tentatively took it into his hands allowing the innately messy sandwich to seep onto his fingers. A mess of squished banana and peanut butter had escaped the bread, crushed by his hard grip and stuck to his fingers. He dropped the sandwich to his plate and stuck out a pink tongue which he barely touched to his finger, his face prematurely skewed into an expression of disgust. But a look of surprise overtook his features, eyes widening as far as Johns had. In a breath three fingers were jammed sloppily into his mouth and his free hand was reaching for the abandoned sandwich.

Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft watched as Sherlock, the man who refused to waste energy on digestion, who had seemed to never let more than tea willingly pass his lips devoured two sandwiches, smearing peanut butter and mashed banana across his cheeks as he bit deeper into the sandwich.

John set down the crusts of his second sandwich and peered over at Sherlock, his face twisting into a grin as he took in the wasted wreckage of two sandwiches and the signs of enjoyment and food still lingering on his friends face. But now that the food was gone the sticky feeling of peanut butter was becoming too much, the knowledge of having food on his face, of having shown his cards so obviously, of having the evidence still written across his skin was making his heart pound in his chest.

He pushed the crusts away as if they had become suddenly dangerous, dawning comprehension rushing from deep within him, chemicals and reactions clicking in his brain, saturating his thoughts and making his little hands sweep them frantically away.

But it was too late.

John was not the first one to notice how Sherlock's breathing had sped up as the panic slowly rose within him but he was the first one to act. Their chairs had been pushed only inches apart making it easy for John to lean over into Sherlock's space, his round face serious in concentration as he reached to brush a smudge of banana from his friends face.

Blue eyes darted to John and stayed locked on brown eyes as his little chest began to heave. John wiped away the banana with his fingertips but a smudge of peanut butter from his dirty hands replaced it. John looked stricken, eyes widening, fear creeping into his eyes as his plan failed…but something was happening.

Sherlock had stopped gasping for air, a sound soft and indistinct, regulating his breathing, changing it to something not normal, but better.

Sherlock was giggling.

The sound was almost desperate at first, walking the line between hysteria and a slow slide into normalcy.

His pupils were blown wide, black engulfing all but a ring of blue as adrenalin surged through his body but as he giggled as he reached out with his own dirty hand to touch John's cheek.

In the silent language of best friends John swallowed the sound of his own thudding heart and reached out with both hands, holding Sherlock's face in his tiny fingers, smudging the food as his heart leapt into his throat. Sherlock took another deep, even breath and let it out again, his other hand reaching out to hold John as his giggles faded into silence.

By the time Mrs. Hudson had drawn a bath and returned the two boys were sitting silently in their seats, foreheads pressed together, arms around each other and eyes closed.

The world could have fallen down around them and in that moment, they would not have noticed.

The boys walked under their own power to the large bathroom. Outwardly they appeared as if nothing had happened, two young boys lagging on their way to bath time, lost in secrets and whispers. But the orange blanket which had become inseparable from the boys had made its careful way around Sherlock's shoulders and little hands which normally clasped together in glee and easy assurances were held tight as if their lives depended on the way they held each other.

Mrs. Hudson handed them two wet cloths as they sat on the edge of the bath and let them clean their, or rather, each other's faces, so as not to spoil the many layers of clothing they still wore. Lost as they were in each other the adults stepped back, no more a part of the moment than the furniture.

Mycroft stepped backwards, another step and he would be in the hallway and could slip away unnoticed. He had calls to make, old journals to uncover, memories long ago lost into the sweet darkness of oblivion to pull into the garish daylight and examine under a microscope.

He had underestimated how much the past would bleed through to the present.

He needed to call mummy, her boys needed her.

But as his foot breached the doorway a thin hand and a cold stare froze him the way world leaders dreamed of doing.

"Still not their housemaid dear, and you did not exactly give me time to reschedule my appointments for today. Just because I am an old lady does not mean I do not have things to do." She set two towels down on the counter and pulled a phone out of her pocket, looking at it for an extended moment before seeming to realize which angle to flipping it open.

"I am sure you boys will do just fine without me." She glanced at where the boys had slid to the floor, peanut butter smeared towels no longer cleaning their faces but sitting in wet heaps by their feet, a pool of toilet paper growing as they wiped the paper in heaps across their skin.

"Now Sh- a former tenant of mine gave me one of these cellular phones, always trying to text me for something, or more often than not, a certain someone." She smiled, her gaze locked so fondly on the children that Mycroft hoped she might stay. "Now feel free to call me dear."

Mycroft let the older woman take his private number and he pretended to not already have her complete contact information. She promised to return and took the credit card Mycroft gave her to buy clothing and other necessities and Mycroft found himself alone with two pairs of eyes gazing up at him.

For the entirety of their stay with him Mycroft had allowed the children to wash themselves, giving them the tools but had slacked somewhat in the supervision. He knew it would eventually devolve to the point where a full on bath would become repugnantly necessary but he had always imagined the endeavor as somehow different. Fleetingly he thought of changing from his formal suit and into a pair of swim trunks in preparation but he found himself unwilling to leave his brother alone after such a traumatic episode, as well as he seemed to be coping with the half felt memories now there was no telling what could swim to the surface of his genius mind and in what manner it would formulate.

Not to mention it would be the singular most terrible moment of his adult life to have a three year old version of his brother best him with a remark regarding his weight while half naked.

Despite appearances and the best effort of the three year old Sherlock was still agitated so it was him who Mycroft pulled closer as he sunk to sit on the edge of the bath, pulling the familiar jumper over his head as John started to do the same for himself. Mycroft let Sherlock finish removing his clothing in the unabashed way of very small children. He had imagined that he would find it awkward to see his brother, so independent and cold, so vulnerable and literally naked, but as soft baby skin was revealed and little legs clambered into the tub with a splash the thought evaporated and corrected itself.

Sherlock, this Sherlock, no longer had the independence or ability to care for himself, it was not yet deeply rooted into his mind that he had to be alone and stolid to survive.

This Sherlock was not alone.

John was being slightly shy, slowing as he got to the layers of clothing which would reveal his skin. A problem which could, for now, be easy fixed. Mycroft added a mixture of soaps to the water and turned the tap until bubbled formed all around Sherlock who was now leaning out of the water to see what was taking John. Stricken brown eyes fleetingly met Mycroft's.

Mentally he added another name to the list of people to be immediately contacted.

His background check had not revealed this.

With obvious intent and a promise to be back before they could drown themselves Mycroft gathered the lump of jumpers and discarded shirts and left the room at a brisk pace. The clothes were easy enough to be rid of, dropped into the boxes from which they came but he lingered outside the open door to the bathroom. He still had thirty seconds before John was likely to be in the bath and forty until any long term damage could be done from oxygen deprivation.

He clicked on John's phone, lifted from a bloodied jacket nearly a week before to find the appropriate number. Twenty three missed texts flashed onto the screen in various states of annoyance and sobriety, the final message lingered on the screen.

'You stood me up. Again. Do not bother making excuses. This boyfriend better be worth it.'

He tucked the phone away and entered the bathroom to find two sopping boys immersed in bubbles, hair slack and bubbles clinging to the ringlets. There was nothing playful about their demeanor as they gazed up at him, something had passed between them. Time he had been assumed would be wasted in idle chatter had left him adrift in a sea of their creation.

There was nothing for Mycroft to do but wait and let them guide him to his new place in their world.

They did not squirm as Mycroft poured water over their heads, they did not try to splash him or struggle as soap threatened to fall into their eyes.

They watched quietly as the bubbled died around them, their bodies malleable and mouths silent.

Mycroft was beginning to think that he had committed an indiscretion and that they were boycotting speaking with him but he saw Johns hand reach out above the level of the water and touch Sherlock's bare shoulder in what an adult would call reassurance and a child would have no name for.

Mycroft let his hands fall, they were generally clean and free of soap, if they were going to alter the way their lives had been leading with some grand secret it best be done while they were not blinking up at him through rivulets of water.

"Why?" Sherlock's voice was crisp and resonated through the small chamber like the ringing of bells, as clear and sweet. He was not angry or demanding or sad, his voice held no definable emotion one would attach to a child but was familiar in a way no parent would want to imagine. It was the voice of a child asking why mommy would never come home, a toddler watching the chemotherapy drip and wondering why its parents would not help them, a child knowing that the blows would come but never understanding what they had done wrong.

He sat up straight in the water, bubbles absurdly making him seem so much younger than his already shortened years as clear dry eyes gazed unblinkingly into Mycroft.

"Why are you taking care of us?" He bit his bottom lip, reddening it as he waited, debating the next careful words. "Why do you…bother?"

Without memory. Without the thousands of harsh words. Without nights filled with silent tears and days filled with fear. Mycroft could see every one of Sherlock's scars written in his eyes.

He could see his own failures etched into the soul of a child.

He reached into the bath, mindless of his suit, and pulled Sherlock from the water, swathing him in a towel and reaching out, cloth in hand to envelop the suddenly shy John. He pulled them into his arms, letting their wet hair soak his shirt as they craned their necks to look at him, warm and safe in the circle of his arms and the comfort of his lap.

"Because we are family, the three of us." He looked both little boys in the eyes, needing to convey how much these words meant. Warm understanding and wordless relief looked back at him and he could not stop the soft, almost paternal smile which stole across his face.

"We will be bothering each other for the rest of our lives."


	11. Chapter 11

A few miniature crisis's cropped up throughout the rest of the day, North Korea was making something of a nuisance of itself, but nothing that drew him away from his little charges for more than a few minutes. After their conversation things seemed to get a little easier.

They were more comfortable with him.

Less afraid that he would disappear.

Things would have to change. Their lives would be anything but stagnant in the upcoming weeks, already appointments had been set and pushed up, but now, in this moment, everything was alright.

Mycroft found that he could manage his usual amount of work while watching over his new charges. They were quiet when the mood struck them, always speaking in coded whispers and giggling in subdued laughter as if the sound of a full voice and true laughter might break them apart. But cohabitation, even in the same room, was easy. Their behavioral pattern was easy to distinguish and anticipate. Too much silence inevitably means that they are up to something, whether it is a tower to reach a glittering object or the rewiring of a lamp to make it 'better'. The sound of only one boy, whether it was a few stinted lonely words or a soliloquy in a quick flighty voice like the wings of a hummingbird, meant that impressions and memories were bubbling into their conscious minds and frightening them.

Breaks were no longer spent alone contemplating his brother's affairs or lamenting his current diet, they were spent in two-minute affairs when one boy or the other tugged at his trouser leg and in a bright chiming voice they described a new finding, some elaborate piecemeal tale before wandering back to their playmate, their family.

Dinner was a quick effortless affair, Sherlock taking small reserved bites as John kept up a continuous litany, turning moments which could hold great terror into bit back laughter.

It was nearly eight thirty and eyelids had begun to droop, and yawns had begun to interrupt rambling sentences when Mycroft heard the chime of his personal phone. A text.

'Still not their housekeeper, putting off taking down the fort will not make me do it dear.'

Mycroft blinked, read the message again, and laughed.

It was an unusual occurrence when people surprised him but this time he did not mind.

Mycroft bid the two boys goodnight at the entranceway to their fort, letting them crawl into its warm depths to sleep if just for one night.

If this was how they felt safe so be it. They would all need rest for what faced them tomorrow.

* * *

The ride was silent, the air surrounding them so filled with tension that it seemed somehow more substantial, as if air could weigh heavy in their chests, breaths weighed down by too much silence. Small overnight bags had been packed, essential items dragged into the front of the car with them, a bag of half crushed cookies used to bribe them into compliance and an orange blanket fell together in a tangle between the two children's chairs.

Unspoken words hung between them, tentative and fragile new trust kept them in their seats more than the forgotten cookies which crumbled between them. Any other children, less brilliant, less observant, less wounded, would not have understood, would not have even perceived.

The unrest and unfamiliar sickening twist of simply not knowing grew and changed within Mycroft.

It was no longer just the immediate future which had his genius mind in turmoil; it was the impossibility of the future which lay out before them.

They read in his face his uncertainty and a nameless word kin to fear, they heard in his voice things which he would never utter to their ears.

Despite his smile, his deadpan face which protected the secrets of countless nations, these two children had sensed his apprehension.

The combination of the two thoughts, of their continued trust in him despite their ability to see through his mask should have brought warmth, a feeling perhaps, of success.

A wave of sudden yet fleeting nausea burned through him as he turned his face to the window to hide the worst if it from them. The car lurched through a ditch as they wandered further from the main haunts of society and a cookie fell to the floor with a soft abandoned crunch. When Mycroft looked back at his companions two sets of eyes stared at him while betraying nothing of their own thoughts, small hands clutching over plastic and restraints to hold onto one another, fingers speaking of reassurance and fierce protection.

It would seem that undertaking the care of these two helpless innocents would be the most efficient diet plan he had ever had.

Unrest filled each of them like a contagion, each person passing it onto the next. But the little boys did not protest as they were removed from the theoretical safety of the car. Mycroft's heart nearly skipped a beat when he climbed out to find a small hand being offered to him.

Sherlock and John stood as they normally did, hands clutched tight between them, but huge brown eyes had focused on him, John's tiny hand being held out for him to take. Sherlock let out an audible breath of relief When Mycroft held the proffered hand, engulfing it in his own, holding John protected between them.

He had told the boys the precious little with which he dared. He had promised that he would protect them and that the people he chose for them to meet would not hurt them. He warned them that memories from before 'the accident' may come to them, that they might remember a face or a voice.

Mycroft hoped in the darkest part of his heart that they would not.

The light was not worth the darkness.

They knocked on the door but it was unnecessary, cameras had followed their slow ascent up the path, old eyes doubtless stealing a first glance at new bodies. It was a member of staff who opened the door and led them into a living room much like his own, aesthetically beautiful and wholly untouched.

None of them made a move to sit.

John held his hand tighter and Mycroft wondered if it was a reaction to the way Sherlock was holding him.

These were not the rooms in which they spent their adolescent years, nothing to trigger a memory or rouse the breath of a feeling. No ghosts hid in the dark corners of these rooms. The house of their childhood lay buried in memory, it could have burned to the ground, its rooms turned to dust, and its hallways barren save for the lives of spiders for all the years it had been abandoned. None of the furnishings were reminiscent of those long gone years; these rooms were the same as his own only a handful of days ago, perfectly impersonal.

Mycroft wished that he held both boys hands in his own.

The moment she walked into the room every eye fell on her. She was handsome, the kind of woman you hesitate to call beautiful because of a strength of character seemingly intrinsic within her physically. There was a hitch in her step, a moment so quick and small it would have been lost to the blinking of an eye, but it was there the moment she laid eyes on his charges.

Mycroft looked into blue eyes as familiar as his own.

"Hello Mummy."

She nodded her welcome, her acknowledgement to Mycroft, but her eyes were on Sherlock. There were a million repressed questions waiting on her lips, questions she was not sure anyone would want to the answers to.

Impossible to wish your child would remember nothing.

To forget you.

To forget everything and start anew.

Like nothing had ever happened.

Like you never happened.

In the span of a breath she collected herself, her lips smiling, her long delicate hands reaching out as she knelt on the floor as if she might touch the black unruly curls but hesitating, hands falling to her side, fingers empty and curling around nothing.

In Mycroft's hand John fidgets, holding him a little tighter, the soft whining sound is both distressed and disarming. Blue eyes and a face too much like Sherlock's turns to the small blond boy, softening as John takes a shuffling step closer to Sherlock, pressing their shoulders together, hiding their hands between them. Protection and comfort in the uncompromised innocents of his touch.

"What handsome boys you are." Her voice had been meant to sound welcoming and reassuring, perhaps a little hard, something authoritative and adult and sure. She never meant it to come out as a strangled, choking, breath. She cleared her throat as if the problem was purely physical and smiled harder.

"I have been working on some samples Mycroft gave me." She seemed to relax into the thought, into something tangible and real and quantitative. Her eyes lit up. Where there was once trepidation existed the spark of assurance that comes with unadulterated fact, knowledge so pure that you can exist within it. Her lithe body, so coiled and tense before, seemed to ease ever so slightly, like the falling of heavy armor, as she prepared to give them her results.

"All of Mycroft's tests, all of his scientists were right. They missed nothing." She smiled the way another mother might when bestowing a wrapped present on their child, knowing that this gift would mean the world to them, that this would be the toy which would follow them into adulthood. The well-loved teddy bear, the scrap of faded blanket. Her hand rose again, not reaching, not stretching to touch, but offering, long white fingers beautiful and delicate. "It is as if the accident never happened at all." Her smile curled as emotion overrode the falseness, her slate grey hair falling into her face, framing her high cheeks, true happiness glistening in her grey eyes. "You are perfect."

Fingers stretched. Reached.

Sherlock took a step back, his face dark, curls hanging into his brilliant eyes, waiting in silence until John stepped back with him, his little hand still stretched out to hold Mycroft's, their bodies falling into the cast of Mycroft's shadow.

She did not notice the way his breathing had grown shallow and fast, or the way his eyes darkened and pupils became pinpoints in an ocean of hard blue. She did not recognize the signs of fear building in her own child. She could not touch him to feel the clamminess of his skin.

"Not accident." Sherlock looked into his mothers eyes. He did not recognize the nuances of her face or the tenor of her voice. He looked as her the way he had once looked at suspects, as if he could see past the physical and into her very soul, as if he could take her most jealously guarded secrets and bear them into unforgiving light.

He shook his head as the word rose to his lips unbidden. A word which echoed from the destroyed memories of the past and infused itself into his new life in blood and tears.

"Attack."


	12. Chapter 12

Everyone was silent.

Mycroft watched the joy fall from his mothers face, watched as all of the unspeakable questions answered themselves piteously. He watched as her blue-grey eyes widened and Sherlock retreated further into John, his words echoing if not in reality then in their minds.

Mycroft wished he had devoted himself more fully to the application of advanced sciences. That he might be able to put himself in two places at once. To protect his mother, to maintain that same respectful distance, that cold affection, to reassure her that if Sherlock knew…

But there was only one of himself, one moment to chose, one action to take.

Mycroft bent and took the boys into his arms, crushing them to him and to each other. He could feel the cold tangles of distorted memory emerging in Sherlock, the way his blue gaze had blown wide, mind lost in thought, trying to grasp onto feelings which fled like dreams obliterated in the cutting light of day.

It was a room, just a room. He had the blueprints to the house of course, knew that this room was far from the laboratories hidden in corridors and false bookcases. Knew that they would be safe here. Knew their mother well enough that he opened the door and found two beds laid with children's covers, found books with bright colors which shone from the bookcases and toys that littered the floor like an offering and a sacrifice.

He set them down on one of the beds, the bedspread almost garishly childish, its vivid spots of contrasting colors making the two dark children set upon seem darker. Like child soldiers brought back into the fold of society, minds and memories ill made for the bodies of babes.

They never spoke to him when they were like this. In moments like this they existed only for each other. Desperate hands and fumbling words, curls and baby hands and silent meaningful gazes. Mycroft stepped back to give them the privacy they so often craved, ready to be their silent sentry yet again. But something gripped his sleeve and held him back, held him close.

His hand seemed very, very small as it curled tight, little fingers straining and stark white against the smooth dark material of his suit.

Blue eyes looked up at him through the fog of memories and unsettled thought.

"Not safe."

"She will not hurt you." The words were meant to sooth.

Sherlock shook his head, upset that he was not being understood. Eyes pleading for recognition, for a thought, a reassurance, that was so much more than pedestrian.

"Not _safe_."

* * *

The boys were asleep, curled together so close that they might have been a single child lying in the otherwise pristine bed. Mycroft had helped them undress; watching as John whispered and touched. The pure innocents of the man amplified in the child, his undiminished heart unreserved and unafraid to reach out and cup Sherlock's face in his little hand.

The last thing Mycroft saw as he spread the orange safety blanket over them was the look on his own brother's face. Their arms had pulled and grabbed and crushed in the manner of those with limbs too small for their desires, baby hands grasping at hair, fingers laying flat over a pale chest and a rapidly beating heart, as if John could will it to slow. Sherlock looked as he had never had as a child.

Without a brave false smile, without an edge of brittle resolve, with John holding vigil over his heart, he looked as if he believed there was something good left in the world.

Mycroft lingered, listening to the rapid sound of Sherlock's breathe as it grew deep and even. He wanted to understand the words they were whispering to one another, to begin to fathom what goes on in their minds. He wanted to be trusted enough to be told.

But the meaning was lost to the night, to the muffle of the blankets around them and secreted away in their private tongue. His listened to the high sweet voice of Sherlock rise and mingle with Johns comforting tumble of words. He listened until the only sound left in the room was the comforting drifting breath of his two wards lost to sleep.

She was not in the untouched living room in which they had been greeted, but Mycroft did not pause or take a misstep, he passed the room by with hardly a glance, delving further into the abyss of rooms until he reached what appeared to be a linen closet and disappeared into it and the antiseptic hallway beyond.

He nodded to the security camera on the off chance that she was actually watching, but unlike himself his family had never taken the things, they were only here for his comfort. He harbored no delusions that she had actually accepted them as a national mandate in conjunction with several of her projects; he seriously doubted all notes sent to classified heads of state were concluded with a heart following her name like the addition of an extra doctorate.

The hallways were clear; he passed by the first few darkened labs with the reassuring whir of refrigeration equipment and projects carrying on without need of a human eye or mind. It was the last lab and obviously the most favored from which the light shone over the scuffmarks in the hallway.

She did not look up from her work as he entered the room but gestured vaguely with her hand at the chair opposite her. He felt a stab of familiarity cut through his chest and steal his breath; it was a passing fancy, nothing but the trick of the eye, but for the span of a heartbeat he could see Sherlock restored, lips pressed in a line, waving him off, entrapped in a mystery all his own.

"This is good." She said without looking up. Mycroft graciously settled into the uncomfortable lab chair across from her and waited. The papers in her hand were no more than a few days old but the creases on them spoke of being held in small hands for long hours. "The implications this has for the rest of his life, for the rest of both of their lives-"

She interrupted herself, letting the papers fall between them, words read so many times that they no longer held true meaning. Her eyes appeared older under the sterile glare of the florescent lights, a deep piercing grey with a subtle feeling of despair that had nothing their surroundings.

"I never met John Watson." There was small sad smile on her lips as she met her oldest son's eyes. "He is good to Sherlock isn't he?"

She asked not as if it was a question that needed answering but one that she thought would sound beautiful to be answered.

Mycroft thought carefully before he responded, the words not coming easily when he thought about the two men he had known and the children they had become. "He is not more than Sherlock deserves- but he is more than I ever hoped for." Mycroft reached out and straightened the papers, wishing for his umbrella, for a purpose for his hands. The pile was neat, perfectly straight, and he had no choice but to pull them back into his lap and look his mother in the eyes.

"John Watson is the most decent man I have ever met."

Her smile did not change but it seemed to grow, to at last reach her eyes. If she were anyone else in the world he would have determined if she was thinking about the way the little blond boy had reached out to protect her son. He would have ascertained how much of her mind was enveloped in the past and how much hope was set for the future, he would have established her every move for at least the next week and more likely, the next year. But she was his mother, and so when she laid her hand on top of his he thought of nothing but what she gave to him.

"We will not dissuade him from what he links with me." Her voice was calm and resolute, her hand did not shake and her pulse was even, and Mycroft dreamt of martyrs. "He needs to learn to trust his instincts. He has a lifetimes worth of lessons guiding him-" Her smile was warm as her eyes were serious. "Without a lifetime of pain to pay for it."


	13. Chapter 13

They debated for hours, pulling up case studies of nearly inapplicably dissimilar animals, invoking old memories and informing one another of recent developments and in the end Mycroft did what he had known was inevitable from the start. He caved to blue eyes and ultimately did what he knew would be best for the two boys who still slept blissfully unaware of the debates underway about their future.

Mycroft would never tell Sherlock about his mother, he would never try to persuade him that he was safe in her care. But that did not mean that he would cave to her excessive martyrdom and break her heart and ruin his own resources for the future.

He was there when John blinkingly opened his eyes to the new day and caught the first blinding baby smile of the morning. John always seemed to wake in this manner, as if each and every single new day had the potential to be the best of his life. Each morning washed away the sins and the torments of the night.

He was spared another purposeful smile, a parting glance, before the little boy turned to his attention to his bedmate and tapped a finger to his friends nose with a half swallowed giggle.

Sherlock did not blink sleepily into wakefulness as John had, some modicum of the previous day staying with him as his blue eyes opened forcefully. John laughed easily and sweetly as Sherlock took in the bright orange of the blanket still covering their bodies, as his hands flew forward even though his entire field of vision was nothing but Johns smiling face and the lingering knowledge of Mycroft being close at hand perforated his mind.

They watched the knowledge sink in and registered on his cherubic features, brilliant mind whirring. His eyelashes fluttered and with a sigh he shut his eyes and turned his face back into the pillow, curls cascading messily around him, hand clutching unconsciously on the blanket covering John.

The little blond was apparently used to this behavior, it was as natural to him as smiling to catch Sherlock's face in his hands and press a wet kiss to his lips. Mycroft was torn between laughter and horror when intense blue eyes opened and observed the world again through a slit of dark lashes.

When Sherlock sat up and let the orange blanket trail over his head, his legs tangled with Johns and a small pleased smile on his face, Mycroft knew exactly what he was going to do.

Mycroft never broke his word. He would do nothing to dissuade Sherlock of his beliefs, but he would reinforce the more fleeting beliefs of children, he would put merit behind the ideas which in his previous life, Sherlock never had the liberty to believe. John would help him do it.

He asked Sherlock, still sleep warmed and tangled with John what the woman of the previous day meant for them. His face hardened, the slight smile on his face left from John becoming brittle as if it might shatter. His words were intense and cold and left no room for ambiguity or argument. Mycroft recognized this look. Sherlock had cultivated it very early in their childhood, strange to have seen it grow and change and become part of the man and fall back to the child. It was a look of longsuffering, one that made the receiver feel as if somehow they had become a very slow child and it was all their fault.

'Not safe.'

Mycroft nodded solemnly. He kept a look of fierce concentration on his face as he carefully extracted the two boys from the tangle of bedding and wrapped them together in the shock blanket.

"There." Mycroft nodded as he held them in his lap, his arms holding them just a little too tight, letting them feel his weight against their little bodies. "Now, are you safe?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply sharply, his brow creasing as if the words were so bitter that they twisted his face, but they never came. His mouth hung silent and open, a million thoughts, a million little deductions flashing through his mind.

The blanket.

Mycroft holding him close.

The woman.

The unbridled foreboding twisting in his stomach and crawling up his throat.

The terror of memories like nightmares he could not qualify.

But it came down to John. It always came down to John.

John who meant 'safe'.

John who had killed to save him.

John who would have sacrificed himself to save Sherlock.

John who was holding his hand.

John who would follow him, whatever he chose.

Slowly, as if unsure how it had happened, Sherlock nodded.

Mycroft did not push his slim advantage. He held them close and let them watch the closed door, the ex soldier and the consulting detective notably more at ease when they could see the single entry point of the room.

They would not, as originally planned, spend a few more days here. No matter what he needed or desired, his children needed to go home more.

He had hoped that between his mother and himself and their intimate knowledge of the man and the child both they could devise a plan to raise him. To do more than avoid the mistakes of the past.

He had hoped that with her he could make Sherlock happy.

In his lap John was talking again, soft burbles and sounds accompanied by a face with a little pink tongue poking out of his mouth. Together the boys looked up at his face and burst into a peel of laughter, lost in their own joke at his expense.

Guilt is a strange sensation, an emotion so complicated that it exists only in humans, an emotion which exists in levels and hides in thoughts and memories. It slides in and out of consciousness and takes you by surprise, you can live your life with the best of intentions and wake one day to find yourself destroyed for what you have done.

Guilt was never an emotion Mycroft felt when working. Of course people died and suffered, but it all had a meaning, a perfectly calculated dance. If not him then someone with less elegance and more cruelty could step in his place. To destroy was, in a way, to save.

But it was what he felt every moment he laid eyes on his baby brother. It was why he watched and plotted and refused to be put off. Guilt was the reason he first met John Watson in an empty car park.

Now it ebbed and flowed in his heart, a strange and painful sensation for one who never had found use for paltry human emotions. For one who could have happily lived and died without feeling anything more poignant than slight annoyance.

It was euphoria, the relief of a failed lifetime to see Sherlock so altered, to see him smile just to be near John. To know that this time would be different, a second chance that no one had before been granted. Relief that he could give Sherlock the brother he deserved.

And guilt so sharp and cold that it could cut into his heart before he ever knew it existed, like a knife so sharp and perfect that you could only know you were doomed when blood splashes to the floor with a sound like summer rain. Guilt that he had not been that brother.

Mummy would agree to only one further meeting, and at that only to bid them farewell. She did not need to say the words for Mycroft to know them, they hung between them like the haze of a sickroom and the clammy hopeless blankets of a deathbed.

One last goodbye to her youngest child.

It was done in the crisp air of the long driveway, the gray area between worlds, neither her strange and looming home nor the safety of the car which waited for them short feet away.

Mycroft had been willing to carry his wards out but they refused his offer, sliding off the bed and clutching the blanket around them just a little too fiercely for the calm they so obviously wished to portray. They stood now as they had when they entered the home only a day ago. Hands clasped in a line, John stretching his little hand up to clutch at Mycroft, his other perfectly at ease in Sherlock's.

She did not move to touch them, she hardly looked as if she wanted to speak, wanting the moment to end and last for eternity, just to stand and look at him forever a moment longer. At long last she nodded, a fleeting smile on her mouth.

Impossible to imagine being forgotten by your own child.

Impossible to hope with everything that you are that you will never be remembered.

Guilt so thick and real that it is in the air you breathe, that it infuses every cell of your body until you are sick with it.

A step back, the soft tread of her stained lab shoes, back to work, back to find not a cure but to make sure one is never produced.

"Wait."

She was on the verge of turning away when Sherlock's voice broke the silence, clear and sharp and sudden.

He dropped Johns hand and the blanket tumbled off his shoulders as he stepped forward. Mycroft could feel Johns hand begin to slide from his own but Sherlock looked back him, not saying a word, not needing to as John settled in beside him again, hand clutching just a little tighter.

He ran the few feet which separated them and every eye was on him, each of them watching with a new appreciation of how very small he was now, of how his every feature seemed to betray a delicacy which disconnected from his character. His raven hair curled again his too pale skin, bobbing and flooding into his eyes and resting on delicate cheek bones, thick black lashes were stark against white skin and surrounding azure eyes which seemed to burn.

He stopped at her feet, looking up at her not without fear but with a bravery that outshone it, looking up at a mother he did not know he had.

His hand was tentative, slow as he reached out, fingertips barely brushing the back of her hand, small fingers resting against the back of her own.

Sherlock would never know the full impact of his words.

He would never know what it meant to her.

To him it had become something simple and clear, unburdened by memories and pain it was just a thought.

An instinct.

"Not your fault."


	14. Chapter 14

A phone call and a handful of text messages later Mycroft was assured that while his plans were in effect and in fact ahead of schedule, they would not be completed until later in the day. The two boys beside him were taking advantage of his distraction, the stale remains of a cookie they discovered lodged in the seat was being tossed back and forth with ill aimed throws, bits of cookie crumbling and breaking into the air with every toss.

John looked at him as his phone clicked off, his face covered in a dusting of cookie crumbs and smudged with particles of chocolate and positively beamed at him.

They could not be could not be allowed to return home preemptively and destroy his meticulously laid plans.

It was with a sense of surrender that he directed the driver to whatever shopping centers people used these days when they could not simply delegate the task. His phone vibrated and the small screen seemed like a comforting window to a world he had almost forgotten. Words like 'urgent' and 'impending' were easily corrected with a few careful words, a linked document and slightly more than a subtle intellectual nudge. It only took a moment but he had become immersed in it, Korea really was making something of a nuisance of itself. His phone buzzed again, the world at his fingertips, and at that exact moment the shattered and hopeless remains of a cookie smacked him in the face.

It was to the sound of two children laughing that a look of if not happy, then contented concentration, was replaced by a irrepressible smirk which stole onto Mycroft's face against his will as he wondered for the umpteenth time what his life had become.

Children should not live in such perpetual chaos as this, not these children already predisposed to dark tendencies and hard painful lives. Children need structure; they need rules and a place to call home in which they feel safe and loved, they require a core group of adults they can trust to take care of them, some modicum of normalcy to which they can latch onto when all else fails and their dark worlds seems all too much.

They need him to pull his act together and stop acting as if somehow his brother will return to him if he delays just a little longer.

They need him to stop hoping that anyone will come out of this unchanged.

And he will.

Normalcy.

A proper home.

A proper life.

He can make things go right this time.

Tomorrow.

Today will be the last day of glittering strangeness as they prepare for a life they had already lived.

It took the greater part of the day to secure what several somewhat reliable sources had declared absolutely necessary for the proper development of two growing boys. The design of both the structure of the buildings and the interior set up were woefully inefficient and somewhat counterintuitive. Every aisle of every shop seemed to be fraught with hiding places for tiny bodies and riddled with abrupt turns behind which any enemy could be lingering in wait.

The aisles positively gleamed with objects which called out to be torn from their packages to any three year old mind. The most innocuous of these objects suddenly seemed a looming threat. Childishly scrawled block letters informed him of toys which could be a choking hazard, as if some frightful child would tear the pieces of his new toy apart and promptly shove them into every available orifice. Other gleaming toys informed him in garish colors that they would be too advanced for his young wards.

Mothers and fathers and children milled about in a mindless chaotic stream, each adding a new level of awareness as they wandered closer to his bright eyed companions who seemed less inclined to stay with him with every passing moment.

If he was ever to have the concentration to make a single necessary purchase he would have to eliminate several of the most dire threats to his wards. It was only for their own safety that he hastily plucked his two boys from the screaming masses of leashed and diseased children and dropped them into the metal bed of their carriage.

Sherlock and John stood barely restrained in their gilded prison, pointing at one object or another, leaning out with tiny fists to latch onto a prize and pull it crashing towards them. Despite Mycroft's fears they made no move to escape, contented by the little bursts of speed during which they cried out gleefully.

They started their journey in the store using what Mycroft would describe as mostly English, a communication unique onto themselves but decipherable by the general public or, at very least, a determined translator. But as more and more children flitted past their metal bars Sherlock drew away from the sides of the cart, speaking in softer progressively indecipherable tones. The way his wards looked at the other children, bodies held unnaturally still and eyes wide open, it was as if they were trying to see something more than little bodies and short years. It was as if they were trying to determine if they were the same type of creature as themselves at all.

Mycroft swiftly ignored warnings that promised the selected educational toys would be too advanced and tossed them into the growing pile within the carriage. Along with a selection of multimedia tools and basic 'necessary' items Mycroft observed where the boys eyes lingered, he watched their faces change even as they stayed uncharacteristically well behaved and silent, sitting at last back to back in the center of their carriage as this world threatened to overwhelm them.

For Sherlock a more intimate toy selection was embarrassingly easy. His eyes locked and grew wide, his red mouth opening not to scream or beg, but torn between the words and the unconscious need.

When Mycroft placed the amateur detective kit with its lustrous plastic magnifying glass in Sherlock's lap the tendrils of cold misgiving creeping up his spine melted. His hand reverently touched the glass as if it were beautiful and rare, the frantic tension in his face and shoulders soothed and disappeared.

John was slightly more difficult to read. Every individual box and toy and child seemed to catch his attention, more often than not making his brown eyes grown wide in wonder. In the end it was more for Mycroft than John when he plucked the small teddy bear from the shelf and placed it carefully in Johns arms.

There was a moment, holding it in his hands and staring into its button eyes, that felt as if John had peered past the fabric and stuffing and found inside, a soul. He smiled as he pulled the thing to his chest protectively, closing it in his crossed arms so that now the action of a self hug so often found in his small countenance was less of a heartache than in itself an embrace.

The second store, while slightly more attuned to miniature costumers, seemed intent on complicating the lives of every adult with the misfortune of entering. Sherlock and John refused to be placed inside the safety of the metal basket, there was after all a 'race car' attached to the front of the carriage.

Mycroft thought the idea of settling his two three year old charges in an easily escapable red plastic vaguely car shaped transport was an ill conceived plan and had opened his mouth to tell them exactly that. But the words died in his throat when it was Sherlock who ran for the toy, opening the little door and waiting only to see if John had followed to place himself inside.

Mycroft followed in the wake of his brother, calmly stranding over the chosen cart. Blue eyes looked up at him without a shadow of the pain he had imagined would always linger there, every misdeed forgotten in the unflappable enthusiasm of childhood.

He looked happy.

Sherlock pushed over on the red plastic bench seat to make room as John piled inside, a tumble of little legs and uncoordinated arms as the wheels of the carriage let them roll slightly away. The two boys wriggled, settling themselves in. John pressed a kiss to his new teddy bear and wedged it onto the seat between their two bodies. Sherlock's almost gleeful expression hardened, his glare fixed on the small stuffed toy, plots for its destruction whirling in his mind when Johns hands curled over his on the bright plastic of their false steering wheel. An adoring smile from John and the look of destruction reluctantly faded from Sherlock's face. Mycroft sighed and took his place at the back of the cart as the two boys erratically turned the wheel, dodging obstacles he was too old to see.

He did not need to put them in a cage to keep them close. They would keep each other close.

The sales women fawned over his 'sons', charmed by Sherlock's wide purposeful gaze and Johns uninhibited smile. Although their attention was unwanted their preoccupations with his wards was not without merit.

Despite their somewhat precarious relationship in the past Mycroft bore no ill will towards his brother and certainly not to the man who had defied logic and reason and implanted himself firmly into Sherlock's closed world. It was an act of morality and goodwill that Mycroft passed by the racks of brightly colored clothes emblazoned with various embarrassing slogans and garish poorly drawn television characters. If he paused only a moment too long at the shirt which announced proudly in its pink bubble script 'Princess' it was nothing but a hiccup in his otherwise morally sound mind.

With the aid of far too many assistants, who had been twirled around the fingers of his smiling wards, Mycroft was able to attain a reasonable wardrobe for the boys. It was hours before the bulk of the shopping was done and they were satisfied that the trip would not have to be repeated. Mycroft was on his way to the checkout when a particularly bright laugh cut through the din of screaming children and mindless music.

It was, of course, only because John had found the clothing so particular that he placed two sets into the carriage basin.

In line a thought came to him as he was gazing down at his final impulse purchase. It only took the effort of a text to his assistant to procure a camera for his personal use. John laughed again as he placed the matching sets of footie pajamas onto the checkout counter.

His plans, which had been placed under the supervision of Mrs. Hudson for the duration of their absence, had been completed. Under normal circumstances there would be no emotions attached to the revealing of a gift. Gifts were chosen rarely and only then on a scale of usefulness to the recipient. There was no emotion invested in a new microscope, no heart in a particularly virulent strain of virus or a full work up on the newest poisons in the underworld. Each gift practical, useful, with no chance of failure or dislike. But now there was a lingering misgiving present in his heart. The recipients of his gifts could not be fully anticipated and this was not a piece of machinery or a virus. This was not a matter of pure intellect or strict need.

Mycroft never put any emotion into his gifts.

He had never hoped so dearly that someone would enjoy a gift of his creation.

They knew something was amiss, it must have been in his gait, or the way he could not stop his eyes from wandering to them as they entered their rooms but John was clutching his hand a little tighter and Sherlock had a look on his face of perfect omnipotent knowledge which would follow him into adulthood.

Mrs. Hudson greeted them with a smile at the door of the room which had once housed their mammoth fort, a smile of pride for herself and one of genuine warmth for the two boys at his side. When she twisted the handle and pushed the door open none of them were surprised, but then again, Mycroft reminded himself, neither is a child come Christmas morning.

They loved it instantly. The colors, the bed pushed tight and secure against a wall and large enough to hold both of their small bodies, the oversized chair meant to engulf, the toys glistening on their shelves for no one but themselves.

Normal.

Safe.

The room which Mycroft hoped could become their home.


	15. Chapter 15

Time flowed and drifted and sped through their fingers, moments of bliss and pain flashing before their eyes and dying as completely as a flash in the night, leaving only a lingering imprint of light and dark on the back of their eyes.

Mycroft had hoped, as they had all silently hoped, for something brilliant, for a life magnanimous. The perfect second chance that no one in history had ever been granted.

There were moments when he could believe this were true, moments filled with laughter and little boys holding tight to his hands, boys holding the phone so close between them that their cheeks were pressed together as they listened and laughed. Little boys who appeared to all the world as if they had never been anything but blissfully happy.

But Sherlock ate only what he needed to survive, swallowing quickly and perfunctorily, staying perpetually underweight, the miniature cloths he wore seeming to grow larger on his increasingly emaciated form with every passing day. John jumped at the littlest things which no one, even Sherlock, seemed able to predict. The crack of a soda can was enough to make him wince and his eyes grow wide with panic, the sight of a broken toy or a splash of cold water from a yet unheated bath was enough to draw upon his face a look of desolation, as if he believed that nothing would ever be unbroken. As if he where resigning himself to the half life of uncaring squalor.

None of the factors of their original childhoods remained and yet the ill effects of a lifetime of punishment seemed to be weighing down on bodies and minds unequipped for such hardships.

For months Mycroft had kept up the charade with all of the characters of his brother's former life. It must seem to them as if Sherlock had solved the most gruesome crimes of London from the shores of every remote and unreachably distant country in the world. Scotland Yard, while dropping increasingly worrying hints about their misgivings, were adequately satisfied to have their pedestrian inquiries spelled out for them. One life however, whom he had dreaded from the very beginning, had worked themselves into a frothing rage despite emails and texts meant to sooth and deter.

After four months Harry Watson could not be put off a moment longer.

From the very moment of meeting John Watson, from the first time he had set eyes upon the man in the tiny screen of CCT security systems he had know that the man had a history which bore itself into every breath. Every step he took had been dictated by the past he chose to rise above.

And from the moment Mycroft chose to take John Watson, beautiful enigmatic child, under his care, he had known that he would have to deduce every in and out of the past that even Sherlock had failed to decipher.

He should have found Harry Watson, only surviving blood relation of his charge, the moment he knew a revival of their lives was impossible. But he had wanted to establish a true home. No more new faces tugging horrid memories to the surface, no more parading them around like some sort of second rate circus, gruesome artifacts to be gawked at and prodded until there was nothing left of them but vivisected sacrifice.

So he had waited, imagining that one day he could bring Harry into the fold of their lives and integrate the information he received. He had imagined a day when the memories of their lives had become nothing but the haze of a memory and the panic attacks which dotted their existence so frequently where nothing more than the barely remembered nightmare which dissolves in the morning light.

But his boys never got better. They never forgot the way their lives had begun.

Despite the home they had gained and the laughter they shared, their childhoods had never become something more than something to endure.

And Mycroft had made a crucial mistake which he had never imagined would come to pass.

He had grown to love John Watson.

In the first days of their coexistence there was no immediate bond a parent might share with their child. None of the natural biological imperatives, the chemicals which flood a biological parents mind, had any hold over his analytical brain. He had believed that when the time came he could share this boy with his family, that he could endure the knowledge of his past without feeling even a hint of empathy.

But, as his brother had done before him, he fell.

Brown eyes looked upon him without naiveté but still as if he would do no wrong, as if just by reaching out and touching messy blond hair he could undo all that was wrong in the world. His smile held him enraptured, the way his body was soft and warm as he curled into the nook of his arm and fell asleep with one hand fisted into a crimpled shirt. The way with a look and a touch he could take Sherlock from the brink of chaos and provide a safety Mycroft could only begin to fathom.

Impossible to take a creature he loved more than himself and subject it to the punishment of caustic memories.

And yet Harry Watson lingered on the fringe of their existence, refusing to be charmed by the blogs posted in her brother's name, by the stories which depicted them as something approaching happy.

She had to be told, to be introduced for the second time.

For her sake and Johns.

Mycroft had to share that which he had come to regard as his own.

The facts lay before him like something antiseptic. The facts of her life so far as they were known, an uneventful existence, a middle class job born of a middle class life, a recovering alcoholic with a past of haggard memories. An ex-wife, lost jobs, a family which had become estranged and then erased one by one through the passage of time and cancer and liver failure.

Harry Watson. A lifetime condensed to three sheets of paper and a lifetimes worth of taxes.

John looked up at him from a book for those twice his age and smiled at him, something fleeting and impulsive, before turning back to the pages, thrusting out a little hand to show the coloured page to Sherlock.

He would need more than a background check and few half hearted lookouts to entrust even the knowledge of his wards into her care.

They were four years old before John Watson met his sister for the first time.

The memories of their first day of existence had faded in their minds, or at very least they had failed to mention it again, the pools of blood, the darkness of their second birth. Drawings of blood were replaced with dinosaurs and suns and smiling faces. The place in which they lived now was the only home they had ever known, the people who filled their days the only family they cared to know, choosing through actions and silent panic the ones with the power to care for them.

They had grown a little taller, and even John had begun to lose the sweet roundness of the very young. Their voices were still high and bright but they had more words at their command now, words which they more often than not chose to forsake.

Toys were used and broken and forgotten while others grew more loved by the day. The trail of an orange blanket would always lead to two boys lost in each other, a teddy bear peering in a certain direction almost always betrayed where they could be found and more than one misadventure resulted in slight, if rather shocking, explosions.

The boys stood before a thoroughly debriefed Harry Watson as two children who believed that they were, in some strange way, loved.

They could all see the way John was reacting not to the memories but to the feeling of being near someone he once knew. They all knew their parts, knew what would be done for every variance of how he may react.

They had gone over each scenario in triplicate.

Harry seemed to be holding her breath, her smile watery and unsure of itself and of them, not because of any doubt but because they were those alien creatures she had never trusted herself with. They were children, soft and malleable and so very breakable. Her hand shook at her side, fingers twitching to grasp a bottle, a glass. Her smile waivered.

John was not reacting at all in the way the first three scenarios had planned for. His eyes narrowed slightly as if deep in thought and when Sherlock stepped in front of him, shielding him with his own lithe body, John made no move to stop him, only peering over the dark haired boys shoulder, unhurried in his examination.

The strain of inaction was becoming too much not for the children but for the adults involved. Mrs. Hudson was worrying her hands were she stood against the door, endlessly their protective 'Nana'. Mycroft could see Harry begin to lose her calm the way she had when he had shown her the first video months before. If this stretched out any longer the two women would need to be removed.

They all suppressed a gasp when John walked forward with Sherlock trailing behind him, led by the hand and surprised as the rest of them. John paused and looked at his sister a moment longer with a face of deep thought which betrayed nothing.

And then, like clouds parting and sunlight casting the grey world in a blinding golden hue, John smiled.

He beamed up at his sister the same way he would when he woke up in the morning and the haze of sleep still clung to him and it was as if he knew that today would be a good day. It was the smile he gave them when a plate of cookies was just out of reach but a doting adult was melting beneath his small hands. It was the smile of something good he never knew he could have.

Despite his smile he seemed all of a sudden, shy. His mouth opened and a blush painted his cheeks and his blond hair deliberately fell into his eyes, a shield. His nerves seemed to get the best of him as he took a breath and his words were not those of the four year old he had become but of the lost three year old who had only ever been sure of one thing.

"This is Sher'ock." John introduced, holding their joined hands out in front of them as if this were the way all introductions were made, a gesture displaying possession and relation and self without the need of any words. A gesture too painfully honest for any adult to even conceive.

John did not feel the need to introduce himself, which was, in ots own way, telling, but he did look back and forth between them as if searching for a way to introduce her to Sherlock.

But he had no gesture for her, no smile that meant more, no words to put to a face he almost remembered.

Harry Watson knelt on the floor, knees thumping gracefully into the carpet, hands placed carefully in her lap as per the plan, but the smile was all her own.

"I am Harry."


	16. Chapter 16

Things were, altogether, going too well. They were not just surviving, they were living. Days were spent in play and work and night found the three of them curled all together in their oversized chair, increasingly difficult books being read as little heads began to droop to his chest.

Mycroft imagined that this was the happiest any of them had ever been.

And he grew foolish and contented.

He let himself fall into the illusion that they were like everyone else, that they were safe.

He should have noticed something was amiss when Mrs. Hudson hugged the boys goodbye and promised to be back in just two days and John got up and curled his arms around her neck and buried his face in her hair and Sherlock only let an arm be draped around him, passive and silent.

He should have known that night when Sherlock did not curl into his side as Mycroft read out loud but instead laid himself across his lap, his tangled head of black hair resting on Johns lap, blue eyes drifting shut almost before they began.

He should have known when John, who at four knew more about Sherlock than he knew himself, climbed from the bed and recovered the human skull from the shelf it had been hidden on, placing it lovingly on the bedside table to gaze down at Sherlock so it would be the first thing he saw when he woke. Sherlock's gruesome answer to Johns teddy bear.

But he only waited for John to climb back into the bed and kissed each of them on the crown of their heads, never looking back when John's soft voice began to fill the night air.

It was nearly seven in the morning when Mycroft set down his pen and shut down his laptop.

Sherlock and John should have been up by now, peering into his office and chirping demands for food or issuing sleepy hellos, dressed like colorblind lunatics without their Nana to help them put together appropriate outfits.

But silence reined in the rooms, once the soft clicking of the keyboard had ceased and not even a pencil was scraping across elegant paper the nothingness, that hollow ringing of oblivion, was deafening.

Silence filled by the rapid pounding of his own heart.

The hallways of his private chambers were emptier now than they had ever been. The household staff had been reallocated into different positions. He had found that he did not need them as much now as he once had. The clicking of subdued shoes and antiseptic cleanliness of his former life had been replaced by the screams of children and the slight but livable mess so inherent in their existence.

But now he wished that he had forced the boys to endure the strangers company just a little longer. Just so the hallway to their room would not seem so very void of life, to hear a single sound other than his own breath as he pushed the door open.

John was sitting on the bed, brown eyes wide as they turned to him, trying so very hard to be brave. The stethoscope from a former life was dangling absurdly from his little ears; in the dull light he could almost see the engraving upon its cold metal like an echo. 'Doctor Watson'. The end was pressed to a pale and heaving chest.

The only sound in Johns terrifying world was the beating of Sherlock's heart.

The skull had been moved to the bed like an offering, the teddy bear falling against it, button eyes pressing into the sagittal suture. A pale and shaking hand reached past the folds of cloth and the tips of miniscule fingers danced across its gleaming smile, unconsciously tracing its naked cheekbones.

Blankets tangled at his legs, half engulfing and half exposing as if they had been kicked off in a nightmare and never straightened. His small chest and belly heaved with every breath, the desperate pulls for oxygen shaking with unquelled nausea and an inability to catch a legitimate breath. Sherlock's night shirt had been rucked up beneath his chin so that each prominent rib, every inch of emaciated flesh stood as an accusation as it rose and fell.

The only relief from the nightmare come to life was the small golden hand of John pressing over his heart, measuring each beat as if he could still understand the nuances of the human body deep within his subconscious.

When Mycroft had first stepped into the room had believed that Sherlock had been in a haze of fever, mindlessly reaching out for the comfort of the skull, face turned away from it as if still lost todreams, quieted by sickness as much as choice. But as he sat on the bed, one hand reaching out towards his brother, the other already dialing his phone, he knew better.

Flushed and ill, sweat drenched curls clinging to his skin, and tormented body exposed to garish morning light, all of his weaknesses and deficits put upon display in a way that for Sherlock was enough to bring him to the utmost throes of terror, Sherlock could not take his eyes from John Watsons face.

* * *

He had not planned for this. There were no contingency plans in place, no onsite medical facilities equipped to handle his shaking body, no undercover guards posted in surrounding hospitals.

There was nothing to do but call for a car and put his hand on Sherlock's face.

He needed to take his temperature. To ascertain what, logically, needed to be done.

The rational part of his mind sorted lists and prioritized necessities, ran through his limited knowledge about children's sicknesses and what items he had on hand. His mind analyzed the last few days, the last few hours. A cough, the wiping of a hand against a nose, a misplaced shiver.

Words flowed into his mind so vial he would not let them form.

Statistics like a prophecy of doom.

He was half way to standing, uncertain what the heat under his palm meant, knowing that in this his opinion would be biased, rendered worthless. But the fingers endlessly tracing the contours of the skull had stopped abruptly. With a sick heaving breath which seemed to fill his chest and expand his whole body, stomach lifting and drawing Mycroft's eyes to the little belly button which seemed somehow obscene and young and private, the hand reached out to him.

Mycroft caught Sherlock's outstretched hand in his own, wrapping adult fingers to engulf the whole of his hand and the logical part of his mind stopped working.

His child needed help.

* * *

A disaster of paperwork and endless yellow tape stood between him and the care he wanted not in an hour's time but right now. So he made it go away.

The flash of a badge, the unrelenting glare of the truly powerful and a single call and everything in the hospital was at his beck and call, his to use and manipulate as he saw fit.

And he gave them Sherlock.

He let the limp body of the barely coherent child be taken from his arms and laid down on the gurney, he watched weak limbs fall and blue eyes open blearily with a panic which had no energy to become even a cry.

Someone on the periphery of his existence was shuffling them out of the room as doctors bent over Sherlock, engulfing him in blankets and needles and monitors. The soft mantra, the useless words of the person trying to block his view and show him into the hall changed and shifted and a cry filled the air.

Mycroft would have no recollection later of what he said or did.

He only knew that the words came out at no more than whisper and the man who had picked up John seemed as if he would faint on the spot, as if his knees were no longer strong enough to hold his weight.

And then John was in his own arms, his blond head burying itself in his neck for one terrified exhalation of breath before twisting in his arms to take advantage of his new height. Arms twirling around Mycroft's neck as together they stood alone at the edge of the room waiting for a glimpse of a bare foot, or the hint of black curls.


	17. Chapter 17

_**John**_

It hurt.

It hurt more than the nightmares.

It hurt more than when they saw what no one else could. When they remembered what they had never seen and Sherlock was too afraid to eat and he was too afraid to let go.

Sherlock would not wake up.

He needed to be there. Needed to hold his hand tell him that it was okay to open his eyes.

He needed to make it okay.

He needed to be brave.

But they were swarming around him, like flies to a wound.

Strangers. Grownups with needles and words like a secret language that floated through his mind and got stuck there. Refractory hypotension. Tachypnea. Elevated heart rate. Fever.

Like the entire world was collapsing and Sherlock was in the middle of it all, bringing it down around him.

And he needed him.

But no one understood.

Sherlock did not need the hospital and all of these people and the machines that meant sickness and death and blood and screaming and all of the things that lingered behind his eyes when he woke up.

All he needed was him.

He tried to speak, to cry out and tell them to get away, to tell Sherlock that he was here.

But when he opened his mouth no sound came out.

When he twisted Mycroft held him closer.

It hurt; and no one understood.

But then the crowd, the mass of bodies surrounding the too large bed started to disappear and they were moving. The bed, Sherlock, the IV drips and the machinery that whirred and whined slipping down hallways and disappearing behind cold metallic elevator doors.

He could feel the scream working its way up his throat, all the words that had been stolen away threatening to erupt at once, but there was a hand on his back pressing him close until Mycroft steady heartbeat thundered under his ear and they too were moving.

The scream died in the back of his mouth, forgotten and bitter as his thoughts threatened to swallow him, drown him in darkness until there would be nothing left of him to hold Sherlock's hand.

People everywhere.

Sick.

Coughing.

Bleeding.

Dying.

Machines pumping hearts, forcing air into lungs. Broken bodies waiting to die.

Like screaming men falling, like brown earth turning black with blood.

Useless, helpless hands.

Beds and beds and beds.

Sherlock did not belong here.

And then they were in a room and all of the bodies were gone and the door clicked closed behind them.

And he was there.

And it hurt so much more.

Too small. Sherlock was too small and everything else was too big.

The mask was shocking and fragile and made something in his own chest ache and burn.

Thin plastic engulfed his mouth and nose, fogging with his too rapid breath, changing color with the shallow rise and fall of his chest. The blankets, which did nothing to hide all of the tubes and the wires entwined with Sherlock, stretched on forever in a bed fit for an adult and engulfed a child.

But this time when John squirmed and kicked and needed to be set down his feet touched the floor and finally everything could be alright again.

It took ages to push the chair closer, to climb up on top of it.

It took longer to promise himself that if he touched Sherlock he would not break him.

Slowly, wanting blue eyes to open and see him and need him and seeing only black eyelashes, he reached out. His hand was soft and cold and he tried not to touch the wires and tubes but one brushed his arm and it was plastic and hard and terrible.

The machines towered over them, walls of metal looming the way the world never had before when he was with Sherlock. But now that they were together and it was still just him and he had to be brave and protect him…nothing looked the same. The world was wrong.

But Mycroft was still standing by the door. His phone in his hand and his face like a stone. John knew that face. The face that meant no one would be allowed to touch them. That whatever was bad, whatever had happened would go away and never come back.

So when Sherlock did not wake, even when he whispered that it was safe to open his eyes because they were together again, it was okay.

They would protect him.

* * *

Time did not drift or flow or anything so genial and careless as the wasted seconds of an untried life. It was thick and heavy, each moment was a decision and each beep of a monitor, each mechanical wheeze of a machine was the death of a second they would never have again.

Realistically, in the most analytical part of Mycroft's mind, he could derive a perfect timeline of events. He could recite the precise minute Mrs. Hudson came in through the door with nothing more than the soft, warm smell that clung to her as a greeting and eyes Mycroft could not bear to meet for fear of the unguarded emotion he could not survive finding reflected in himself. He knew the very second, the precise tracing of Sherlock's heart which corresponded with the moment his people flooded into the hospital far too late to erase the damage he had done.

He knew the time register in which they deleted all admittance data of a very sick four year old boy. He could recall the unforgiving tick of the clock and the intake of breath Sherlock had taken, a raspy desperate wet sounding thing, when everyone who had come into contact with them, who had seem their faces, was sworn to secrecy.

He could recite the hour, the minute, and the second two people tried to force themselves through the door and become invisible simultaneously. Two vastly different lives and jobs and thoughts held together in two bodies which at that moment held the same look of cultured despair and foreboding.

He would never be able to forget the minute when Sherlock's heart beat and John curled his little body at the foot of the bed, too afraid to touch but reaching across the sterile white distance to curl in the blankets and almost touch with a delicate sleeping hand the curve of a foot beneath blankets. The minute when Anthea told him in a quiet informative voice that the computer system had been hacked between the interval of their arrival and their subsequent deletion. The minute a solemn faced doctor took her place and uttered words that meant statistics and complications…and the possibility that Sherlock's heart may not continue to beat.

Mycroft could pinpoint the timeline of the night, knew how many hours had passed, how many agonizing seconds had succumb to them. But irrationally, emotionally, in a totally pedestrian, completely fallible human way, it _felt _like forever.


	18. Chapter 18

The first of the team of doctors he chose arrived just two hours after Sherlock's arrival at the commandeered hospital. The other six from around the world trickled in over the next 24 hours.

He wanted clashing opinions, he wanted options and possibilities, he wanted a plethora of treatments laid out before him. He wanted hope.

But they all said the same thing; they all had the same look in their eyes that said that when they got the call in the middle of the night and half way around the world they never expected the man at the other end to be another helpless parent.

Not an epidemic.

Not disease a disease jumping the species barrier.

Not a call to arms from the most powerful man they had ever even heard of.

Just a little boy.

They were sworn to secrecy as they relayed the same words over and over again. Every prognoses the same. Each identical and reiterated word echoing within Mycroft making him imagine things he had never predicted for his life.

Emaciated. Dehydrated. Pneumonia. Septic.

Treating with IV fluids, intravenous antibiotics, nutrients, medicine to boost falling blood pressure.

Watching for kidney failure.

Watching for systematic organ failure.

Waiting to intibate.

No one told him the statistics, how many children, even with the best care, survive this.

They were too afraid.

Who could fly half way around the world to tell a man who holds the power of life and death, war and peace in his hands, that a four year old may never wake up?

But he knew.

All of his power, all of his influence, his genius, rendered useless.

He was useless.

Helpless in a way he had not felt since they were children.

And then even though some part of his mind still calculated the seconds, and noted factual events without slant or misconception. The rest of him measured life in the spaces between Sherlock's breaths, value was written only in heartbeats, and Mycroft set down his phone as the door clicked shut behind him, one hand resting on Johns sleeping back and the other holding a small white hand.

He didn't mean to fall asleep. He wanted to stay up in case Sherlock woke up. He needed to be there.

But their words were crushing him, and even when he opened his eyes wide and tried so hard not to blink the images would not go away. Bodies and screaming and uselessness and no Sherlock to make it stop.

He just wanted to close his eyes, to squeeze them tight until there was nothing but darkness and swirls of bright blinding color, to be as small as he could. To disappear just for a moment, disappear so they could not find him.

But when he woke up Sherlock was still asleep, still buried under translucent tubes and wires.

Waking from nightmares of small dark spaces and thundering heartbeats into a reality worse than the ones he could wake up from.

John rubbed the sleep from his eyes with small balled fists, blond hair falling in thick strands down his forehead. If he sat up, carful to touch nothing, only his leg bumping into the blanket, against something soft and giving which could only be Sherlock, he could see black curls and closed eyes.

Mycroft was there. Protecting them. Guarding them.

But the reason he woke was still standing in the doorway. A man in a long white coat like a cape, his cold green eyes flickering over to him with a look of disapproval but he never stopped speaking.

The words floated over him in the gentle haze of just waking up. A sound more than a meaning. But Mycroft's shoulders were stiff, tensing for a fight.

Something was wrong.

And the words didn't disappear so easily now.

Oxygen levels. Bacteria. Pneumonia. Sepsis.

They stuck in his head, in his ears. Echoing over and over. Like a death keen.

Familiar and dark and bad images.

Lungs filled with liquid.

And blood.

So much blood.

And it hurt.

He could not breathe.

And then the talking stopped.

One quick, loud, growl.

Arms picking him up, hands on his ribcage.

Pulling him away from Sherlock but tight against Mycroft's chest, held close and warm and safe.

A heartbeat under his ear fast and hard and so real.

Not like the beeping of a heart monitor.

Footsteps shuffled quickly, the tap of expensive shoes.

The door clicked closed and a kiss pressed to his head, falling on blond hair, only half felt but more an expression of comfort than an actual motion.

He let himself be held, a heart under his ear, thrumming the words from his mind. But his eyes never left Sherlock. Waiting for the moment he would open his eyes.

After that moment, when Mycroft had held him in his arms and his heart had beat loud enough in his ear to drive away the world, loud enough for him to remember how to breath even when the words had gotten stuck in his head and burned in his mind, the adults were not allowed to speak in front of him again.

But that didn't mean he was safe from the words. From the pictures that would not stop.

He did not want to leave Sherlock.

He couldn't.

But Nana Hudson promised he would be safe. That Mycroft would watch him while he was gone.

She let him put their blanket on him and held him up to Sherlock's pale face so he could kiss him, careful and soft.

Only a few minutes.

A trip to the cafeteria for food he would not eat, and then a longer one to the bathroom to wash it all away and he could come back.

They promised everything would be okay.

Different words echoed in his mind, images more powerful than blood and more meaningful than their reassurances.

_Soft blankets over their heads casting an orange glow across their skin, eyes not pleading or demanding but asking, and just a little sad, a small hand touching his face the way he only did when they were alone._

'_You have to trust him.'_

So when Nana Hudson picked him up and carried him away from where Sherlock lay he let her. He twisted in her arms only to watch the door shut between them, saw as the elevator closed around them, the white coats sparing him a look as he disappeared.

They ate, she held him to the glass in the cafeteria and let him choose anything he wanted, pointing out the foods that usually made her frown, the pizza, the tray of individual cakes and puddings shining in their cellophane wrappers.

Together they watched the pizza go cold and congeal on the thin paper plate.

They washed his face and hands in the bathroom, cleaning away the grime and food that was not there, dressing him and tucking away his pajamas at last.

John watched as she pulled out her phone, her face carefully blank as she read it, her smile too wide when she looked away. She said nothing as she picked him up in her arms and held him to her chest even though he was getting to big to be held like that. She held him close as the faceless people pushed by them, ashen people trudging through their own bubbles of existence.

John wondered what they saw when they closed their eyes.

Nana Hudson wanted to go outside, to take a walk. She spoke about the sun and the wind and just a few more minutes even as she reached for her phone, waiting for it to chime.

She went to set him on the ground the way he usually wanted to be, strong and independent and so very grown up. But he held on a little tighter and buried his face in her neck.

He did not want the sun or the wind or a puppy or a toy.

He wanted Sherlock.

He closed his eyes and remembered orange light. He remembered the way they did not speak about it, the way it was just a cough that stuttered his speech, just a tiredness that made nap time a blessing. He remembered promising as blue eyes held him without having to touch him.

Nana Hudson held him tighter, whispering meaningless words as she held her phone to her ear, keeping it carefully away from him, not wanting him to hear the echo of Mycroft's words as she kept her own purposefully meaningless.

And it was wrong.

The looks, the smiles, the phone.

He didn't want to be held anymore.

Didn't want to be touched by them.

He squirmed and wriggled, not wanting to kick or hit, wanting to hurt no one but himself.

And the phone went down, and he went down.

It hurt but it didn't. To fall on his hands and elbows. To scrape his cheek on the floor.

He had to move.

Had to run.

There were people everywhere, mindless and lost and sick, and so many legs, and stairs and gurneys and his Nana was crying his name but the elevator was right there.

He slipped through their legs as the last occupants left, lost in their own minds, in their own torments.

Nana yelled again, louder this time, but no one paid attention to her in din of the lobby.

The doors closed with a ding like the beating of a heart and he was alone as the doors closed on her frantic face.

He memorized the buttons. The hallways. The door.

He knew to follow as if he belonged to one adult or the other, to slip behind a counter or a bed or a desk.

And he made it through the sea of fallen bodies even as the images of more rose in his throat. The only closed door. The only one allowed to be closed because it needed to be protected.

He eyed the doorknob. It was high and round and when he stretched to open it someone would see him. Anyone could pick him up and carry him away because they wouldn't know that he was supposed to protect him! There was no way they could understand.

But the door opened beneath his gaze, two men walking out, their coats like white tails between their legs.

And he ran.

There was a cry behind him but he ignored it. Ran faster. Little legs pumping, working so hard in the blue dinosaur overalls he had been forced into only minutes ago.

He pushed the door as it drifted closed, two palms flat against it, shoving hard, prints of blood.

He was still there.

The beeping of his heart.

The soft almost-not-there-at-all whoosh of his breath.

The chair had been moved and with a grunt of frustration and anger he shoved it back, ignoring the way Mycroft watched him without alarm but with silent worry.

It was hard crawling on top of it. His hands were bleeding and his cheek left a red stain on the fabric but it didn't matter, none of it mattered.

Because when he reached out Sherlock was warm. His hand was soft. And even though he did not sigh or open his eyes or smile it was okay. Because when he did, John would be there.

A word floated into his mind, rising above the rest, dredged from the darkness without sound or concept but filled with implication and meaning.

A tube. Small and yellowish and taped to his face like you could just tape plastic to him, as if it did not mean anything, as if this were not his Sherlock.

A tube that snaked past the mask around his open mouth and into his body, threading through his nasal passage, down his throat and emptying into his stomach with pumps and medication and nutrients.

Just a little tube.

John froze, his hand tightening over Sherlock's placid one, his eyes squeezed shut tight. Mycroft's hand fell on his back, comforting and warm, but it did not stop the way his heart felt like it had frozen in his chest.

It did not matter.

Nothing mattered.

Sherlock was not just going to open his eyes and chase away all of the bad things with a look or a word or a hug.

This was wrong.

Nightmares that were real.

All of the bad things were here, the words and the screams and the fear which crawled up his throat as if he might disappear within them swelled unchecked without him. But this time, even when he opened his eyes, when he remembered to breathe, when the screams and the sound of children crying stopped the bad things did not stop.

This was real.

This, everyone could see.

And he was alone.

John climbed onto the perfect white bed and curled carefully beside Sherlock, closing his eyes against the tubes, not hearing the sounds of machines keeping him alive, pressing his stinging cheek into the rough sheet to try and feel the heat of him. To not exist. To disappear within it.

To fall into memory.

_Sherlock pulled the orange blanket over their heads even as his blue eyes fought to stay open. Sunlight streaming through the window became warm and sweet in their cocoon, the feeling of their shared breathe intimate as a secret as they shared a pillow._

_Sherlock reached for him, little fingers tracing patterns over his cheek, holding and memorizing, eyes fighting to stay open to make the moment last. Sentimentality that made Johns heart hurt. Like looking into a clear blue sky and knowing it was going to rain._

_Somewhere out in the world outside of their haven Mycroft closed the door softly behind him. Another layer around them._

'_You have to trust him.'_

_John opened his mouth to speak but the look on Sherlock's face stopped him, the sweet sadness he should never have mixing with something more heartbreaking. It was the look Sherlock only gave him when he though John was not looking, the look he pretended to be asleep just to see._

_The look that made it feel like he would never be alone._

'_If I am not here-'_

_He could not help it. It was not a word that came out of his mouth, but a soft, wretched, sound. Any words he might have said were stolen when Sherlock held his face in both hands, needing him to listen, needing the words to exist between them. _

_The touch fought off the panic that wanted to seep into their golden world._

'_If I am not here with you…' Soft and serious and imploring. 'You will be okay.'_

_He did not realize he was crying until Sherlock wiped at his face, catching his tears in pale fingers._

_Why was he crying?_

_Blue eyes blinked sleepily at him. Too tired for midday. Too tired to be okay. On his lips ghosted the hint of a smile, one knowing and warm. His skin seemed to glow in the orange light and streams of pure white. _

_Sherlock was warm as he wriggled closer, wrapping John in his arms and pressing a kiss to his wet cheek, holding him so close that his heart was in his ear and his words were on his skin._

'_You will be brave.'_

'_Sherlock-' Denial. Refusal._

'_John-' Not stern but imploring. Asking in a way he never dared to for anything. _

'_I will be brave.' John whispered as he tried to fight back the tears even as the cloth of Sherlock's shirt grew damp beneath his eyes. He swallowed and let the words choke back into his mouth. 'But…promise I will not need to be.'_

_But by the time his words filled the air Sherlock was already asleep in his arms. _

_He told himself it did not matter._

_It was just a dream. It was all the bad things in his mind seeping into their reality, the parts Sherlock would not tell him, the parts that made him go quiet and cold._

_If the bad things were real…_

_If they could hurt them…_

_But they were not real. They were safe._

_He would never need to uphold his promise. _

_He would never need to be alone._


	19. Chapter 19

Life with children was…complicated. Mycroft was at loathing to say difficult. So many negative connotations attached to the word. As if they were a burden, as if their 'difficult' could be compared with a tsunami or world hunger. But it was not what he imagined raising children would be. It was nothing like his own upbringing, nothing like movies or books or others would lead him to believe.

Coexisting with his two little charges meant existing in the midst of indescribable happiness mixed indiscriminately with abject terror.

There had been days of helplessness, of watching his little brother suffer in a way he had never before managed. Each procedure had been laid out before him, each blip of a monitor meant something finite and indisputable. This time around Sherlock could not hide his suffering, each symptom, each pain laid out in a way his adult self would never allow. If Mycroft was honest, in a way a conscious baby Sherlock would not allow.

He watched the medicine fail to bring him back, the nutrients fail to revitalize his limp limbs, he watched as his breathing grew shallow and ineffective. He had gathered John into his arms and let himself be led from the room when Sherlock could no longer breathe on his own and had tried to explain to a silent four year old doctor what it meant to intubate a patient while keeping his racing heart within the confines of his chest.

And then, when long silent days had passed them by, he watched the same doctors, the ones who had told him with solemn eyes that Sherlock may never wake, smile, and tell him that he was breathing on his own. He watched the ill pallor fade to comparatively vibrant cheeks, watched the weight loss halt and then ,reluctantly, turn in the other direction.

Indescribable happiness in a sea of sorrow.

But even as the worry for Sherlock ceased to plague his every moment, a more subtle slow burning worry had already begun to establish itself in his heart.

Sherlock grew better by the day. His little hand would close around his larger fingers when Mycroft sat by his bedside, his eyes fluttering beneath the lids as if deciding when the perfect moment to wake from beneath the drugs and fatigue would be.

Everything should have been perfect. A miracle.

But he had watched two boys fall.

He had watched the way John seemed to forget how to speak, as if the other boy had been his voice all along. He watched his once healthy appetite falter, eating only when prompted, not refusing food but apathetic towards it.

Mycroft noted every day which John woke without a smile on his face.

Mycroft had imagined that as Sherlock regained his strength that John would come back to himself. That recovery would be quantitative; each definite step in Sherlock's recovering marking one in John until they were the same boys who had accepted their place in the world with such unparalleled grace. He had imagined that the boy he had come to know was only beneath the surface of this new ennui.

But Sherlock was warm under his fingertips and John sat like a statue upon the edge of the bed, not as if he were unaffected but as if he could no longer see. As if his reality no longer meshed with that which the rest of the world perceived. As if he were too far gone to see that Sherlock was returning to him.

Mycroft wanted to call Harry, to have her brought to him and demand all of the information they both knew she had withheld in all of their meetings. The history so buried that not even he had been able to formulate more than a vague impression of truth and the million vivid possibilities that haunted him in the way their reality haunted john.

But it was impossible. A wishful fancy.

She had been informed in the most vague and meaningless way of the situation but Mycroft wondered if even those scraps of information had penetrated the saturated din of her mind.

Unconsciously he flipped to the reconnaissance data of her current life. The alcohol, the failed relationships, the inability to go through a single day without doing something to sabotage her own happiness. Mycroft flicked the phone off and set it heavily into his pocket, eyes unblinking as he repressed the urge to gather John to himself and hold him where the world could never touch him again.

Impossible that this child could have grown to share his sisters fate, that whatever life had given them so long ago he was able to become the man he had been, the man who had cared unconditionally for Sherlock, the man who had made Sherlock care, instead of becoming something so much…less.

But the melancholy was dragging his eyelids low, the tension of illness and worry drifting from him at long last leaving him deficit.

He could do nothing. Could not even reach out and pull his boys towards him, to hold them in his arms and whisper false platitudes in their ears as if they were all just people.

One lost in sickness and the other lost in himself.

Mycroft's hand curled around his phone unconsciously, waiting for it to buzz or chime, waiting to save the world with a few words, as if it might hold all of the answers, even to this, if only he knew how.

Nearly a day had passed since even the most cautious of the doctors had told him that Sherlock would survive this. He himself had watched the slow progression into recovery, the way the alarms connected to his little body rarely issued their shrill warning any longer, the way his breath came out not in a painful shallow rattling but in the soft warm way of children lost deep in sleep.

But the worry, however illogical, refused to abate completely. Like he was waiting for something he could not name, some final clue, before he could believe that this life had not been taken away from him.

The sleep he fell into was as uncomfortable as the plastic chair he rested upon, light and suffering, unwilling. As his eyes at last slipped closed he dreamt of John, reticent as a stone angel, keeping carful guard at the foot of Sherlock's bed. Perfect and untouchable.

Only a few hours could have passed by unmarked as he slept. The light from the window had changed; the sunlight coming through the window in milky streams, minutes still separated the morning light from touching the faces of his sleeping boys.

But in those few hours everything had changed.

With more surety than all of the words of the doctors.

With more heart than every reassuring nuance of beeping machinery clicking in time with a silently beating heart.

John, their tiny stone angel who had sat endlessly on the end of Sherlock's bed, too afraid to touch, afraid to leave, had found it in himself to move.

They were curled together beneath the curves of tubes and wires, child arms entangled hopelessly, faces so close that they shared a breath, two tiny hands measuring the rise and fall of each small chest.

They were going to be alright.

It happened silently, without fuss, so soft and simple that had Mycroft not been marking every breath, every heartbeat, he would have missed it. The moment Sherlocks eyes opened again for the first time.

Sherlock did not wake as he did as an adult, with sudden vicious awareness, not as he woke when nightmares plagued his sleep, blue eyes wide as terror slips through his mind, erasing all but a lingering taste of itself. It was a fluttering of black lashes against pale cheeks. It was sleepy blue eyes peering carefully into the world searching for a reason to hold on.

It was dry, chapped lips beneath an oxygen mask pulling up in a weak smile, just a hinting of life at the edge of his mouth.

It was finding John Watson laying by his side, brown eyes catching and holding him and pulling him back into the world.

Hands reaching out and brushing hair, a cheek.

It was John Watson smiling for the first time in so long that Mycroft had forgotten the way his heart would thump at the sight.

It was the silence of a kiss pressed to the plastic of a mask, of kisses pressed into wet eyelashes and hands that met and held and could not seem to let go.

In the end it was only two minutes of lucid wakefulness. Two minutes of tired blue eyes.

But it was enough.

Everyone knew it. It was written across anything and everything, like a prophesy of doom but not nearly so dramatic or escapable.

It was in the look Mrs. Hudson gave him as Sherlock acquiesced to being carried inside the house only because he was too lost in sleep to protest. It was in every word John refused to say, lingering in the silences that hung in the air with the echo of his lost voice.

It was written in the way John looked over Sherlock as if he were looking at his own soul, looking at him with eyes that were simultaneously those of a lost four year old boy and a grown man.

They were not, and never would be, like anyone else had ever been in the history of man kind.

There was no guide book, no comparisons to be drawn, no way to extract the old memories and make them real just as there was no way to destroy what lingered.

He could not pretend that he could raise these two boys and give them a good life, a life they deserved. He was like the child he could not remember being. Saving an injured animal and hiding it away out of love, making a bed out of scraps, a balled up shirt, a dish of water and a handful of grass and never figuring out what else it needs to survive.

But he was all they had.

Not a mother and never a father.

Barely a brother.

But it would have to be enough.


	20. Chapter 20

His thoughts were the first thing to come back. Before the fatigue that held him pinned to the bed gave the first hint that it would ever go away, even as the heat flashed over his body in waves and left him cold and shivering and empty in its wake. He could think before his voice was enough to mutter Johns name and have it be even close to recognizable in his own ears.

It burned.

To hear him and not be able to reach out, to lay in darkness and do nothing but wait for the bodies to come in, to mutter to him as if he might be asleep and put their hands on John so carelessly the way he could not do with all of his energy.

Like he was not going mad for want even when John lay next to him and held his hand.

It was not enough.

John was his and so close and he couldn't…

And then his body was coming back but it was not his, not like before. Each motion cost him hours of rest, hours of his mind wandering where he could not lead it, falling into dark evil places. To reach out and touch was almost more than he could do, but he tried anyway. Succeeded anyway. Most of the time.

To feel John under his hand, safe and warm and his, and when his hand fell short, when his effort was wasted and the back of his eyes stung and the sound died in his throat and it all burned like acid a hand would close over his and bring his palm flat over a cheek, over his heart, pressed against kisses he could not reach out for on his own. And then he would smile. In the darkness, like none of it mattered, like no one else mattered but them, just for him, he would smile in a way that almost felt like happiness.

John did not talk anymore.

Nana Hudson would sit with them and ask what story they wanted to read and he would wait for John to speak for them both and the silence would come heavier than before and they would all lie beneath it until she smiled like it hurt and picked a book and cuddled them to her as she read like they might break in her arms.

That would be okay. If John did not want to talk for them. If he wanted to save his voice just for them.

But John never even whimpered in his sleep now, he would not cry, if he fell he would not make a noise beyond an almost silent whoosh of breath before standing up with blank eyes. But worst of all, the whispered bubbling words that followed Sherlock into sleep when the darkness pressed in and threatened to drown him, the words that came when they were wrapped tight against each other so that nothing could get them, had died too.

But if he did not want to speak Sherlock would not make him. And if the others tried to make him he would stop them.

It was alright even if it was not. Because John was warm and close and when he looked into his eyes it was all there like the words were still in his head without John saying a thing. The pain and hurt and despair and worry and the yes and yours and it's okay now.

He would be John's voice.

* * *

Everyone thinks he is sleeping but he is not. He does not want to sleep, he slept too long already. What if John needs him and he misses it because he is weak and sleeping? What if next time he wakes up and John loses more than just his voice?

But he is too tired to move.

So he lies there.

Wishing to move.

Thinking of ways to make John better again.

But maybe he does not need one to fix the other.

John does not tell him, cannot tell him in more than looks and the press of his body but Sherlock knows what has stolen his voice, what has taken this comfort away from him.

The dreams that come in the day.

He does not know if everyone has them, if Nana and Mycroft and the whole world have them and no one ever talks about them because they hurt or they go away if you pretend they do not exist. He does not want to ask.

He does not want to explain.

To admit he has them if no one else does. He does not want them to know, even if they already do.

They would ask and they would not understand. Maybe they forgot what it was like, maybe they have spent so long pretending that they went away by themselves and if he mentioned it they would come back in a flood and hurt them.

He does not want to hurt them.

Maybe no one else has dreams like that, so real that they stop and you still can't breathe and you can feel the water in your mouth and you are drowning even when you are not.

But John does.

And he needs to protect John.

They make the dreams go away, they always have. They keep each other from falling too far. Whispers and hands and arms that make the thoughts stop and they never drown, they never get crushed.

But John did. All by himself he could not make them stop.

And maybe if he makes the dreams come, if he searches them out and lets them happen and the darkness swallows him and he finally falls, drowns, starves, freezes, suffocates, dies then he can help.

He can make John okay again, he can teach him how to be okay and never leave him again.

They all think he is sleeping, but he is not.

* * *

It is like living in two worlds at once, worlds that have nothing to do with one another and neither knows the other exists.

Like being two people at once and neither at the same time.

If he died in one would he slip effortlessly into the other, no longer sure which is the dream and if either are real?

Mycroft is picking him up and holding him in his arms and he is alone in the dark and it is impossibly cold like he will never be warm again and his wrists burn where they touch metal.

Mycroft is speaking but the words wash over him because he is cold, too cold to think, frozen, and words like 'food' and 'eat' and a desperate, impossible whispered 'please' do not make sense and he thinks 'brother' and that does not make sense either. How can food matter when you can no longer feel your fingers move?

And he thinks 'John' and he is ready to die. To freeze. But he doesn't.

He stopped shaking; it stopped being cold at all. How could he have ever thought this was cold? But he can still see his breath in the air and that is wrong. And it is all darkness, blues and blacks and he cannot move but there is another body. Not Mycroft. Even though Mycroft is still there, still begging him to eat without begging at all.

He needs to die! To freeze! For John. But there is a voice, heavy and not cruel, but somehow that makes it worse. Apathetic.

'Remember this.' And he does. He will.

"Sherlock please." And this time it is begging. But he can't, not yet.

It is just fear. Just the twists of empty hallways. But it does not hurt to exist. Somewhere he is lying down with his eyes closed and John is warm, his hair is soft where it is tucked under his chin, his breath on his neck, somewhere else he wanders alone.

Nana is there. She is carrying him and John is reaching up to hold his hand but he is too far away so he smiles and John pretends to believe him. It is warm, hot, and his skin is already turning pink under the intense sunlight but the water is cool and welcoming, his head bobs above the water and there is no one else around. Just the sound of a car nearby stopping too quickly, the slamming of a car door.

Nana runs the tap on the tub and water and bubbles fill the bath, warm and welcoming, splashing, gushing.

Someone else near the water. Not mad, talking to him. He wants to swim away but he does not. They have swim trunks on and the water is so cool. The man laughs.

Nana moves to take off Johns shirt but he takes a step back, worry and fear not needing words. She murmurs soothingly but he takes Sherlock's hand in his and buried his face in his palm, eyes pressing into his hand. She ruffles his blond hair and Sherlock can feel the breath of relief against his skin. John looks carefully up as she walks out of the room.

The man is in the water, he is coming closer but he cannot see his face.

'Do the stroke I taught you.'

And he does. He moves his legs behind him and kicks perfectly, he slides forward in the water like a fish and he can see the way his bare arms look yellow under the surface of the water as they stretch out before him. Beneath him the bottom of the lake is lost in darkness and the water is colder when his feet kick just a little too low. He likes the top where the water is warmer.

He does not like the cold.

Mycroft is kneeling on the ground in front of them, carefully lowered to one knee and he looks pained. John is sitting on the ground behind him, his brown eyes watching them both and he is so tired and he wants to sit down too but he has to be strong. He hears his own voice without ever deciding to use it.

"I will take care of him."

And when Mycroft leaves the room and the pain has nothing to do with his knees it is John who helps him take off his clothing and helps him into the tub. It takes a moment too long but there is trust and gratitude in his face and John follows him in with one parting glance to his long sleeved shirt. John holds him up above the level of the water when the effort of sitting becomes too much.

The man is closer now and he is talking, saying something, his smile is huge, like he has a secret, and it is probably important but Sherlock cannot think. He knows that look.

The water is cooling but John is warm against his back and there are hands in his hair, maybe Mycroft will not be upset if they are both clean.

The water is cold. The water is dark and everything is sick yellow brown and when he kicks the silt kicks up until he cannot see anything at all even though his eyes are wide open. The silt swirls around him and when he screams the water in his mouth is cold.

He is panting and John is holding him tight and he can almost feel the words that are not coming, like Johns throat is his own, but a trickle of water passes his lips and he cannot breathe.

He screams again but this time it comes out silent. The sound nothing but a reverberation in the water, useless. He should not have done that.

His lungs burn and everything else is cold, the cold is seeping into him, infiltrating his bones, his organs. Silt and water in his mouth, in his eyes. A ring around his ankle of burning flesh, fingers trapping him, hot and hard and not letting go.

John is breathing deep and fast against him as if he could breathe for both of them. His body is light and useless and it is easy for John to turn him in his lap and hold his face with both hand so that their foreheads are touching and John is breathing against his mouth and brown eyes are pinning him in place, begging the way Mycroft begged.

He wants to scream again, wants to beg, he looks up and the sun is streaming down at him, almost visible through the water. The hand on his ankle is still there but there is slack, he kicks up and his hand breaches the surface. Hot, warm, air.

The slack runs out, fingers tighten around his ankle.

He sobs into the water.

A wet hiccupping breath and Sherlock realizes that the water in his mouth tastes wrong. Salty and warm. He is not crying, but John is.

Black, around the edges the world is going black and it burns and his lungs are screaming and he takes another mouthful of cold dirty water.

He cannot give up. He has to figure this out. For John. John hiccups through his tears. It is the first sound he has made.

He wants to give up. Has to give up. He cannot kick anymore. His arms will not move. The world is going black.

And the hand lets go and somehow he moves. He breaches the surface and for one horrible second there is air everywhere but he is so full of water he cannot breathe.

The hand has caught him again. He wants to cry out but he does not have the time. One quick breath.

He coughs, deep and raspy and wet and his breath is gone and he wants to cry.

He coughs, deep and raspy and wet and John is crying.

The water is cold and half in his mouth and he will not survive and everything is murky yellow brown and the sun is gone even when he looks up.

There is a yell, a curse, and the sound of a door being thrown open. Expensive shoes on wet tile and he is in the water and he is dying and he is in Mycroft's arms gasping and John is pulling at Mycroft's arm until he too is picked up and the three of them stay like that, holding on and wet, and breathing and crying.

He was so close.

Next time he will not fail John.


	21. Chapter 21

He wants to calm John, wants to tell him everything will be alright but he cannot come that far out of the darkness now, not if he tried. John will understand later, it will be worth all of this.

All he can manage to do is be quiet and breathe as Mycroft and John dry him off and dress him like he is still in the hospital and he cannot move.

He has not slept in days, not really, and the taste of his body eating itself is always in his mouth now, John winces when he smells it on his breath, Mycroft shuts his eyes and tries to wipe all the emotion off of his face as he carries him into the kitchen. He does not quite manage it.

He is tired and cold and he knows his body is shutting down and he is not sure where he learned that but he knows it is true. And he will eat.

Just as soon as he finds a way to help John find his voice again.

He wishes he had explained it before because they are all staring at him and they do not understand and he can no longer find the words himself because he is not there at all.

He remembers the mess he made. He remembers the way it felt between his fingers, the careless way he had wiped his face with the back of his hand.

He remembers that look. That half smile, crooked and thoughtful and wrong.

He remembers pain, and the smell of the food still stuck on his skin as he was pinned in place. Words in his ear that he does not try to remember.

He remembers the tests and never knowing what was a test and what was survival.

Being taught not to want even as his stomach ate itself, to sit and watch and not touch, to not reach out.

'Don't show your cards.'

'Don't show weakness.'

'Don't show how much you want it.'

He remembers failing. Reaching out, wanting, needing.

He remembers pain.

Nana Hudson is circling the kitchen too fast, her hands are everywhere like they have minds of their own, moving endlessly. She keeps her face turned towards the cabinet and she always takes a breath before she turns around and there is always a brittle smile on her lips that does not reach her eyes.

John has pushed their chairs together so that there is no space between them, heat and comfort running from his ankle up to his shoulder where their bodies are pressed together.

He knows hunger, the taste that rises in the back of your mouth and coats your teeth and makes you think of burning muscle. The way acid saliva fills your mouth and you swallow it down and it is sharp on your tongue and as soon as you swallow it fills your mouth again.

He can feel the cold that never leaves his limbs and the way it is just a little bit harder to move, like life takes just a little more effort.

But it does not hurt. Not the way reaching out and needing and wanting hurts.

So he finds somewhere alone and dark and when he lies down and can do nothing but think because everything takes so much more effort and thinking has always been easy, it is simple to learn not to feel. Easy to forget the pangs of starvation and fade into thought, like he was never really human at all.

Nana Hudson puts a plate in front of him, puts a plate in front of everyone, the four of them sitting around a single table. She is trying to temp him. There are bowls of food set out. Everything that had ever made him smile, everything he had ever snuck while they pretended not to look.

It was another test. Or not. The plate of food in front of him is hot and the smell hits his him like a punch to the gut and acid fills his mouth and he tries to forget he ever knew the taste of it. The smile on the man's face is expectant.

'Go on.' He says.

Mycroft fills his plate, fills Johns plate. No one reaches for their fork.

Nana Hudson looks close to tears and Sherlock wonders how long it has been since he has eaten and why everyone is looking at him like he is about to break.

He shakes his head, pushes the food away, careful not to touch anything but clean porcelain.

The man smiles again and Sherlock watches as he finishes everything on his plate.

Mycroft is swirling a fork through some potatoes but his eyes flit between Sherlock and the cell phone set on the table and he never lifts the fork to his mouth. When he says something about going back to the hospital Nana Hudson hides her mouth behind her napkin and refuses to look at him.

Sherlock is enjoying the warmth of John next to him, pressed hard against him, so when he sits up straighter, clambering to sit on his knees to reach the table better he has Sherlock's careful gaze on him.

Sherlock watches as John in a perfect sick imitation of the other world pushes the plate away from himself, brown eyes avoiding even looking at the food.

No.

No.

Sherlock scrambles to his knees and is pulling the plate back in front of John, carefully not flinching when his hand brushes against something not cold and hard.

He turns and finds that John is already looking at him, the same sad expression on his face that Mycroft and Nana were trying so hard to hide. John takes a deep breath and it fills his tiny figure, his chest rising and he shocks all of them when he does not give Sherlock a chance to speak.

"Not without you."

And he is cold and hungry and acid is filling his mouth and his body is eating itself and all of a sudden it does not hurt anymore.

He does not kiss John even though he wants to.

He looks down at his hand and sees the blob of mashed potatoes on it and he smiles, reaches onto Johns plate and takes the first thing his fingers touch without looking at what it might be and it is warm and squishy and finally his mouth doesn't taste like acid and hunger and starvation.

When Sherlock takes a carrot from his own plate and offers it to John the laughter he gets in return eases the ache in his heart.

The next hour is spent feeding each other and stealing off of each other's plates and laughing and Sherlock doing silly things just to get John to comment on them.

In another world Sherlock waits until the man is gone and the food is cold and minutes tick by like days before he feels safe enough to steal some of the food off of his own plate. Sherlock sees it in his mind but it is fading now. Dream and reality are separating and John is warm and pushing a bit of cookie into his mouth and even though he is full he lets him do it because he needs to see that smile.

Nana is laughing and talking with John. Their eyes have lit up like they have never been so very alive and Sherlock notices how different everyone looks through their smiles.

Just a little haggard.

Tired.

Drawn.

Mycroft is silent when Sherlock rounds the table slowly, too full to move quickly.

Sherlock has his hands tightly closed around something and Mycroft obediently holds out his own hands to receive his gift.

Sherlock offers a small thankful smile too emotionally complicated for a child and too revealing for an adult as he places the object in his brothers hand.

"For you." Sherlock nods at him once, almost awkwardly, in an echo of the man he once was and will never be and then he is gone, hand in Johns, the two of them whispering loud enough only for the adults to disconcert the undeniable sound of children in the room.

Mycroft is glad he is already sitting down when he opens his palm to and finds that a gently crumbling cookie had been placed in his hands.


	22. Chapter 22

Mycroft had begun wars with a word. He had taken lives, saved others and sacrificed still more. He had lived what would be, logistically, one of the most influential lives of the twenty-first century.

In the span of his life he had done more than the average Londoner can begin to conceive for a hundred such life times.

But this year, this one year, felt like a victory to have survived.

Wars raged and people starved and the world remained eternally teetering on the edge of chaos but they had survived.

They were alive and healthy and if he wanted to he could follow the sounds of laughter and scoop them up in his arms and not let go. He could hear John whisper softly in his ear as his little arms wrapped around his neck in a delayed embrace. He could hold Sherlock in his arms so close that he could feel the little chest rising against his own, hold him until black curls laid against his chest and he knew that his brother was listening to the beating of his heart.

This year was a victory for not losing all of the things he had never dreamed he could never live without.

Time in relation to small children is different than with adults, it is sharper, each day infused with more life.

The life of a fifty year old is no different than that of a fifty two year old. They have the same abilities, the same impediments.

Life flows or it halts but each activity can be repeated, age no longer affects life. Decades spent in stagnation.

But two years away from the three year old children who had fallen into his lap was like watching sand fall through an hourglass. The curved round sweetness of their bodies had melted away, fading into lengthening limbs. The boys, who had once fit so easily in his arms together as if they belonged nowhere more than there, were now a jumble of limbs and curls.

Secret languages and fragmented words grew into increasingly difficult sentences. Words were strung together so effortlessly it was as if they had always held such power, even if they chose more often than not to use a blinding smile or doleful eyes to gain favors instead of words.

These were transformations which would take years to complete and he wanted to be there for every second of it, to hold each moment in his hands even as it slipped away.

So with the taste of the hospital lingering on the back of their tongues, with silent nightmares lingering behind tired eyes and harsh reminders peppering their lives behind firmly shut bathroom doors and silent tense meals he could little be blamed for feeling like this year was a victory to be savored.

A victory to prove that they could do more than survive- they could thrive.

They could make memories that he could be proud of.

Imagine Sherlock's face as he knew it would form in twenty years and seeing the echo of this day in his expression, an echo of laughter replacing haunted eyes.

At least this is what Mycroft told himself as the inevitable complications of his horrible idea began to formulate.

Mummy had taken less persuading than would have been expected, but no less than Mycroft had anticipated. In the months following Sherlock's illness, in the slow days of recovery, it was easy to lay the proper groundwork for a future they could all hope to share. Tactical planning 101, never waste an opportunity.

If Sherlock had not necessarily woken from a particularly violent nightmare as Mycroft may have implied and Mummy had not called specifically to talk to him neither of them would ever have to be the wiser. All Sherlock had to know was that the woman on the other end of the phone was somewhere very far away and sounded very sweet and made John laugh as they pressed the earpiece between them. All Mummy had to know was that Sherlock could lie there and listen to her speak and be glad for it.

Calls went from an anomaly to an expected occurrence. It was not uncommon to see the two boys laying together with the phone between them, the cord twisted around their limbs like an ineffective straight jacket, or to see one or the other marching around the flat with the portable stuck between their shoulder and cheek leaving their hands to whatever misdeed had caught their attention.

Mycroft was not below reminding Mummy of the instance on which she had texted him while still on the line with Sherlock.

'S is asking about duration of flammability of couch. Check living room ASAP. 3 '

'Also blue desk lamp. 3'

He had managed to secure the improvised electrical starter with only the smell of singed velvet in the air as a reminder when he caught the flash of a small, disconcerting smile on Sherlock's face and his phone vibrated once more in his pocket.

'J's front overall pocket. 3'

With the increased span of time which the two had been exposed to each other and the insistent promise that it was having no detrimental effect on Sherlock's well being Mummy agreed, after hours of analytical breakdowns of all possible factors, to see the boys face to face once more on a trial basis.

Which was of course how Mycroft got himself here, with two newly minted five year old waiting for their big surprise and Mummy waiting in the unused guest lounge, presumably going over a lab work up but in actuality, researching the psychology of amnesia patients.

Which would be bearable, if strange, if one Harry Watson was not late and waiting at the front door to be let in by a fretting Mrs. Hudson who refused to let the temporary house staff/trained body guards do any of their assigned jobs.

Harry Watson had been a decidedly more risky decision. She had no security clearances, a clean if somewhat dingy past, and absolutely no training in any field relevant to their continued existence. If everyone who knew about their boys was taken simultaneously into captivity and tortured she would be the first to fail. It was not a reflection of her character in any way, it was simply fact.

But she had something with John that no matter what he could never have. Even if John was his, even if John loved him and it was to him that he would run to when an adult, when a parent, was necessary, he would never hold the past John had forgotten. Even if he accumulated and selfishly stored away every story of his first existence it would never belong to him the way the shadow of Sherlock existed in him.

He did not want Harry to be John's family. She had been given her chance and she had failed.

She had failed John the way he had failed Sherlock.

But this time, this time she had not demanded to be in his life. She had not been there when he cried, she had not spent long days watching him fade.

John was his now and he did not want to share. But that would not stop him from doing what was right for John. His past held in the mind of a woman with no more control over her life than any of the millions of people existing just outside of their door.

Worth the effort, the hazard, if it won him that instant, blinding, smile.

But Mycroft was not the only one with reservations. Mycroft had begrudgingly had to readjust his opinion of the woman when she blatantly refused the invitation to their birthday without explanation.

It had taken a week, three phone calls, and exactly two and three quarters bottles of wine before her resolve had broken and had given him, in a rush of thick tumbling words, the data he required.

She would take them on camping trips, she would watch three hour recitals just to get a glimpse of him for three minutes and sit through monotonous teachers meetings. She would do everything that had never been done for him in the past but she would not ruin the first birthday that he had ever a chance to be happy.

Mycroft switched off his not-quite-secure-enough phone, made sure the boys were still asleep in their bed, tucked into each other and oblivious to the world, and woke up Mrs. Hudson. Their self appointed Nana had fallen asleep in the large armchair by their bed, the one from which she had kept a vigil even after the days Sherlock had regained enough weight to put him out of danger and with a quiet apology and obligatory muttering from her, he was gone.

It was three and one fourth's bottles of wine by the time a blinking Harry buzzed him into her empty flat.

Mycroft tried to explain John's triggers, the things that made him go silent and the things that made him scream.

He was slightly cruel, cold in a way he had not been since he had learned that two boys were watching his every move. He watched her face as things that had been harsh surprises for him registered in memories written across her expression. Her past in his present.

The way she tugged at her shirt sleeves when he spoke of how John hid himself, the way her fingers danced unconsciously at her throat when he recounted in short painful words what it was like when John would not talk. The way she took another deep pull of wine, the smell of it thick in the air even as the empty bottles were placed behind the counter as if their empty presence was one of shame that could not be adequately hidden.

It was nothing he had not imagined but it was less than he had hoped for.

She had gotten off easy. The oldest of two siblings.

Like him.

Maybe it was that the youngest was the easiest target. Maybe it was a trick of happenstance and time, of a dozen factors contributing to which child would fall and which would be left hatefully untouched.

She offered him a glass of wine as she poured herself another. Three and one half. He declined.

But only just.

He watched her physical reactions, her tells, as he told his piece and wondered if she understood what he could read in her gestures, if she was willing giving away the information she could not tolerate to verbalize.

Someone was a drinker. Someone close to them, someone they were dependent on.

Father.

He had been unrepentant about his drinking, unlike Harry who only pretended to be so. Shame to be like him, not just in drinking but to share any traits, a desire to downplay the genetic connection.

This was not the first time John had stopped talking. There had been no surprise, but a flinch of recollection. Not medical, that would not have merited such a reaction. Environmental then. Situational imperative.

She had never suffered such an affliction. That flinch was all for John.

The flinch of the witness, of unspoken guilt, merited or otherwise.

He waited for her to finish her thought, watched the emotion play out and tried to determine what it all meant for his John. But he was too close, to biased.

That had never happened before.

When she wordlessly handed him the glass of brandy he accepted, examining the golden liquid as it glinted in the cheap crystal glass.

He held the glass to his lips, let the liquid touch his lips, let the smell engulf that of wine and guilt.

He knew she was thinking of her brother, not the man that he had met in that empty car park with the tremor in his hand and the gunshot wound in his shoulder but the brother who looked like the John currently at home asleep in his bed.

He asked what birthdays had been like for them.

Harry smiled and then laughed in a way that held no humor, the kind of laugh that one finds at funeral homes made by those who never learned how to cry.

When she sat back in her chair and the laughter had died on her lips, appearing far too lucid for someone with such a blood alcohol level, her eyes were unblinking and serious and beyond tears and ill humor. She took a deep breath as if steeling herself and then at the last moment words failed her and with a self pitying smile looked at Mycroft apologetically.

'I just can't'

Why not her? Why not him?

Because they were older? Because they were less beautiful? Because of some trick of fate?

Why had they escaped, even if they had not?

He set the glass down with an thump; it burned his dry lips, stung as he changed his posture, less deliberately friendly, more the heartless misanthropic genius he had always been until two years before.

'Make no mistake Ms. Watson, I am not asking for propriety's sake.' Her eyes widened almost comically, the alcohol in her mind taking a back seat to the new threat before her. Something cold and hard rose in Mycrofts chest, an anger that in the past would have been feigned, his hand curled around the top of his umbrella forcefully as if in an effort of restraint.

What right did they have to be weak?

'John is mine. Do not harbor any illusion that you could bring harm if you dedicated your life to the effort.'

The doorknob was cold and hard under his burning hand. He saw Sherlock's cold blue eyes in his mind, before John, before John Watson showed him what it meant to be human.

'I will see you then.'

"My-cough" A little hand pulled at his sleeve.

All thoughts of the two women who were complicating his life disappeared under the force of the five year olds fierce pout and drawn black eyebrows which would have him believe his little heart was being systematically crushed by every moment Mycroft was not paying attention to him.

"Regressing Sherlock? You know very well how to say my name." The pout grew more intense but it was betrayed by the spark of laughter he let out as Mycroft swept him up in his arms.

"Down!" He yelled through the fit of giggles fueled by the excitement of anticipation and the sugar of the 'secret' cookies as much as by the way Mycroft swung him through the air.

"Down? Are you sure?" Mycroft snuck a look at gleaming blue eyes and the broad grin just at the edge of his peripheral vision. "If you insist." He answered with an affected board shrug.

Sherlock's laugh began before Mycroft ever let his top arm drop, letting the little boy hang upside down in his arms, his legs wrapped tight around him, one arm still holding him in place.

Mycroft pulled Sherlock back to him, his smile unstoppable under the force of Sherlock who was now testing Mycroft's hold on him, letting his body dangle trustingly in Mycroft's arms, trying to go back to being upside down.

Today they were having a good day.

"Where is John?"

Sherlock stopped trying to push himself backwards.

"Changing. Nana said we have to look nice." He scrunched his face, his nose crinkling in distaste in explanation of what he thought about the matter.

Mycroft looked at Sherlock's clothes, garishly bright orange pants which must have been a gift from someone who suffered from partial blindness or hated them very much topped off with a faded blue button down which complimented his eyes but surrounded his little body like a dress. The buttons were all skewed purposefully by one so that the edge hung down on one side too low and exposed even more of his pale shoulder and collar bone. A keepsake from his old life that the boys seemed inordinately attached to.

"And she approved of your ensemble?"

The scrunched face melted into a toothy smile and wide innocent eyes.

"I hid it." He answered cheekily with not a little bit of pride.

Mycroft felt the laughter bubble in his chest as he pictured Sherlock hiding terrible clothing around the flat rather than be subjected to normal attire.

"And where did you hide them?"

The look Sherlock graced him with clearly questioned his intelligence. Some things, it seemed, would never change.

It was a good day and Sherlock was happy and they had survived another year so Mycroft pressed a kiss to his brother's forehead, the feeling of warm skin and soft curls under his lips.

"Alright, keep your secrets."

The sound of small feet running preluded Johns entrance to the room, little hands pulling only once at the fit collared shirt he had been forced into.

Sherlock was instantly wriggling in desire to be put down and Mycroft watched the two boys collide, not upset at their short separation but grateful to be back in one another's arms. The room filled with indecipherable words, not muttered, but crisp and perfected and utterly alien.


	23. Chapter 23

When Mummy was finally permitted to enter the room, her with her careful cheer and Mycroft with his breath frozen in his chest the way it tended to do when he was forced to leave any infinitesimally small detail left to chance instead of pure science, all of the terrible possibilities failed to come to pass.

It was John who saw her first. There was a moment of thought, of slow recognition which caught Sherlock's attention, and then they were both smiling.

It was tentative. The last time they had seen her had been, at best, rough, and at worst, traumatizing. But she was the voice on the phone which called and listened to all of their stories without a word of reprimand. She was the doting grandmother who sent them beautiful packages from faraway places and never had to tell them to brush their teeth or to stay away from swords.

When she knelt in the doorway waiting to let them choose to come to her or not, her arms open and palms up in a vulnerable posture of peace, the boys looked to him.

It was sobering and uplifting all at once. A life of contradictions.

Where a minute before two children had been laughing John was now edging in front of Sherlock, bodily protecting him, smile fixed firmly on his face but his eyes wary and protective. Hands searched and grasped silently, knuckles turning white. Sherlock was watching her, reading her, analyzing every piece of her and applying it to how it would relate to them. He made no move to stop John, as if he did not notice his own body and did not yet perceive a threat to John.

Sherlock blinked as he finished his mental vivisection. He looked down and found his hand in Johns as if he had not noticed before, slight surprise betraying his deadpan expression and pulled their clasped hands to his chest in an almost unconscious motion.

He turned towards John, noting his tense body and then turned to Mycroft and very suddenly Mycroft felt very much a part of his world.

'Okay?'

Mycroft nodded to the silent question in fathomless blue eyes and then impossibly, as if they shared a mind, John turned to him. He was his little boy, innocent and young and looking for reassurance but in his eyes, somewhere so deep he himself probably had not the slightest inkling of its existence was the man who would have willing given his life for Sherlock's.

Mycroft smiled. In gratitude that rushed through his body like a living heat, in reassurance, in terror that he was the last line of defense between these brilliant creatures and the world.

But no one was crying or frozen or lost. Today was a good day.

Sherlock and John did not hesitate further. They were in Mummy's arms, a continuous litany from John about what they had done that day burbling between the three of them, Sherlock silent but at ease, one arm around his mother, the other still holding part of John against his heart.

Mycroft waited for the three to acclimate themselves to one another.

Strange. To see Mummy together with Sherlock. Things may have proved to be tense and awkward between them now that they were physically in one another's presence, all of the emotion that had been unable to fully articulate itself in the absence of the other erupting in an explosion of half buried thoughts.

Her memories and his nightmares.

But John had integrated himself perfectly, big brown eyes blinking innocently as if he had no idea the calming effect he was having but always speaking at the right moment, always staying in the perfect place so that there was only laughter, only joy even when darkness lingered under the tenuous and imperfect surface.

Even Mrs. Hudson, who had slipped their orange blanket in her absurdly large purse and carried it around like the holy grail, had found it in herself to breath and clutch the floral disaster as if she were not about to mount a rescue mission to the ends of the Earth.

He had expected for them to be, in a way, the way they were before.

Mycroft and Sherlock had always been separated by years, even before all of this.

When Sherlock was making his first embarrassing deductions about house staff dalliances and just beginning to venture off on his own to find the hiding places and brilliant worlds of the young, Mycroft was firmly entrenched in his studies in boarding schools tailored to the very brilliant and the very rich.

Mycroft saw his brother in the week spans of holidays, seeing him grown like a chart from a book, one stage then the next without transition.

Mycroft knew that when he had been young it had been different.

Mummy had sat with him with milky cups of tea and in a soft voice that made him want to crawl into her lap and taught him the words for the world around them in French and Latin. She had taught him about her work which was at that point just beginning to shape into what would be the brilliant work of the next twenty years. She never held back, always making sure he understood, and when it was hard and he grew frustrated she would smile and kiss his nose and make it alright.

Sherlock was one year old when everything changed. It was not that they had grown less important but that her work was at a stage where it could not be stopped. It demanded long hours and a brilliant mind and even though Mycroft had not known the specifics of the work at the time he knew that more people than just him were depending on his Mummy for their lives.

So when his tutors implored Mummy to send him away, send him somewhere where they could keep up with him and provide a challenge for him, he told her it was alright, he told her he wanted to go.

He had had his time with Mummy and now the world needed her. He would go away and study and be brilliant and then one day he could come back and help her.

Sherlock never had that.

Mycroft knew that Father was around more after Mummys work took her away but he was lost in study and to him Father was a figurehead. He was like a Monet hanging on the wall, if you were in the same room you stopped and made all the proper gestures and carried on with your life.

Mycroft almost never saw Sherlock and Mummy together, but when they were Sherlock looked at her as though she were an angel.

Mycroft never saw Sherlock with Father.

But those days were gone. That Sherlock no longer existed.

This was not Mummy's lost five year old boy looking at her like she could be his savior if only she knew he needed her to be.

This Sherlock belonged to Mycroft and to John.

This Sherlock did not need to be saved.

The three of them had fallen into easy conversation, an update of a story they had obviously begun to tell her on the phone. Mycroft tried to ignore the way she nodded without surprise at their 'experiments' which had ended rather disastrously in the kitchen the day before and made a mental note to accidentally send her next shipment of requisition forms in Swahili.

Mycroft tapped his phone, looking at the live image of a very annoyed Harry Watson standing at his front door. He put the phone in his pocket and nodded to Mrs. Hudson who, finally given something to do, disappeared down the hall.

He was not worried that she would make a scene around the boys for being made to wait just as he had not been worried that she would show up. They had both known precisely how late she would arrive.

He had after all given her the excuse she needed to allow herself back in John's life.

Sherlock and John had seen Harry more than once over the past year, short meetings spent in the park or over chocolate milks and mild conversation. They had all carefully shied away from anything that might hold the slightest weight, topical conversations about rain and mud puddles turning into short stories from the boys about random escapades and ruined outfits. So when Harry walked in the door with a frown that dissipated with startling natural ability under the double gaze of the boys it was typical for the shouted hellos and waves and eye rolls to take place.

Mycroft made quick introductions between Harry and Mummy as Sherlock and John stood off to the side watching. They had never seen all of these people together, all these adults who meant something to them gathered in a single room.

Mummy gave no hint that she knew everything there was to know about one Harriet Watson and Harry, who had gone as far as to Google Mycroft, smiled politely as she pretended she was not trying to figure out who exactly her brother had gotten mixed up with in the last moments of his former life.

Mentally Mycroft conceded that this might have been a terrible idea.

Mycroft was trying to find the proper way to get this event begun so it could come to a conclusion when Mrs. Hudson smiled at them all.

Mrs. Hudson has a way making you feel like all of your problems, all of the emotional turmoil raging in you, was suddenly, inexplicably, quite small. As if she were not looking a group of adults with the most complicated interpersonal relationships in the world but as if they were all her grandchildren fussing over a skinned knee or a shared toy and that everything would be okay if they would just sit down and have a nice cup of tea.

Mycroft could almost believe he had lost the capacity to be amazed by people, as happens when you spend your life predicting, knowing what others would likely do. But then he woke up every day and realized that this was in fact, his reality.

Mrs. Hudson clapped her hands together as if to emphasize her decision, her eyes sliding easy across them all without her fondness fading in the least over any individual but brightening noticeably as they settled over the two children. "Lets get these birthday boys some cake shall we?"

Birthdays are strange.

Mycroft said it was to celebrate that they were a year older and then asked if they understood what a birthday was. Of course they did, he had just explained it. They just said yes though.

Sherlock says that it is silly to have any one particular day to celebrate because they were only a day older than the day before.

John secretly agreed with Sherlock but Mycroft had looked so excited in his own subdued way that meant he was trying to hide what he felt from them that he decided not to say anything. Besides, Mycroft had said there would be a party.

John had never been to a party, but he had read about them in books.

Nana was excited; she was running around like she had a few too many cups of tea, clutching a giant floral bag to her side. Sherlock saw the bag and his face grew hard but when John asked he just shook his head and seemed to dismiss the thought.

John did not like it when Sherlock kept things from him, but he would tell him if it was important, and if it wasn't he would probably tell him anyway, when he felt like it.

That morning Nana and Mycroft had been busy with the party so they had chosen their outfits themselves. Nana had laid out clothes for them but she had never had to wear their green collared shirts with the buttons that never actually went through the holes. She obviously did not know how much they itched. John was just being helpful when he pulled out two matching pairs of yellow trousers and Sherlock pulled out the entire contents of a drawer to find the one black shirt they had thrown into the carriage when no one was looking and a soft blue one he knew John favored.

John thought they looked quite pretty.

There was really no call for Nana to flap her arms around like that and talk so fast that it made his head spin until as she led them back to their room.

Sherlock went first, letting the shirt be pulled over his head without a fuss, only squishing his face a little when Nana licked her thumb and cleaned an invisible spot of his cheek. When he was done he was scowling slightly.

John wanted to tell him he still looked quite pretty but figured that it was probably wiser not to say anything.

Blue eyes met his across the room and, of course, Sherlock was not actually going to wear his button down at all. All he needed was a distraction.

John smothered the giggle that the look of mischief on Sherlock's face always brought out in him. He nodded once when Nana was putting their rumpled clothes back in the drawer, and Sherlock was gone.

John waited while Nana put the clothes away and re-laid the clothes he was supposed to wear out on the bed.

'Need a hand?' She asked in the way she always did, without pushing him. John shook his head. 'I will be right outside if you need me then dearie.'

John quickly and efficiently stripped out of his preferred outfit and into the uncomfortable, stuffy clothes that made him feel like he would immediately accidentally spill something on them.

And he waited.

And waited.

By now Sherlock had probably found whatever he had stashed away.

John let his foot fall heavy onto the floor, let out a small, surprised breath.

'You alright?' Came the voice through the door. John waited half a beat.

'Uh-hu!'

As long as he made a noise every so often Nana would stay just in front of the door, too much quiet and she would find something to do, something possibly closer to Sherlock.

John balled up his other clothes and threw them into the drawer with a satisfyingly loud 'Thwap!'

'Almost done dearie?'

Sherlock was probably done by now and he could walk out and Nana could go ahead with her planning and he could go make sure that Sherlock was not scowling anymore…but Mycroft had said it was his birthday.

On your birthday, Mycroft said, calories do not count.

John did not know what calories were but he figured maybe other things did not count either.

So, maybe, just this once, he could be just a little bad.

John pulled his arms through the sleeves of his shirt and rotated it until it was backwards, the ugly buttons running down his back, thick collar almost in his mouth and yelled to Nana.

'All done!'

John lasted exactly nine seconds before he burst into laughter and tumbled to the floor as she tried to fix his clothing.

Nana knew the second he started laughing what he had done but she did not say anything about it. She fixed his shirt, kissed his hair and smiled before she went off with a backwards call of 'Just this once!'

Birthdays, John decided, were not that bad.

It was easy to find Sherlock, his laughter made John run faster. Sherlock did not laugh enough and he did not want to miss it.

Sherlock beamed at him when he walked into the room, his mission had been successful. His orange trousers where much better than Johns stiff brown ones.

John did not need a thank you and he was not jealous. He was happy that Sherlock was happy, that warm fuzziness in his chest that meant that everything was ok filling him.

But when Sherlock ran into his arms and placed a slightly squashed cookie into his hands that John had thought had all been eaten the night before, with his blue eyes saying more than his mouth knew how to, John blushed.

Some things, like Sherlock, are better than 'Thank you's'. Sometimes all the words go away, and it is okay.


	24. Chapter 24

John held Sherlock's hand tighter under the table. When the grownups started acting really weird, distracting themselves with cameras and singing John pushed himself closer to Sherlock, close enough that he could feel the heat of his body, the soft press of his arm against his.

That was better.

Closer was better.

This was not bad. Birthdays were not bad. He liked everyone, he really did. He missed them sometimes when they were not with him. But this…this was strange.

Phone-gran was here and she was safe and warm and her voice was sweet the way it was on the phone but she was different. He had forgotten, or maybe he had never noticed.

She was beautiful.

She had Sherlock's eyes, blue-blue. But she was like Mycroft too. She tried not to let it show, she was smiling and John could tell that she meant it, but her eyes, Sherlock's eyes, were sad even when she smiled.

John wanted to make the look go away. He did not want their gran-mere to hurt and maybe…maybe he did not want to see eyes that looked too much like Sherlock so very very sad.

John had thought that maybe all she needed was a cuddle. Maybe she did not have a Sherlock at home to go to when things got too dark and scary. But when they went to her and they held her and John willed all the sadness to go out of her eyes with his hug, holding tight enough that if she were Sherlock she would understand he was trying to give her the world, it only seemed to grow deeper. She smiled of course, and held them, but he could still read it in her eyes. Pain.

She kissed them both and held them tight as they held her, their sweet phone gran-mere.

Maybe one hug just was not enough.

He was lucky to have Sherlock. He pressed just a little closer, until Sherlock had to push back into him or tilt to the side. Blue eyes flashed across his face, reading him, silent, and their interlocking hands fell apart and Sherlock's warm arm wrapped around his middle, pressing them close. Warm and soft and close and so much better.

Maybe he could find the right words to tell her that if she needed it, she could come over and he would give her a hug, whenever she wanted.

He would even share his Sherlock.

Harry was here too. Her and Nana had been playing with their cameras all day. Saying 'CHEESE!' which made no sense, but Sherlock and he chose not to say anything. Sometimes it was better to let the adults play. John would teach them better games later.

Sherlock said it would be impossible to make adults play anything that made any sense and then proceeded to not, not roll his eyes.

Harry was acting a little strange today but that might just be because birthdays are strange. She was tense and edgy, her smile, which normally started brittle and false and ended warm and like she had forgotten that she was supposed to be miserable, remained tight.

When she caught John in her arms and lightly rubbed her knuckles into his hair he thought he might have seen her really smile, but the moment was gone too quickly. Ending in her surprised laugh when Sherlock pulled him out of her grasp and wrapped his arms possessively around John, his glare not quite serious but perhaps a little too honest.

John wrapped his arm around Sherlock, so close now that he could feel the sharp edges of bones beneath his skin, could feel every breath in the chest beneath his open palm and curling fingers. Harry took another photo.

They were still singing and that had a lot to do with how unnerved John was. Mycroft was singing as if he could speak to a certain rhythm and it would be adequate, Harry was a little too loud and very very off key, phone gran was soft and still just a little sad and very beautiful, and Nana had been singing from the other room, her song punctuated by exclamations about candles and walking too fast.

Then Nana walked in with a cake, a cake on fire.

John did not look at Sherlock.

He could not look.

But he could feel him.

Feel the laughter building, feel it shaking him, still silent

John looked at Sherlock just as his friends head turned towards him. Their noses were touching but that did not matter, they could look into each other's eyes and that was enough, it was too much.

They burst into laughter.

Birthdays are beyond strange.

Nana put the flaming desert in front of them and they finally stopped singing and everyone was staring at them.

John could feel Sherlock thinking. Could he take one of the candles? Would someone stop him? What on Earth were they supposed to do?

John wished he had read a book about birthday parties in particular.

The flames danced in front of them, melting the little wax candles and dripping onto the cake, blobs of pink and blue on white frosting.

It was Nana who came behind them, her voice excited, like something wonderful was about to happen, like this was the moment she had worked for all day. The reason for all the fuss about birthdays. "Make a wish and blow out the candles."

John eyed the candles dubiously.

A wish?

He wanted to question her.

Could he wish for anything? If he wished for something easy would it come true? Or should he ask for something he desperately wanted even if it seemed almost impossible?

A wish. A birthday wish.

Sherlock held him tighter and John could feel him, more than just his arm or his body, but him.

Sherlock was not wishing for something easy. Sherlock was wishing for the impossible. For something he wanted so much maybe he did not have the words to tell John what it was.

An impossible birthday wish.

John closed his eyes and wished as hard as he could and together the candles fell before them, flickering out one by one in a gust of breath.

The presents were something that should have been given a long time before but Mycroft had not thought that the boys were ready for it…that he was ready for it.

The others went first in a blaze of torn wrapping paper and delighted croons from the women at the table.

The first gifts had met with apprehension. The boys looking at the bright paper the way they had the cake, as if they were wondering if everyone in the room had lost their minds and not bothered to inform them. But the paper flew after explanations and coaxing and two small cameras were revealed, bright and childproof but certainly not Sherlock proof.

Sherlock looked at his bright green camera clinically for a moment, wondering perhaps what the insides of it would look like spread across his floor when he looked up at John who had placed himself in Mummys lap, holding out the camera sweetly for an explanation. The look of scientific discovery faded from Sherlock's face and slowly, as if the actual use of the object had not occurred to him, he brought the camera to his face and meticulously framed John with bright yellow buttons and clicked with a flash, capturing the image for eternity.

As John slipped off Mummy's lap and with a smile so blinding even Sherlock was powerless to resist, and pulled them together to take a self-portrait, arm outstretched to its fingertips and capturing off center pictures, Harry placed a cheap plastic photo album in his hands.

"I went looking. I do not think there was a single picture of John when he was five." Her voice was muttered as if she were in a museum and did not want to disturb the people she imagined actually belonged. "But that is okay, I think. These…these will be happy memories."

Eventually Mummy offered to take a picture and John, after trying valiantly to manage a single decent shot on his own, relented. When she handed the camera back and the image of two little boys wrapped in each other's arms looked back at them Sherlock's smile was small and private and pleased as he carefully took Johns hand back into his own.

The boys smiled when they unwrapped their handmade sweaters, warm wool things which displayed the creators overwhelming love far more than it did any sort of innate ability. Sherlock was still not one to save someone's feelings and John always hesitated just slightly when he lied about something inconsequential but their smiles were real and they laughed as they pulled the baggy, slightly misshapen sweaters over their heads.

Mrs. Hudson crooned and John thanked her sweetly with a kiss before requesting another photo, this time with Sherlock and he pressed together in the comfortable loop of her arms, all three smiling but none looking as if they were posing for a picture, all three looking as if they truly had no better place to be than trapped in that moment.

Mycroft wondered if he should tell her later or if, in the unnerving way she had of understanding what she should not, she already knew. Long weeks had passed since he had been allowed to 'accidentally overhear' Sherlock and John speaking about new calluses on familiar hands and the fact that they were maybe, just a little bit, worried.

It had only taken them two days to break him which was, admittedly, unnerving, and had him testing his ability to withstand interrogation later that night when the boys were, hopefully, asleep.

It was with jealous but careful hands that Sherlock had pulled out the hidden knitting and examined the stitches, pointing out the places there were mistakes and places she had re-done entire rows just to fix a single mistake.

Mycroft felt only mildly better when Sherlock demanded that Mycroft steal his Nanas phone and he was able to say and maintain an adamant 'No'.

This lack of pride in being able to withstand the double effort of Johns heartfelt eyes and Sherlock's expertly quivering lips may have been because every night after they should have been asleep he would let them come and count the rows she had stitched, let them dissect the effort and love she was pouring into this cloth when she could just go buy something so much more practical.

Mycroft watched the pride with which his boys tugged at the soft material, the way they gazed at the material covering their arms as if it were proof that she loved them, that each stitch and mistake was the physical embodiment of that love and that and even if she said it every day this was proof, this was fact.

No, Mycroft would not need to tell her. Mrs. Hudson had known what they needed before Mycroft had even known there was a need.

Of course they knew they were loved, his two boys who would hopefully never remember a time when they were alone in the world, but how could anyone believe that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson of all the people in the world would not occasionally need proof of fact.

Mummy, of course, had bought them an embarrassingly large child oriented lab set complete with chemicals deemed safe for Sherlockian usage and several instruments which would have made lab techs at Saint Barts envious. Mycroft remembered what Sherlock had managed with his very first child safe lab set and made a mental note to secure at least six new fire extinguishers, possibly seven if he were to air of the side of caution.

They would not notice, or rather, they would not mind if Mycroft did not give them anything. He could hold back his gifts and no one would say a word. He could wait until they were older, wait until not only they were ready but he was ready. But they already were older. Two little humans who could walk and talk and deduce and do so much more if only he would let them.

He had to choose for them.

So he lay the simply wrapped box in front of Sherlock with his heart hammering in his chest.

Sherlock had torn into the other presents as if the paper were nothing but an obstacle to be overcome but now he stared at it as if waiting for it to speak to him. Of course.

Mycroft would have smiled if every nerve in his body was not at a fever pitch of apprehension.

Sherlock had known the contents of every single gift the moment it had been set down in front of him.

The paper came off slowly, as if giving the object one last chance to real itself mentally to him. His blue eyes darted up when the paper box fell away and a case lay beneath. And of course he knew what it was from the shape of it, the lingering impression of memories putting the image into his mind, his small hands reaching out as if what inside was precious and rare and would explode the moment he opened it.

"It was mine when I was your age." Because he could not give Sherlock his, not as a present to a child, not when even this was too much and the memories could over flow him, not when just being in the same room with it made the loss of the brother he knew ache in his chest as if he had truly lost him.

The case snapped open with a click and it was done, it was over.

Sherlock reunited with his first true love.

He reached out and held the violin as if he had done it a thousand times and never noticed how beautiful it was until this very moment. He brought it to his lap and let his fingers glide over the strings soundlessly, not touching but memorizing, remembering. Holding it the way he would when he was in a mood but not in a mood to play, plucking the strings with his fingers as a case or problem whirled in his mind. Thought turned into sound.

For Sherlock the world ceased to exist as he tucked the violin in to place on his shoulder effortlessly, his blue eyes closed, black lashes fluttering shut as he rested his chin on it. And there was a moment, the span of a heartbeat, where the two Sherlock's existed simultaneously in one body.

Blue eyes and black curls and sharp cheeks.

The boy and the man too brilliant to keep himself from harm's way.

They could hear it, all of them, the strings of music from somewhere far off, echoes of memory bleeding into the present.

Their Sherlock.

Mummy could hear the sonatas he had played for her as a child. The ones he had learned alone, hiding in the darkness so complete the music was from rote, music played so softly that sometimes it was only in his mind because real music, real sound, could hurt when it was finished. She heard, as he silently held the violin as if it had been made for him, as if it were a part of him, the music he had learned just because he wanted to make something as beautiful as her.

Mycroft could hear the notes of an older Sherlock, no less broken but more…complete. Sherlock never let him hear him play as an adult. It was private and emotional, it was, in a way, everything they were not. And how could he have borne it? To hear his brother soul laid out, the hear all the things he refused to hear when it had meant so much more.

But that day was different. Mycroft had needed to check something, or rather, someone.

After a year of searching Sherlock had chosen a flat mate, in a day, in a minute, after rejecting everyone Mycroft sent or planted, rejecting everyone he met with a sneer and a sharp remark. And then he had chosen someone, as if it meant nothing, as if it meant everything.

Mycroft could hear the first resonance of music as he came up the stairs, the low sweet sound like painful thought. He waited at the door of the stairs even though Sherlock knew he was there. For some reason, today it did not matter. Today Sherlock did not care who heard him when over a decade before the sound had been lost to history and theory.

And the sweet low brooding sound was joined by another, something at first intangible, niggling at the edge of your consciousness, and then entwining, folding into the song and becoming real.

And it sounded almost, like hope.

Mycroft's phone vibrated silently and the images from earlier that day at Saint Bart's appeared once more on the screen.

The man's background check came back clean, common, pedestrian even, a war hero, but then so many are. He had sent similar to Sherlock and had them dismissed.

In the next room the music grew, it was brilliant and fast and bright in a way he had never hoped his brother could be. Almost…joyful. Like part of the darkness of the world had just begun to lift.

Mycroft climbed down the stairs without interrupting him, there was no need.

John Watson was going to be something special.

Mycroft could hear it now, the music Sherlock would never know he played.

Mycroft wondered for a moment what Sherlock heard, what songs played in his mind when he had never in this life heard a violin? What memories threatened him as he held the instrument carefully to himself and he teetered on the edge of reality? Could he hear the music at all or was it the panic he played away? The pain turned to sound that died in the air, the thoughts that would no longer have meaning for him turned into sound and whispering back at him through the years?

He wondered what John heard. John who was warned that Sherlock would play near him when the rest of the world had been denied that sound. John who had become a new thought, who had changed the music that came from deep within Sherlock's brilliant mind as if he were the most potent thing in all the universe?

What did he hear as he sat there, five years old, and watched his only friend remember the music of being utterly alone?

Sherlock, lost, adrift in memory and sensation and sound, reached out for the bow, nearly had it in his hand when he stopped, froze as if his heart had been crushed and Sherlock, the boy playing alone in the dark for Mummy, the detective finding his only companion, died again. And the child's mouth opened in time with his imploring blue eyes, asking Mycroft questions he would never verbalize.

He did not know how to play.

To him, he had never learned at all, never held a violin in his arms.

Mycroft swallowed past the thickness in his throat. He needed to act normal. As if he could not see his brother as he had been, as if he could not still hear him. He needed to make this okay.

To give his brother back his one constant source of something he could almost call happiness. "You will have a private tutor, both of you." Mycroft smiled at John who did not smile back, brown eyes fixed on Sherlock, unblinking, hands clenched in his little lap as he made the conscious effort not to reach out and touch Sherlock.

"Would you like that?"

Sherlock held the violin a moment longer, reluctant to let it go, as if it might disappear and turn into mist the moment his eyes fell away from it, but John lost his own private battle, his little hand just barely touching the edge of Sherlock's sleeve as if to see if he were real. Sherlock put the violin back in its case reverently, never taking his eyes off it, and snapped it shut with a deafening click that made all of the music stop, the last strains of music dying in his mind, fading as if it had never been there at all.

And of course, it had not been.

Sherlock shook his hand out of his sleeve, soft material, proof of love, so that his fingers could grasp Johns unhindered, hands twining together. John held him tight and Mycroft wondered if for John, the music had yet to stop.

Sherlock looked at Mycroft and nodded.

This music…this music would be different.

Birthdays are weird…but that is okay, weird in a good way. Everyone was there and smiling and holding them and telling them silly things like 'look how big you have gotten!' even if they only saw them last week and John knows he did not get any bigger.

Maybe his hair was sticking up?

But it was getting late and everyone was kissing them and holding them and wishing them a happy birthday as they left. Nana had wanted them to go to bed an hour ago but it was their _birthday_ and how could they leave when everyone was still here and phone-gran was really really here and Auntie Harry had just forgotten she was supposed to be miserable?

So John had pouted, and when that did not work Sherlock saved them. Sherlock always saved them.

When Nana was distracted Sherlock clambered onto the table, sitting cross legged next to the almost untouched cake and grabbed a spoon from where it had been left in his bowl of untouched and now melting ice-cream.

When Nana turned back to tell them to say goodbye she stopped, her mouth slightly agape as if she were not quite sure what she was looking at. Sherlock carefully shaved a tiny spoonful off the cake and shoved it into his mouth, grinning at adults who were slowly coming to look at him.

John wanted to kiss him.

He wanted to hug him and tell him all of the words that never wanted to come out of his mouth.

Instead he ran over to the table and climbed up as well, sitting close beside him and taking his free hand and hoping that squeezing it was enough, holding that little part of him was enough to say what he wanted to.

How proud he was.

Sherlock was eating in front of all these people. Something messy and voluntary and he was not shaking or afraid or lost. He was smiling.

Nana would not make them go to bed now. Not if Sherlock was eating. Not if there was a chance that each mouthful could add desperately needed weight to his lithe body.

And so Sherlock ate slowly until night fell, until they all kissed them and hugged them and he never let go of Sherlock because even if he was okay he would still need John. Just in case.

And maybe because John needed it, just a little.

Sherlock put down the spoon and they let themselves be forced into their new birthday pajamas, a gift from cell-phone lady who would sometimes come to talk to Mycroft but always waited until he turned his back to give them a quick knowing smile.

Harry laughed and took a picture as she left but John did not mind.

He liked the pajamas with the feet and the hood, he liked that every inch of him was enveloped in cloth. He liked that their outfits matched, that they were close enough in size that sometime he could take Sherlock's and Sherlock could have his and it was kind of almost like a hug.

Because that is what you did when you were family.

Gran-mere promised to visit when she could and promised to call even more soon than that. Harry had promised ice-cream because she knew Mycroft would protest, just a little bit, and left with a last ruffling of their hair which Sherlock, crashing from the sugar and leaning heavily on John, begrudgingly allowed. Nana smiled as she put away their new sweaters and checked that they had brushed their teeth and managed all of their buttons and tucked them into bed.

Mycroft was the last one to leave their room, his blue eyes a little tired and his smile just a little too sad as he sat on the edge of their bed. John wondered if he had done something wrong and ruined the birthday party for Mycroft, but when he asked things like that it just made people look more sad, so he stayed quiet.

Mycroft watched them for a minute in the half darkness but it was like he was not seeing them at all, like he was somewhere far away. John shifted closer to Sherlock, hand reaching out for his, the far off look in Mycroft's eyes made his heart beat faster but Sherlock was squeezing his hand and it was okay, for most people maybe being lost in their minds did not hurt at all.

Mycrofts eyes focused and he came back to them still smiling sadly. He leaned forward and gathered them both into his arms, he was warm the way he always was, his heart strong and constant when John pressed his ear to his chest as it rose against him as if Mycroft were trying to breathe in the smell of them. He moved to let go but John reached out and twisted a hand into his shirt. Mycroft let himself be brought back down for a kiss to be placed lovingly on his cheek.

This time Mycroft's smile was not sad. He smoothed their hair and pressed a kiss to both of their faces and without a word left them as if something important had been decided.

Sherlock was almost asleep the moment they laid down. His blue eyes were half shut and watching John through thick black lashes, moonlight spilled in from the window and John thought he looked an awful lot like an angel.

Sherlock smiled as if he knew exactly what John was thinking and maybe, John thought, he did.

His smile was sweeter than it normally was, heavy with sleep, as if he never woke up in the night gasping for breath, as if he never fell into dark places and got so lost John could not go in after him, as if he had never gotten sick at all. This smile made John want to smile. It made him want to stay up forever because he knew that when he woke up again it would be gone.

But Sherlocks smile did not last even that long, blue eye were on his face as the smile melted into a frown, a pout which made John want to reach out and touch it, to fix it.

John stretched out his hand a little further, fingers brushing Sherlock's wrist.

They were not lying as close as they normally did. Maybe everyone was right. Maybe they were 'big boys' now, maybe big boys were not meant to curl up together in the darkness. Maybe they were supposed to learn to be brave now, to face the night alone.

He did not ask Sherlock just in case he said yes.

John kicked his foot a little further out; let it rest on top of Sherlock's as if he had not noticed what he had done.

The frown on Sherlock's face was doing nothing to stop the way his eyes were drooping heavily, but the almost painful pout was slowly giving way to thoughtfulness. He always had the same look on his face when this happened, when there was something he could just not figure out but it was almost there. A mystery he needed to solve.

John could not stand it any longer, being so far away from were Sherlock was, locked out of what he was thinking. He reached out and touched the very edge of Sherlocks mouth, gently pushing it up into an artificial smile.

His efforts got him the hint of a real one and sleepy blue eyes determined not to sleep focused on him.

"What is it?" John asked softly, letting his fingers play with a dark curl now this it was already so close.

Sherlock frowned, the hard earned smile gone as he wrinkled his nose against the words.

"I can't figure it out." He looked upset at the vocalized revelation. "I can't figure out what you wished for."

John fought back a smile and rolled his eyes just to make Sherlock smirk at him.

"No. Before that." John let the curl fall from his hand and his arm fell into the space between their pillows. "You were thinking something else."

Sherlock looked surprised for a moment and then not surprised at all. His smile this time was slightly embarrassed, the words coming out soft and muttled as if maybe he had decided to sleep after all.

"You gave Mycroft a kiss."

And all of a sudden John realized how stupid he had been. The joy built up in his chest like a laugh that wanted to fill the room but did not need sound.

He tried to stop the smile as he pushed up on his arms and leaned over to give Sherlock a kiss on the cheek, but he knew he felt it. He sunk back into the bed closer to Sherlock, this time sharing his pillow, their limbs touching with every motion, the heat from his body warm and comforting.

The smile was there again, but only for a second. A hand reached out, warm and soft, and touched the cloth over his chest, fingertips measuring his heart beats.

"What did you wish for?"

John smiled and snuggled deeper into the pillow, shaking his head a little in response.

"Nana said we couldn't tell or it wouldn't come true." At some point his eyes had drifted shut but he opened them again to look at the other boy over the few inches of warm air that separated them. The barely there touch of fingertips over his heart turned into a palm pressed flat against him, delicate white fingers fanning out over his heart.

Like a kiss but more, John thought.

Sherlock did not say anything, his face still drawn in the Mystery that was apparently John.

"I need it to come true." John whispered. He could feel his heart begin to pound as he thought of his wish, his breath coming too fast. He was no longer tired.

Sherlock's hands came up to his face, fingertips dancing across his cheekbones, holding him as he shifted closer until their foreheads touched.

"Shh-" Sherlocks blue eyes flashed, no longer holding slightest hint of sleep, all of that genius focused on him. His voice was soothing and soft, little more than a breath.

"Breathe with me."

Fingers caressed his cheeks, across his temples, and he could feel Sherlock's breath against him and it was simple to match his own to it, the slow in and out that made his heart calm and his mind go blank.

When Johns heart had stopped racing against his ribs and his breath was slow and even and shared utterly with the other boy Sherlock curled closer and pressed a shy, gentle kiss against his lips.

"It doesn't count if you tell me you know." Sherlock said with a slight deliberate smile with a voice that made it hard for John to remember why he had ever thought otherwise. "Nana said we couldn't tell other people." Sherlock settled back into his space next to John. "We are not other people. We are just…us." Sherlock smiled again, that rare beautiful one that made him look, perfect. "My secrets are yours."

John never wanted to sleep. He wanted to stay right here, in this moment, forever. Then he would not need his wish to come true.

"What did you wish for?"

Sherlock looked as if he were contemplating answering but of course he had known the question was coming. When he finally spoke his voice was very small, a whisper in the silent night which betrayed emotion Sherlock never displayed outside of nightmares and daylight memories.

"I wished that I would never lose you."

Sherlock was afraid.

John snuggled closer, the way they had slept when they were little, the way they slept when they woke up in a cold sweat and a scream on their lips. He wrapped his arm around the other boy under the blankets, hand skimming over his ribs to feel the intake of breath, their faces so close on the pillow that when John shut his eyes he could feel Sherlock's eyelashes flutter against his skin.

"That was a silly wish." Their breathing began to slow as sleep wrapped around them, comfort and familiarity pulling them into slumber. The words became heavy with sleep. "I am never going to leave you."

"And your wish?" Sherlock's voice asked so softly that John could ignore it if he wanted to, but he could feel the words on his skin as they were spoken, he could feel a small hand reaching out and curling around the back of his neck.

"That you would never be sick again."


	25. Chapter 25

It was quiet now that he boys were finally asleep and their strange piecemeal family had gone its separate ways, back into their fragmented existences, leaving only the three of them. The unfathomable trio left when everyone else had the leisure, and the anguish, of walking away.

Mycroft wanted to stand up, to go to their room as he had when they were little and spend the night in the chair watching them sleep. To hear their little breaths, to watch them turn, and limbs heavy and warm with sleep find one another in the darkness.

He wanted to know that they rested without nightmares. He wanted that indescribable feeling of sharing a room, nothing more than the air and slow radiating warmth.

He wanted to be with them as he finally killed them.

Today had been a good day. They had been perfect and wonderful and done everything no one should ever expect of them. He watched them stamp down the memories that still gripped their minds and tore at their hearts and bodies. He watched them push back the memories and fears that he had invoked by giving them too many people, too many realities to crash together and then throw on top of it the muted song of a violin that he knew now haunted their sleep.

Tonight might not be haunted with the images of an aborted childhood, but it would be filled with a sound, a song, which no longer existed.

He did not want to watch them thrash as the music pressed down on them and pulled at the memories just beneath the thin veil of the present.

The way Sherlock had looked when he would lock himself away at three in the morning and play until he forgot who he was.

The moment hours later when he would look up and realize that he had not hid himself at all, when he would realize that John had come down and spent the night with him and a cold cup of tea was turned with the handle facing him and John, who had listened for hours, had been lulled to sleep when Sherlock had unconsciously began to play the lullabies his mother had sung him years before.

So Mycroft was alone with the hum of his computer and the tapping of keys, the images of a brother who once was lingering in his mind's eye, imposing himself over the screen, blotting out the white blue light which softly filled the room.

The cursor blinked on the screen, each blip marking the time which past, each blink marking another moment in which he hesitated.

It was perfect. Everything about this moment was perfect. There was no other path but this, already chosen and laid down before him.

Their birthday, the anniversary of the day they had been reborn in a sea of blood and in the mad chaos of lost lives found themselves in his arms.

For two years Mycroft had lingered on this site, and kept alive that which had already been lost.

The blog of John Watson.

At first it was a means to an end. It was an alibi for when John Watson and Sherlock Holmes would be restored and able to reclaim their lives.

It was simple really, to log on and create an adventure which had taken them away. To leave notes to those left behind, to solve a case or two left in quandaries by D.I. Lestrade and write in Sherlock's bite softened by Johns words.

And then one adventure led to another and there was always that lingering hope that maybe, for once in his life, he was wrong. Maybe his brother would wake up one day and be the brother he remembered, the brother that he devoted so much of his life to protecting even when Sherlock never knew.

And then he fell in love with them. His boys. His children.

The contrasting cherubs who screamed and laughed and ran and needed him so very much.

But he could not help but miss him even as he held him in his arms.

When a case came up he would still reach for his phone and the beginning of a smile would touch his lips at thought of making Sherlock actually answer his phone and before it ever began to ring he would realize, he would turn it off and something cold and heavy would settle in his chest.

Sherlock would never scoff at another of his cases while secretly rejoicing. He would never glare in a way that was so obviously for show that it was almost like affection.

And he would text someone else to go solve the case, send a team off, and Sherlock would march through the room with his skull smiling garishly in his arms, John trailing behind in a pool of orange and he could not help but love. And it hurt.

But at night, at night Sherlock was not dead or lost or forgotten. He would never not be able to be mad and brilliant and every inch the man Mycroft had spent his adult life watching over.

At night he was all of the things Mycroft remembered of his one sibling. He was sharp and sometimes cruel and always brilliant and liked to pretend he did not, or maybe did not even know that he possessed, a heart. And every step of the way there was John Watson standing beside him.

Every adventure they took in these nighttime wanderings, every trick of fate and genius revelation was told through the eyes of the one person in the world who chose to love Sherlock Holmes.

It was…glorious. It was every idea which, barely formed in his mind had been buried deep into the place that drove him to watch his brother's life through CCTV instead of knocking on a door or reaching out to him.

To pretend in the darkness when twin breaths comforted his nerves and gave him new reason to live, that he was the man who had staggered through life and war and showed more honor in a cold car park than any man Mycroft had ever seen and still found it in himself to call Sherlock 'amazing'.

Two years. Two years he had made them travel the world; he had given them life even when he should have ended it. When hope died that they could ever return, that they could ever be these men again, he should have let this foolishness end.

Why spare the feelings of those who still believed in them? Everybody dies. Even those who are so much more than ordinary.

But they deserved a better ending than a simple goodbye. They deserved more than a note from a foreign country informing those who to whom it may concern that the bodies of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had been discovered cold and abandoned.

They deserved an ending as spectacular as the lives they had led, as the lives they would lead.

And maybe he just wanted to hold on a little longer. Maybe he wanted everyone to see the Sherlock John had seen.

And he had given himself two years. He had built the plot of the end of their lives. He had created such an escalation of events that there could be no ending as perfectly formed as this.

Their birthday. Their death.

And it was time.

And he was not ready to let go.

It was perfect. A story of grand enemies and a secret conspiracy, Sherlock would have loved that. For two years they had drifted through the world bolstered upon the wind of this oncoming evil, always just a few steps away from the brink. A million pieces of a puzzle which on their own seemed like nothing more than the nuances of life but together became something beautiful.

They had been running at the end, not drifting from case to case on invitations and clues but running for their very lives. There could be no more leeway, the enemy had made a stand, unable to carry on with the continued interference of the detective and his companion. Now it was all just a dance to choose the final battlefield.

Posts grew less descript, not dropping clues about where they might be but that, for the moment, they were safe, using the posts to expound upon cases they had just left behind.

John telling the world in that almost painfully honest way of his the way Sherlock had outshone them all. Without reserve and without shame Johns writing was teaching Mycroft what it meant to be the best part of humanity.

The posts carried in them a tinge of dark adrenalin, the taste of small dark places and midnight bus terminals where they had become the things that go bump in the night. Wrapped in words was the feel of flesh pressed close through layers of foreign clothing, of dark curls finally dropping to another man's shoulder when sleep finally reached up and claimed him for its own.

There was, despite all of the careful deliberate optimism, the feeling of inevitable end. The end of the game when all of the players are weary and there is nothing left to do but break.

For a while they had found refuge somewhere untraceable, somewhere far away from London where the world it seemed could stop and they could breathe.

John spoke of emaciated limbs and hollowed cheeks regaining tentative new life. He spoke of new friends who could never have names but where none the less kind and sweet.

Sherlock posted in his blunt way that his cheeks were not 'sunken shadows of his former health' but rather the thinning effect of being on the run and that a certain brother may benefit from such a trail should he be reading, as he so inevitably was.

And just as the words lost their ability to recall wartime without consciously trying to invoke such imagery, when the words stopped meaning a life tentatively scraping an existence on the edge of a blade and deserts and gunfire where not imbedded into every update, the world seemed too perfect.

They were not huddling together in a darkened alley, bodies pressed so close that they were unsure where one person ended and the other began in the damp cold which bit the exposed skin of their downturned faces as voices in a thick and brutal tongue passed by. They were not running from one train to another in a mad dash of looking over their shoulder and never ever being able to trust more than each other.

As simply as a child, as if he had no idea what he was doing, John spoke of the future.

Of more than just the next day, the next minute.

He spoke about gardens.

He imagined packing a lunch and wandering with Sherlock and naming all of the medicinal plants he had never actual seen outside of text books and having Sherlock tell him the brutal uses of each in fantastical crimes.

He wrote about eating under the blue sky with imagined birds keeping watch for them not because they were escaping through the forest or because their bodies had finally given up on them and they had no choice but to lay down. He spoke of a tomorrow he could want to have.

Mycroft imagined warm smiles that were so small they were almost not there at all. He imagined a sun that did not burn their skin but returned to Johns a look of youthful fervor and added the slightest tinge of color to Sherlock's fine cheeks.

Sherlock solved five new cases by message alone, murders and abductions in the haughty tone that said that everyone should already know the answer, and then said as much in the comment portion of Johns posts.

D.I. Lestrade pretended not to know that Sherlock sounded almost…happy.

Donovan did not show as much restraint.

And then the gardens disappeared with the picnic lunches and the sunshine that never burns.

An unexpected murder in the village. A murder which no one in their microcosm of life would have committed.

Shuttered back into a single room, the smell of roughly hewn wood surrounding them, dark and heady. The stagnation of waiting behind a closed door not knowing what was welling behind it, what evil may await them should they abandon their foothold.

One last post, quick and hurried, the feeling of Sherlock pasing behind him, picking up items and then disregarding them as useless or unnecessary to carry when they would have to travel light. Picking up a book or something else small and cherished that had made the two year journey with them and then putting it back down. Hands on Johns shoulders.

Time to go.

'Bit of trouble- nothing to worry about.'

And then something telling. Something written as an after thought as he would be standing half out of his chair, Sherlock's hand warm and tense on his arm.

'We take care of each other.'

There had been posts by everyone after that. A mix of the worried, intrigued and confused.

The curser blinked at him.

Time to post.

Time to let go.

The clock on the computer silently marched onward.

11:30.

It was perfect in every way. Their perfect ending.

The way they would have wanted to go. The way they would have ended themselves had they not been taken away without a death. The way he would have lost them anyway.

It was everything he should have done every day for the past two years.

But it felt so wrong.

The writing style had changed. The words were awkward and painful where John had been elegant and warm. A password given away at the last moment. A request to a friend, one issued with brown eyes which no one could refuse.

Their escape had been abrupt. The information had flooded inward, someone had given them up. The boy who had died, no more a man than a child, had died instantly, a gun which should not even be found in this country. A room abandoned so quickly that the remnants of life still littered it as if Sherlock might at any moment come back and clam the shirt he left so haphazardly on the floor, the laptop still open from when Johns fingers had last skimmed it.

They left on foot and only a few knew which direction they had taken. They could make a single rendezvous in an hours' time high in the mountains to be given supplies they could live off as they disappeared once more into the wilds of the world and after that they would be lost.

They had not anticipated that the boy who had been sent to meet them would be crying as if his mind had been torn apart and left nothing but ragged sobs.

Sherlock grabbed the small satchel and turned to leave having everything he wanted in his possession, but the one thing he needed lingered.

John kneeling at the boys side, coaxing the story of the sister, of the little girl who had time and again run to John with a flower or some small gift of affection. A firefight, a quick dirty affair which left several injured, most dying, as the shooter, a mercenary more likely than their main quandary, disappeared into the forest.

John had not even seen it as a choice.

He would go back, it would be safe enough if the boy led the way through the back alleys and hid in the long shadows of the ending day. He would meet Sherlock with more supplies, with fresh information. He could gather the medical supplies they would need to survive further into the wildness.

Sherlock saw the choice, knew every outcome as if it were inevitable truths laid out before him, but he did not hesitate. He did not consider for a single moment the choice not taken.

If Sherlock held him too tight as they said their silent goodbye, if his eyes lingered just a moment too long as if memorizing what was already emblazed in his memory John contributed it to the much more obvious, the idea that it might be John who was walking to his death.

They parted without a word and John did not mind. He knew the way Sherlock worked and he would not die and leave him. He would see him again and they would travel to the end of the world together.

John would not know his mistake until a friend met them on the path, the man who had known Sherlock long ago and taken them in as his own kin when they had shown up at his door ragged and half alive.

There had been no fight, no one had died because of them, no lives had been put into danger because of their existence in this place.

Another traitor had been outed in the village since they left, since the boy had been intercepted and told to run ahead with a package and told of the massacre.

John would never see the final battle.

He would not see Sherlock make the lonely journey up the face of the waterfall to where a dark figure stood waiting for him as if guarding the gates of hell and all of eternity lay before him. A dark lined face that spoke of London air as thick as water, a body that seemed so out of place against the soft green beauty of the world in which they stood that it seemed as if he had come to be here by magic rather than the way Sherlock had come with his dirty shirt and torn trousers, dirt smudging his pale cheek.

He would never hear the words the two enemies exchanged. He would never really understand what it had meant that he was not there to witness the exchange nor to take part in the inevitable outcome that lay before them. He would never know that this moment, this chosen ending, was for him.

One sacrifice in a life of unrelenting self-service.

One life gambled to set another free.

What John would know was that the only sound in his world was the efficient intake of his own breath and the pounding of his blood through his heart like the sound of a war drum, like the sound of young men falling to the ground in a spray of bullets and delusions of grandeur.

He knew that time was running too fast.

Knew that he was the last player in a game in which no one could come out alive and everyone but him could see the finale before they had ever begun to play.

He would feel the panic as he approached the falls and he sound of crashing water filled the world, the last few steps looming as a barricade between what could be and was, time frozen beyond the final veil even as his lungs seared in pain and his heart pounded and his hands and feet grappled for desperate purchase on the final incline.

The rocks would loom before him treacherous and damp and smelling of the dark things rotting in the forest and the unending spray of water and he would not take a moment to pause for fear or wait for backup which had followed in his wake.

It was too silent.

Without the dark rumbling mutter of a voice snarling that the end had come.

Without the achingly familiar sound of self-assured brilliance.

From here the wording would change. The sentences abrupt and the words haggard.

As if each sentence, each moment of recollection was a physical pain. A staggered step, a torn breath.

If this were a hundred years ago, if this was a final note goodbye instead of an electronic update, if messages still held the physical manifestation of the sender, the handwriting would be in dark blotchy ink, black orbs dropped to the paper and then smudged by a careless or unseeing hand, the writing would be harsh and slanted, as if each pen stroke was not a simple line but a barb cut into flesh. If this were a letter sent back in a horse drawn carriage in a more elegant time, tear stained watermarks would smudge the words here, warning before the words were ever read the truth of their ending.

John is almost falling as he reaches the top, as the waterfall opens before him in all of its sick grandeur.

And no one is there.

Footprints sunk into the earth, a battle at the uppermost ledge, hundreds of meters in the air where the water is like a fine mist you breathe into yourself.

He can see it though there is no one there.

Hands twisting into black fabric, fingers clutching and pulling. Two dark figures against a world of green.

The scrape of a shoe on the edge of the ledge.

A moment of weightlessness. Of neither falling nor standing.

Sherlock.

And though he will never hear the gasp as white hands reach out not to pull himself back but to tangle and entwine he can see them.

Sherlock's sharp blue eyes.

The smile on his lips as he falls back like an angel about to take flight.

The smile that meant yes, of course he had known this was coming.

The smile that meant that their quandary of the past two years had finally made a mistake.

He had underestimated Sherlock's heart.

It doesn't stop John from screaming.

From the name tearing itself from his body.

He falls to his knees on the wet earth, leaning dangerously over the ledge into nothingness, screaming at the top of his lungs although the wet heat of loss has already begun to seep into his voice.

And there is the roar of water.

And the echo of his own voice like a ghost reaching back for him.

'SHERLOCK!'

He screams again and waits as if there is a chance that the first time he had not heard, he leans further into the abyss as if waiting for a response.

A hand tangles into his coat and pulls him back from the edge and John tumbles into the wet dirt, looking up with pleading eyes at the man who had taken them in and treated them like family.

He lets himself be dragged away from the cliffs edge, away from the endless abyss with its roaring white water.

Footsteps in the dark soil leading up to the battle, evenly spaced, calm and unhurried.

John follows the echo of Sherlock back through time.

Footsteps lead to an alcove, a small outcropping of stones and the tangle of vines hearty enough to survive in the extreme habitats of the Earth. And it is beautiful. The falls stretch out before him impossibly huge, green and black and white and so far from the streets of London, so far from the rooms in which they had shared a life.

A coat carefully folded and placed, just for him.

He takes the coat into his arms without knowing why. Just to hold it. To feel the familiar cloth in his hands and want it to still be warm.

It is cold and damp and John can feel it, this slow moving horror rising within him.

But he does not cry.

He is still waiting for a voice to echo back to him. He just has to wait. Just has to believe in Sherlock.

And then he feels it wrapped in layers of wool in his arms. Dry and safe, a paper folded into the coat.

He sits down on the rocks where Sherlock had been only minutes ago knowing that John would come for him, knowing that John would follow.

He opened it with a flash of hope. A single perfect moment as the water crashed and rose in a mist over the land and maybe, beneath its roar Sherlock cried out for him to come.

A page written in familiar dark script, like living brilliance.

And in the too honest mirror of his dark brown eyes hope rose, and flickered, and in a breath which hitched and caught in his chest, in the missed beat of a heart, it died.

There was a moment silence, like a moment of weightlessness, like standing on the edge of a precipice with an indulgent smile, knowing you were about to fall.

And the dry beautiful paper, the words written so carefully, so beautifully, smudged beneath the fall of burning, wet, tears.

The silence did not end peacefully, it was broken in a jagged cry of pure unendurable anguish. Angels might fall so beautifully but humans were doomed to earth bound torments.

John buried his face against the cold coat and cried out a name in a sob which had no reply, the sound smothered and died against soft wool.

Tears falling into dark wet cloth as if they never existed.

The paper. The note goodbye, crumpled and crushed against a throbbing chest.

And time passed and water fell and light disappeared until all that remained was the glistening twilight lighting the mist.

When a hand fell on Johns shoulder and a soft voice told him it was time to go home there were no tears on his face and if any remained imbedded in the coat in was too dark to betray their existence.

His movements were careful and slow as if the passage of the last hour had taken the toll of a lifetime on his body and each motion had become the work of the utmost difficultly and pain.

He did not say a word as he stripped off his own coat and lay it on the ground, folded in the unconscious moves of a wartime soldier, slipping his arms into black wool which engulfed him like a blanket. He never put down the note, never unclenched his fingers from around whatever truths it held.

In a voice without emotion John explained the events which had happened to the friend who stood still with tears in his eyes. He explained that he would not go back, that it would not be safe for the village.

He gave him the password and asked him to write to the others, to tell them what happened. They deserved that much at least. He pulled the coat tighter, fingers curling over the edges of the long sleeves.

He did not ask what the note contained and John did not offer.

He put a hand on Johns shoulder, on wool that still looked like Sherlock, and promised. But he would not let John go alone, not tonight, not like this.

John agreed easily, too broken to argue, a nod his only consent.

But brown eyes flickered back to where footprints still betrayed the final dance, to where names echo and return and water fills the air.

Just a moment.

One last look.

One last goodbye.

John started the climb back up, following the ghost of Sherlock's footprints, careful never to trod on them but always next to them as if they had walked this path side by side if only hours apart. Over green moss and grey rocks and nothing that looked like home except warm black wool.

He disappeared in and out of the mist, the dying light playing across the water, lighting rainbows in the air.

John Watson stood on the highest precipice, staring into the churning water hundreds of meters below, leaning over as if he could defy gravity, as if nothing could touch him now.

The man looked away. It seemed too private. Like watching the vivisection of a soul.

And then without a noise, without a breath or a cry, John Watson fell.

As if gravity had decided to wrap itself around him and reclaim him.

Nothing but a black figure falling against white water and maybe, maybe a smile that meant yes, of course I knew this was coming.

And the words would sputter and stop.

Electronic messages devoid of tear stains and smudged ink.

The perfect ending to an imperfect life.

Time to let go.

To bury the brother he had failed, two years too late.

To abandon the man who had shown him through writing what it meant to be a good man instead of just a great one.

To kill them once and for all.

The clock struck five in the morning in the silent way it does only to tell you that somehow the last five hours of your life had disappeared without you seeming to notice.

The curser still blinked at him but it feels different this time.

The story has changed.

It is less perfect.

Not the ending they deserve, but the ending they all need.

He clicks enter before he can change his mind. He can go back and erase it of course, but he won't.

Soon the sun will come up and two little boys will wake up and the world will start all over again. Another year, 365 days to make everything go right this time around or at very least, to make it better.

Scotland Yard will wake up and check Sherlock's stagnant website and Johns blog the way they do every day even if they deny it to one another. Each one will sit in his or her home with a cup of tea or coffee with the numbness of sleep still making their limbs heavy and their minds slow, and they will read the last blog of John Watson.

The Final Problem.

It was close, the story begins as a warning, the whole episode at Reichenbach.

The writing is different this time, slightly perfunctory and very nearly preoccupied in lieu of John's elaborate romantic writing, but it is in perfect English.

It is the story of a final battle between opposing sides when the option to run is no longer of any value.

The talk between parties is ignored, it is of no value, and in any case the finer points would be lost on a reader of even moderate intellect.

It is only necessary to understand that this is no longer a battle in the theoretical or of conspiracies and networks, this was a battle which had devolved into its most basic and inevitable form.

Two bodies locked in a conflict, hand to hand combat miles from civilization where no one else could be caught as collateral damage. A spot chosen as much for its desolation as for the dramatics of meeting at cliff face edge of a waterfall.

The two opponents were evenly matched in intellect and brute strength and their companions had been diverted and left behind. The end would come either at the first mistake or when one or the other decided to end it at the cost of both of their lives.

It was the other man who made the final gesture forsaking any other ending.

He clawed his hands into Sherlock's coat and with a twisted smirk let himself fall.

It was impossible to hold them both up, to keep them on the slippery unforgiving ground at the edge of the precipice. His shoe scrapped into the rocks and wet dirt at the edge in a last hopeless bid to remain standing but the ground gave way and the other man was already falling, weightless and laughing.

And so Sherlock Holmes fell.

A split second of peering into to abyss, of having nothing beneath him but air and water and the sound of crashing water coming up to meet him even as his enemy fell away to find a solitary death.

But firm hands curled into his clothing, wrenching him back. He slipped anyway, already falling, already building momentum, but John was there holding onto his hands as he fell and caught. John holding him as he hung above nothing.

And John was strong, every inch the military man, the loyal companion, and he was almost smiling, adrenalin and relief flooding him as they were reunited.

But the ground was wet and the rocks beneath them were falling away.

If Sherlock held on they would both fall in a torrent of dirt and stone.

John would never let go, would never let him slip through his fingers.

But Sherlock could save them. There was a ledge unseen from up top, little more than a few stones gripping the side of the cliff face, stones he could grasp onto, stones which would inevitably incur injury by were unlikely to bring death.

And so he smiled.

There was no time for words nor the breath to waste on it, but John would understand.

And so he fell.

Above them a fool of a man, the witless partner to the fallen enemy, had witnessed what he no doubt interpreted as the death of his master and that of Sherlock Holmes and no one remained to blame except the one man left standing on the edge of the world. Rage painted his vision red, emotion clouding an already inferior mind.

The gunshot echoed through the cavernous waterfall as if the bullet was tearing apart the very air.

John Watson fell to his knees as the bullet tore through his upper chest, piercing just above his heart.

A lesser man would have fallen, would have screamed and lost his mind in agony.

John fell into the dirt as it darkened with his blood, his chest and face splashed with crimson.

But John had never been ordinary.

If he died there would be no one to stop the shooter from doing the same to Sherlock when he reached the top.

The shooter had exposed himself from his hiding place, foolishly believing that he was safe. He never even saw the glint of the gun.

Johns hands did not shake at all.

It only took Sherlock the matter of moments to scale the cliff and tear off his soiled leather gloves. Sherlock pressed his white hands against the wound, steaming the blood flow, refusing to let John slip through his fingers.

And that was it.

Covered in blood and bruised and feeling the steady beat of a heart which had nearly stopped beneath his hands, he was done.

They were done.

Sherlock had nearly lost John and that was unacceptable.

The words of the blogger seemed to run away with him for a moment, caught up in the action now written on the page, on the emotions and repercussions lingering in those thoughts.

As if they were too painful to linger on, the darkest moments of the story were flitted past quickly and efficiently.

If the two shared any words at the end of their trial, soaked in blood and gasping for breath they would remain ensconced in mystery, locked in the minds of those who survived them.

The author turned towards the present and the future.

John was alright. He would be alright. He was to get out of surgery within the hour and the prognosis was good, considering how mortal the wound had the potential to be.

He would retain intact mental function despite the extensive blood loss and regain most of the range of motion in his shoulder and arm.

John Watson is too strong to die.

The writing felt as if it were leaving most of the words unspoken, that minutes or perhaps hours had been spent on the last line, deleting and adding adjectives to describe John Watson and finally 'strong' was the meager compromise which had been while perhaps too unintentionally revealing, honest.

John would survive, but he would need to rehabilitated.

They were going away.

Somewhere John could recover from his wounds without the slightest possibility of death. Things had escalated rather badly in the last two years and a return to London would inevitably mean a return to established enemies and dangerous work patters.

They were going somewhere where no one had ever heard of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, somewhere where John could recover and maybe once he was suitably fit they would continue as they had.

However, until further notice Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were effectively retired.

This blog would no longer be updated. This post existing for the soul purpose of assuring everyone who still took note of their lives that they were still alive somewhere out in the world.

John would be out of surgery soon and he had every intention of being there no matter what the doctors said about him being unconscious.

John would know he was there.

Any efforts made to find them would prove entirely fruitless. Sherlock had taken steps to make sure that they would never be found and anyone who journeyed to Reichenbach Falls would find nothing but a serene looking waterfall.

So do not bother trying. Lestrade. Mycroft.

Of course he had yet to inform John of their plans for immediate retirement and subsequent settling down but John would more than likely be amiable to such an idea, or it would at least grow on him.

He remembered John saying something about watching the sun rise over the ocean and keeping bees.

So until the end of their retirement or for the duration of their lives this was their digital farewell.

There would be no need to worry about them.

They would take care of each other.

The curser blinked at the very end of the post, marking time which seemed very suddenly, to have not yet started at all.

SH

A handful of hours later, when London was waking and Scotland Yard was just sitting down with their cups of coffee and tea, bleary eyed and swathed in bathrobes to read the blog of a man who had once existed, two little boys invaded the silence of Mycroft's contemplative melancholy. Running into the room arm in arm, eyes twinkling with the excitement of yet undiscovered things, and dressed as lunatics, Mycroft gathered them into his arms and held them as if he would never let them go.


	26. Chapter 26

Mrs. Hudson walked through the security clearance checkpoints at the front door, nodded at both the hidden camera set into the inconspicuous looking plant and the plain clothes guard pretending rather poorly to be immersed in what appeared to be yesterday's obituaries. The heavy metal doors thundered closed behind her, clacking the way a bank vault might close when the security precautions had been triggered. The final door into the rooms was simple, a dark cherry red wood and for ascetics more than actual service as a door. She closed it behind her, clicking the simple push lock with the press of a finger, the simple mechanical lock feeling like the protection of a sheet of paper in comparison to its counterparts. Mycroft never locked this door, always made strange appraising faces at her when he went to exit and found it locked but, she supposed, if the mad geniuses of the world were spending their lives in elaborate complications maybe it would be the overly simple which they overlooked. After all, every little bit helps.

The hallway was empty but that was far from unusual. Tiny coats and one long black overcoat hung on the coat rack as a greeting, an unusual display of domestics in an otherwise ornate and pristine chamber. There was a sound here which could not be heard from the outside, probably owed to bomb shelter style walls and anti-chemical warfare air filtration systems built into the elegant rooms, hidden by tapestries and paintings. It was a soft drifting sound, low strains of music that made her think of old black and white films where romance was always true love but never seemed to end happily, music that was, if music can carry human emotion, slightly sad.

She followed the sound, silencing the click of her own heels against the hard wood floor. The room opened up before her and the music spilled out, filling the chamber and echoing into to where she had just come.

John was curled up on the couch alone, his legs tucked up against his chest, his chin resting on his knees, so small and quiet that she might have missed him altogether had she not known where to look. He was listening, but more than that, he was watching, brown eyes wide and almost unblinking. He was supposed to be practicing, rooms away a grand piano sat untouched, sheet music read only for as long as his tutor sat with him but he never lingered.

Sherlock was playing for him. She could always tell when Sherlock played for himself, when he was so lost in his own mind that he did not hear John sneaking in, when the music was not soft and beautiful but sometimes harsh and difficult and confoundingly beautiful.

Sherlock's eyes were closed, his black curls falling into against his cheeks, his pale face tucked lovingly against the violin. She could see the man he had been in these moments, all pale and underfed and maddeningly brilliant, but he remained her little boy, the five year old who could have the ear of the world if he wanted it.

Mrs. Hudson settled into her usual chair, the one that looked harsh and unwelcoming as if it belonged in a museum or a castle tucked behind red velvet rope, but enveloped you in softness and comfort as if it had been waiting for your arrival. Neither boy made any move to acknowledge her but she did not mind, she knew that their silent acquiescence only meant that she was theirs.

She wanted to take the camera from her bag and take a picture of them, to capture how they looked together like this. John listening as if he would be happy to stay silent forever, brown eyes so wide and innocent, more like a painting than a child and Sherlock lost not in his own darkness but in the music that to him, meant John. She did not bother taking the picture, moments like these were impossible to capture, so fragile it was like a flicker of light, almost invisible, something tangible between them that spread to those around them.

She settled in to wait. Her boys would not need her until long after the music faded, until John unfolded himself from the couch and Sherlock remembered that there was more to himself than a bow and a violin, that not all thoughts could be made into music.

Quietly she shifted through her bag, clutching her wallet in one hand as if it were something solid and heavy, as if it were a weapon or a stone tablet, something finite and powerful. The camera she borrowed from Sherlock the day before dangled from the wrist of her free hand, already holding within its mechanical contents the picture which she wanted to make real.

It was nothing special, the image she had in mind. It did not demonstrate that these boys had once been men, it did not show genius or ludicrous bravery or silent secret tongues. It was so simple that Mycroft would have to say yes, so perfectly pedestrian that he could harbor no complaints.

These boys, her boys, were the third generation of children she had hand in raising. She was there when they would barely speak a word, she knew what it felt like to sit outside their door and listen to them scream and know that nothing she could do would help them, she knew what it felt like to have them look at her as if she was the most perfect woman who had ever lived and all she wanted in return was a picture.

Two generations of her children existed in her wallet in faded sepia. Two small faces she had loved more than herself peering out through the years at her. Her boys, her John and Sherlock deserved to be there as much as she deserved to have them. When she held them in her arms and they let her, they belonged to each other.

Things were changing, they were changing. She knew that life moved fast, that if you spend too long waiting, planning for the next moment, it will pass you by as if you were never there at all. Life was all of those little moments that simply slip past. It was when John climbed up on her lap just to be held in her arms, it was when Sherlock insisted with overly large blue eyes that pants could be worn in place of a shirt. But things were changing.

Soon they would shy away from her hugs under the gazes of their peers, soon they would no longer need her to help them tie their shoes even just because they wanted her attention.

More had changed since their birthday than just the onset of music into their lives.

Mycroft had been very busy for about three days, texting and ordering people about in foreign languages in a flawless accent that still managed to sound so incredibly British, before he came home with two miniature outfits for some form of martial arts that she had not even tried to pronounce the name of. He explained that these two, of all of the people in the world, should know how to defend themselves. He acted as if it were something paltry, as if he were not desperately worried that they would need these skills, as if he were not the most worrisome parent in the world with the most reason to be so, and had done nothing more than signed them up for a class downtown.

Mrs. Hudson did not say anything about the way all of the equipment was expensive looking and out-of-the-box new. She simply let her two boys run into the throng of older children who enveloped them with warm smiles and confusing if welcoming Korean, their heads reaching the level of the other student's black belts. She always waited outside or ran off to do some errands when they had class so as not to make them nervous. She never worried about their safety when she left the building and plunged into the grey streets of their city. She doubted there was another group in all of London, or Korea for that matter, that knew more ways to kill before you realized you were in danger.

Her boys always came back from class smiling and laughing. She had worried at first that they would be coddled, after all John was so sweet and Sherlock always just a little too thin, but she should not have worried. They would reenact class in the middle of the living room, their bodies slamming into the ground in failed attempts with laughter that would echo through the room or success and even more laughter. They would come back to her with the injuries of little boys roughhousing, a scrapped knee and bruises so light they were nothing but a tint of yellow on pale skin. On Sherlock she would see the barely there bruises on his arms or knee and she would kiss them and he would look at her indulgingly. He did not need her to kiss them of course, they may treat him as if he were made of papier-mâché and fine spun glass but Sherlock himself would be hard pressed to notice if his arm had fallen straight off until he had reason to use it.

She never saw a bruise on John.

Not a scratch or a bump or the yellow indentation of fingers gripping just a little too hard.

John was like her Ben had been in this way, the quite boy who still peered out at her through the years in the faded yellow of a photograph with a smile that was never really there.

But it was alright, even when it was not.

She knew how to care for him.

She understood what it meant when John looked at the clothes that she had pulled out for him and quietly, without words, without more than the stiffening of his body, panicked. She knew without having to touch him that his skin would be hot to the touch, that his heart would be pounding so hard that he was afraid that it might jump from his throat.

She remembered the way to sweep away the clothes and tut at herself saying of course they were dirty, of course it was too cold outside, and hadn't he worn blue just yesterday?

She understood the way it was okay to gently brush the hair from his face to call attention back to the world as she made a mental note not to set out shorts for John until Sherlock's matching bruises had faded from his skin.

She knew the way they could all pretend that nothing was wrong.

John would smile, her brave little boy, and he would not need help changing anyway and even if he did Sherlock was just a step away, blue eyes evaluating, watching, hands always just short of reaching out to touch.

In some ways it was easier now with John than it had been with her Ben, because most of the time in at least some of the ways, nothing was wrong.

She was not the woman-child without any idea of how the world worked with the husband with a golden smile and the baby boy who was always just a little too quiet.

Things were different then, she was nineteen and in love and love does funny things to you. You make up excuses for people, you don't see flaws where you should. But then again maybe that is not love at all.

John is still sitting enraptured on the couch, breathing so softly that he might be consciously slowing it so that he would never miss a note of music, staring at Sherlock as if his world began and ended with him.

Maybe love was acknowledging the flaws and loving anyway. If she had had the knowledge of these five year old boys maybe her life would have been very different. But she had not, and maybe it would have been the same anyway.

Things had been different then. She never imagined getting a divorce, of course she contemplated just leaving but it was never a real idea, never more than a fleeting thought when she watched her child flinch or when she had to learn to walk without a limp so that no one would ask. But where would she have gone? What would they do? Things were bad, but like he told her every day, things could always be worse.

Where would they end up without him?

How would they survive without him?

She did what she could to protect him, her brave little Benedict, but she was not always strong enough, not always quick enough.

They existed together in a world all their own, her and her Ben and it was all so normal.

They did not know anything else.

So she dressed him for school in his long sleeves and long pants and on the long hot afternoons of the summer when tempers were short and hands heavy she would send him away to play and sometimes he would go, and sometimes, sometimes he would not leave her.

She had been thinking about him a lot of late, the child he had been and the man he had become because of it.

She had seen her Ben in John the first time they ever met. He hid it better of course, John had always been the strongest person she had ever met, but she could not help but love him just a little bit for it.

When Sherlock, the brilliant mad genius who had been so kind to her through the worst events of her life, those awful endless black days in Florida, came to her for a flat she was glad to have him. A distraction, someone to fill her old building with life again, with bumps and footsteps and explosions to drown out the silence where her life had once existed and just a little, to have someone to care for. But she had worried endlessly.

Sherlock was never meant to be alone.

And then John Watson had walked into their lives.

He looked nothing like Ben had looked when he hugged her for what would be the very last time and told her he was moving to Florida, that he could not stay in London, that London was no place to raise his baby girl while his father still lived.

Not his hair or his face or his smile or his laughter.

But they had that same look in their eyes.

Endless.

And so she loved him. Both of them. And she could worry about Sherlock just a little bit less.

Or at least she had worried about Sherlock less. That feeling did not cross over to when he suddenly needed her to feed him and stop him from blowing up parts of the kitchen.

The door clicked softly as Mycroft walked into the room, she clutched her wallet tighter but neither of them spoke. Sherlock was still playing.

She could tell that he wanted to spend time with them before he had to give them up for the afternoon Harry Watson took them every week.

Another change there. Harry was a sweet girl if a little out of sorts with herself. Not as strong as John, different of course, but she could not be blamed for that. Mrs. Hudson was proud of what Mycroft had done for her; a year ago she would have run from the idea of spending time alone with her brother for the span of minutes, as if her presence alone could ruin him and now she took them out every week for what she called 'normal children' time.

Now the boys called her Auntie Harry.

There were conditions of course. She had to be clean, no alcohol for three days prior to taking them and she took this for what it was without comment. She had to tell Mycroft where they were going in advance so that he could send plain clothes guards and depending on the location, send additional police into the area.

She was a good girl.

Harry took them to parks and movies, she held their hands and rolled her eyes at them and taught them to make silly faces and eat food with no nutritional value.

Mrs. Hudson had been fond of her in the way she was fond of everyone but then she had done something that would endear herself to the older woman forever.

Mrs. Hudson had been tidying when her phone buzzed in her pocket; it had been on vibrate ever since Sherlock had changed her ringtone to an array of rude sounds and then set the language to some form of Arabic. A picture came up on the screen with three words typed in exuberant caps.

'FOR THE WIN!'

A picture of Sherlock meticulously licking at an oversized ice-cream cone, face scrunched in concentration so that not a single drop would touch his fingers.

It had taken only two visits for Harry to ask in her blunt way if they were feeding Sherlock, a look of agitation on her face betraying her actual concern.

It took three weeks for her to figure out that the junk food of choice was ice-cream. Cotton candy had been fed to the wind, cupcakes had been crushed into new shapes and candy generally remained in its wrappers while the boys tried to sound out the ingredients listed on the back. Ice-cream however held some appeal, at least a few bites disappearing from Sherlock's dish voluntarily and more than a few bites of Johns ice-cream being offered to him and taken under the carefully pleading wide brown eyes.

And now this.

Sherlock came home that afternoon bouncing off the walls with sugar, taking Johns hand in his and disappearing into their room to create chaos as Harry laughed in their living room.

She smiled as she described it, the way he had been so focused on not letting it fall or drip that he had actually seemed surprised when it was gone, looking at his empty fingers with a raised eyebrow.

They had always come back from their trips with Harry after that hyper but no one told her to stop.

Mycroft added five different flavors of ice-cream to their grocery list.

The music faded, the last notes disappearing, fading into time and memory. They all looked up, blinking as if they had been asleep and Sherlock put away the violin before looking up at them, as if until the moment the case shut it away it had him under its spell.

John jumped up from the couch, smiling as if he had never been so happy in his life and kissed Sherlock, pulling the other boy into his arms.

Mycroft saw that he did not have a chance of catching their attention until they had exchanged whatever endless conversations and secrets they carried and Mrs. Hudson stood, thinking again of the pictures in her wallet, the small faces peering out at her, of the picture in the camera she wanted more than anything.

The picture that was not of their genius or their skill or their madness, but a picture that was nothing less than love.


	27. Chapter 27

Auntie Harry took them to the movies sometimes and it was fun. The theaters were cool and dark but no one was ever scared and there were a million seats all over the place and when you sat in one your feet would dangle over the edge. And sometimes if it was too cold then they would both crawl into the seat next to Auntie Harry together and everywhere their skin touched was warm and their limbs would tangle and there were people all around them whispering and they would sit there and make up stories about how their lives must be.

Well, at least John made up stories, Sherlock insisted that his were always true. John thought that the man two rows down with the scratch on his arm was probably not actually a lion tamer though. Maybe a baby lion tamer.

Harry would buy them treats too. Popcorn was bad because it got on your fingers and stayed there, slick and yellow, but candies were good. They came in all sorts of colours and flavors, sticks and circles and Nana would hate all of them which made it even more fun. Sometimes they even ate some of them. They sounded like rain as they scattered to the floor.

John had told Nana and Mycroft about the movies once and Nana asked how the movie was. John did not really remember, it had been bright and colorful and the screen was amazingly tall but the characters were silly and it was much more entertaining to whisper with Sherlock than watch what all of the other children seemed so amused by.

John did not get it but he had Sherlock so he did not really mind being different. They could be different together.

Mycroft had started playing with his phone, texting Harry. John knew because sometimes Sherlock would steal his phone and they would text people with it, importing sounding stuff, just like Mycroft.

'You sunk my battleship!'

'Foothold situation!'

Mycroft had almost panicked the first time and sent a flurry of texts in their wake, when he had calmed down again he said they were lucky they had contacted people without many English translators. The thought seemed to put him at ease but Mycroft did not know that they had taken some of his books and were learning the translations for next time.

Whenever they got his phone they sent texts to Harry telling her to buy them swords or flashlights or spelunking gear but she never did, but still, that was the chime Mycroft's phone made when she texted.

After Harry sent him the lists of movies they had watched he promised them that he would show them what movies were supposed to be like.

It was going to be a busy day, a half a dozen countries were waiting on him for responses to what they had each individually labeled an 'immediate crisis' and one so far as to melodramatically add 'impending doom'.

He knew the type of day, the kind where he would not notice when a meal slipped him by and he would look out the window, finally done staring at the digitalized screen of his phone or his laptop to find that the world had gone dark around him and that the two boys he had intended to spend the day with where already long ago asleep, the memory of a sleepy goodnight murmured at his doorway or a quick perfunctory hug lingering in his memory like a waking dream.

Mycroft would tell himself as he looked into their darkened room that they were no worse for it, that they had other people in their lives who loved them. He had made sure of that. He told himself that another day without him in their lives was hardly noticeable. He told himself that normal parents did it all of the time.

And then they would shift in their sleep and he could see a peaceful face years younger in rest than in wakefulness, a hand thrown over a hip or encircling a chest and holding on as if they would never let go…and it was no longer a question of who needed whom.

He could hear them breath softly into the darkness, see their small bodies shrouded under blankets, the faces which were never this serene in the day. The explosions and laughter which followed them in daylight were all but gone and he missed them unbearably.

It was going to be another one of those days.

He let them slide past him that morning without more than a ruffle of their hair.

He had meant to tell them to be brave and be careful and to tell them how proud he was of them as they stood there in their martial arts outfits waiting to leave.

He had meant to draw them into his arms and hold them close and whisper that he loved them very much as small hearts beat against him and smaller lips pressed kisses to his cheeks.

But his people in Japan had just sent him their nuclear crisis plan, and the royal wedding was so very soon…

And then they were gone.

As if they had never been there at all.

And he sent back the crisis plan, nine months now, not twelve and he was about to send another round of very harshly worded texts when one appeared on his screen.

Not about the stability of a foreign economy or the fall of a military dignitary thousands of kilometers away from him. Without any emails or attached files or need for orders and instruction.

Another, secondary text appeared on the screen and he was already running down the hallway, not texting but yelling to have the car started.

The second text still lingered on the screen.

'Don't Panic.

3 Mrs. Hudson'

Today was not a good day.

Today they did not want to hide in small dark places or run through the halls and rooms playing detective.

Today they did not want to let go of each other at all.

It had been a mistake. A split second John wished he could take back.

They thought they could do what the older kids were doing. They thought if they could just get closer, just take a look and watched how they held themselves, how they moved as if they were invincible, as if they were untouchable, dancing instead of just fighting, then they could do it too.

They knew how to stand and to breathe, knew how to tumble without hurting themselves.

But they wanted to be strong. They could be strong.

Be safe.

They just wanted to watch.

To look.

To learn.

Easy as remembering.

They did not know they had come too close.

John felt it before it happened, in his gut, in somewhere without words or thought.

A moment where his heart stopped and it was too late to scream.

And Sherlock went down, he was in the air, off his feet, and then he was on the ground, body reverberating with the secondary impact, too shocked to gasp, the air in his lungs already gone.

A small white body splayed on the mats, black curls falling to the floor.

Words like an echo of gunfire exploded in John, strangling his mind until they swallowed him and there was nothing left.

Trajectories, impact weight, internal organs, nerve clusters, bone density.

Like bullets and shrapnel and hand to hand combat and wounds and internal bleeding and trauma and death and life and instant, emotionless inhuman analysis.

He was not hurt, but he was.

Everyone was around them, like the world had stopped turning, all of the fighting, the warriors turned back into children, untouchable gods reverted into fallible teenagers. Meaningless word rose around them like the incoming tide, rising to a panic pitch, bodies moving around them, endless Korean.

Hands reaching out to touch them but holding back as one voice barked an order John did not even consider.

An order not to touch.

John was on his knees next to him, hands on his face, cupping his cheek, brushing the black curls from his face.

He was okay.

Blue eyes stared up into him as he took his first shuttering painful breath and panic creeped at the edge of his consciousness.

Bruises without a doubt, a fracture of the eighth and ninth ribs possible but unlikely. Hard to breathe. Painful to breathe.

And John knew what it meant to hear Sherlock gasp in the night, to hear him drag in each breath as if it would be his last and wake with a soundless cry and sob without words or tears into his chest in the darkness of their room.

He could see the pain, the panic in Sherlocks eyes as the breath filled his lungs and it stopped and hitched in pain.

John would make all of that go away.

'With me.' John whispered.

He lowered himself until his breath gusted against Sherlock's cheek as he took slow shallow breathes. He wanted to erase the sounds of the world, erase everyone but them, wanted to hide them with his body.

John smiled against Sherlock's skin as the other boy reached up and a small hand tangled with the blond hair at the base of his neck and held him there.

Sherlock did not panic. He did not cry.

Sherlock was always brave.

John leaned back so he could share his smile with him, to show Sherlock how proud he was of him, that of course he knew he would be okay. He kissed his forehead and watched his clear blue eyes as the nightmares failed to swallow him, he watched Sherlock push back the panic and the screams and the men who were not really there.

Sherlock reached out a hand and John let it pull him back down, he let himself fall until their breaths mingled and all he could see was Sherlock and all Sherlock could see was him.

John kissed him again.

Sherlock was brave and they were learning to forget the bad things, but sometimes he just needed John.

Mycroft was not sure what the most disturbing part of the morning had been.

The text was horrific.

His heart had been racing the moment he read it until he rushed inside to find a crowd of children surrounding his boys.

They were lying on the floor together. It was obvious what had happened. An accident. They were in the wrong part of the room, so they had been sneaking somewhere. Trying to do what they had been told was still too advanced for them.

His heart stopped pounding in his chest when he heard not one but two soft voices whispering together.

They were laying so close that Mycroft doubted they could see him at all, John carefully holding himself above Sherlock, Sherlock's hands twisted into Johns hair, not gripping in pain but in the absentminded way of children holding onto something they loved.

The pattern of their speech did not change but they seemed to move in unison, John rolling off to look up at him as Sherlock let go and held an offered hand instead, laying very still on the ground but looking up at him with wide blue eyes that held only the slightest sign of discomfort.

John took a deep breath, filling his chest but his voice came out breathy and childlike. "Extensive bruising. Possible fracture of his eighth rib. No sign of concussion or further injury."

And with that Mycroft heart began pounding again.

The doctor was waiting for them in a safe building nearby by the time they arrived. John was right of course. Sherlock would be fine, just a little banged up, no worse than he had had as an adult or a child for that matter.

Externally they were both doing fine. Sherlock was already trying to pretend that it did not hurt at all, that of course he would be able to attend class tomorrow and John was smiling and playing along with him and pretending that he was tired so Sherlock would sit with him.

Internally Mycroft knew better than to take their smiles at face value. He could see the way it hurt Sherlock to breathe and the way that every once in a while he would wince with something more than pain. He caught the fleeting panic in Johns eyes as he caught a flash of purple skin beneath the collar of his shirt, the way he would take half a step too close to Sherlock and his eyes would dart for the exit, for somewhere to hide.

Three texts had come in during during his preoccupation on his 'opinion' of offering military help to Libya, four 'Immediate crisis's' and one 'impending doom' still lingered in the dim future for the day ahead. A day where ever minute he spent in the oblivion of work his boys would be fighting to keep their sanity.

The boys had finally settled together in their room, they asked for nothing, they did not cry or whimper or demand the basic necessities of a true childhood he had foolishly hoped he could offer.

They never asked Mycroft to make the nightmares go away.

They never asked to feel safe.

He could spend the day on the phone heaped in digitalized information, and they would survive, they would wake up the next morning and if he found the time they would kiss him and let him hold them in his arms.

He could spend the day being as Sherlock had once called him, the smartest man in England, he could utilize these hours to be the silent Alexander of his time and in the darkness just feet away he could let two little boys protect one another, distracting each other as memories from a life they no longer possessed reared up to claim their small bodies and ill equipped child minds.

Three brilliant people living together and simultaneously worlds apart, separate parallel lives.

But today would not be one of those days.

Today they would do more than survive.


	28. Chapter 28

The boys were reluctant to come out of their room, to remove themselves from the soft dark cocoon they had settled into, a place where only the sound of each other's breaths could be heard, where nothing could trigger a dream, a lost memory.

But they trusted him.

They loved him.

So when he called to them they came, two boys wandering from their own darkness, blinking into the light of the hallway as if they were still drifting through existence, teetering on the edge of two worlds and firmly planted in neither.

It was foolish, an indulgent fantasy and a trick of an overworked mind but it seemed to Mycroft that if he dared to touch them they would not really be there at all. His out stretched hand would pass through the empty air and they would never have been there at all.

The blinds and curtains in the living room had been drawn leaving the resplendent golden room in a murky haze, like old-time theatres lit by candlelight, like horse drawn carriages and cobblestone roads.

The couch, perfect and ornate as a museum piece, had been pushed back against the wall and in its wake as if they had been hiding there all along lay bundles of soft plush blankets, heaps of pillows like an incredible disaster of a child's sleepover, a disaster like the freedom of children who do not yet think in folds and perfect wrinkleless existences where everything is even and meticulous.

The boys hesitated, proof of how far they had gone, how far they had wandered away from him.

Could they even hear him?

When they closed their eyes, when they blinked, could they remember this world at all?

Mycroft kicked off his shoes, not untied, not removed, but toed them off and let them lay where they fell, sideways and misused. He could feel careful eyes burning into him, evaluating every motion, the way every muscle was held, the ease or hesitance in the way he moved.

He shrugged off his jacket leaving only his white shirt and tie, awkward and bright in the dim room, like the soft light had only been waiting for the moment to latch onto him.

The jacket fell to the ground in a heap and his shirt was wrinkled and pulled up just a little on the left and as he sat down in the mess of pillows and blankets it was not awkward. It was perhaps not the way a father would call to his child to come to him but in the way of the big brother. A silent gesture, a shared smile.

Like the most unlikely twins in existence, like darkness and light, they came hand in hand. John smiling just a little and Sherlock carefully watching everything, absorbing and wanting so much to trust but not being able to let go when the memories clawed at his mind.

When he held out his arms to them, open and foolish and letting them choose weather or not to trample his olive branch, putting more of himself on the line that he would have with any military insurgency or plan to save the world, they seemed to stumble back into this reality.

When they reached out and small hands touched his open palms, when small bodies curled against him, with him in a tumble of pillows in a faded gilded world they remembered who they were, they regained their place in the world.

They tossed and turned and fought with pillows and tangled in blankets and elbows fell into holes where the hardwood floor alone lay beneath them until they lay together as if it were Mycroft who had been transformed.

Three little boys trading secrets without words, laying together as if they had forgotten who's limb belonged to whom.

Retrieving the remote control from the settee became a game of thrown blankets dragging across the floor and limbs pinned down by artificial laziness.

It was John who finally, laughingly, extracted himself from the mess and captured the controller like a concurring hero while Mycroft and Sherlock exchanged glances of silent lazy victory, a secret plan all along working in perfection under their unspoken brilliance.

The movies started easily, like flowing water instead of the forced way in which Mycroft had chosen them before with intense and worrisome care.

Their conquering hero, their white night with the glistening blond hair and the Remote of Power was given the first choice of movies, Sherlock's smile almost like silent laughter as John wielded the remote as he imagined a Knight of the round table might have done before he was tumbled back into their warped embrace.

Mycroft expected them to pick up on the more mature themes, he expected the brilliance he had come to know, but it was the laughter that shocked him.

They laughed at the silly childish things, they giggled at faces meant to be absurd the way any five year old in the world might do, they laughed at the complicated, they laughed at word play which a child twice their age would stumble over, they laughed at nuances Sherlock as an adult might have scoffed at as his peers in age if not intelligence let the moment pass them by unnoticed.

And because he was one of them, a tangle of limbs and heartbeats and breathes and blankets, he felt it too, the laughter building somewhere deep that he had all but forgotten existed, and he laughed too.

But this was not meant merely to pull them from their inflicted melancholy or even to prove that he knew his boys better than Harry Watson with her icecream and easy laughter.

This was a test.

The movie had John from its first nearly unspoken ' I love you'.

The Princess Bride had been an easy choice after hours of careful deliberation, John, enigmatic child that he was, plucked it from the pile without a word of explanation, just a smile as he wielded his remote sword.

Perhaps it was the secret language between the two leads almost before the movie had begun, or maybe it was the duality of two simultaneous existences, each seemingly real in its own turn. The child tucked safely into bed as his grandfather reads a story, the swords and death and separation in another world, but John was enraptured.

At first Mycroft imagined as he watched the little blond that he was, as all children do, imagining himself as the lead, as the daring hero dashing through. That maybe it was nothing more than simple childish pleasure that drew him into the embrace of the film.

But he grew still and quiet when another child would have ignored the emotional repercussions, would have failed to understand and continued in a safe swell of bravado. Mycroft wanted to pull him into his arms so that he was against his chest and whisper that the character was not really dead, that he would be alright.

But John had not imagined himself as the hero at all. His tears were silent save for a soft sniffle as he laid his head in Sherlock's lap and let other boy brush away his tears without shame.

John had been the princess all along. The one with the unknown background, the one left waiting, only able to hear stories but unable to help when the injuries were already partially healed.

It was not that John needed to be saved.

It was that to him, Sherlock been the hero all along.

They were warm and sweet in the blue white glow of the television screen, the mood of the movie pressing itself upon them, a slow silent building happiness that stretched into the time beyond the frame of the movie.

He never wanted to move.

It was a surprise to all of them when it was Sherlock who got up, carefully picking his way to the stack of movies and lowering himself onto the ground with the light caution that knows pain in one form or another would be inevitable for a long time.

He deliberated silently as John watched him upside down, sprawled on his back letting his head tip off a stack of lopsided pillows not to make anyone laugh but as if he were so deep in contemplation that he had not noticed the way he sat at all, bit simply moved unconsciously to keep Sherlock in his gaze.

Mycroft untangled himself from their cocoon, careful not to dislodge John's easy sprawl. He was hesitant to walk away, to stand, as if it would betray him for the adult he was and he would break this strange spell and he would once more be the brother looking in. Instead he shuffled on his knees, not a crawl but an extended reach, the bag sitting abandoned on the floor behind them.

Crawling back to John he threw the packages on the floor as if they did not matter, as if it were of no consequence to him if the boys ate at all. Some of the bags were familiar but far away, sweets from his own childhood, sweets that on the rare trip home he would have shared with his tiny baby brother.

The screen flicked to life with previews and Sherlock made his careful way back to them, sitting against the pillows tenderly, upright and attentive as if to see if he had chosen correctly. John looked at the candies fleetingly but turned away from the television to watch Sherlock in his unabashed manner.

The bag crackled as he opened it drawing two sets of eyes onto himself. He refused to acknowledge his audience, carelessly opening the bag and silently praying that one of the few wasted afternoons of his youth had not been utterly forgotten.

It should have been easy. The toss of the Jelly Baby into the air, the force, the trajectory, the exact place and time to open his mouth to catch it as it descended back towards them from its short flight. The victory of the small candy landing on his tongue should not have merited the sense of accomplishment it did but it was all he could do not to utter a cry of victor.

He wanted to play it off as if it was nothing, the legacy of the older brother, like blowing bubbles with gum, like learning to whistle.

He failed utterly. He was not cool or restrained. He was ecstatic that it worked and they knew it.

Sherlock watched his complete failure at being the cool older brother, there were a million things to laugh at, to mock, or he could ignore it completely, wait for the movie to start and let the moment fade into oblivion.

But Mycroft was one of them.

His victory was theirs.

And maybe…it was still a little bit cool despite himself. Just a little enviable.

Sherlock carefully picked a candy from the bag and threw it into the air, scowling when it missed and hit his cheek. Again he searched carefully through the bag, collecting several this time and keeping them in the palm of his hand.

John and Mycroft realized it at the same moment. They had imagined Sherlock was being careful, that he did not want to touch the candy, did not want to be seen touching it.

He was in fact touching all of them, pushing the undesirable colors out of the way until he had taken only fire-engine cherry red.

Red Jelly Babies fell out of the sky, falling against Sherlock's upturned face.

John took a rouge handful, all colors tossed into the air, it was only a moment before with a started gasp of surprise, he found a candy had hit its mark. Laughter mixing with candy and becoming something brilliant.

The preview played to a chorus of surprised exclamations and muttered curses, images played to the fallen bodies of dozens of colorful candies. New bags were opened, torn plastic ripping down the sides to spill bright candies over the floor and the foods that had been nothing but toys became…well, edible toys.

Mycroft threw another careful piece into the air, wanting to keep his record intact, wanting to maintain a little of that cool mystique.

He closed his eyes for added effect, judging where it would be, knowing where it would be, leaning his head back.

But then it never came.

The candy did not hit him unpleasantly in the face or lodge itself unfortunately down his throat.

There was an honest moment of pure confusion until he heard it in his ear. The sound of giggling.

Sherlock was standing next to him, their faces level, his little hand clutching the candy he had caught from the air. He waited until Mycroft caught his eye and giggled once more rebelliously, holding out the candy to as if to offer it back before popping it into his own mouth with a grin.

"Look" He said through half chewed red candy, smirk still twisting his cherub lips. "I save you the green ones." A little hand offered him a mass of slightly smushed green candies, Mycroft took one and under the intense gaze of the five year old and put one into his mouth.

Sherlock smiled.

"Booger flavored."

Mycroft swallowed his decidedly lime flavored candy but Sherlock was already laughing at his own joke, delighted how well it had worked out, his eyes shinning with the mirth of a five year old boy.

Mycroft made a show of swallowing again and wiped his hand ungentlemanly against his lips, leaving a scowl of distaste as false as the laughter beneath it was real.

Sherlock was watching him as if he were the greatest thing he had ever seen, as if the day began and ended with him, eyes wide so as not to miss a single thing.

Mycroft growled and pulled the boy gently into his arms, mindful of his injuries, of the slightest hint of a memory, of the flinch of the recognizable, but all he did was laugh.

"Cheeky!" He pinned the little boy in his arms and pressed a loud kiss to his cheek which Sherlock pretended to fight but only made him giggle more. Another kiss to his hair, his nose, to blue eyes which sparkled.

"John!" Sherlock cried between laughter, and it was Johns turn to be the hero.

Little arms encircled Mycroft's neck from behind and a blond head bobbed into view as a kiss was pressed to his cheek, loud and wet and ending with a triumphant 'Ha!'

Mycroft stopped as peal of helpless laughter captured him in its grip. John was climbing ontop of him, into his arms, wet baby kisses messily pressed to his cheeks. And when it stopped, when the laughter had subsided two boys had settled in his arms, Sherlock laying over them both, his curly hair falling in a mess over Johns lap, candies scattered everywhere like colorful beacons in their self-imposed dusk he knew that he would give the world not to move from this place.

One text and an exuberant sigh later Mrs. Hudson came into the room with her hands planted on her hips saying nothing as she swept the remote off of the abandoned couch and tossed it into Mycroft's waiting hands only a few feet away. The three boys on the floor watched her silently, three pairs of eyes waiting to see her mouth dip in annoyance or curve in amusement as she berated in her motherly tone that they were utterly helpless without her. Mycroft thought he saw something flicker in her eyes as she examined them, the mess of candies and pillows and blankets and the stack of movies in a crooked tower at the foot of the screen but she was an expert at subterfuge, her face betrayed nothing but perhaps lingered too long on Sherlock's lounging form.

The movie played for a few minutes, the lulls in scripted words leaving places for the sound of their soft breaths to echo the feel of the bodies tangled against him, a breath matching the rise of a chest. They had barely begun to learn the characters when a sliver of light invaded their movie dusk and Mrs. Hudson slipped unobtrusively into their darkness, a tray of sandwiches in her white hands.

She went to set the tray onto the table, paused as if reconsidering, and then set the lot on the floor bathed in the blue glow of the screen. Mycroft could see one sandwich devoid of crusts, one cut into perfect simple triangles and one which looked suspiciously infused with nutritional additives and cardboard flavoring.

In the light of the dim room she seemed to pull all of the light into herself, lighting the smile she let drift onto her face.

"Three of you deserve one another-" she mumbled shaking her head and turning to leave. "Just lucky I love you."

Light had spilled back into the room from the hallway heralding her exit when John turned so he could see her and smiled.

"As you wish."


	29. Chapter 29

Sherlock stretched out his fingers in the darkness and flicked the bathroom light on, blinking against sudden glare. The door closed with a soft internal click as Sherlock moved to capture any light which might try to leak out into the bedroom beyond.

John needed his sleep.

He could have stayed in bed, he could have watched the time march slowly past on the clock and wait for the sun to finally rise and start the day. But John would know, he always knew. Sherlock was not sure if it was his breathing or if it was the way he moved, he tried to keep his breath deep and even, he tried to stay still and not squirm but if he was awake, if he couldn't sleep, John always woke up too.

He tried different experiments, different hypothesis, but all of his tests ended the same. It was like John had an extra sense. Sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste and _Sherlock_. No matter what he did blue eyes would blink open and refuse to close so long as he knew Sherlock couldn't sleep.

Tonight John needed to sleep.

John had already spent the entire day watching over him, the least Sherlock could do in return was make sure he could rest now.

Sherlock sat on the closed toilet and prodded his naked stomach, Batman sleep shirt rucked up under his chin. It was still flat, maybe slightly concave, but he could feel the stretch of food, could still taste it on his tongue even though he had brushed away the remnants. He had not been hungry, of course, but they had looked so happy. Mycroft and John. John watching and so proud and _smiling._

John was good like that. John made him want to be good.

Sherlock gave up prodding the pale unblemished skin of his stretched stomach and gingerly poked the spread of black and blue which engulfed the upper portion of his chest and spread out over his shoulder and ribs like water.

It hurt, but he stayed away from where heat radiated from the injury, away from where it ached, just prodding the spread of blood black and blue where it faded to yellow and green at the edges.

He didn't mind really.

He was strong.

Another second, another few steps and it would have been John instead of him.

John falling backward, John crying out in pain, John breaking.

And that would have been bad.

It would have been horrible.

It is unspeakable when John gets hurt. Not just because he should have done better, should have protected him and if he was hurt it meant he had failed.

Injuries did more than hurt John.

They terrified him.

They made the dreams come.

John hates when Sherlock gets hurt, he becomes quiet and hold his hand so tight it feels like maybe John can feel the pain too, but it isn't the same.

When John gets hurt, it is like drowning. It is like not breathing, like all the good things in the Universe, all the things that make it okay, Nana and Mycroft and _him_, it is like they were never existed at all.

Like John cannot see them.

And no matter what he does or says or screams, Sherlock cannot reach him.

Like John can dissolve. Like he can disappear so seamlessly that some people do not even know he is gone, but Sherlock knows. He knows when John is vanished and the hand he is holding is _nothing_, a doll left where his John should be. He is touchable and warm and human and real, and you do not have to blink for it to happen but if you could break him open, tear him apart in your hands, he would be the hollow space in the bodies of old toys. Dead air and crumbling plastic.

_Nothing_.

Injuries are the only things John ever keeps secret from him.

A scrape, a bruise, anything visible, anything that should be kissed better or fussed over, John hides as if it is a terrible secret. Like it is wrong.

Like it is his fault.

John lets him see when they are alone, when they are locked away in the semidarkness of their room and Sherlock demands to see or else he will not sleep, will not eat. When he needs to know that John is okay even though logically he _knows_ that it is just a cut, just a scrape…

But Nana can never see, Mycroft can never see. Not even when Sherlock asks, when he pleads because it looks inflamed and angry and red.

But what if one day it was bad?

What if one day they _needed_ to look?

What if something happened that Sherlock could not fix?

What if he needed to protect John, what if he needs to be strong and brilliant and good and he _fails_?

What would happen when they forced him, to help him, and never knew that John was dissolving?

Sherlock put his hand over his stomach again, feeling the stretch of food beneath his palm.

Healthy. Good.

John is always fixing him, watching over him, making him good. John knows how to make him better.

Sherlock would fix John too.

Mycroft turned off the alarm clock which informed him in its hideously honest way that he had three more hours of rest available to him. As if sleep was truly as simple as that.

The tiles on the bathroom floor were cool, the room holding its reservoir of night air, an unconscious balm on his sleepless body. He switched on the light and let it wash over him, yellow white light bleeding through his closed eyelids.

If he was going to be awake he might as well do so fully dressed.

Mycroft was never one to let ideas haunt him; there was no use in lingering over the impossible or letting emotion stand in the way of solution.

But of course his boys, as always, were the exception to the otherwise stalwart rule; their complications following him into his almost rest.

He did not want them to grow up. The idea of pushing them back into adulthood or forcing their education onto them preemptively was…repulsive.

He wanted them to be happy this time. He wanted a childhood they could reminisce about and smile at the memory of. A life they could be glad to have lived.

But he was holding them back.

Two isolated geniuses locked away in their tower, never interacting with more than a handful of others, never experiencing the world as normal children because of course they were extraordinary and nothing approaching normal.

But how could he thrust them into more, into education and society and everything they would need to survive life without knowing how they would fair? Without knowing if they could interact with others? Without knowing if they could pass as normal when they were anything but?

It seemed like a simple test, to take them out, to watch them interact, to watch them thrive or fail where he could be there to catch them if they should fall. Harry did it all the time, treated them as if they were little boys, as if no matter what they did they would come out alright, the fleeting consequences of childhood, a real childhood.

Simple really, to take them out to a meal as if they were any other family.

Mycroft gave one reproachful glare to his bed and carried on in the pre-morning darkness to find his first cup of strong tea.

After all, there were only 137 separate and plausible ways this could go wrong before Sherlock uttered his first bleary eyed hello and conceded that pants might be necessary for a trip outside.

The boys went out with Mycroft, of course. They went to museums and got to look behind all of the locked doors and see restorations in progress and hidden collections and pieces that no one ever got to see but that Sherlock could _touch_. They visited ruins and churches and Mycroft explained the history and the architecture and John stayed close, his small hand wrapping around two of Mycroft fingers as they walked or holding onto the edge of a coat sleeve so that if he had any questions or if he wanted to hear the story again all he had to do was tug- just a little.

When Mycroft took them out they were bound to do something grand and amazing, the kind of adventures other little boys could only dream about, if they had the imagination necessary to conjure such astounding things.

So when Mycroft promised that morning when two little boys wandered into his study, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes and clutching the orange blanket which trailed behind them like a beacon telling him that the night had been for them, difficult, that he was going to take them out, there was a moment of apprehension he could not voice.

Would he disappoint them to only take them to eat and to wander the city a bit on their own? Would John still want to hold his hand? Would Sherlock still whisper discoveries in his ear as if they were secret and divine?

John was pouting; a nightmare rather than memories then had haunted his restless sleep. Mycroft wondered what had kept Sherlock from waking him as he normally did on such occasions.

Sherlock closed the door behind them, John tended to fall between memories and old habits when he was tired, like his mind had not fully woken to the proper reality yet. He waited for the click if the door lock and his shoulders relaxed, slumping into the safety they both knew he felt. John slumped over to where Mycroft sat and very much like the small child he resembled, scrambled into Mycroft's lap, curling into his arms and closing his eyes, small fist rising to curl into Mycroft's perfect shirt, linen crinkling beneath his fingers.

"Where are we going?" Sherlock seemed unperturbed by John actions, only walking closer, pulling out the drawers of Mycroft's antique desk and using them as steps to sit himself on top of the desk so that his legs brushed Johns body as they dangled, his hand reaching out mindlessly to tangle in the blond strands as his eyes wandered over Mycroft's papers, top secret documents concerning at least four countries and one impending war.

Mycroft coughed in slight reprimand at the blatant disregard for not only his property but for the papers Sherlock knew he was supposed to leave alone. The boy smiled, a small private thing accompanied by a slight shrug as if to say 'Afghanistan again huh?' and waited for a reply to his question.

Mycroft could see why Sherlock had not woken John now. Sherlock had not been in bed at all, save for perhaps the few minutes before John woke.

Again Mycroft felt the old emotions sweep through him as familiar blue eyes stared unblinkingly into him, sleep deprived and holding that wordless spark of untested hypothesis.

It was an emotion that was more memory than it was relevant and real to the child sitting in front of him. Something he should be able to tamp down and separate utterly from the present.

But he could feel it, the way he felt it when he was telling himself that museums and galleries were simply the proper places to take his boys.

That gut deep feeling, the knowledge, that Sherlock would rather be any place on earth than with him. That if he brought work, brought information to occupy every moment they spent together he could steal a few precious moments, but never, never just to be with him.

"To lunch," His voice did not shake. "Perhaps walk around for a bit if you are up to it."

He did not betray the way he was waiting for the rejection or at best, disappointment.

Sherlock nodded, not as if he were disappointed or upset or bored or all of the other things Mycroft's betraying subconscious were searching for, but as if he had taken the data and found it acceptable, turning away and back to the papers, idly playing with them as if he could not feel Mycroft's anxiety raking over him. Mycroft closed his arms around John and shifted his slight weight in his lap just to feel him curl closer.

John had fallen asleep in his arms, the smile on his lips half hidden against his own chest.

"Mycroft." A bare foot prodded his thigh to get his attention. Sherlock's curls bounced as he looked up from the paper he was holding with the word CONFIDENTIAL stamped across its manila folder.

"When do I get to run a country?"

It was a small restaurant, unassuming, and only a handful of families were seated in the booths lining the walls, small children cooing at one another from highchairs blocking the aisles like dogs barking their greetings at each other over fences and yards. The wait staff was predominantly young, some working their way through university, others decidedly not. The nighttime crowd would have been different, tables lit with candles and couples imagining that they see love in each other's eyes, the dim lighting making their pupils blow wide in an imitation of unconscious desire.

But for now John is holding his hand and they fit into the scenery like another essential piece to this three dimensional puzzle, Sherlock marching a step ahead of them, oddly in sync with his surroundings and the children emoting from their tables all around them.

Mrs. Hudson thought herself quite clever when she recommended this place, it was the way she smiled, the way her voice was just the side of too cheerful, purposeful tells that she used when she wanted you to know her secret but thought that words would be too indelicate, that her joy would ruin it.

Of course Mycroft knew this place before she had ever said a word or smiled that smile, mentioning how often they had gone as adults together, how often they would come home with a takeout box and the remains would be left on the table when they ran out the door, two forks poking out at odd angles.

He had CCTV footage from the very first day they spent together here, a camera peering into the table by the window, a candle lighting their faces in soft shadows and light.

Sherlock walked up to the young woman in charge of seating, early twenties, recently engaged but they will push up the wedding as soon as she finds out she is pregnant, family values and all. Mycroft expects wide eyes, perhaps a loud declaration of her pregnancy or a demand for the table he prefers but instead Sherlock ducks his head shyly, peering up at her through what Mycroft knows from experience are almost absurdly long black eyelashes. John is holding on tighter to his hand but the woman is already squatting to the floor, making the soft cooing words that people make to small frightened animals and meek children. Mycroft is reminded suddenly of cooing to a small, ferocious, bear.

Mycroft steps forward, ideas half formed in his mind of saving the young woman but his vantage point improves as he moves. Sherlock is smiling at her, his entire demeanor one of coy sweetness. He points to a table, hesitantly, shyly, and she spends the next five minutes cleaning the table by the window while Sherlock asks her eighty points of interest he thought of the second he walked into the establishment.

John watches silently, he holds on to Mycroft's hand and watches with curiosity and something that might be begrudging amusement. Sherlock waves them over when the table is clean, exasperated motions, and John does not run to him as Mycroft thought he would. John is slow and calm; he grips Mycroft tighter and stays by his side as they walk.

Whatever Sherlock is up to he knows exactly what he is doing.

And more worryingly, this time John does not share this knowledge.


	30. Chapter 30

They are giving him faces. Not bad faces. Not faces that mean pain or anguish or fear or he would stop.

They are watching him, bemused and interested. Mycroft looks…wary, like he might smile if the experiment turns out to be to his liking but is prepared to frown and adopt the sternness he chooses for sheets of paper and endless phone messages. John, John is watching him like he is laying everything on his trust of him, he is watching him with wide eyes that are not hurt but might be. He is trying to explain to himself that it will be alright, normally a job Sherlock would undertake, not with words but with a look, or by reaching out and touching him, by pressing their foreheads together and letting him understand. John is trying not to wonder why he was not told what Sherlock was doing, why he finds himself alone and lost in this.

Sherlock doesn't like that look even if it means John trusts him.

He doesn't like feeling alone.

But John will understand soon.

He is doing this for him.

He still wishes he could have explained. He wants to reach out and pull him closer, wants to feel him in his arms, but he doesn't. It would ruin everything.

He sits at the table and tries to smile in a way that evokes trust. John's face twists like he is trying to understand and then as if he might laugh.

Sherlock makes a mental note to work on his 'trust me' face.

The waitress comes over and she is almost too easy. She is already smiling at him, she comments on his 'pretty hair' and asks if John and he are twins. Mycroft flinches. Not a flinch as much as a blink, a pause, a fraction of a heartbeat but his smile is forced and painful to behold.

Sherlock makes a note to look it up later.

The girl does not notice. Her smile is big and simple and Sherlock wonders what it must feel like. That simple happiness. A mind where the looks of a stranger could make you feel joy.

Sherlock smiles at her. The one he practiced all night. He fists his hand into the hem of his shirt and twists it coyly as if in distraction and lets his face go slightly red as if her compliment was enough to make him blush.

Her smile grows larger.

By the time the drinks hit the table other wait staff is passing the table, glancing at them, sending them smiles. Some make silly faces with tongues and rolled eyes and Sherlock wishes it was a booth. He wishes he were closer to John, wants to feel the silent laughter in his chest as these adults do these bizarre things, wants it to be a secret amusement shared between them. Them against the world.

He wants to lean over and whisper in his ear because John loved that story when Mycroft sat and read it to them. He wanted the words over and over so Sherlock learned them for him.

'_Lord what fools these mortals be.'_

He wants to make John smiles the way they smile.

He orders food because Mycroft is trying to teach them to be sociable, because he is worried about this, about taking them out, just the three of them. It was written into every fiber of his being that morning, his…hesitance. Worried about something, something Sherlock cannot pin down. But Mycroft always worries about them. It is not uncommon. Most times he can pin it down, make it better, make him stop frowning, make that fake smile go away. But not today.

Mycroft is not like other people. He is more…complex.

So Sherlock is good.

Tries to be good.

Sometimes it is hard to tell what he is supposed to do but this must be close. Playing like this, it is working.

He smiles at the girl and trips over his words on purpose. _'s-ghetti please'_. She smiles at him while he plays with his shirt, smiles until he pulls the collar up to his mouth and bites at it for a moment as he has seen other children do. The way it stretches the material, the way it falls in a deep wet semicircle over their chests.

She is asking something about the food, butter or marinara, her smiling green eyes still fixed on him when he lets the material fall, when he tugs at the hem and her painted mouth falls open silently. John stiffens from across the table like he has been electrified and if Sherlock did not know better, if he did not know John, as if he might cry out.

He can feel their eyes, all of them, Mycroft and John and the girl boring holes into the blackened skin of his chest, each on the edge of their own abyss of specific panic.

He smiles as if he does not notice. Beaming. He laces his hands into the hem of his shirt, pulling it another inch down and looks up at her and inquires very, very sweetly.

"Do you have cookies?"

She leaves without asking and that is okay, he knows she is going to tell the others.

They circle like sharks, past the table, the rumor mill of an enclosed society at work. Within two minutes the wait staff all know, another three and the cooks and owner will wish they could circle by to look for themselves.

John is handling it well.

Normally John does not feel the need to hide Sherlock's battle wounds the way he would hide his own. That panic does not come when Sherlock displays a scraped knee, when bruises colour his pale arms but this is something new, these injuries look as bad as they feel.

Crushing injuries.

Human inflicted injuries.

These wounds trigger something that makes John want to hide him away and let no one close enough to see them and never, ever, close enough to touch them. Sherlock knows, he understands.

When John had pulled out of his arms that morning and barely awake pulled a shirt with a high collar and half sleeves and silently handed it to him with a gravity that begged not to be demanded aloud Sherlock knew that now more than ever he had to do this. This could hurt. This could fail.

This could work.

John was evaluating every person who walked by them now, resolutely not looking at Sherlock, eyes hard and unblinking as they took apart each person who came their way. Some foolish girls still tried to smile at them, tried to pull a face while they thought Mycroft was not looking just to make them laugh, make them smile, but John was untouchable. He shocked them now as much as Sherlock had with his destroyed skin. He was piercing, distant, so hard and painful that their animated faces dropped in shock, as if they had opened a door expecting a child and had found themselves face to face with a snarling wolf.

The frequency of the walk byes were dropping. This would never do.

It was simple to calculate, easier to accomplish. John was not watching him and Mycroft would not stop him, he knew that this was important. The glass was cold, the milk colder as it soaked into his shirt and splashed against his skin but no one even knew until the glass shattered into a thousand glittering pieces on the floor.

John jumped. He forgot his calm, his anger and that anyone else had ever existed at all, let alone spared them the time or effort of thought or a watchful gaze. He was standing, splashing in milk, letting it soak into his shoes, crunching glass carelessly beneath his feet as he reached out to touch.

Sherlock waited, he let John grab fistfuls of his wet shirt and assure himself that he was unharmed, he waited until the silence was deafening and more eyes peered out of the dark corners of the establishment than another person might have thought existed at all and then, in the silence, he began to cry.

His sobs were soft and broken by hiccups which rocked his body and made his ribs ache. Tears wet his eyelashes and spilled down his pale cheeks leaving salty trails like acid on his dry face, falling into his wet shirt and then, when the stunned silence had John leaning against him, into blond hair.

It took no more than 30 seconds before two of the women were at his side, one equipped with a broom and the other with nothing more than a smile and a soft voice that sounded almost a bit like Grand-mère if he could have forgotten the soothing words and let the tone wash over him. He hiccupped painfully until John, brilliant John, climbed up onto his chair beside him, arms curling unobtrusively around his waist, waiting for whatever this was to end. Sherlock could feel the shock in the breath against his neck, feel Johns heart hammering and pressed against his own back. He did not need the soft, whispered _'Sherlock…'_

But it was sweet and it was warm and it was all of the reasons he had to do this.

A stack of napkins came a moment later, the woman from the door abandoning her post and baring not only that but a fresh cup of milk and a smiled which was not dimmed by the cliché she offered.

Sherlock sniffed. His face was flushed and his lips red with sorrow, when he took one of the napkins and looked up at the small crowd of adults with his eyelashes clumping together with tears he knew that every eye was on him, he could feel it in the way John held him, one small hand lightly holding his shirt in place.

John let go when Sherlock's hand covered his. Even now, with his heart pounding and his breath growing shallow and quick on the back of his neck John deferred his trust to him.

It didn't hurt to have them watch this, but the silence, the cold gasps, were familiar in a way that he could not place.

A word rose unbidden.

_Freak _

They were silent as Sherlock wiped the worst of the liquid from his bared chest, the shirt damp and uncomfortable where he had crushed it under his chin, milk slipping further down as it escaped the cloth. Pure white streams against garish black. John was frozen. Sherlock could feel his eyes pressed into his neck, closed against the world, he was silent now, his breathing strange and hindered and unnatural, the breathing of those trying not to exist.

He did not mind the injuries, the way they stared at him and wondered How? Why? It was good, right. It was going to show John that it is okay to be hurt.

But he could hear it escalating in his mind.

Freak.

Freak.

Freak.

He pushed it back. Down. It didn't matter. This mattered.

He smiled at them.

Mycroft was speaking, a few short words thanks or apologies or both. He couldn't hear the words over the voices in his mind. The eyes that were glaring but did not exist here and Sherlock found himself swept up into strong arms; found his wet t-shirt pressed against an expensive suit, his face buried in Mycroft's chest as John was pulled up against him. As Johns cheek pressed against his own and they were breathing Mycroft and each other and they were moving and the voices didn't matter because John was holding on so tight…

"Shh" Mycroft breathed into his hair as cool air enveloped them, the clean glimmering tiles of the empty bathroom, small, barely big enough to fit the three of them.

So small every foot was filled with just them. Good.

The voices died.

The glaring cruel eyes disappeared from his mind as if they had never been there at all.

Sherlock let himself be set down on the small counter against the aging glass of flowers, the leaves pressing into his back and crumbling to pieces against his skin.

Mycroft gently pulled his shirt off of his body, threading his compliant limbs through the holes, keeping the wet material from his face. He was silent as he worked, crushing the liquid from the shirt and then dabbing it with towels, his motions soothing and deliberate.

John was holding onto him, one small hand twirled around his wrist, not his hand. A hand could let go. He was looking for ways onto the counter, considering climbing the toilet, clambering up Mycroft, but there wasn't time for that.

It would be uncomfortable, there was no room for both of them up here but Sherlock wished John would climb up and they would have to tangle their limbs and hold on tight just stay upright.

John was not talking, he was not broken or haunted, the words had not been stolen from him or ripped from his throat. His words had been stilled. A conscious effort. He was not pleased with Sherlock.

Sherlock wondered if John felt as abandoned as he felt desolate.

Being so close, Johns hand on the skin of his wrist, he wanted more. He wanted the silent communication. He wanted to whisper to him all of the things that jumped to his mind, he wanted to evaluate people's reactions just to hear John laugh. He wanted to tell him about the voices.

He had never heard it before. It was not the man. Not one voice, but dozens.

Cruel.

Taunting.

Freak.

Was he a freak?

What was a freak?

But he could not ask just as John would not speak to him. They were mid experiment and Sherlock had chosen to go about it alone, to cut free the other half of himself because it was the only way it would work.

Mycroft cupped his face in his large hands, warm and lightly calloused, tilting his face upwards until he could look down into his eyes, until he erased all of Sherlock's thoughts with his gaze.

"Do you want to go back and finish?" He would have smiled if the muscles had not felt paralyzed by his earlier tears. Mycroft knew.

Mycroft always knew.

Sherlock nodded, expecting the still damp shirt but not the kiss as it was pressed to his forehead and then, impulsively, his cheek. Large warm fingers brused away the last of his tears before lifting him into his arms.

The food which had come out some time before the milk incident was cooling and unappealing, forkfuls swirled around on the plates from where they had tried to eat congealing into place with butter and cheese.

The people were still swarming, women taking a heavy tray of drinks the long way around just to see them, to offer a little smile or a worried glance to the children who had wormed their way into the consciousness of their microcosm of society.

If nothing else happened John would see how little people act, how you can bear your scars and wounds to the world and no one will even ask, restricted by society and propriety or because they imagine that someone other than themselves has it all worked out. At very least John can see how invisible you can be lost in plain sight.

It wouldn't change anything, not really. But maybe when that one inconceivable moment happened, when there was no choice but to show his wounds to someone, he would remember this and know, at least logically, that he would be okay.

The food congealed under his fork, the milk rising slowly to room temperature.

A plate of thin Italian cookies, each piece broken into shards, into perfect child fistfuls, hit the table as a prelude to the entrance of the man bearing them. The first thing Sherlock sees is the smile, soft and amiable and caring and he does not think immediately 'owner', or 'business man'. His first thought is that this man is someone's grandfather, this man has raised children. He is plump but not too heavy considering modern day standards of obesity, and he stands at the end of the table not like an imposing stranger or with the tentativeness of a visiting guest but as if he is an unmovable object, amiable and sweet and smiling until you decided to force your way impossibly past.

Sherlock looks up at him and the man smiles and gestures at the plate of cookies all the while carrying on a friendly litany. Made them himself, he says, best in London. He smiles and carries on until both John and he take one. Delicate sugar and liquorish fill his mouth, destroying the lingering taste the smell of cooling pasta has imparted on his tongue.

As he talks, as he smiles, his eyes linger on Sherlock's collar, the heavy material slipping low, black skin peering out and Sherlock knows this is what he was waiting for. For this man. For anyone to care.

The man squats to table level so that he is no longer towering over them, his is still smiling but his eyes grow hard as he asks the silly question, the obvious excuse for any other five year old to grasp onto if the truth had needed to be hidden.

"Did you fall, little one?"

Sherlock is ecstatic. The man is pretending the question is nothing even though the weight of it unasked has weighed down every person he has come into contact with; he is pretending he does not have his largest line cook standing by the door in wait. Sherlock beams.

"Wanna see?" Sherlock asks. He thought no one was going to act, that all of this was a wasted effort, inadvertently proving how self-centered people are, how uncaring. He lifts his shirt again and this time he doesn't feel the word, it is silenced as the man tries to hide his shock because Sherlock is so very relieved. He did not want to prove humanity so worthless. He didn't want that to be what John had to believe in.

The man, Angelo he tells them belatedly, laughs as Sherlock gets further into the story, telling it in loud words which make the trip across a room of practicing teenagers a mission of epic grandeur, but he isn't exaggerating, he is sharing. To him, to John, this was how it felt. They were not walking, they were exploring, sneaking into unknown territory.

Sherlock finishes and he feels as though he might explode. He wants to laugh, to reach out and touch the man, to see what the burns on his fingers feel like, he wants to know how many children he has, how many grandchildren, what makes him care.

The man turns to John, silent John, John who has watched the entire interaction without comment or expression and through his smile he asks 'this is what happened?'

And for the first time John smiles, just a little, a sneaking thing that means Sherlock is forgiven, a smile that means when Sherlock reaches out his hand John will still be there to take it.

"Yes." John answers looking not at their new friend, but directly into Sherlock's eyes over plates of food and shattered cookies and droplets of spilled milk. "But much, much braver."


	31. Chapter 31

Life had not been going well.

In fact, life had rarely gone worse and taking into account his- to be polite- messy divorce, that was saying quite a bit.

Nothing had been going right for Detective Inspector Lestrade since Sherlock Holmes had disappeared.

It was not, of course, that that the Inspector was helpless. He had certainly brought in his fair share of culprits in his time- but Sherlock was a case onto himself. He would never let Sherlock hear him say it, god knows how he can fit into his flat with his ego as it is, but sometimes it seems like Sherlock has a way of escaping the trappings and limits of humanity and becomes something else entirely.

He said it to Doctor Watson once, as a warning as much as an admission.

Sherlock Holmes is a great man- and maybe, one day, if we are lucky, he will even be a good one.

Lestrade took another long falsely purposeful step and nearly tripped over a sun faded toy truck half buried in the sand, too lost in thought to notice his own feet. Inattentive to the point of uselessness to whoever had decided to send him here and ruin any chance his day might have had at being productive.

He was doing it again.

Sherlock _is_.

Not Sherlock _was_.

Donovan would have given him one of_ those_ looks had she caught him at it. Again.

It wasn't as if the man were dead.

Probably.

He was just no longer- here.

Lestrade twisted as two children ran past his legs, screaming the joys of youth, oblivious as their game swallowed their perception the way thought had swallowed his own.

All right, so not here per say, not in this no name park looking for god knows what because some self-righteous government official had _decreed_ it, but back at the Yard. At 221B Baker Street.

He had dropped in on Mrs. Hudson a few times over the years- just to check in. She had always been nice during their drugs busts after that first time, offering tea and a story Sherlock would not want shared with the general public. She shared that same look he imagined he had, the look Doctor Watson had seemed to simultaneously overcome and perfect, enamored and engulfed in a way they had never been. A look of We-Are-Fond, But-God-Knows-Why.

The first time she had been on her way out the door. She seemed confused for a second- as if she had forgotten whether she should invite him in for tea while he waits for 'the boys', or ask if he had been reading Doctor Watsons blog. In the end she made some stunted and obviously transparent excuse.

'Must be off dearie! I am scheduled to go pick up…the butter. Yes. The butter.'

He had watched her walk off, an orange safety blanket peeking out of her bag as she made her way down the street.

He called on her again later, calling ahead this time to let her avoid him if it were all too raw.

She smiled and invited him into her flat, keeping up a running litany as she poured his tea and pushed a plate of stale biscuits towards his empty hand.

She was fine she said. Keeping busy. And wasn't it wonderful, the last update John wrote?

Two years almost since they had left without so much as a phone call. Of course she was worried. That is what it meant to care for Sherlock Holmes, it meant to worry. But here she was, brave soul, smiling for him as if Sherlock were upstairs at this moment, safe, where she could reach out and touch him and let all of her fears melt away.

When her phone rang, a funny little chime he would never have chosen for her, she frowned and told him she really must take the call. He stood politely, saying that it was time for him to go anyway and, of course, he could let himself out.

He could not quite hear what she said as she made her way into the back room with a last wave at him and the odd chiming sound of her phone stopped with a voice too muffled to have just been due to the door. It was enough to be curious, but time was short and he was already turning away from the front door, hand searching his pocket for the cool metal of his lock picks as he made his way quietly up familiar stairs.

Two Years.

Two years and she had left the flat exactly as it had been- if a little cleaner than in his memory. The floor had been polished as if Doctor Watson could come home and thank her for it while Sherlock simmered on the settee.

That day he had left 221B Baker Street feeling that at least he was not the only one left bereft in Sherlock's absence.

Poor Mrs. Hudson was obviously more deluded than him.

From abroad Sherlock solved the Yards cases, short answers straight to the point and words formed like a mental eye roll for two years.

And then he stopped.

All communication stopped.

Lestrade was not really surprised; he had been waiting for it if he were honest.

He could imagine it; he did imagine it. Sherlock losing the ability to speak, to function. Loosing every ounce of inhuman restraint, brilliant mind churning so fast not even his body could keep up.

All thanks to Doctor Watson.

Because of John Watson.

He remembers telling Donovan to shut it when she made crude jokes but he always secretly hoped that it was true.

That Sherlock Holmes could love another person, that by whatever infinitesimally small chance in this endless universe that the one person he had ever let in- ever wanted to be with and clung like an orphan to a lost parent- would be the man strong enough to love him back.

He didn't know if he believed it was true.

But he wanted to.

Lazily he scanned the area again, the coffee in his hand unpleasantly hot in the almost sunny weather. The strange sort of day where darkness and light swirl around the world but never mix, illuminating one tree into brilliant verdant emerald and leaving its brethren in shadowed depth, the kind of day most people do not notice at all.

Sherlock would have noticed.

John would have been the only one to say anything about it.

Other than the weather this part of London seemed perfectly mundane, at least on the outside. Children played, mothers and nannies sat on benches watching their screaming charges.

There was a bit of woods next to the park, some sort of conservation effort more than likely, but the children stayed away from the tree line. The mothers had scolded them away from the rocky path that led to the small cliff that look over the park like a dark grey sentry. Heaven forbid one of them had to follow their child off of the tarmac.

This was. Undoubtedly. The most embarrassing point in his lengthy and often humiliatingly humbling career.

He was on the lookout for 'strange behavior'. There had been a slight hinting towards child abductors or a white slave trade but Lestrade honestly doubted it. Why put a homicide detective on the case as an uniformed look out?

No, this was some rich bighead thinking his tot needed the 'best man' in the yard, the 'best team'.

He was the most obvious choice for 'best available high-ranking Yarder' now that his solved homicide rate was on par with what would be normal for humans but post-Sherlock looked like a lobotomy.

At least he was doing better than Anderson.

It had been Sherlock's birthday, a fact that he would not let on to anyone that he knew, when three liquefied bodies were sent to the station.

It took two weeks for Anderson to figure out the 'victims' had been pigs.

That was two months ago and Anderson still smelled of liquefied sick.

Lestrade tried to pick them out, the kid who had inadvertently become the low point in his career.

There were a lot of well-dressed nannies, an au pair or two and mothers who had obviously not paid for those lips themselves.

Most of the adults were sitting on benches, bored and apathetic, but one woman was braving the plastic jungle of slides and latters. Plastic rose around her and her charge- her short blond hair bobbing and swinging boyishly as they made their slow way over to the rope bridge. The colour of her hair gave him pause, like his eyes wanted to linger on it, like a word on the tip of his tongue, an idea at the edge of his mind. He wanted her to turn around, to give him a profile, an identifying characteristic, a scar, a tattoo, to kick his mind over from curiosity into set knowledge but she was swallowed by walls of red plastic.

Lestrade closed his eyes and the pictured the park as it had been a few minutes ago- an ability he prided himself on- and acknowledged in a way that had slipped past him before that she had been standing at the vertical metal ladder for at least five minutes. A very small, very determined child then, or one with physical disabilities.

Somewhere, if he was anywhere at all, Sherlock was laughing at him.

He hung on a little tighter to the styrofoam coffee cup, feeling the form warp in his crushing embrace.

One of the nannies was eyeing him strangely.

He would never hear the end of it.

Maybe he would even get the call to check out the possible pedo with the pepper and salt hair and the mangled remains of what had once been a coffee and was now a distinguishing feature of angry red flushing over the suspects/his left hand.

He almost wanted to march up to her and pull out his badge and ask her to please not make this the worst day of his life.

But he had orders.

Instead he walked closer to the bottom of the cliff, the rocky face rising almost twice his height, leaving the alarm zone area of whatever screaming child belonged to her.

Another rush of abstract fondness swept over him as the blond woman swirled into view with a child- neither very young nor obviously physically disabled- carefully encased in her arms, the two of them laughing at the way down the thick red plastic slide so that the sound came to him like an ambulance passing into the distance, growing loud and then silent.

That was the proper way to take your child to the park, to actually interact with them as if you cared instead of tweeting like a flock of aggravated birds as he wandered by, garish hats and purses like strange bent feathers.

The blonde and the child had finally stopped, the slide ending with a twist so that he could see their profile, almost hear, like a fading call warped in his memory to become something too familiar-

'John!' A yell of accomplishment, of joy.

The child's chest hitched mid-exclamation as if in pain. An injury after all.

Lestrade took a step closer, as he watched pale hands rose to press against his chest, her chest?

The clothes were that of a little boy, elastic waiste jeans and a dark blue shirt with the words 'Future King of the World' emblazoned in white block letters but the hair, dark raven and hanging in curls, the facial features, what he had seen of them, where not feminine per say- just too pretty for a bloke.

Possible Kidnapping, reassigning gender roles as cover. Possible injury. Possible abuse.

Maybe this was not going to be the worst day of his career after all.

Lestrade took another few steps, trying to look casual. At the playground the little child was yelling again, but something had crept into the childs voice. The last cry had been on of joy- this was nothing but fear.

A pebble pinged against the back of his leg, biting into tender flesh like a bee sting in a vulnerable area.

And then they came down like rain. Dozens of small grey pebbles shifting against each other as they fell through the air, striking the ground and pinging against the rock face and up against his legs.

He heard it- a breath over the fall of stone rain- small and fragile- something that had it not been, in part, a whimper, he would not have heard it at all.

The coffee exploded against the ground- styrofoam crumpling, steaming coffee like a geyser washing over his legs.

A little boy stood on the precipice of the edge, small blue trainers peeking hanging over empty air, more pebbles crumbing as the world gave way in pieces beneath him. The scratched white of the underside of his shoes.

But it was more than that.

It was worse than that.

He had his back to the cliff.

Something up there with him worse than the fall.

A whimper. A cry. A breath.

Lestrade staggered forward, no longer falling over falling stones or half buried trucks in the sand.

Above the indistinguishable mumbling of voice a voice-deep as an adult male, the words lost to him-but not to the boy.

He never looked.

No hesitation.

He simply- fell.


	32. Chapter 32

He simply- fell.

Never knowing he would be caught.

It was rough- painful.

Arms crashed together.

Legs kicking.

They collapse together into dirt and stone.

A tangle of limbs and pounding heartbeats and a little boy who could not seem to catch his breath as if it had not been knocked out of him but stolen from him.

Behind him- behind them, a woman screamed a familiar name.

He ran his hands quickly over the little boy, his arms and his legs blissfully unbroken.

The crunch of sand and gravel beneath running feet. He hoped one of them had the foresight to call an ambulance.

His voice was rough with adrenalin as he gently tilted the boys chin so he could get a clear view of his face and measure pupil reaction.

"You are alright." He cleared his throat and tried again, it seemed terribly intimate suddenly as the boy let his face be guided up and brown eyes looked up into him. "I have you."

Maybe it was a reaction to the shock, or the lingering effect of whatever words had been swept away on the top of the cliff with no one but this child to hear it- but it seemed that these brown eyes were old enough to be the stars themselves, the ancient rock beneath their feet, blind and omnipotent.

They did not say anything after that.

There was no cry, no warning as a third body crashed gracefully with their tangled limbs, another body falling and climbing into his lap.

Pale hands and raven hair momentarily eclipsed the world.

A thousand words were falling from his mind, a million lost and abandoned thoughts exploding simultaneously in a million flashbulbs of light and then fading into blinding smoke.

One incredible impossibility.

The thoughts were foolish, impossible, stupid. But the two boys nearly in his arms, pressing into his body, they were real. Impossibly real.

No words came from them; he would have caught the smallest whimper, the whisper of a single syllable from his vantage point nearly holding them together, his arms holding them against himself.

But they barely seemed to be breathing.

Pale hands caught the others face, holding him, his lips moving as if to speak but there was nothing. Lips moving over and over in the same silenced pattern.

Please.

Please.

Pleasepleaseplease.

All in silence.

Lips freezing, the pattern shattered and digging into his heart.

The blonde. John. He was not moving. Not responding. He was watching something they could not see.

He could not see them at all.

It was the shock. It was his mind finally jumping track and careening into oblivion after a lifetime of Sherlock Holmes and gruesome murders and wasted lives and personal failures.

But when too familiar brilliant blue eyes welled with tears- in the moment he should have pushed the child away and carried the fallen boy to safety, to the help he so obviously needed, he came back to life in their arms.

He blinked, shaking his head as if the thoughts could be so easily erased, as if nothing at happened at all. As if he were a parent reaching out to a beloved child with a scrapped knee and a broken heart he reached out with cold hands and pulled the other boy against himself, arms folding over him, holding him to his chest, careful and gentle and only betraying his own desperation in the curling of his fingers until they were white knuckled against the blue fabric of the other boys back.

All in his lap.

In his arms.

He could feel them breathing. He could hear it as if sound had returned to them, wet and heavy and deeply human.

A hand tentatively touched messy blond hair and Lestrade looked up at the woman staring down at the two boys with a look of panic and relief fighting for dominance on her face. Her eyes flashed up to him every few seconds as if he might suddenly become something new.

He felt like a voyeur. A blush rose unbidden and hatefully onto his cheeks as if he had been caught purposefully intruding…

He could not get it out of his mind.

The act he had not seen but had imagined a thousand times.

He was watching John Watson fall a thousand miles from home.

He could see Sherlock- the man without a heart, the man with the analytical mind who thought of victims in terms of clues fall to his knees in silent tears.

He could see Sherlock watching his world fall apart.

See him in the darkness of his hiding place cutting the last ties to his life to keep John safe.

He could almost see his face in shadows in the light of the computer where John had spent so many hours.

It was stupid. Impossible.

He pushed the thoughts away by force, leaving them to linger at the edge of his mind, like a constant gnawing hunger threading into his thoughts, tainting everything.

He was seeing ghosts.

A phone chimed behind him, the woman reacted, looking away, reaching into her pocket, but the children in his arms stiffened. Their muscles tensed, holding on harder, fingers digging into skin and cloth so hard it must have hurt but neither flinched.

They were whispering to one another.

He wished he could understand what they were saying.

He wanted to hold them so close that they had no choice but to let him in.

Another flash of memory, irrepressible, rising up his throat.

Sherlock and John crouching over the body in a crime scene and the noise is deafening. Equipment whirring, people talking, the plastic shift of evidence bags, of life trying to make sense of death, and he cannot hear a single word being said but he can see their lips move.

Just a word. One word.

And he could feel their laughter, feel the connection between them as if it were palpable, a line drawn between them through open space.

Raven curls and porcelain skin.

A blond with a rueful smile.

This was not right. Not normal. They should be crying, these little boys, they should be simple, comforted with a few words, a teddy bear, a parent.

He should not be sitting here doing nothing thinking of god damn Sherlock Holmes.

The woman is tapping him on the shoulder and she is too familiar. He knows her face.

She is telling him to carry them, that they have a car ready, that they have to go. Now. She is panicking but she is trying to keep it together. The voice on the phone is giving her directions.

He can't place where he has seen her before, if he should do what she says or take them and hold them close and run and, god help, him he looks at the babies in his arms for guidance.

The dark haired boy is a mess, he has his face buried in the other boys neck like he is trying to remember how to breath and small hands are holding him close, soothing him. The blonde, dirty blond really, with eyes Lestrade does not want to look back into is looking up at them, at him and the woman as if he is deciding the same thing, as if trying to remember who is whom and where all the pieces fit.

A crowd of tentative onlookers starts to form around them.

The boy. The blond. John. He nods, he almost smiles. As if he were the adult, as if he were trying to comfort them. He smiles as if he knows them, not just the woman but him as well.

It is enough for Lestrade. The car is waiting, he can see it across the yard.

He should absolutely not be doing this.

He should ask to see their identification. Insist on an ambulance.

But the crowd is building and the woman from before with the cold eyes is yelling, she is calling him a hero, she clutches her offspring with garish pink nails, she is drawing more people over. Not just women and children but men.

Somewhere out there the man on the hill is watching them.

Getting closer.

Someone worse than a fall.

The boys in his arms are warm and they are clinging to him now, waiting for him to stand. He shifts them, stands, and one of them whimpers, softly, not like a child should do, but as if strangling the sound, as if it is a secret.

The woman is at his side as he walks, wanting to touch, wanting to pull the boys into her arms but they are too big for that. She can't carry both of them curled up together, an unruly illogical mass of precious children.

The car is already on and the door open, he ducks in and the woman in the park is still yelling, her voice shrill as the colour of her nails but the crowd is disappearing. Soon all that will be left of them is a crushed and abandoned styrofoam cup laying damp in the sand and gravel in a sea of overturned rocks.

Lestrade pushes himself across the seats as he balances the boys in his lap, in his arms. The three of them settle against the black leather and tinted windows as the woman closes the door behind her. The driver goes without waiting for command.

He can feel them breathing, the rise and fall of their bodies, his to protect for now. He looks down into them, but they are quiet now and all he can see is dirty blond and raven black and desperate hands fisting into baby clothes. The rest, their eyes, their voices, are just for each other.

There is nothing to do as the world passes him out the window but hold on and hope that he made the right decision.

Even if everything works out. Even if he did the right thing, even if all of the pieces fall together and everything reveals itself and everyone survives it will not be because he was a brilliant detective, a great policeman.

He has based everything off of the silent word of a child who reminded him of someone he had once known a long time ago. He has risked all of their lives on the ghost of a memory.

In the future if anyone asked, and of course they would ask, what the lowest point in his career had been he would remember the day when he took the advice of a five year old over all logic and reason. And the worst-best part? It would not be this day.

There is a man in his nightmares.

A silhouette without a face, a dark outline made of a thousand sounds, with feelings that exist all at once and not at all.

Like drowning.

Like being broken.

Like everything being broken.

And if you love something, if you let it show, if your eyes linger or your heart speeds up-

It breaks.

The crunch of a thousand beloved things beneath the heel of a black shoe.

The crash of a car door slamming.

The tap-tap-tap of expensive shoes leading exactly to where you are.

No matter where you hide.

He has a face.

He has seen it, knows it, but it fades like a dream.

In dreams he never looks the man in the face.

Sometimes, if you were small and quiet and you didn't look him in the eye-

You couldn't _disappear-_

But sometimes you could be_ nothing_.

Wallpaper, a carpet, a porcelain doll.

He tried to disappear. To be nothing.

Sometimes it helped.

Like looking him in the eye meant you were still strong enough to be wrong. Like the hint of his own too blue eyes meant he was healthy enough to learn a _lesson_.

John has a man too.

They didn't talk about it.

What if just hearing it, knowing it, knowing all of the awful things that happen in the darkness meant it could happen to you?

What if the man could hear him even under the blankets, pressed against John?

What if he found out how much he loved him?

What if the man did something terrible to John? What if he knew and all he could do was watch him cry and bite back a scream?

What if he hurt in a place Sherlock could not follow?

What if the man in Johns dreams did the same things the man did to him?

What if none of that happens. What if John finds out what happens to him, what if he learns the things that happen in the dead of night when it does not matter how close John holds him-

And he never looks at him the same way again?

And Sherlock losses him?

He _can't-_

They don't talk about it.

But they scream.

They cry.

They sob in the darkness before they remember they are safe, they sob in the place between worlds because when the man is there you don't cry. You can't cry. Can't scream. And with John holding him tight, when John is sobbing- hiccupping against his cheek he doesn't want to cry, he wants to be strong but sometimes he can't help it.

Sometimes he isn't strong enough.

Sometimes he can take a breath and hold it and think of mundane things, think about tear ducts, he can picture them, the mechanics of a tear and he can stop it from happening, and then John sniffs against him, a hand curls around the back of his neck, into his hair and he can feel him trying not to cry.

And then he can't help it.

Not because he can still feel the blood pooling beneath his skin hot and painful, not because he is still half frozen or drowning and gasping for air- but because maybe John can feel it too and he can't help him.

In the darkness they hold each other and they tell one another that they will be okay, that they will overcome the impossible and they will protect each other. They promise that they will be okay.

And he never asked.

A silhouette on a hill as John stands on the edge.

What did John's man look like?

Maybe if they never said it out loud, if they kept it in shuddering exhalations hidden amongst the tears, maybe if the man was kept behind haunted eyes glistening in half moonlight he would disappear like nightmares of death and destruction.

Like when you dream everyone you love has died.

Kidnapped.

Tied down.

Little red dots of light in an otherwise darkened room, the glisten of light on water.

And you wake up to their lips pressed to your face, their hands stroking your back.

Maybe they would wake up one day and the man would never come back, as insubstantial as moonlight.

So forgettable it would be as if he never existed at all.

Sherlock never thought, not for a second, that he could walk from their minds onto a grassy hill.

A silhouette of a man walking towards John.

And John-

John falling.

John. John is brave. He is the bravest person Sherlock has ever known.

He wouldn't jump- wouldn't fall unless…

Sherlock can't blame him.

When he closes his eyes he can still see it.

John falling.

And his heart stops and he wants to scream and cry and hold on so tight that they would be the same person because he cannot imagine a life without him.

But Sherlock doesn't blame him.

If it was _the man_, John's man, Sherlock's man…

He would have jumped too.


	33. Chapter 33

The man in front of him fidgeted as if denied the burden of the child in his arms he was unsure of what to do with himself.

Even after John had been coaxed away from Sherlock and onto the nearby temporary gurney Sherlock had remained in the Detective Inspectors arms, as much by the child's need as the adults.

Mycroft had watched it all on CCTV.

Sherlock's hand fisting into the nondescript coat, letting his legs and back be supported by unfamiliar hands.

It would be surprising if the stroking of Sherlock's back and hair was anything more than unconscious, a protective instinct on the Detectives part. Both of them half in shock. John was doing the best of all of them.

Mycroft stood in the center of the empty room, leaning casually on his umbrella, the wood of the worn handle like an old friend in his grasp. It seemed appropriate for this dark and musty building, these rooms where water leaked through walls and hid in dark corners as if it were a living thing.

He had not used his umbrella as a prop for years and it felt a bit like traveling through time, like he had fallen asleep and only now woke up to find it had all been a dream.

Carefully, he assumed the stern yet apathetic face that so well suited his features and masked his intentions, knowing his silence and easy posture would be…intimidating. The smooth handle of the umbrella lent him old strength, something to hold onto when all he wanted was to rush to his children. To be the one to hold Sherlock until he stopped trembling, to be the person who John grabbed onto with the hand not clinging to Sherlock and held just a little too tight.

The man in front of him settled his hands finally into his pockets and glanced back, twice, at the door from which he had just come, the door which two little boys still lingered behind.

Mentally Mycroft rebuked himself.

No one should feel comfortable enough standing opposite him to turn their back.

A slight miscalculation.

The Sherlock factor.

In years gone by this impossible variable had been one stemming from fear and, occasionally, assumed omnipotence on the part of his brother. When through action or reputation Sherlock seemed to criminals as dangerous as Mycroft himself. It had been a factor that had worked to his advantage keeping his baby brother safe, to keep undesirables away or in carefully measured places.

Now the Sherlock factor had an aspect of something he hesitated to call love. An unstoppable gripping affection.

He wanted to map it out, to turn blue eyes into a logical formula, to take Johns sweetness and painful innocents and turn it into something finite he could factor and analyze and predict.

Foolish. Fanciful inane thoughts.

He disregarded them.

Detective Inspector Lestrade took another step towards the center of the room, the dark space between them receding, his eyes squinting in thought, so close to some version of the truth that his mouth was open as if he hoped the words would simply spill out of him.

Mycroft had watched on his smart phone the moment the neurons had connected, the single solitary second when he knew it was too late to simply release Lestrade back into the world. The moment confusion turned to blinding epiphany and he curled Sherlock closer against his chest, hand running through dark curls and holding on as if he were impossible. The moment he looked at John babbling sweet reassuring words to Sherlock as if he were a dream.

"That woman-" The words did tumble from Lestrades lips but not as revealing as they could have been. The information was coming piecemeal, like he could not hold it all at once. The knowledge, the data was there but his mind was rejecting it. He gestured vaguely at the door without looking at it, pointing, a man of action; he finds the motion comforting, not an undesirable trait for an inspector. "She doesn't just look familiar." He managed at last, eyes widening in realization. "That is Harriet Watson."

He isn't seeing Mycroft at the moment, not really. He is seeing implications. He is seeing the police files that stayed on his desk for weeks after Sherlock and Johns disappearance, the files that he pulled out again when they issued their electronic goodbye.

"Divorced. No kids. No close friends and no contact with the only surviving member of her family. There is no way those boys belong to her-" He stops, the words do not trail off. They die. His eyes rest finally on Mycroft, his casual yet alarming stance, the power he wielded so cavalierly to get everyone here, the structure of his face, his eyes. Sherlock's eyes.

His arm drops back to his side, his expression not the almost manic understanding of a moment ago but with an expression that has become pinched.

His stance evened out, not the man lost without the little boy in his arms but the seasoned Yarder who had seen too much death to play the fool.

"Mr. Holmes." A statement as much as a question, the tone only slightly looking for affirmation, the rest of it betraying a slow building pain that reminded Mycroft of migraines, of pain that comes in a wave with each rolling thought.

Mycroft nodded once and let the hint of a smile show the truth of it, an olive branch. Normally he would have given no sign, no information, but the man had done well, exceedingly well under the circumstances. Had he not been there at that exact moment…

The Detective Inspectors eyes widened at affirmation, mind already wildly careening down into places a common mind rarely wanders.

For a moment Mycroft felt something like pity for him. The world as he knew it was about to change, to be destroyed, grow and shrink simultaneously to fit these tiny creatures into their place.

A lifetime of beliefs shattered in a single afternoon.

Lestrade took a step back, and again turned his back on Mycroft, towards the door as if it might open and reveal its content to him. His eyes were wide and the pinched look had grown into something more troubled and yet…oddly fond.

"It was an experiment wasn't it?" He came closer to Mycroft, imploring, oblivious to the fact that another man might find the situation disconcerting. "Did he even know?" His hand came to his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose he took a deep breath to calm himself, obviously restraining himself from turning back to the door and forcing it down.

"How in the hell did they get each other pregnant?"

John has already fallen.

But Sherlock still wants to catch him.

He wants to pull him into his arms and bring him down the last few inches to solid ground so that they could never fall again. He wants to pin him in place and hold him where he would never be out of his sight, not for a second.

He wants to touch every inch of him and make sure that he really is okay, wants to crawl into his mind and his heart and make sure that nothing could ever hurt him without him knowing again.

He had wanted to scream that the man on the hill was coming. That they had to go. They had to leave now.

Had to keep moving.

Had to hide.

But he didn't.

In his mind he had been screaming, endlessly screaming for John, screaming about the man, screaming at the adults who thought they were keeping him safe.

But they couldn't hear him.

Outside of his mind his tears were silent and lost in the frantic tumble of too many limbs, lost as time pressed on headless of the fact that it should have stopped, that everything should have stopped.

Outside of his mind his chest aches, it throbs and it is hard to see through the tears.

He doesn't know how it happened. But he knows, logically, that John is okay.

He knows that the heartbeat beneath his hand, pressed against his chest, is real, that it won't stop no matter how many times he watches John fall in his mind. Logically, he knows that the breath coming hot against his face, into his hair, has the capability to produce speech, that John could whisper to him at any moment, that soon he would tell him that he was alright.

But there is a moment when logic can fail you.

He remembers it like a needle to the spine.

A second caught in midair.

Johns voice in the dark, their bodies curled together and the lingering happiness, the revelation of their birthday wishes lingering sweetly on their tongues and his own sickness like a diminished echo behind them, nothing but the memory of a feeling. He remembers Johns brown eyes.

John had whispered what it was like to be alone.

To know how it felt to wake up every morning and know that Sherlock would not be there. That no matter what John did, he would not laugh or smile or hold his hand or brush away his tears when all he wanted to do was cry.

There are times when logic does not matter.

There are injuries that defy physical boundaries, that reach past logic and reach into nightmares and twist at organs and make your heart pound and thump without every laying down a finger in reality.

In Sherlock's mind it was all happening at once, a thousand simultaneous eternities. And John was not talking. He was not smiling. He was on the ground, in his arms, he was touching his face in the car safe in the policeman's arms, he was telling Sherlock to smile as the doctors prodded him.

And for one moment.

A moment stretched out in his mind long enough to fill forever.

Sherlock knew what it was like to be alone.

He knew a world where he would have to survive without John or stop existing altogether.

For one moment John was on that hill and the man was coming.

But John was brave. The bravest person Sherlock had ever met.

So in that place that defies logic, in the place so deep inside his own mind that even though they were safe, even though the car was taking them home and John was pressed against him he could see it still.

A second caught in midair.

John jumped. Fell.

And this time Sherlock was here to catch him.

Mycroft is used to this. The cold drawn out silences where his mark is trying, struggling to keep up, to catch up and grasp at the pieces Mycroft holds seemingly effortlessly in his hands. He understands the power play, he knows the steps as if it were a dance he could perform in his sleep. He knows how to make quick evaluations, instant decisions that will affect everything, will affect a life, a country, the world. He knows how to take a constant flow of information and without pausing for breath or a cup of tea make a decision that incorporates the new data seamlessly.

He never has that moment after a conversation to think, _foolish, of course this is what I should have said._

He knows to caulk his head to the side in a gesture that seems both falsely intimate and slightly demeaning as if he could see the entire universe, every nuance and grand scheme simultaneously and the result was him.

"It seems I owe you my thanks."

Lestrade looked tired. Spent. His shoulders slumped beneath the weight of the accumulation of old and new burdens. His posture was that of a seasoned soldier at the end of a war, not at ease but softly defeated.

His eyes still flicked back to the door.

"All I did was be in the right place at the right time. We were just lucky I was there." The words themselves coming from another man would have been overly modest, an attempt to diminish oneself in order to acquire praise, but from the Inspector they were simple observations. His speech held the honesty of the otherwise preoccupied.

He looked back at Mycroft with obvious effort, away from the door, away from thoughts of the two little boys who should not exist at all.

Mycroft almost wanted to smile the way he had wanted to with John all those years. Pleasantly surprised.

Had Sherlock chosen the people around him knowing that in some respects they exemplified the best of humanity?

Had he known at all?

Mycroft swallowed the pain that rose in his throat and crushed his heart with the grip of a stone hand.

"I have found that there is rarely a thing left in this world which can be contributed to luck."

Brown eyes regarded him thoughtfully, dissecting the implication, no doubt considering his recent reassignment to parks, to the places in which children dwell.

He did not choose the most obvious path of anger. Good. That would have been dull. Counterproductive. It would have negatively effected his imminent decision.

"So they are alright then? They are…" a pause. Hesitation and then, as if the word were inadequate, as if it held the wrong weight, "…happy?"

Mycroft was not sure who the Inspector was asking after. Sherlock and John of course, but which pair?

The children themselves? The boys who inhabited his every waking moment, who had come to create in himself a man he had never thought could exist.

The possible test tube babies? The mixture of two volatile sets of genetics?

Or the adults who lived on now only in memory and fairytale?

"Yes."

The inspector nodded as if it were what he had expected but could taste the hollowness of the word, as if it were a white lie with a glimmer of hope fashioned to protect them.

He nodded as if he was trying to believe him.

Perfect.

"You want to see them again." It was not a question and neither of them pretended it was.

Mycroft picked up the tip of his umbrella and set it down again a quarter inch to the right, staring at its tip, making the move seem deliberate and unconscious. A decision.

"I have a proposition for you."

It took ages. Weeks. Years.

But he did it.

They were alone.

At last.

Finally.

A soon as the door clicked shut behind them- even as Nana's voice still came muffled through the dark stained wood, Sherlock pulled John into his arms.

Enveloped him.

Wrapped him in his arms and then did it again, rearranged their limbs, unsatisfied.

He pulled at cloth and hair and arms and placed John's arms around him, made him hold him and then it happened.

John melted into him.

Collapsed into him.

And it was enough.

Sherlock held him up.

He was quiet. Too quiet to hear but that was okay because he was still talking.

He was still John.

Still with him.

Words could come later.

Words could lie.

Nana called through the heavy door again like she was speaking to them from another world, the doorknob turned slightly.

Sherlock clutched tighter, held John so hard that his ribs ached. He lifted his head, his chin resting on Johns blond hair, Johns breath on his neck.

"Alright!" He yelled wanting to lock the bathroom door but unable to let go.

"We are alright!" The doorknob twitched silently.

She had let go.

"I have him!" Sherlock called.

Footsteps leading away. Hesitant.

But John was his.

"I have you."

A whisper this time, pressed into soft hair as he lowered his head to whisper in his ear.

Johns lips moved against his skin, mumbling. A thanks probably.

Safe regardless.

Sherlock pulled back.

He needed to hold on. To pin him down. Keep him safe.

He needed to see.

John stood on his own, brown eyes watching, marking every motion. Not lost.

Not broken.

John didn't fuss as Sherlock pulled his shirt roughly, desperately over his head and let it fall in a heap on the tiled floor.

Not hurt.

John wasn't hurt.

He was dirty and stained with dust and coffee and his fingers curled and uncurled in the fabric of his pants, but after all that. After falling.

He was okay.

Sherlock pulled him into his arms again, crushed him in his arms, and it was better this time.

He was warm and his skin was soft and real and human and just as he was going to wrap John's arms around himself again, to remind John to hold him, John did it himself.

He was smiling against Sherlock's cheek, wrapped his arms around Sherlock's middle, crushing them together, dirty clothes and pale skin pressed tight together.

"It's okay." John whispered, holding him close. "I have you too."

"And I will have my normal working conditions back? No more park details? No more mysterious orders from the top sending me half way across London and away from my caseload?"

Mycroft refrained from commenting on the status of the cases currently under the jurisdiction of the Detective Inspector. Four of the rather pedestrian murders would have been solved by Sherlock without bothering to leave the flat, two he would have taken an active interest in if only to have an excuse to run about the city with John but he would have known the outcome none the less without the effort of doing so.

Lestrade however did not have the luxury nor the tragedy of being Sherlock Holmes and so the cases were taking rather more time with him being continuously dragged away.

Mycroft made a mental note to make at least three of the cases disappear with the solution and Lestrades signature perfectly signed on the bottom. He was after all handling this remarkably well.

"Yes, of course." His face remained carefully blank, as if none of this was truly of any consequence to him, as if this were all a mere trifle. "So long as you are willing to aide in this manner I will see that you are returned to your normal duties."

The Detective inspector straightened out his body, his hand drifting over his pocket, checking his wallet and phone in the unconscious manner of someone about to take their leave and then turned his attention completely back to Mycroft, his mouth already forming the words, the question on his face.

"A coach? Like a little league footballer coach?"

"And a chaperone to other such activities when I am unable to join them, no more than a few hours a week. Do not put it into your mind that you are getting off too easily. I am asking you to make sure that these boys are not only safe but interacting at a proper desirable level with children of their own age if not mental aptitude." Mycroft let his head tilt four degrees to the left; it made him come off more…friendly his assistant had told him. "You do remember what Sherlock and John were like with their age group at the Yard?"

Lestrade nearly laughed a stifled chuckle really, and shook his head, eyes always drifting back to the door from which they had come. He looked sad suddenly, as if remembering the men he had known and the boys he had just met.

"They are gone aren't they?" He nodded towards the door.

Mycroft did not ask whom he meant.

"Yes."

Lestrade nodded as if it was exactly what he expected and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, an unconscious sign that he was not afraid or at very least too preoccupied to know that he should be.

When they were finally done, when they had washed the every trace of dirt away from each other's skin and the water had grown cold and Sherlock could almost believe that everything would be okay they ventured out into the world of their home.

They had followed the sound of voices until they found Nana and Harry sitting together, two cups of tea nearly untouched before them, Harry shaking so slightly that had she picked up her cup she may not have notice the cooling liquid slosh at all.

The women smiled as they walked in, not as if they were happy, not the simple smile of unconscious pleasure, but as if they had been caught red handed and guilty. The smile that said that they had been the topic of discussion, the smiles that meant that despite being grownups and powerful and free of nightmares that fear still coursed through their minds.

That they still perceived danger.

John didn't see any of this of course.

John saw only how Harry had moved her entire body unconsciously, the way her hand had moved ever so slightly as if to reach out for him. John only saw that she needed him.

Sherlock felt Johns hand drop from his own, watched as his fingers slipped from his grasp as his arm fell limp and empty to his side. He watched as John crossed the room alone and half climbed and was half lifted into Harry's lap, her arms coming around him.

Sherlock did not move.

He did not watch as John reached playfully for Harrys tepid tea, just to make her smile, just to coax a cross look from Nana who would not let them have tea without adding half a cup of milk first.

But Nana was not watching him either. Not really.

But they were of course.

They were the same that way, him and Nana. They would never really let John fall completely from their sight.

But for now John had his cup of strong bitter tea without comment, slightly lost as to what to do with it now that he had it undeterred.

Nana was watching _him._

She did not have that fake smile on, the kind Sherlock hated and everyone seemed to wear like a badge of pride. She was not smiling at all.

She looked sad. She looked…old. Not the kind of old that makes you slow and dissolves your body, the kind of old that makes is seem like she could understand everything he could tell her, like she had seen so much life that she would understand everything he had seen because maybe she had been there too. She always had kind eyes, Nana, ones that made you want to tell her, or to lose yourself in her arms.

He did not watch as John took a sip of tea and made a face of distaste, he did not watch as Harry held him closer because the smile of fear was brittle and sharp at the edges of her mouth.

"I want Mycroft."

John put the tea down and Harry turned to look at him and he did not know why he had said it but now that he had he did not want to stop.

"Please." He was talking to Nana. Just to Nana. She would _understand_. She would make it okay. "I want Mycroft."

Mycroft could make it okay.

Mycroft could always make it okay.

The words he never said to John.

The fear in Harrys smile.

The man on the hill.

The man that comes in the dark in nightmares, when no one can hear you.

The way he can understand people and things as if they were books even when he does not want to.

Mycroft would make it all go away.

"Nana _please_." And he was begging. He was going to collapse. To fall down into darkness and never get back up because he understood everything and nothing. The whole world at once. Everything-slipping through his mind.

Nana did not smile. Nana was easy, she was real. Nana never lied to him.

He had needed her to smile then.

"He is not home yet Sherlock." Sweet and understanding and so very sad.

The tears welled in his eyes and he wanted to scream but the words were dying in his throat.

He _needed-_

He was not watching John, his vision blurred with hot tears he could feel running over his cheeks. But he could feel John, know he was coming closer, coming to comfort him the way he had in the bath, the way he had with Harry. But he didn't want it.

He couldn't stand it.

It was too much and not enough and he couldn't see through the tears the people around him but instead he could see everything else.

_The man._

_John, falling, jumping, leaping from the edge._

A hand grabbed and held his, small fingers entwining, tangling hopelessly with his and he could not stand it. The desperate squeeze of his hand.

How could he know so much about everything he shouldn't, people he had never met, places he had never been, but not know what had made John, his John jump?

Not just the man like he had thought before.

There was something else. Something wrong.

Something John was hiding from him. Hiding behind his eyes where he hoped Sherlock would not see it.

He tore his hand away viciously, wanting it to hurt, wanting the separation to be painful, like part of himself was being ripped away. He wanted to hear John in pain for want of him.

But he couldn't stand it, the second he pulled away, the second he was standing alone.

He needed it back.

Needed more.

He was falling and he couldn't breathe.

A million useless details swallowing him whole.

_The couch on which Nana sat, the wood but not the upholstery, the scene of a murder, with a knife. She had been carrying his baby, a mistress more likely than a wife. _

_The cleaner sweeping dust under the far carpet, with a limp, car accident. Worse when it rains._

_Scar running up the inside of Auntie Harrys arm. She had a man too. Her man, her father, he died. Killed. Murdered. _

_The person who set the windows-_

_The portrait on the far wall-_

He can hear them, all of them. Time doesn't quite facts. They scream at him, each wanting to be the only thing in his mind.

_Nana had children of her own-_

_A girl? No. A boy-_

John caught him. Held him up, arms tight around him, pulling him back together, forcing him to be held, hands tight around his arms.

Sherlock looked at him. Saw him.

No facts. No ideas. No logic.

Nothing.

"What is it? What did he say? What did he do?" It was a cry, a scream, and a whisper.

John tried to move, tried to pull him into a hug but Sherlock wouldn't let him, he needed to see. Needed to know. If he knew he could focus and the rest would stop! _He just needed-_

John was shaking his head, trying to hold him, to be gentle.

John was trying to protect him.

"It doesn't matter." John pleaded.

"John!" His mind was melting. It was there. The information on the edge of his mind, demanding to be known, thick and poisonous and sharp. Acid in his mind.

Nightmares come to life.

John was shaking. He didn't want to remember. It hurt. He was afraid.

He was afraid for Sherlock.

Didn't he understand that they could never hide anything from one another?

Didn't John know that he was part of Sherlock?

"_Please-"_ He couldn't breathe. He was _drowning._

Mycroft watched as Lestrade was led to one of his cars, the phone in his pocket vibrated silently against him.

Sherlock needed him.

He looked back just as the tinted windows shut, hiding the look on the Detective Inspectors face. A look that might be given to a god, to the omnipotent, to someone who knew all the moves before they happened.

Mycroft thrust his phone into his pocket and made his way to the waiting car, fear boiling in his blood.

He wished he still felt that way. Powerful. Omnipotent.

He wished he knew who had sent the order to send D. to that park.

And John broke.

John shut his eyes against the words that came dead and emotionless from his child voice.

"gottle'o gear gottle'o gear gottle'o gear."


	34. Chapter 34

The sound of hurried footsteps faded into the distance as the door shut heavily between them.

John was trying desperately to affect a look of general disapproval but the corners of his mouth were betraying him, curving upward until he abandoned all propriety and let out a small helpless laugh.

Sherlock looked endlessly pleased.

Mycroft was anything but.

* * *

Technically the situation was a simple matter to fix, a single message, a simple matter for those in his employ. The mechanism was already in place.

After all, this was the third tutor they had chased away this month.

The last two had left in tears; embarrassment was perhaps a marked improvement.

He would have to secure another teacher with all the proper credentials and dissect every moment of their lives and ascertain the likelihood of them doing or saying anything which would prove…unhelpful. And he would. Just not today.

Sherlock had already abandoned the children's book on the desk, his improvements written in bright red marker that still smelled very faintly of artificial strawberries. He had clambered gracefully to the ground and was taking Johns hand, leading him away.

Mycroft sighed as Sherlock walked past him without an upward glance, bare feet thudding softly on the carpet; shoes vanished somehow in the past hour when the poor tutor had the misfortune of blinking.

They disappeared through another door before Mycroft could hear the soft giggling laughter.

At least this time nothing had exploded.

* * *

There was a rather unfortunate cycle going on with the boys and their teachers. It is no doubt difficult teaching two rebellious five year old geniuses. There was no telling what they would already, seemingly like magic, understand and what they would be markedly ignorant of. Teaching what the boys had already learned or picked up rather too quickly would give Sherlock more than ample time to plot against them and subsequently regain their freedom.

Teaching or even stumbling over a new point of information caused Sherlock to launch a full on assault.

The information would be sucked out of them ruthlessly, every relevant question demanded and a full elaborate explanation required. The teachers would hold their own for a minute and then, assuming falsely that Sherlock was merely having them on would refuse to answer any more questions.

What child did not know where 'Sesame Street' was?

What boy could grow to the age of five without knowing how to play tag?

There were, of course, more damning questions which had immediately become Mycroft's issue to handle.

What animals can constitute a 'pet'? How does one go about acquiring one? Can one be ordered on a phone?

Mycroft had a feeling that it had been one such question that had led the rapid evacuation of the last teacher. It was a sure sign that further 'research' had been deemed necessary.

After a rapid fire question and answer session came to its inevitable end Sherlock would activate whatever plan he had formulated, a small controlled explosion involving the tutors briefcase, the deduction of a recently failed romance, or an upstaging and evisceration of their mental abilities normally proved more than adequate to secure the rest of the afternoon as free time to ponder the new tidbit of information.

Mycroft wondered why Sherlock had not come to him with questions this time and double checked both his laptop and his phone (which disappeared into small hands with alarming frequency). In the room beyond there was a small thump, a surprised giggle, and a stream of conversation.

He only had an hour of work left.

Sherlock had survived one lifetime of unsupervised experimentation, he would survive the next hour evaluating whatever ordinary word the tutor had let slip.

* * *

They lasted an admirable five minutes at dinner before anyone mentioned the resplendent golden elephant in the room.

They were seated as they always were, not in one of the two formal dining rooms, but at the simple table located in the kitchen, abandoned by the staff and now more often than not inhabited by Mrs. Hudson.

No one was eating.

Sherlock was pushing his food around on his plate not as if he were uninterested but as if his thoughts preoccupied so many of his mental processes that the message to make his fork go to his mouth were being lost in the traffic. John was in a similar state of being, his default reaction to preoccupation would normally have been to eat without tasting, to acquire calories as fuel and carry on, but brown eyes flitter occasionally to Sherlock's place.

When Sherlock did not eat, John did not eat, a ploy that more often than not goaded Sherlock into compliance. When neither of the boys ate Mrs. Hudson fretted and, while drinking ample quantities of tea, ate nothing.

Mycroft knew better than to eat alone.

"I have an announcement." The word stumbled from Sherlock's mouth, correct in every way, endlessly rehearsed, and yet somehow still off. Still five years old.

'Annunc-ment.'

John put his fork down and settled his hand on the table as if this had been his cue.

Sherlock smiled, the smile of a plan working perfectly, quick and approving. He placed his own hand carefully of Johns, entwining their fingers. The antique gold ring on John's finger slipping up to his first knuckle until Sherlock pushed it gently back into place with his fingers. The gold clashed with the dull grey ring of metal surrounding Sherlock's finger.

Blue eyes looked earnestly into Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson's face in turn, his little body regal and straight in a way that would make Mummy proud. A tiny prince on a massive throne.

"We are to be married."

Sherlock smiled at them, the smile of the enormously rich, the smile of the aristocrat and then, turning to John, the smile became real. Mycroft watched as John held Sherlock's hand tighter.

"We wanted you to be the first to know." John adds sweetly, not the aristocrat but perhaps more honestly for it. The impromptu prince.

Mrs. Hudson does an admirable job of looking quite serious when she congratulates them, her smile endlessly adoring.

"A long engagement then I suppose dears? It's only proper." She smiles as Sherlock loses his adopted posture and begins to pick at his food with his left hand, leaving the right on Johns. They have learned to become partially ambidextrous in order to do this no matter what the seating arrangements. Always one hand holding on.

Sherlock takes a petite bite of his cooling potatoes. "Yes. We are waiting until we are nine at least."

Mycroft does not laugh. But it is a close thing.

It is nearly the end of him.

He wants a video camera right now. He wants eight angles and five microphones. He wants to remember this moment forever and remind Sherlock every year after the age of 20.

Mrs. Hudson nods like she could not be happier, 'of course' her every look and motion seems to say.

She smiles primly without the hint of humor and Mycroft realizes he had severely underestimated her acting ability. He wonders what kind of Christmas bonus is in order for complete and utter adoration for what she does next.

"And how did it happen?" She leans forward conspiratorially, two girls whispering in the dark their deepest secrets. "Who proposed?"

"We knew right away it was what we both wanted." Sherlock informed her regally.

"We took turns." John added helpfully. "We got both rings and I got on my knees and asked him to marry me." John blushed suddenly, face and ears pink and bright. "And then we switched and he asked me!"

Mycroft smothered the undignified sound he was making behind his napkin, coughing cautiously before offering his congratulations.

Mrs. Hudson ignores him and asks to see the rings.

John blushes as he holds out his hand for her to inspect and Mycroft can identify Johns but he cannot place the dull metal around Sherlock's finger. John explains that Sherlock's ring is temporary until they can get a nicer one and asks Nana to take him out to get one.

Sherlock's explanation is much less sweet but more informative.

"Oh-" he says as an afterthought after thankfully putting a carrot into his mouth. "Do not turn on the dishwasher."

* * *

By weeks end the boys have two rings with histories that give Mycroft pause. The little bands of gold hanging around their necks rather than on their too small fingers, chains their Nana coaxed them into wearing 'For safe keeping.'

Sherlock _insisted_. Insisted when the two had only one actual ring that it was right for John to have it. Although he could not have told anyone why, no matter how much Mycroft wished he could.

It could be simply that he wanted John to have the best, that his little brother was demonstrating selflessness or that he selfishly wanted to make John smile.

Or it could be that in some part of his mind Sherlock still knew what they had found in the hidden compartment of god knows what item that had been brought over from Baker Street. The ring from his first case. He could not have been more than nine years old when the ring went missing, their mothers ring, inherited from her mother. He traced the history of the stone, knew its black history of crossed lovers and feuding families. He discovered the genetic disposition of the family for a certain pattern of illness, an illness one of the maids had tried for months to hide.

Mummy had pulled Sherlock into her lap carefully, cradling him carefully. He was always ill, always prone to breaking, the abuse of course, but they had not known that then. He was still pale from his last trip to hospital; he had nearly drowned, succumbed to a lung infection. Mycroft had been home for the weekend, one holiday or another. He watched this small alien creature as the ring was placed in his hand and Mummy told him to protect it for her.

He watched him glow for her, a health borrowed on wavering energy just to smile at her.

The ring around John Watson's neck.

The other story was less personally painful, at least to be heard from Harry. Harry who insisted on knowing nothing, as if she had gone from birth to adulthood with nothing in between, dragging John along with her.

She was charmed with the way they told her of their immanent marriage, of Sherlock's dish washer metal ring.

Sherlock had written her an invitation, date To Be Announced, John had drawn a picture to illustrate.

Someone at some point had not only said the word 'wedding' to them but pulled up videos of the Royal Wedding. Mycroft had unfortunately been 'unable to attend' due to an 'incident with several middle eastern nations requiring the utmost care'. This roughly translated to a dislike of formal engagements and sounded much more pressing and official than an undocumented and somewhat miserable head cold that John had been suffering from. Mrs. Hudson had spent the morning blowing her nose into a handkerchief in front of the television while he had gladly been wiping Johns.

Harry had received the letter posted via Mrs. Hudson and by the end of the week she had turned up with a ring that had once been her mothers and had more recently donned her now ex-wives hand.

She had handed it over to John, kneeling at his level and let him admire the ring.

She did not tell them about the decades it spent in hiding, the way it had somehow survived decades of raids for the pawn shop and still more through times of growing hunger.

She did not have to tell Mycroft at all.

John curled his fingers over it as if the small ring were incredibly precious but Harry let go of it with only a kiss and a rueful smile.

"You take better care of him than I did of her okay?" Sherlock had deduced Clara ages ago.

John had gone down to one knee and offered it to Sherlock who seemed for once to be out of words, surrounded by this little ensemble of people in his living room. He nodded as John asked 'Will you marry me?' and let John slip it onto his finger and then later his Nana to put it around his neck.

This time Mycroft had the camera ready.


	35. Chapter 35

Having a single teacher for a single subject seemed to be working wonderfully for the violin. Of course his teacher was spending increasing amounts of time begging for him to let Sherlock preform in public, throwing out words like 'savant' with alarming frequency but that was easy enough to tolerate when Sherlock himself showed no desire to play willingly by request, ever, unless it was John asking.

It would be easy to handle this way. The teachers would never meet, each possessing only a small piece of the puzzle. They would only have to entertain the boys in a single subject apiece and the frankly alarming intelligence all around would be masked by the ability to test only a single subject.

The boys were learning in the way Mycroft had hypothesized from nearly the very beginning.

They would never be able to attend a normal school.

They had only to learn a thing once and the parts of their minds which once held the data seemed to become assessable again. The way an amnesia patient knows how to speak, to drive a car, to multiply, his boys only needed to let their young minds interpret the information and they seemed to understand it.

The boys did not notice anything amiss.

To them, this was all as natural as learning the first time.

This of course meant that in some subjects one boy would immediately far outstrip the other but in such early days as this it hardly proved to be a problem. In French, which John had never taken, Sherlock would listen to the teacher for the allotted hour and then spend the rest of the day dutifully helping John through, conjugating verbs in his decidedly messy scrawl.

Mycroft watched the process with a mixture of scientific interest and insurmountable pride not for the intellectual aspect, which had always come so naturally, but for the strange childish humanity he had never seen in his brother.

"Je t'aime, John."

"Wait! I am not done writing this one!" John finished writing quickly, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. "Okay, what was that one?"

Sherlock putting his finger in the ring around his neck, twirling the metal.

"Nothing. Mumbling. The third one is wrong."

Not to be outdone, John, who had joined a football team hesitantly under the newly appointed volunteer coach Lestrade, was almost immediately adept at both the social and physical aspects of the game without assistance. He was kind and articulate and a star player and immediately popular among the boys. Sherlock who was dark and slight and silent amongst these unknown and strange peers preferred to stay out of the way, observing the group, staying out of the path of the ball but adequately up to the task of playing if need be, up to playing if it would keep him close to John.

In retrospect the two were probably related, subjecting the boys to a group of children who could become potential friends or threats and then describing a wedding which displays possession and commitment. Sherlock had always been…possessive.

Mrs. Hudson said not to worry, that they would forget or at very least hit age nine and realize they should wait a bit longer before they get married. After all, little boys declared they would marry their mothers all the time, only natural that they would want a claim on one another after so long of being alone.

Sherlock seemed to be suffering it the worse of the two.

"I don't want to go back. Those people are a waste of time, they are stupid. They are not- _they are not like us_." An echo from Sherlock's first time through school, through university. Bitter years of ostracization and painful discovery.

"Of course they are stupid. Everyone is stupid compared to you." John agreed easily with a smile and an eye roll that was more 'of course' than 'as if'.

Sherlocks smile was small and reluctant.

"Not _everyone_."

Sherlock would have liked to quit football immediately, a game he had never bothered to play the last time around. A game filled with silly children making a series of silly mistakes for the span of a loud and wasted afternoon.

He hated sharing John.

He hated how they laughed and joked as easily as if they had known him forever.

He hated that when he had to try so hard to be good and to eat and fight not to scream all to make sure John was happy they could make him smile with a stupid joke.

He hated that he could not imagine a life without John but he could imagine John having a life without him.

But John knew all of that of course.

John knew Sherlock.

He knew to slip his hand into Sherlock's and pull him into a conversation.

He knew to whisper stories of Sherlock to the other boys, to tell them how amazing he was so that when Sherlock was too quiet they knew that he was thinking of things that they would never even conceive of.

John knows that there are such things as heroes and he knows that Sherlock is a hero to him now, but someday, he will be a hero to everyone.

John is invited to parties and sleep overs and play dates and Sherlock is always invited too but they do not go.

Someday maybe.

Someday when Sherlock knows what John knows.

When Sherlock understands that if he is afraid that he will be replaced, if he is thinking dark things, and if facts are rising up to overwhelm him, that John doesn't mind if he comes and takes his hand too.

There are some things that Mycroft is not willing to delegate. Not to anyone. No matter how much he wishes he could.

He nearly went alone. He had the supplies in a duffle bag on his shoulder in all of its domestic glory, the weight reassuring if awkward as it swung. Mrs. Hudson had volunteered to get the boys ready, by the sound of it she had found them in the middle of a game and had been, subsequently, integrated.

John was yelling 'Civilian!'

Sherlock yelling 'Evil Lackey!'

Interesting disparity.

Mycroft allowed a moment to wonder which boy would defer to the other or if she would gain a double agent spy status.

His shoulder twinged under the poorly distributed weight and he set the bag down on the floor. Anxiety was building in his chest with every passing moment the words 'bad idea' were slowly evolving into 'terrible idea' in his mind.

Sherlock was the first one in the room, running full tilt, laughing and clad only in his blindingly yellow cargo trousers. His shirt, as had become his rather insistent preference of late, had been disposed of.

John was a step behind him, not chasing Mycroft noted, but following. John of course retained his clothing but he was laughing as he ran, it slowed him a bit but Sherlock never let him fall behind.

They were gone, laughter finding other rooms to occupy when Mrs. Hudson came at a slowing jog behind them. She looked much the same as when he had left her, only now she had two pairs of swim trunks looped around her arm, a colorful flag as she ran past him.

Their laughing screams echoed back to the now nearly vacant hallway.

Interesting.

With the introduction of an additional player they defaulted to each other.

'Terrible Idea' seemed now to be the firmly reinforced. Mycroft gave the duffle bag a rueful look and fished his phone from his pocket, securing backup with a few words and an all too naively enthusiastic reply from the woman on the on the other side of the phone.

Years from now when Sherlock found himself, again, inexplicably, and repeatedly, fallen into the Thames, Mycroft would be glad that he taught John how to swim.

The pool was large and empty and indoors and all of these things in conjunction gave Mycroft pause, but there was little to be done for it. There had after all been worse episodes with his boys, worse places that he had taken them without consequence. There was no reason they would remember the pool from a lifetime ago just because he happened to have been the one to pick up the pieces. Besides, he told himself as he lifted John from the car, already smiling and holding out his arms for a hug from his auntie Harry, they had always been okay when they had each other, even when they had been mere adults.

Mycroft had made sure it would be bright inside and that any waves they created would shine with it, somewhere one of his men had put on music, something soft and noninvasive and at least one room away, the comforting sounds of life in the absence of any. He wanted the clear shallow water; he needed to be able to see every inch of clear blue.

That is the problem with having guardianship over geniuses, sometimes, no matter how much you plan, no matter much you wish they wouldn't, they manage the impossible. They do something unpredictable.

Unpredictable and water is nearly as frightening as unpredictable and swords.

Harry did not seem to be worried as she hugged John to her and then balanced him on her hip, waving her hello at Sherlock and then messing his hair as he got closer.

The boys had been captured and wrestled and coerced into their matching blue flowered swim trunks. Once they had been told what they were doing John had run and changed into his Superman shirt, Mycroft had been caught looking at it but John just smiled and pointed at the 'S' emblazoned on his chest with both little hands.

'So I can save you if you sink!' His face was lit with excitement at the possibility, completely earnest.

It was Sherlock who giggled cheekily and looked at Mycroft, hiding his smile behind his hands. Mycroft had waited for it, the sly look and the nearly innocent sounding '_sink?_', but it never came.

John beamed.

Mycroft hoisted the bag of 'necessities' onto his shoulder and closed the car door. He could hear Harry start to walk into the building, John telling her a story in a rambling unworried manner. It was…calming. Reassuring. At least someone was at ease.

Sherlock was so close that he nearly hit him with the bag.

The little boy was looking up at him silently, pale and slight against the tar of the parking garage, his blue eyes bright and imploring. John was almost out of sight now but Sherlock made no move to join him, to follow and fist his hand into Harry's clothing or to latch onto John's foot as it dangled, close enough to never be forgotten.

They spent a long moment staring at each other before Sherlock gave a great sigh, his small chest heaving dramatically with all of the flair of a five year old, hair bouncing off his cheeks as he shook his head as if Mycroft were being unreasonably thick.

Sherlock held out his arms to be picked up, face peering up at him.

Mycroft was shocked for a moment but a smile crept onto his face and he bent, taking the boy into his arms, letting skinny legs wrap around his waist. He pulled him tight so that he could feel his small heart beating against his own. Mycroft held him close as he walked down to the pool, not chatting, but Sherlock's cheek resting on his shoulder.

Sherlock had always been…uniquely possessive. The looks of adoration he gave Mummy when they were both little, the way he cuddled and touched John now. He did it with others too, slipping into his Nana's lap and sleepily asking for a story, placing his hand into Harry's and letting her have a hold on him. Spontaneous affection as if it dawns on him very suddenly and he must act before the chance slips away.

Mycroft caught up to the others, the smell of chlorine filled the air and washed over them like a wave of warmth, the sound of water echoed against the walls and high ceiling.

Mycroft dumped the bag onto the ground, letting John and Harry tear into its contents with equal zeal, questions and peals of laughter with every bizarre flotation device.

He just holds Sherlock tighter and arms come around his neck like an embrace as if Mycroft might set him down as easily as if he too were baggage.

If Mycroft were prone to irrational and rather loud emotional exclamations now would be the time to indulge.

Sherlock is possessive continuously, with items, with John.

But Sherlock is clinging to him. Like they mean something. Like they are brothers.


	36. Chapter 36

Sherlock held on tight, his arms like vice grips, not frantic but looped around Mycroft's neck as if he might be sleeping in his arms. Mycroft held him closer, more an embrace than what would be efficient to simply hold him, shifting him so he could settle a hand on his back, so he could reach up and touch his curls. Sherlock buried his face into Mycroft's shoulder with a breath that was warm and soft even through the layers of fabric between them.

John was sitting on the ground with Harry. Flotation devices spilled out of the bag around him in a thousand different colours, he was laughing, trying to put an arm float onto his shoed foot. He giggled and kicked the thing away, knowing full well how to use it but finding it more amusing to let it bounce against the ground.

He glanced up at Sherlock, turning his whole body so he could stare up at them. At least, Mycroft had though that Sherlock would have been the focus of John's attention. Until understanding and _old _ brown eyes met his. John smiled at him the way an adult might have, as if to say 'it's alright', a smile too subdued and almost sad to be on a child's face.

John held out a hand, fingers opening and closing and so very _five years old_.

Five years old and yet somehow _'I will take care of you.'_

Mycroft pressed a kiss to Sherlock's hair to no effect but arms holding on tighter. He smiled just because he could, at the absurdity of it and laboriously lowered himself to the ground next to John, shifting Sherlock in his lap.

Of course John would take care of them.

John kicked out his feet in front of him, stretching out his legs to untie his shoes, small fingers plucking painstakingly at the knot until it gave and then, after contemplating the other shoe, grabbed it with both hands and pulled it free with a laugh and enough force to nearly knock him over. All the while he had been speaking, chatting on as he will just to make a silence friendly or to make someone smile, to make Sherlock smile.

Only Mycroft didn't understand what he was saying.

He had thought that the language of their babyhood had been lost, forgotten with age but here it was, flushed out and more incomprehensible than ever. _Jerlock._

It had the same up's and down's and soothing happy cadence of Johns normal speech, if he could have ignored the sound, the words themselves, it would sound like nothing was amiss, it could have been a nonsense song if it wasn't so much more.

Mycroft didn't understand, but Sherlock did.

Sherlock finally, reluctantly, mid first shoe in John's time, unburied his face from Mycroft's chest and slid down to sit in his lap, watching John silently, curling Mycroft's arms around himself.

John gave no hint that he had seen Sherlock move, but ripping off his shoe? Their military efficient little boy letting his socks fall haphazardly around him in rolled up balls to grow damp in the air or lost forever? That was for Sherlock.

Sherlock did not laugh but when John crawled over to them he held out his legs obediently, letting John take off his shoes with more care than he had his own, carefully taking his socks and putting them into the corresponding shoe.

John stood up, barefoot and in his bright blue superman shirt and held out his hands for Sherlock to take. Mycroft could still feel Sherlock's heart beating, a little too fast, his body running a little too hot. Mycroft was almost afraid, for an instant so fast it did not have time to be put into words, that Sherlock would not reach out for him. But John was all blond hair and safe and standing there like a superhero. Sherlock never really had a choice at all.

John said something, a word, a phrase, and Sherlock let himself be pulled up, let the space between them close until John was close enough to hug him. Mycroft thought he might, it wouldn't be unusual for one of them to erase whatever melancholy had taken over the other with a kiss or a touch, but John just smiled and looked into his friends eyes.

"It is just a dream."

It wasn't just a dream though. It had been real and Mycroft had been the one to pick up the pieces.

He had been there, not standing there waiting for the ruble to be taken away and the crews to come back and report to him. He had been there, dragging pieces of roofing, cutting his hands and breathing in the dust of the crumpled building. He had been there to hear the cry go out when they found a body, an arm exposed under the rubble and half underwater.

He had been the person to jump into the water black with debris and pull them out.

He had been the first one to see the wound that in the next weeks would be touch and go with infection. A chest wound that would coat his hands with blood and later when everyone else was gone, he would realize that it had dried on his shirt rust brown. Because of course Sherlock Holmes and John Watson could not die like everyone else in the world with a whimper and a bow.

They would go down saving each other.

If the entire bomb had really been Semtex it would not have mattered who was in front of whom, it would not matter who got the shrapnel in the chest and who was protected.

But of course it had mattered.

It mattered now too.

Sherlock looked almost frightened, deadly quiet when the room picked up the echo of every step and breath they took.

John hesitated, but only for a second, an old fear. He took the hem of his shirt and pulled it up until the bold 'S' of superman was lost in scrunched blue cloth. He held the material in place, his small chest rising and falling before their eyes. Sherlock almost reached out, almost spoke, but it was enough. John took Sherlock's hand and put it over the place where there was no scar, not even the hint that once he might have died protecting Sherlock in a place like this.

John smiled and put his hand over Sherlock's, fingers splayed over his ribs.

"Just a dream."

* * *

Resilient. His boys were resilient. It was a fact; they were here in a swimming pool laughing, giggling and watching him with two sets of mischievous eyes.

Resilient, and now, hopefully, buoyant.

Very, very, buoyant.

Sherlock, reassured and hand in hand with John, had disposed of his shirt and grinned impishly whenever anyone asked about it. Somewhere wet then, obviously.

Mycroft had finally taken off his suit and was now…adequately attired for a pool. Mrs. Hudson had taken the liberty of acquiring a swimsuit for him. The boys loved it, laughing good naturedly and pointing at their own blue flowered shorts and then at him, delighted. It is amazing, the things you learn around children, the things you never wanted to learn.

Amazing that someone would have the…lovely…idea of making matching bathing suits for children and adults.

No one said anything about his weight, not even Sherlock who was too enamored with their matching outfits to do much else. But that was before Mycroft had insisted on the floats.

There were vests, tubes, water wings, and all manner of devices that looked like floating medieval torture devices with straps and buckles of neon green and florescent yellow.

Mycroft had imagined a child sized life preserver and arm floats and one adult per child, holding them continuously, at the very minimum. At best he had imagined the floating swimsuits, so that even if Sherlock made a concerted and even brilliant effort at drowning himself it would at least take him a few minutes to manage the task.

Sherlock had apparently imagined rather less.

John let Harry put the arm floats on him, laughing as his arms bounced against his sides, upper arms encircled with bright red balloon 'waterwings'.

Sherlock pursed his lips, standing at the edge of the pool as Harry and John made their way into the water in the shallow end, Harry letting John kick at the water from her arms before lowering him further into it.

Mycroft picked the least garish of the floats and approached the little boy cautiously.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock shook his head 'no', lips still pursed, eyes still watching the water, watching John and Harry.

Mycroft was only a few feet away when Sherlock turned to him.

"There is water everywhere isn't there?" He took a deep breath, eyes turning back to the water as if it might creep closer and steal him away. He looked very small against the dark blue of the deep water. "I have to learn."

"You do not have to if you don't want to. We can come back later."

Sherlock shook his head again and almost smiled when John called out to him and waved from the other end of the pool.

It was the way he said it that made Mycroft heart begin to race, like his words were a whisper to the water. And an echo from the past.

"_Want to see how long I can hold my breath?"_

Sherlock jumped into the water without looking back, with nothing keep him floating, white against dark blue and only air and water beneath him.

Mycroft yelled.

He was already in the air when Sherlock's splash swallowed him whole.

Mycroft was only underwater for the span of five terrible heartbeats thundering in his ears before Sherlock was in his arms, warm and so very fragile, and together they were breaking the surface of the water.

He was beyond words as he held Sherlock in his arms, drenched, his curls hanging in his face, coughing up the water he had swallowed, but smiling. He was shaking by the time Mycroft swum to where they could stand up, to where he could just hold him and not let go. Sherlock wrapped his arms around Mycroft's neck and laid his head on his chest blinking the water from his eyes.

Mycroft was still trying to find the words, to get his heartbeat to stop being louder than his mind, to determine which of them was shaking harder when Sherlock whispered against his chest.

"Just dreams."


	37. Chapter 37

On their sixth birthday, after a year of a dozen tutors and classes ranging from fencing to football the boys were told they could have two parties. It was not something they requested but something Harry and Mrs. Hudson had hoped they would take advantage of none the less. They imagined simple things, a sheet cake with candles and children running around screaming, gorging on pop and ice-cream until they made themselves sick. Mycroft had reservation about the validity of the supposed social usefulness the event presented.

Mycroft was reasonably sure John had only gone with the idea because it would make the women happy and maybe, just a little bit, to appease the friends he had made over the last year. Mycroft made sure not to let those exact words leave his lips in the company of the others. Too harsh, untruthful almost in their blunt manner.

John was sociable, he enjoyed being with people, he could laugh and play and look so absurdly _normal _kicking a ball and giggling as it veered in the wrong direction, lost in a throng of boys who could scream for pleasure instead of heart stopping fear. He enjoyed it, he was good at it.

Mycroft tried not to imagine how John had been the first time around, tried not to see the present echoing the distant and faded past but it was impossible now in a way it had not been only two weeks before. Now he had seen the images, the proof that John Watson had always been more than meets the eye.

He had seen the faded and ill kept photos, torn and dirtied and scratched.

The first dredges of a buried and forgotten past peeling back after digging into the dark places which had remained hidden for more than two decades.

The first shred of information after three years of searching with the determination of knowing that his child's life depended on it.

He tried not to think of the repaired images of John smiling decades ago, images smiling into the empty darkness in the bottom of a locked drawer. Images of the same smile John used now, the same expression on his face as he ran and screamed and laughed as if he were okay. As if everything was, and always had been, perfectly okay.

His John juxtaposed through time.

Images of a boy running with an almost imperceptible limp.

With poorly healed injuries, untreated and painful and cumulative.

Short for his age, not just small but almost tiny. Malnourished.

Laughing, playing, running.

Because he had to. Because it was _normal_ and _normal_ hides all manner of sins.

With a smile that was just a little too bright. Just a little too perfect, as he waved at the camera, frozen in time for Mycroft to see a lifetime later.

A smile which could have come from today, from next week.

Mycroft never would have known.

He had wanted so badly to believe that this was real.

He wanted to believe that John Watson is so full of grace that he could be the child running around with his mates and still be the boy who understands Sherlock's silent horrors. That it was grace that allowed John this happiness as Sherlock lingered unsure on the sidelines, not shunned but not fitting.

He had never imagined it could be an act. Even if false laughter sometimes led to real laughter.

When Mrs. Hudson said that it might be nice for the boys to play with their friends for their birthday and Harry agreed Mycroft did not ask her if she had known all along. He was not so sentimental yet that he would have missed that.

But maybe Harry was more than first glance as well. Maybe she had been play acting okay for so long she had forgotten it had ever been an act.

John had not wanted to hurt anyone's feelings so when it came down to inviting 'friends' out to the park where a little tent had been set up in case it rained, and there were a few plastic tables smattered with brightly coloured napkins and ugly paper hats he had invited anyone who had wanted to go.

* * *

He had asked Sherlock first.

He had pushed close while Auntie Harry was standing at the counter; flirting with the ice-cream girl (they always got the biggest ice-creams in the whole place). It was like being alone, all the adults towering over them as they stood against the plastic counter, lost in their own world with smart phones and arguments and the other children running past without ever really seeing them. Sherlock was warm as their shoulders pressed together, his hand was soft and he held on like he would never let go.

John did not want to leave him on their birthday, not for a second. If they had a party, if there were other kids…

John wanted Sherlock to say no.

He wanted Sherlock to ask him to stay with him. He wanted Sherlock to ask so he could give it to him and they could spend the day together and Auntie Harry and Mycroft and Nana and Grand-mère would be there and when they wanted, whenever they wanted, it would be just them.

Sherlock reached out with his left hand to take the ice cream cone, something purple with chunks of chocolate and red berry. He always chose something different, only shrugging when Harry asked what he wanted. 'New. Anything new.'

He touched it delicately with his tongue, barely tasting it, pulling it back into his mouth to analyze the flavor. His face scrunched as he analyzed and then, suddenly, the look would drop and he would hold out the cone for John to lick.

Sherlock always wanted John to know everything he knew.

John offered his cone in reciprocation but Sherlock was already staring at the slowly melting concoction, deducing the most efficient way to eat it before it dripped stickily onto his fingers. Plan of attack established Sherlock licked a melting stripe off the ice-cream and with purple lips and tongue turned back to John, still holding his hand tightly.

He had not said anything yet. Had not asked the question he was not sure he wanted an answer to but that did not matter. Sherlock was pulling him into the jungle of legs and the sea of screaming bodies streaking past them. No one saw them as they climbed up into a far table, watching the chaos pass them by.

"If we spend lunch with-" Sherlock frowned, delicately twirling his ice-cream in his fingers, like magic John thought, with one hand, as if it were nothing. "Everyone." The look of disdain was enough to tell John who everyone included. "And we the evening with-" he made a circular motion with his ice-cream, gesturing to Harry who had just realized they had gone missing, to the air around them as if the people they loved stood around them only invisible to the untrained eye. "us…"

Sherlock's hand tightened on his. John could feel his pulse, the way it picked up, hammering. He could see the flush that was reaching up to claim life on Sherlock's cheeks. Not afraid, he knew Sherlock's fear. This was different… but close. Nervous.

Ice-cream, plain vanilla with swirls and chunks imbedded in it, hidden inside, melted over John's fingers.

He wanted to press his face against Sherlock's chest. He wanted to press his ear so close that he could hear his heartbeat pound until, just because he was there, just because it was Sherlock, the pounding would slow. Because he was there to hear it.

"Will you come away when I ask?" Sherlock was staring at him. Into him. Like the words were nothing but a nicety and he would find his answer buried in his eyes.

Their names were shouted over the din of the room. Searching and exasperated and maybe just a little afraid. Anger flashed over momentary panic as she called out again. Auntie Harry was pushing her way through the crowd, anger melting off of her face and turning into relief and need as she saw them sitting together, safe.

Sherlock's words were quick, his eyes darting to her and then back to John, very wide and very, very blue. "Will you promise to trust me even when you don't want to?"

She was a step away, her hand reaching out for them. She would not let them out of her site again today. She would reach out and touch their hair, hold onto one of their hands and check over and over to make sure the other boy still held on.

He wanted to say of course. He wanted to tell him that he would do anything he asked. Ever. That he would follow him anywhere. That he did not need to ask.

But he didn't.

"Yes." He could feel his own heart now, pounding like Sherlock's.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

* * *

The boys screamed and yelled and pushed each other and laughed too loudly, like another species Sherlock thought. Like some bizarre creature in the zoo that would peer out from behind the bars at them just as they looked in. John was a spot of calm in the storm of tiny bodies, he laughed and played and ran but he was softer, harder, he was something Sherlock did not have a word for. John smothered a giggle behind his hands and as the laughter faded and died he looked past his companions. He smiled, so quick that the boys he was with missed it but Sherlock didn't, even if they had seen it they would not have understood, to them it would have been nothing but another temporary and fleeting expression.

Sherlock felt his shoulders drop; he had been unaware how tense he had been holding them, how stiff he had been holding his whole body until that moment. He let his legs uncurl from against his chest and laid them flat in front of him on top of the picnic table, a muddy shoe brushing against Lestrade's sleeve.

Sherlock liked Lestrade from the beginning.

He had saved John.

He had caught him when Sherlock was not there and that was enough.

It was a happy coincidence when he turned out to be vaguely interesting as well. All of their tutors seemed to be one mass of frustratingly similar proprieties teetering on the edge of astonishment and horror. It was a nice change of pace after suffering through a day of classes where a single innocuous word or a statement that barely merited saying, let alone repeating, brought on equal looks of horror, fear, and astonishment. John was trying to learn which things not to say, which words made people look at them _like that_.

_Freak._

_Freaks._

Sherlock did not try.

He did not care.

Wouldn't let himself care.

So the first time he threw out a word or a phrase that had made his teachers stare, because he was mad, because he did not want to play this stupid game and he wanted a reason to not like the man anymore, and Lestrade only rolled his eyes and told him to get back to it, Sherlock was intrigued.

It had only been another week before he took his ID badge.

Sherlock had not intended to keep it, he just wanted to look at, but the man could have lost it anywhere and his games would be much more authentic with the real equipment.

Sherlock always made John be the good guy but John never seemed to mind. Sherlock would concoct a robbery or a murder or a forgery, sometimes they were reenactments of stories they had read, or history books they had finished, and sometimes they were unique and new and John would follow him through the rooms, chasing clues, jumping into the 'caves' and 'hideouts' and 'traps' they had made from closets and seat cushions and one memorable time, with the skull and a dress.

Sometimes John won, pulling out his badge and arresting him or trying to keep a stern face on as he gave chase, his act dissolving as he tackled Sherlock into a hug rather than to subdue him.

And sometimes Sherlock won. Even if he had been really bad. Even if his crime was something awful.

"Because." John had said when they had curled up together at the bottom of a 'trap' of a clothes hamper and their legs tangled and the yellow light of the room was filtering down on them in shadowed holes. "Sometimes, the bad guys win."

Sherlock had asked Lestrade, never 'Mr. Lestrade' like the other boys called him, or 'Greg' like he told Nana to do, and it had never even merited an eye roll or a sigh so he must feel that his name sounds wrong any other way too, about being an Inspector a few times but had gathered little useful information that way so had moved on to other topics.

But this was different.

This time he had a reason.

"Sherlock."

"Lestrade." Sherlock replied as if it had been a greeting. He made sure to open his eyes wider and keep a carefully blank expression when the older man turned his body to look at him. He was safe in the knowledge that he would not get into too much trouble, not on his birthday, but looking the part never hurt.

"Foot Sherlock." Lestrade said with an almost silent sigh and a rather pointed look at where Sherlock was leaving a perfect Sherlock sized footprint in dark mud on the Detective Inspectors jacket.

Sherlock took his foot away and smiled cheekily at the detective, shifting the offending appendage to dangle off the side of the table harmlessly, and, assured that he had gathered the man's attention, shifted closer, both legs dangling off the table, kicking softly, unconsciously to a rhythm of his own creation.

"Do you have a gun?"

The words were a familiar ritual.

"Yes."

"Can I see it?"

"No."

Together they watched the group of boys in a moment of companionable silence, the sound of children playing a comfortable if not soft background noise, the rustle of Nana fussing around with plates forks that matched the arrangement of vibrantly coloured frosting. Somewhere in the mass of boys John laughed, not loudly or in a way that might call attention to him, but a sound Sherlock could pick out at the expense of all others.

"Can I see your badge?"

One mostly dark eyebrow rose but he did not take his eyes from the boys, watching somewhere in the middle distance as if he had found a point of interest no one else was keen enough to find.

"Are you going to nick it again?"

Sherlock froze, his foot caught mid-swing. Lestrade's face did not change, still staring ahead, his eyes did not flicker to Sherlock but to John who was laughing again softly in the mess of boys.

And then he saw it. The hint of a smile. The amusement on the mans face, the edges of his eyes betraying him.

Shocked. Amazed. Sherlock laughed, feet swinging again freed from their temporary prison locked in time, his cheeks burning with the force of his smile. He laughed until he ached, the sound of it strange and buoyant.

This was a birthday present. To be caught, found out and _surprised_ by it. Lestrade had given up his mask, he was laughing too, but softly, as if he wanted to hear the sound of his joy rather than add his own to it. It made the DI look younger, he was trying to look rueful as he reached into his jacket to extract the badge but his eyes still gleamed in a way that few people ever achieve after spending so long faking it.

"Yes." Sherlock took a deep breath and tried to hold it in his chest but it came out as a soft stream of helpless laughter which faded into something warm and heavy when he caught John's eyes, the blond standing motionless in a crowd of boys, watching him, waiting to hear the sound again. "Eventually."

Lestrade rolled his eyes helplessly and resolvedly tossed the badge into Sherlock's lap.

"At least I know you are not having me on." He waved his hand once dismissively at the badge as if it had always been a lost cause and turned back to the crowd, hiding his fondness. "Happy Birthday."

Sherlock ran his fingers over the badge and quickly pocketed it before Nana could catch him. There was a trace of dust clinging to the edges, lingering the creases of the metal, as if it were not only a few months old but had been waiting, already made, waiting for years to be used. It was interesting, bizarre and unpredictable the way the man himself was. Had it been another day he would have needed to know why, to know how, to make sense of this mystery. But today was their birthday. Today Sherlock had a promise that John would come away with him, that even when he did not want to, even when it hurt, John would trust him.

Sherlock watched and waited until John turned back to his game, brown eyes reluctantly leaving him, turning back to the screaming children. Sherlock nudged his muddy trainer into Lestrades sleeve, drawing fond eyes back to him, eyes that grew worried and aged as they took in the seriousness in his own countenance. Words of reprimand died on his lips when the questions that had not yet been asked drifted between them as if thought could become palpable and Sherlock had found one of the few people who could see it for what it was.

Looking up into the hard face of the detective inspector the sounds of the party seemed to fade, their lives, their easy laughter not only unreachable but unfathomable. There is a gravity in Lestrades eyes that remind him of Johns. Eyes that have seen too much. Know too much and still love too well.

The feeling rose in his throat like he might be sick as a cold sweat broke out on his skin, the kind that burns and turns the basic part of your mind to fear. He took a deep breath to drive it back, holding it in his body and letting it out hot and sick.

He couldn't do it.

You don't speak of the things that happen in the darkness, not even when they burn, not even when you are afraid that you might never wake up.

Not even when the injuries chase you from one world to the next. You can not talk about _him_.

You can never tell anyone.

Not Mycroft who is safe and loves you or Nana who understands more than anyone else.

Not John.

He could stop. He could swallow the bile rising in his throat and shake his head and forget this ever happened and Lestrade would never know.

But John was waiting for him.

John who had not slept in weeks.

John who wakes up screaming.

John who would cry for hours in his arms until the first rays of sunlight bled orange through the blanket that covered them and the tears had all dried out because he was too afraid to go back to sleep.

John who would not tell him why he woke up with a sob in his throat, silently choking him.

John who would hold him tight and whisper 'please' in a voice that made Sherlock want to cry.

Sherlock forced the thoughts away viciously, ruthlessly destroying them as if they had never existed at all. Thoughts ripped from his mind.

'_Don't cry.'_

'_Don't let anyone know.'_

Sherlock looked into Lestrade, into the eyes that looked too much like Johns. He could survive this. Lestrade with his gun. With his badge. With knowledge in his eyes that deserved no words.

He had saved John once and now he would do it again.

The smoky smooth voice that haunted his own dreams made him want to stop, to be silent and invisible.

'_You can't tell anyone, they won't understand.' _

_Fingertips bruising skin, gripping hard enough to make blood pool, hard enough to make him smother a cry. Real men don't cry._

'_And if you do I will have to make them understand wont I? Make you both understand.' _

_A voice like sadness and disappointment, a voice that said without words. 'If only you were better…'_

'_And it will be all your fault.'_

And if they couldn't survive this?

'_You don't want that do you?'_

If men could really reach out of dreams and hurt them? If dark promises could be made true?

Lestrade would fight, he was a Detective Inspector, he would survive.

And Sherlock?

If he was not brave enough, smart enough, strong enough? If this the man in his dreams kept his promise and made sure Sherlock would never tell again, if this time he could not come survive?

The others would take care of John. He would not be alone.

He would never have to be alone.

John is loved.

Nana tells them stories when night falls and Mycroft is still lost in paperwork and countries they have never seen. She sits on the edge of their bed and her hand is warm as she places it on the small of their backs and rubs small circles in a fond way that makes Sherlock wonder what her children had been like. If they needed this comfort from her the way they do. She tells them stories of knights and kings and gods and men and safe in bed with old cloth tangling in your fingers like an old friend and John curled close enough to feel he can almost see the knights when he closes his eyes. Dragons who breathe fire and men who have nothing to fear but the monsters that dwell in the deep dark places of the earth.

Men die for war and land and power and a million trivial nothing things.

It would not be so bad really. To die for love.

Sherlock's favorites are always the men who died for love.

"I need your help."


	38. Chapter 38

Sherlock tried to extract a promise not to tell anyone but the Inspector shook his head as if he were still lost in thought and incapable of emerging back into the world where little boys asked impossible things. Trapped in it the way Sherlock and John could get trapped in dreams.

It was a good sign.

It was brilliant.

The questions could be asked, adults could get lost in bad thoughts and memories that do not deserve words. And they could come back.

Because they could talk about it, they could get lost and still come back and be alright and real and not invisible or broken at all. Lestrade was already blinking as if bringing the world back into focus. The screaming children, the cool wind against his damp face, the way it swept napkins from Nana's neat piles so that colourful paper danced in red and blue across subdued green grass.

The men of nightmares could not hurt you just because you whispered terrible things into foreign ears, knowing does not mean that bad things would happen, that they would come in the dark when you close your eyes, too tired to stay awake any longer.

A word was not enough to damn.

'_You can't tell anyone, they won't understand.'_

Lies. He knew it the moment it was too late to turn back, the moment fear and pain should have made him stop if there had been an ounce of truth to it.

'_I would have to make them understand…you wouldn't want that would you?' _

All of it. Terrible. Beautiful. Lies.

Because Sherlock was still breathing. He could still feel the wind and smell the grass crushed beneath running feet. And when this was all over he would still be able to reach out touch Johns hand and let him curl their fingers together like he had missed him, like he was something amazing.

And if he could have, if there was any truth to those promises made by invisible bodies, if the man had any power here…

Then there would be nothing left of this world.

Nothing left of him to be sitting here now.

Lestrade was staring off into the crowd of boys, his eyes following John in an unconscious motion. It made Sherlock want to smile, a feeling that did not reach his cheeks or lips but was no less real, something private and internal, hidden deep in his heart where it could never be harmed.

Lestrade looked at John as if he were the balm that could soothe Sherlock's words.

His better half. The cure to Sherlock's poison.

Sherlock had been careful. He had never told these things to anyone; never let them read it in his body or face. If later, alone, without a John or a Mycroft to hold him, Lestrade suffered nightmares from this, silly dark dreams, then he would only have to suffer things he could survive. Dreams which would take a breath, and a tear, and nothing more.

Little pains. Little anguishes.

Sherlock would never tell him anything that would break him.

Lestrade is brave and strong. Even if he turns too pale as he listens, even as his lips press closed and tight as if he were afraid of what might come out of them, words and a half a mind run off without him.

Sometimes bravery is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway.

Lestrade saved John once.

If he had known, if Sherlock could have asked him, Lestrade would have volunteered for this.

Even without knowing he had said the words, perfect. Like a story book. John would have loved the resonance, the sound of it as he closed his eyes tight and pictured the knight on his impossibly white stead with shining armour.

"I won't let anyone-" the words stuttered and stopped as if they were painful, but not too terrible to bear, not like drowning, starving, dying. Just pain. Knowing the words were an impossible lie even as they fall from your lips. A pause. A correction. Out of place against the streamers and the rays of cold sunshine lighting their artificial signs of _Happy Birthday!_

"You do not have face this alone."

Sherlock shifted closer as the long dead words settled between them and the laughter of the others seemed very far off. He was done now. He had his answers, his brilliant unfathomable test results.

Too good to be true.

Soon Nana would call them all over for presents. Sherlock would not whisper any more dark things today, he had no more questions to ask or stories to tell that would linger like something bitter and acrid on the back of their tongues, lingering in their minds like a physical pain.

Lestrade had, for a moment at the beginning, tried to hide his reaction from Sherlock. He had tried to mask his actions, to make them deliberate and comforting as an adult should be to a child, tried not show the strain he felt.

He had given up on that.

He had taken one look at Sherlock and eyes that seemed far too old and too clear for a soon-to-be six year old and seemed to decide that coddling would be a wasted effort.

Sherlock loved him a little more for that.

Lestrade's hands rose to cover his face in a motion that seemed to be an unconscious habit, like he was permanently on the edge of trying to dispel a migraine, fingers pressing against temples and then shifting to press into closed eyes.

Sherlock shifted closer, reaching out and taking one of the hands from his face, gently insinuating his own hand into the open fist. His clean trousers pressed into the mud he had smeared onto his jacket before. A Lestrade-Sherlock shaped stain on his clean clothing.

He knew how this part worked.

Even if Lestrade would not suffer, even if the pain never came and the man was trapped only in dreams he would suffer from this. It was like waking up alone in the dark without knowing where or why or how.

It was falling without reason or knowledge from one world into another and unless someone grabbed your hand, unless they pulled you close and made you feel something real…

You could feel so alone that you might forget how to speak.

Lestrade smiled, quietly, the kind of smile you could miss or mistake for sadness. Sherlock thought for a moment that Lestrade might pull him down off the table and hug him. He didn't.

Slowly the bigger hand wrapped gently around Sherlock's, holding him lightly, gently. A man who knew how to hold a child's hand, knew how to make it feel as if they were both holding onto one another.

In the throng of boys John was edging closer, circling towards them with every deliberate step.

Lestrade would not promise not to tell anyone but just because he had asked, because he had tried, he would keep his almost-secret, mostly.

Mycroft would be told but Sherlock had always known that. In his own way Mycroft already knew about _the man,_ he knew about the dreams, he knew that sometimes even when they were there and holding his hand that they were not really there at all. That they had disappeared, gone to where not even he could reach them.

Now Mycroft would know just a little more. And he would worry and would try so very hard to keep them safe and eventually he would discover the things that Sherlock had not said and he would dream of what John would not speak of and it would hurt him.

But Sherlock could stop that. Because when Mycroft asked him tomorrow or the next day he would have a _plan_.Things would not be good, but they would be _better._

* * *

John was silent as he slid into the seat at the head of the table, ignoring the chair set up for him, pressing close against Sherlock as the others all sat down around them, completely oblivious. They were getting too big to share a chair anymore but he didn't care. Under the table John touched the back of Sherlock's hand, just a finger tracing across delicate bones, unsure, but Sherlock gripped his hand tight, holding them together as he gave him a smile John could feel in the pit of his stomach.

Nana was handing them presents and the other boys were yelling out who they were from before Nana could read the tag aloud and John was smiling because it was the right thing to do. Because it was a birthday and everyone was happy and at birthday parties you smiled.

When you smile no one wonders if everything is okay.

But two men were sliding closer to Lestrade who still looked as if he had seen a ghost, too pale and not quite shaking but giving the impression that given the chance he would really like to. The three of them sliding into the background.

John opened the first present with his left hand and Sherlock's right. A toy, something shiny and expensive that they would never ever play with from a boy whose daddy liked to say 'money can't buy happiness, but it can rent it'.

John smiled harder, said thank you, and wondered fleetingly if it would be more beautiful when Sherlock took it apart, a hundred glittering pieces laid out on the floor.

Mycroft's men, both with ear pieces in and little microphones hidden in their clothing (John only knows because they have two hidden in their toy box for when they play hide-and-go-seek with the body guards), are trying to persuade Lestrade to go with them. One of them was not very good at hiding, touching his clothing, his ear. John felt a little sorry for him. The obvious ones never lasted long. Maybe he could get a job he liked more now; maybe he would be an astronaut.

Mycroft had not come himself to their 'Friend party', he said that he was really very busy and that he was really very sorry. Sherlock had laughed and stuck out his tongue, John had just given him a smile that Auntie Harry called his 'uh-hu, sure and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you' Look.

Later they decided that it was because Mycroft didn't want to have the 'and what do you do for a living' talk with any of the other grown-up's, apparently saying 'top secret' was only funny when you were just-about-to-be-six.

As for the bridge? They decided that was just an Auntie Harry thing.

John shook himself mentally, trying to fall back into the present even as more inane thoughts sparked in his mind, stealing his attention away. He did not think he was obvious about it but Sherlock held his hand tighter, a reassuring press of fingers like a whisper in his ear_. I am here._

_Yes_, John thought with his heart climbing into his throat, _but for how much longer?_

The next present set before them was wrapped in gold ribbon with matching paper that shone in the sunlight, warm and cold all at once. Frozen, glistening, metal. John touched the invisible bump in his shirt where his ring lay warm against his chest like a promise. Sherlock pressed closer against him, curling their joined hands in his lap, pressing Johns hand into the warmth of his stomach. If they were alone Sherlock might have kissed him, he might have whispered in his ear a joke or some silly story to make him laugh.

It didn't help.

It made it so much worse.

He could still see the look on Lestrades face as Sherlock whispered something not even the wind would catch. Something secret and heavy that could bring Lestrade close to shaking, something that could make Mycroft suffer pedestrian obviousness. Something that John could not read when Sherlock's sad blue eyes looked at him and revealed…nothing.

It was a nothing kind of word. A nothing feeling. It was subtle. A feeling that he had always carried with him but sometime he could forget, drown it out in laughter and hugs and smiles. Sometimes life was enough to drive it back but it had always been there, lurking in the dark corners of his heart. Until it reached out to overshadow him. An innate, sublime knowledge. A comfortable familiarity that is dark and cold and smells like the hot copper tang of blood.

_Nothing good last forever._

_Eventually, everyone will leave you. _

John touched the ring under his shirt again, wanting to pull it out, to look at it and watch it shine in the light and prove that it was real.

A promise. His. Always his.

John tried to remember how it felt the first time, when they had looked up marriage and watched the royal wedding and found so many answers to questions they never knew they had. He tried to recall the moment when it was just them and he wanted to say the words but he was so nervous that all he could hear was his own heart and then Sherlock surprised him, John's words coming in Sherlocks voice_. _

'_John, Will you marry me?'_

And then, because his heart was still pounding, because the answer was so obvious but somehow Sherlock couldn't see it. Like his heart had been pounding too.

'_Please?...I mean, If you want to.'_

He remembers it was joy and rapture and love, but he can't feel it now.

He can feel the moment he looked at Sherlock with his devastating blue eyes and an ashen faced Lestrade and knew that Sherlock no longer held all of his secrets in his own heart, in John's.

John smiled as the golden wreckage shifted in the wind and Nana saved it from escape, as the golden ribbon tangled around his fingertips. The words were falling from his lips, 'thank you', the next present being placed before he realized he had never looked to see what is was they had unwrapped.

Lestrade had shaken off Mycroft's men for the moment, letting them sink back into the background as he took a seat at the back of the table, beyond the crowd of children. He offered a smile to John over their animated faces as if by accident. As if he had not meant to look at him at all but now that he had, now that he saw Johns birthday-party smile all he could do was return it. A smile that says 'I know everything isn't okay but we try to look the part don't we?'

John felt naked. Exposed.

The smile on his face felt suddenly like plastic. Like it was crumbling over his lips.

Two separate presents were set down in front of them, bright boy-blue paper and their names in curly elegant script written by someone who cares more for appearances than for children.

Sherlock pressed his cheek to Johns shoulder, curls tumbling endearingly into his face. White and black and blue with a smear of red. He could feel John's anxiety, his slow mounting panic as easily as if he were a book in their lessons. Could he feel the shadow unfolding inside him? Starting in his heart and reaching out to touch his toes, slinking through his veins while he sat here smiling?

Yes. Of course he could. Sherlock still had all of John's heart. All of his secrets.

He knew Sherlock wanted him to press his own cheek into curly black hair, to curl closer, to pretend as they did when they were younger that they were one person, that nothing could ever tear them apart.

John took his hand back from Sherlock, his hand damp from holding on so tight. He opened the wrapping on his gift slowly, peeling away the tape, folding back the thick paper, hoping that if he prolonged it he could buy himself enough time for the shadow of nausea to settle.

Sherlock turned his face on his shoulder, blue eyes looking into him from inches away but John refused to look back. He did not want to see the secrets he was no longer privy to. He did not want to see walls building up against him.

He did not want to look and know that he was losing him.

It was his own fault.

Before it had been okay. It was enough to wake up and not be alone; it was enough to hold on so tight that nothing could get them.

So close beneath their blanket it was like they were one person and no one would ever be able to tear them apart.

But now John can't sleep at night. Now there are two men haunting his dreams and sometimes he cannot tell them apart. Laughter and screams. The heavy thud of boots and the light click of dress shoes on tile. And every night Sherlock holds him tighter and every night the look on his face, the feel of his heart pounding against his back grows more worried.

Scared.

Scared for him.

John had given him all of his secrets. Almost.

Sherlock knows that there are things you can never talk about. John has asked, begged for Sherlock to tell him those secrets but he can't. Just like John.

But Sherlock told Lestrade. Told him a secret, because John wouldn't tell him the secrets that were keeping him up at night.

And now, because he couldn't say, because he couldn't hide it, he was going to lose him.

It starts with secrets shared. Simple and slow and innocent. But secrets can grow, they branch out and build. And if Sherlock gave a secret to everyone, if he kept them away from John, there would be a forest of little secrets, a little piece of Sherlock's heart in everyone they loved.

Auntie Harry teased them and called them Sherlock-John and John-Sherlock.

But now Sherlock would have all of John and John would only have a little piece of Sherlock. One tiny piece of a heart spread around a dozen people. One tree in a forest of secrets.

There would be inside jokes and looks and smiles he would not understand.

They would never be Sherlock-John again.

Just. John.

A kiss pressed against his shoulder, at the edge of his chest. A smile pressed to his shirt, his skin. In front of everyone. Like they were still one person.

And he looked. He couldn't help but look.

Eyes more familiar than his own. Silent words that he imagined he would never know again.

_You promised you would trust me._

And Johns smile became effortless. The cold blood dark shadow creeping through his limbs burned away in a blush that rose to his cheeks, leaving behind only an aching need to prove it wrong. A Sherlock sized hollow in his heart that began to fill when Sherlock beamed at him in silent understanding.

The presents before them were torn open, ready to be done, ready to be just them, just their family.

John tore the blue paper away at last, letting Sherlock do the same next to him, he smiled and had a 'thank you' ready at hand when laughter, loud and cruel, erupted from the mouths of his friends.

Beside him Sherlock was holding a pain of sunglasses up to his face, examining their weight and shape, asserting how much of his eyes could seen through the darkened lenses.

The boys' laughter continued. John did not have to hear their whispers to know what they were saying. He had heard it all before.

Mr. Too-cool-for-us

Mr. Misunderstood-Genius with the Ice-Blue-Eyes

John wanted them to stop. He wanted to throw the glasses back at them and tell them that they could never hope to be half as amazing as Sherlock. That they could spend their entire lives searching and never find a person as loving or loyal.

The smile dropped off his face, crumbling to nothing, shattered on the ground.

They were supposed to be his friends.

New words were on his lips, heated and harsh, heart still pumping from the thought of losing Sherlock. He would make them stop. But beside him, quietly, amused. Sherlock laughed.

John turned to see him smile, to see him slip the dark glasses onto his face, erasing his crystal blue eyes, black curls falling down against black glass and hiding him away.

The boys continued to laugh but it was less cruel now. It suited him, they said through giggles and the snap-flash of cameras and adults thinking that this was a moment that should be saved forever on film, a memory to treasure.

Mr. Too-cool-for-us

Mr. Misunderstood-Genius with the Ice-Blue-Eyes

Sherlock knew of course. He had beaten them at their own game. He had saved John from exposing himself, from ruining his birthday-party demeanor.

Sherlock squeezed his hand. John turned and looked at him, needing to see that it was okay, to know exactly what he was thinking, needing that closeness that has no words. Needing Sherlock.

But he wasn't there.

Black glass reflecting his own sickly smile back at him.

He stopped smiling.

If Sherlock noticed John could not tell.

The presents came and went, the cake was brought out sans candles. They had made Nana promise. No candles until later. They did not want meaningless people to distract them from their wishes; they did not want to lose something precious in a crowd. Nana said they could do candles twice but they refused. What if it negated their wishes altogether because it was greedy to get more than one?

No one mentioned the lack of candles, or the fact that two little boys did not want their birthday wishes. They just wanted the cake, wanted fizzy drinks and ice cream.

John crushed his cake with his fork, swirling the melting ice-cream into it until it looked like he might have eaten some of it, until it was nothing but swirls of thick creamy colour that smelled sickly sweet in the air.

Sherlock did not touch his. The ice-cream in a dish, pooling into an untouched ocean.

The boys said goodbyes in shouts as they trailed after their mothers, streaming past with frosting smudged onto their faces, sticky hands stuck with bits of grass waiving in the air in carefree goodbye.

Sherlock still wore his black on black glasses, the image of aloof, of frosty detachment.

John did not care what he looked like. As the adults cleaned up and claimed their children and streamed past them and Lestrade went at last with Mycroft's men John locked his arms around Sherlock, pushing his cheek into black curls.


	39. Chapter 39

Nana received a text and a nod from the driver as they got in the car. They took the long way home, Nana pointing out the places she had lingered as a girl, telling them little stories of people long gone. The two boys did not talk, letting her memories wash over them, faded and vibrant in turns, the unimportant details misted over as if they had never existed at all.

John held on tighter and closed his eyes as Nanas voice drifted over them in a dozen little heartbreaks, in a lifetimes worth of happiness. He could feel Sherlock's heart beating against his chest and with Sherlock in his lap he could not see the concealing black glasses slicing his features apart.

John held his breath, stopping the gentle in and out in his own pedestrian lungs to feel Sherlock's alien heartbeat better, a heart full of secrets yet to be shared.

When he looked back on this memory, when the edges of recollection began curl and fade in a haze of nostalgic sepia and through the lens of old age he would not lose this. Pains and presents and heartbreak would fade and be lost in unimportance.

John would still have Sherlock's heart.

* * *

When they finally arrived, finally walked through the heavy doors and gates and locks and sent secret waves to men who were less secret than they hoped a small intimate crowd had formed in wait.

They made it seem realistic; they put in the effort, the smiles as they shouted 'Happy Birthday!' as if it were a surprise. The proud people who formed the matrix of their lives decorated in silly party hats and streamers from little poppers that fell to the ground heavy and uncurled.

Mycroft in a paper crown.

But as their family moved to as if to hold them they hesitated, when they should have snatched them up in their arms and twirled them around Sherlock and John stayed heavily gravity-bound.

It had taken months for the adults to learn how to fly, that if they lifted John up he would not break, if they held Sherlock up above their heads so that he was against the sky, that he would not fall.

There should have been a rush of arms and kisses, heartbeats and hugs as each adult stole their turn and then at the end they would find their way back to each other, hair ruffled and kisses lingering on their cheeks.

John did not want to be taken from Sherlock, not when the idea of loneliness still seemed so close. But he would not have minded if his Grand-mere had picked him up and told him how very big he was getting, he would not even have protested much as Harry messed up his hair and muttered 'twerp' into his ear as she held him as if she was afraid he might disappear.

John might have been worried that whatever Sherlock had whispered to Lestrade had found its way back here. That he was the only one left in the dark and that if he looked too closely he would find that everyone was a little too pale, a little more broken. But Harry lasted only a minute before her smile broke into laughter that seemed contagious, like a different secret had perforated the room.

She dropped to sit cross legged on the floor in defiance of the elaborate couch and elegant chairs that surrounded them. She smirked and tapped Sherlock on the nose with the tip of a finger.

"Sunglasses inside kiddo?" She pulled John down into her lap to face Sherlock, her arms wrapping around his middle. John could see himself in the mirrored glasses, see Harry wrapped around him and Sherlock's easy smirk as he rubbed the back of his hand against his nose as if she had somehow left a mark. "If these are to keep your secret identity it's a little late."

Sherlock pushed the glasses up into his hair, catching his curls at odd angles and John watched as his own dulled image was pushed away and in its place vibrant blue eyes met his.

John felt the smile go all the way to his eyes.

Harry offered an arm and Sherlock laughed, tumbling into them, his eyes never leaving Johns as the blond reached up to touch the faint mark on his nose where the glasses had sat.

"It's all right Superman." Harry promised with a laugh and a tousling of disastrous curls. Sherlock grinned and John could read in his face how pleased he was with the comparison; by the way John was still reaching out to touch his cheek. "Your secret is safe with us."

* * *

Sherlock was sitting with grand-mère. She was always just a little hesitant with them, forever just a little more reserved than the others. Like she was always remembering the first time they had seen her, before they knew that she would love them. John imagined that every time she started to reach out to touch them she saw them running from her. Sometimes her hand would fall back to her side, but sometimes she would remember that now they loved each other.

Sherlock had led her to a chair away from the others, holding out his arms as she sat down so she knew he wouldn't run, to help her be brave. That's where he was now, sitting in her lap and chatting to her in a soft lyrical French that John liked listening to. He would never sound like that but he didn't mind. He had Sherlock for that.

John turned back to the group of adults gathered around him. They were clingy today, now that they knew they could be, but John didn't mind.

He didn't blame them either.

They were talking, telling stories and trying to get him and each other to laugh and forget what they had learned, what Lestrade had told Mycroft. But their eyes would linger on him, like he had his own gravity, or maybe it was like when something is so beautiful that you just wanted to look to make sure it was really there. Like staring into the sun. Auntie Harry caught him looking at Sherlock and smiled at him, her sideways smile that could make him blush, but this time her tongue was sticking out of the corner of her mouth to make him laugh instead. He smiled at her, the warmth of her affection settling over his heart and quelling the need that burned there. Nana was telling them a story, the one from when they were little and decided to paint each other's bodies with all of the contents of her purse, a story that everyone knew but laughed at anyway at all the right moments, waiting for the words, the punch line, so that they could remember too. So they could hold up the memory and make it shine.

John reached up behind him and closed his fingers around the soft cloth of Mycroft's collar. He liked the feel of the soft pressed cloth between his fingers; he liked that he knew the smell of it if he should turn around and press his face into it, warm and familiar.

Mycroft gave every pretense of listening to the story but John could feel his eyes on him, could feel the way his posture changed as his mind switched tracts. Nana and Auntie Harry were laughing at their story, at their snapshot of joy, but Mycroft had let go of the memory. While they laughed Mycroft wrapped his arms around him and pulled him tight, a kiss pressed into his hair.

Like he was something beautiful.

Like he was loved.

John didn't mind.

* * *

Their birthday wishes were quick. Something to be done of course, how often do little boys get to make demands of the universe? To wish for the impossible and the unfathomable?

But they were something to get finished, wishes wished for silently every night, dreamed of until the words lost meaning and there was nothing left but the idea, the heart of it, and maybe it was better that way. Words could be misconstrued, forgotten, but something that is just wish cannot be anything but heart.

John doesn't know if wishes come true but sometimes it feels like they do.

Everyone clapped and sang, everyone looking at them with their hungry eyes, eyes that betrayed the hearts beneath even as their faces tried to be stolid and perfect. Smiles laying on desperation. Sherlock took his hand when they were done, he was ready to leave with him now, to forget the presents and the cake and spend the rest of their birthday not being apart but John knew they could wait just a little longer even with Sherlock holding his hand so very tight.

He had been brave for Sherlock all day, now he just needed to be brave a little while longer for everyone else.

Instead of letting himself be lead out of the room John tugged Sherlock into the mass of their family, with their thin porcelain smiles.

When they hugged them all goodnight and gave and received their kisses for the night John imagined that he could feel the unease slipping out of them like a breath. He imagined he could feel them saving the moment in their minds so that when they were alone they could bring out the memory and make it shine.

When John gave his last kiss of the night, an obnoxiously loud kiss pressed against Mycroft's cheek and received a soft gentle one in return the smiles did not seem so brittle. Fleeting maybe. But he had been brave so very, very long and there was nothing else he could do to help them.

Besides, it was his birthday. And on birthdays wishes come true.

John gave one last little wave and heard them laugh as he went to the door where Sherlock stood waiting for him. Sherlock put his arms around him the second he was close enough, holding him so tight it was hard to breathe.

John didn't mind. John just hugged him back.

He thought the hug might be for waiting for him, for letting him talk to Lestrade, for not demanding to know, for a million other things, but then Sherlock let go, holding onto only his hands and John could see what it was really there for.

Because Sherlock had not thought of the others, had not thought even to say goodnight even though he loved them.

And the lacking had shocked him.

John had shocked him.

John could see the swell of affection in Sherlock, he could feel it spilling over into himself like it had filled Sherlock and it was pouring over into him. A swell that had made Sherlock reach out and hold him close without ever taking leave of his mind, without going through all of the mental processes that he subjected every action to. He loved John for being better. Loved him helplessly.

John could hear his heartbeat in his ears, feel the flush work its way up his neck and onto his cheeks, warmth spreading from his chest into his body until he felt so light that if this were a dream he might fly. But there was something in Sherlock face that he could not read. Something entirely different.

Sherlock gave him a quick nervous smile that made his heart skip a beat. Sherlock's cheeks were bright red and John thought absurdly to himself that he was what everyone should stare at. It was Sherlock who had his own gravity.

Sherlock let go of him and edged back into the room where the adults were still staring unabashedly at them, cheeks still blazing.

"Goodnight." Sherlock's voice was uncharacteristically small but he steeled himself, John could feel that he was afraid, but no one else would. John was close enough to touch, he could see the way his hand was shaking almost imperceptibly as he reached up to his neck and placed a hand flat over where John knew a ring lay.

"-Love you." He told them all. And when he was done, when the words were out and real and they could never be called back, he smiled.

When he turned back to John with his heart beating so fast it made him dizzy John knew what the look had been and knew that sometimes wishes will become something better.

Sherlock wanted to make him proud.

He wanted to be better for him.


	40. Chapter 40

Mycroft swallowed back the emotion in his chest. He would remember the words forever; remember the sound of it as if it had been something that he had earned, but not now. Not when there was still work to be done.

A silence had fallen over them, a sound heavy and sweet that seemed to isolate them each in their own thoughts and yet bound them together.

Harry was still gazing at the empty place the two boys had stood a moment before, tiny ghosts imprinted in the shadows of her eyes.

The presents still gleamed on the table unopened, the cake with dots of melted wax lay untouched although wished on.

An almost birthday.

Almost suitably normal.

Mycroft stood and examined the women sitting around him, three women who never should have had anything in common, of almost comically incompatible lives, three women whom he had decided he must, at least to a degree, trust.

Sherlock's words, his unprecedented sweetness, his depth, still resonated within each of them.

The least he could do was observe courtesy.

"You are all welcome to spend the night and perhaps in the morning we will find ourselves less… pressed." A glance at Mrs. Hudson told him that she would find a place for each of them, the nod and the smile of approval on her face made him feel oddly comforted, but there was precious little time to dwell on that when behind closed doors Sherlock and John were rediscovering a past he had only begun to uncover.

"Harriet, if you would be so kind as to accompany me?"

But it was not Harry who stood and made her way to the center of the room with a power that would be dangerous to ignore and a look in her eyes that was enough to give him pause.

It was Mummy.

Everything had been chaos in the beginning, so many variables, so many dangerous unknowns and two precious babies in the middle of it with only him to save them. She had changed then. From the moment Mycroft took his brother and made into him a son Mummy had let herself be small.

The forgotten mother.

Better that way.

Harry was not the only one who feared the past repeating.

But Sherlock's words had triggered something in her, where in others they had softened, in her they had become something hard and resolute. She had always been tall and beautiful and all sharp angles but now she seemed underlain with steel. Now she suddenly looked very much like Sherlock had in the moments when he realized that he had something, someone, worth protecting. Harsh, and with eyes that burned.

"No." The word was no more than a breath but it shattered their silence, fragmented it and let it crash around them in a thousand razor sharp pieces. "This secrecy ends now. Whatever you have to say you will say it here, in front of me. I have a right to know what is going on." She stepped forward, unabashed, standing against him the way no one else in the world might dare to do. Her grey eyes were fixed on him, unyielding, burning. "I may have lost a son." Her voice was even and cold. "But those two are my grandbabies. I will be damned before I let anyone take that away from me."

The woman with the fierce grey eyes looked into her eldest son, and at that moment Mycroft remembered the only other time he had been allowed to see this emotion.

This emotional upheaval that overrides the logical world and makes it seem so paltry.

The day their father died in a way police would call accidental.

The day that he betrayed Sherlock in a way that had taken his brother from him, forever.

The day he had come home from school a day early and by luck and happenstance found that he was as a brother, wretched. That he was the most unobservant and the most powerless person he had ever known. Because this strange little brother whom he watched grow like a picture book, on long weekends and snatches of time on holidays was not sick, or weak, like he had thought, as he had assumed.

He was broken.

Time dulls memories, it turns them into fact without real images, blurring faces and emotions.

But Mycroft made himself remember. Running over details, words, sounds, _that look _in his mind until it was part of him, hardwired in. Inescapable.

He remembers the way he sped straight to his mother's lab, the way she looked when he had told her like a dutiful and ignorant son, the way the truth of it clicked behind her eyes. The way it burned. She looked like this. Like now. Her voice was cold and even and if tears and pain were burning the back of her eyes she never showed it.

He remembers that when she told him to take Sherlock and go, to not let on that anything was amiss, that he didn't ask any questions. That he had actually felt proud to be entrusted with his brother.

He remembers that he never even looked back.

A few days later it would be ruled as natural causes. In the days that followed people would say things like 'It's always the good ones', and 'It was before his time', hugging them or reaching out a hand and touching them and telling them that it would get easier. Like they believed it. Because people want to believe what they are told, they want to believe in what is easy and honest and not what they fail to observe. They said those pedestrian clichés and meant every word. Because they wanted to see the world the way he would never see again.

Sherlock used to tell people, rare people, people he trusted, people whom had somehow become part of himself, that Mycroft was smarter than him. The most dangerous man in London, he used to call him. But it was Sherlock who had made him more than just well-read, it was Sherlock who taught him the way the world really works, that in this world he could not afford to be second best.

Sherlock had known, the second he took his hand and told him they were going for soda pops, he had known.

Instead of following him out of the house, Sherlock, this scrap of a boy with too pale skin and painfully brilliant eyes motioned for him to be quiet and led them upstairs without a word. It was a disused room, nothing special, and at first Mycroft had thought it was just a place to hide, a place to sit in the dark and wait. Sherlock closed the door behind them, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. His small body so close that without even touching him Mycroft could feel the heat of his body. Sherlock did not spare him a look as he ignored the furniture and crossed the empty bedroom to huddle in the corner of the room, one small arm cradled against his chest, the bruising already deepening to purple, a spread of black.

Mycroft had stood there like a fool, a fool who could read to you in a dozen languages and recreate every proof Einstein had ever written, but a fool none the less.

Time slowed and sped and lost its normal course, shadows leapt forward and the last of the tinted orange sunset flickered and died and grew dark.

He watched Sherlock whose skin nearly glowed in the thin light of the stars and actually believed that this was some strange reaction to what he had been through, that he was like any other child, like a small wounded animal.

And then he heard it.

Voices through the air vents, old beautiful homes where elaborate metal grates were for more than ascetics.

Mycroft sat with him in the dark twilight, a world of blues, lowering himself to the floor beside him, the wall against their backs their only support, listening to the sounds below echo up to them.

He wondered how many times Sherlock had hidden here, how many times he had listened to conversations that gave him an edge, an idea of where not to be without any of them ever knowing.

They listened to the voices now, their mother's calm voice talking about nothing, talking about work and weather and the merits of having a drink before dinner. Their father's voice, unchanged, not dark or menacing but, terribly, the same voice that Mycroft associated with Sunday dinners, with safety.

And it had suddenly all become so very flimsy, this life, a thin veneer which made shine something rotten.

Sitting in the dark in a room where the air was thick with disuse, where breathing is done silently as if it can be heard feet below and betray you, listening for the last time the sound of what had been his life, Mycroft looked at his little brother sitting so still and quite, head tilted and eyes closed as if every spec of him where listening, and Mycroft realized that he had no idea who this person was, not the doll he had imagined.

He had never seen Sherlock at all.

But he was starting to.

He understood what was happening. They both did.

There was no other way.

There would be no running.

No police.

No fair trial or clean perfect escape.

The Holmes' were an old family with older money.

Terrible things happen in closed communities, in the isolated places of the countryside where no one ever dares whisper, but even if you were to scream no one would hear you. Terrible things are allowed to happen in the name of old honor and allegiance. In the name of money changing hands.

Mycroft watched Sherlock's little arm, the delicate wrist swell and darken until the starlight made it seem nothing but a shadow fallen over his skin. He was half as skinny as he should be. All the injuries, the illnesses painted black beneath his eyes.

Below they heard the pause of soft actions, a smile, the opening of a bottle of wine, the tink of crystal lightly touching.

And then something soft, but audible.

Choking. Gasping.

The crash of shattered crystal on a dark wood floor.

The dull, muted, crunch of a body falling.

It could have taken hours or seconds. Time was nothing. Mycroft could have stayed there in the dark for days while his world changed but Sherlock made time start again.

Sherlock scrambled to his feet and swung open the door like it did not matter anymore, letting light pour in, yellow and bright enough to make him blink. He was silent as he had been before but Mycroft followed him anyway, down stairs and past doorways until they could see her.

Until they could see what they had done to her.

They would protect her.

He was still alive. Still moving. They did not look at him.

Mummy was soft and brilliant and she loved them so much that it hurt.

But Mycroft had taken that away from her. He had thought he was doing the right thing, telling her, that this one act would begin to make up for the fact that he had failed for so long. But he made it so much worse.

Because Mummy is brilliant. Mummy never thought that a single action could take back the past, could begin to rectify anything.

Mummy had killed him, but she would never be able to go back and not fail Sherlock.

He had shown her that.

And for that, Sherlock had never forgiven him.


	41. Chapter 41

John followed Sherlock down the hallway. Light from where they had left their family softly lit the dark oak walls so that the intricate panels gleamed and looked as if they would be warm if he reached out and pressed his cheek against it. There were shadows on the walls and only the nightlights still glowed, casting yellow circles of light that dissipated into darkness. As if they were walking down a street in the middle of London, two gentlemen arm in arm, and they were stepping in and out of the pools of light of the streetlamps so that every few seconds their faces were lost in darkness to everyone except themselves. They could have turned on the lights, as simple as reaching out and touching the switch, but they didn't. When they reached their door, cast in warm golden light from the two little lights Mycroft had insisted on just for them, Sherlock took his hand.

Sherlock paused when he should have just reached for the doorknob, looking at him, bathed in the same golden light and he didn't do anything at all. He just, looked, and holding hands in the darkened hallway John saw what he never imagined he would see aimed at him.

Sherlock was being shy.

"Close your eyes."

John could hear Sherlock move, he felt the door open and heard the click of their light switch. He put his hands over his eyes and let Sherlock push him gently into the room, his steps shuffling as Sherlock maneuvered him so that the door could close behind them safe and solid, but not as flawlessly real and comforting as Sherlock's hand still resting on his back.

"Alright." Sherlock said, no longer touching him, leaving him all alone. "Open."

"Sherlock-"

"It's silly." He stammered before John could finish his sentence, fists clenching at his sides. "It was just- _nothing_ -forget it. Stupid. I will take it down-"

"Sherlock it's _beautiful."_

The castle fort rose high above them, the blankets and sheets tied to the top levels of book shelves and chairs, and a stolen coat rack. Within the mass of cloth other objects protruded, holding up the material, giving it shape, making rooms and tunnels of folded white and blue.

Sherlock stopped talking. Stopped staring down at his hands and looked up at John with very, very wide blue eyes.

"R-really?" As if he could not believe that it was happening. "Do..." He paused and took a deep breath and his eyes were so, very, blue. "- do you want to see inside?"

John took Sherlock's hand and smiled and he watched the blush rise on Sherlock's nose and cheeks.

John smiled so hard that it made his cheeks hurt. The words were on his lips but he stayed quiet, listening to Sherlock's breath and let the unspoken words fade until they were gone.

'_Oh god yes.'_

* * *

It. Was. Amazing.

It was like a castle, like a real castle with rooms and openings and hidden pathways that led to parts of their bedroom that had always been there but now seemed…magical. It never got too dark inside; and magic castles? They had walls that were soft and smelled like soap and some walls were not blankets or sheets or towels at all. Some rooms were made of clothing that looked like Nana, and others looked like Mycroft and all of them looked _safe_.

Sherlock was on his hands and knees, crawling past panels and cubbies and he would stop and turn back to John and smile and slip his hands under the cloth wall, opening it into a hidden passageway.

Sherlock waited for him at the end of one of the short passages, standing in a tunnel where the cloth fell all around him, a dead end save for an opening that he was holding with his hands. Sherlock was standing against something solid and it took John a moment to realize that it was their bed, that the only way from here was through Sherlock's arms and onto the bed.

"Careful." Sherlock whispered as he began the short climb. John let Sherlock put an arm around him and help him up. He didn't need the help, but it was okay, because Sherlock knew he didn't either.

John blinked, blinked again, and tried to let his eyes adjust as Sherlock scrambled up behind him and the tunnel disappeared as his legs slipped inside.

It was, beautiful.

It was small, the length of their bed but only high enough for them to sit inside, a cave made up of bright, safe, orange. A cave that made all the light around them soft and warm and perfect.

For him.

John crawled on his hands and knees to where his bear sat looking at him with his friendly button eyes, purposefully placed where John would see it. He scooped it into his arms and held him tight against his chest.

All for him, John thought. Sherlock did all of this for him.

He hugged the bear closer.

Sherlock caught his eyes and blushed again, looking back down into his lap where he had finally settled bathed in warm light. That was not like him, not when they were together, not when they were alone.

John looked around again, looked for the first time.

This was not the bed they had spent so many nights in, this was a pirates treasure cave, it was a king's ransom all laid out for him.

The sword lay across the edge of the bed, somehow stolen, pilfered from wherever Mycroft had thought to hide it from them this time and put into a scabbard that shone like story books and fairy tales that Nana cooed to them as they fell asleep.

Sherlock's magnifying glass was here, the new one that Mycroft got him one day when they had all stayed home sick with a fever and a cough. They had spent the whole day together playing detectives and Mycroft had pretended that he couldn't find them even when a sneeze had given them away. The glass was tucked safely into the cloth, shinning like an orange diamond. Sherlock still had his baby one, John knew, his first one with its little plastic handle, hidden away with their other little treasures under the bed.

There were torches and glow sticks and photographs that were worn at the edges because the pictures were of them and their family and they were beautiful and had gone with them on car trips and trains and tucked into trousers and overalls and toy wallets. John didn't need to look to know the faces in the pictures, the photo of all of them that Sherlock had done with a delay and propping it up on books and five tries because someone always made a face, the picture of Mycroft holding both of them when they were still little, just before the Christmas tree fell down on them because they had been playing with the stand and forgot to screw it back in.

There were soft mounds where their pillows once rested. One was black and white stripes and soft to the touch, a huge jumper that on them would be a dress but once smelled like nighttime skies and cups of tea. The other was just as familiar, smaller but still too long for them, dark and still lingering with that same smell, an old scarf, older than them.

The skull grinned at him, half buried in folds of cloth, like it was laughing at its new wardrobe, Sherlock's fingers played across the coronal suture absentmindedly, like maybe he felt it too, the tightness in his chest.

The tightness that made John hold his teddy bear tight.

Sherlock is brilliant, but sometimes he does not know that what you need to feel better is a hug.

John would cuddle him if only he knew he needed it.

John needs it.

John looked around him, at all of it, at Sherlock, at the fairy tale made for him.

It was beautiful and he was safe and he there was no reason to be afraid but all of that…was wrong.

That was what made him afraid.

Because he remembered the look on Lestrades face at their party only hours before. He remembers the strange promise that Sherlock had taken from him, that he had given out of love without a second thought.

A promise to trust him.

A promise he never should have given. He had wanted to give him everything and a promise seemed so simple. But he should have known better. He had been stupid and naïve and now it would be all his fault.

Because Sherlock would ask for all of things that he could not tell.

Because Sherlock was there, Sherlock was the one who wiped away his tears when he was still trying to remember how to breathe. He was the one who held him at night when he was too afraid to go to sleep.

He was the one who asked what was wrong in a whisper, holding on so tight that he could make the dream seem like almost…just a dream.

Sherlock who could never, ever know.

Because if he opened his mouth and he tried it might all come gushing out of him and it would never stop and then Sherlock would be hurt. He would be in danger

John remembers that part. When all of the rest of it slips away when he wakes up, when the pain melts away because Sherlock is there and he is warm and holding him tight, John won't let himself forget. He closes his eyes until the darkness turns into bursts of light behind his eyelids and he holds onto the words until they become part of him, until he knows he will not lose them when the morning light seeps in and looks so easy.

'_**And if you say a word…'**_

But he had promised. Like a fool. And if he broke his promise…

'_Will you promise to trust me even when you don't want to?'_

'_Yes.'_

'_Promise?'_

'_Promise.'_

Sherlock can read minds. Or at least sometimes it feels like he can read Johns, even when they are not looking at each other, even when they are pretending that they don't really need a hug.

"You are safe here." Sherlock tilted his head up and ran his fingers over their orange roof making the cloth ripple. Making John think of all the times they had spent wrapped up in it, all the times they blocked out the world and hid together like this, before they ever had Mycroft or Nana, back when it had been just them.

"I will keep you safe." Sherlock promised, his voice more forceful now, more real, and suddenly all of the layers and tunnels that hid them seemed as important as stone walls. Sherlock's hand drifted down to the hilt of the sword, his fingers too small to wrap around the hilt but laying on top of it as if he might pick it up. John released one arm from his crushing hold around his teddy bear and took Sherlock's hand in his, pulling it away from the cold metal until their hands rested on the place where their knees touched.

He knew Sherlock could fight for him, he knew he would fight for him. But he did not want to think about that. He did not want to see Sherlock with a sword in hand, defending him. He wanted him safe.

He only ever wanted him safe.

John closed his eyes and he was crushing Sherlock's hand in his and holding his bear tight in the other but he could not stop. He had promised he would do what Sherlock asked.

No matter what he asked.

But he couldn't-

"John." Delicate fingers lifted his chin and crept up to his cheek, soft and burning. When he opened his eyes all he could see was Sherlock in a halo of orange. "I can keep you safe." He smiled, and it was so private and real and beautiful that it hurt.

Tears stung the back of his eyes and threatened to fall, a sob breaking silently in his throat. It wasn't what he wanted. Not at all. How could Sherlock touch him like this and see everything but not see that? How could he think- How could he not know-

"But I won't have to."

Sherlock brushed at his cheeks as if wiping away the tears that never had a chance to fall and his smile changed, the smile that is a smirk, the one that John knows means that Sherlock had done something brilliant, that whatever has just occurred to John had come to Sherlock weeks ago as plain as day.

"He can't hurt us." John wanted him to stop talking, wanted to make it stop before it was too late to go back, but Sherlock extracted his hand from Johns and reached up until he was holding Johns face in both of his hands and Sherlock he was all he could see. All he could feel. A world of only Sherlock.

"I told. I told and nothing happened." Close enough to see himself in the black center of blue eyes. "They are just dreams."

"-but they aren't." His voice was a whisper colored by the tears that still filled his throat and the words came out half broken. "Not just dreams."

Sherlock leaned forward until they were leaning on each other, until their foreheads were touching and John was so close that he could feel Sherlock's eyelashes on his own cheek. He closed his eyes and let himself breathe.

"No, they aren't just dreams." Sherlock admitted. His eyelashes brushing John softly as he closed his eyes. "But they are not real anymore either."

John wanted to sob, he could feel it in his chest, rising against his teddy bear. And this time Sherlock could feel it too. This time he knew how to make it better.

When John wanted to reach out and hold on so tight that they could stay like this forever Sherlock was already leaning forward to hold him, and in the hidden room, in their brilliant castle, surrounded by everything that had ever mattered, Sherlock laid them down on a pile of soft, striped material and whispered as if the words might break in the air.

"You promised that you would trust me. So trust me that I will be with you when you fall asleep even when you can't feel me. And when you wake up afraid and you find that I am still with you, trust me to listen to everything you are afraid to say. And in the morning when we are still safe and we are still here trust me to do the same thing tomorrow."

This time John could not stop the sob, a sound wet and deep and when he tried to stifle it Sherlock twined an arm over his chest, his breath in his ear as the other boy curled around him, his bear tangling in their legs.

John could not tell him why he was crying but Sherlock knew.

Sometimes Sherlock does not know when he needs a hug.

But when he does, sometimes it is good enough to make you cry.


	42. Chapter 42

He was…bored.

Frustrated.

He shouldn't be frustrated. That should not be allowed to happen. Everything was perfect. A million pieces all slotted together perfectly just the way he wanted, the way he planned.

Still.

He couldn't be the only one in the world who ever got bored.

Except that now, maybe he was.

And wasn't that just the biggest surprise, the biggest cockup that had ever come to be, and _he had not seen it coming at all_.

Well. Maybe just a little.

He was just so changeable.

And older. Sure, a few years ago he might never have changed his mind in this particular direction but that was one thing he had yet to master.

He_ was_ getting older.

He wasn't _old_, not by any means. But he was bored, and in a few more years, a decade, two, he would be old. And what would he have to show for it? An empire, yes, the world, more than likely.

And the moment he died it would be over, a million peons losing their minds for want of him and the worst part, the very worst part that even now made him _ache_?

No one would ever see it, no one was smart enough to see it.

His world, his genius.

All amounting to an invisible pile of ruin spanning the world. Nothing.

And he would be bored. Decades of boredom with only little puzzles, little murders and wars to distract him.

Of course there were other, more interesting ways to amuse himself.

He had already made arrangements; elaborate little plans over the course of long dragging years to make sure that he his little arch nemesis grew up in just the right way to come back to him.

Once it would not have been a big deal, the death of Sherlock Holmes. He would have welcomed it.

But it was _his_ death. It should have been his. His to plan, his to play with and make extraordinary, his little play thing who made everything just slightly more interesting and a thousand times more bothersome. Sherlock Holmes should have been his. Was his.

A mistake.

How had he not thought of protecting his little play thing? So fragile. So naïve.

A mistake he would not make again.

He had made an example of the men who had taken Sherlock away from him.

And their friends.

And their families.

Too little too late.

And now he had to wait.

Oh a _rhyme_, how droll.

Rhymes are good for children, even little genius ones.

He had played with him once, scarring his little pet, just a bit of fun. Making sure they never really forget him. He could poke and prod and make sure that Sherlock Holmes grows up to be just as annoying and bothersome as he always was.

He could make him the consulting detective all over again.

Strange, the things you miss when at the time you only want to kill them.

He was glad he had not killed him back when they were both still adults. Frustrating, yes, expensive, without a doubt, and even if he had his little morals and his naïve penchant for being _good, _Sherlock had been…not boring.

Only now, now that he was _bored,_ now that was getting _old,_ by the time Sherlock could play again, and only sometimes, he would always have to share him with his little pet, how many years would they have to play?

He could poke and prod and manipulate. But maybe…maybe he did not want another consulting detective at all.

He was just so _changeable._

* * *

Mycroft had never wanted to leave them. Even when he was an adult Mycroft had trouble leaving Sherlock unattended. Even if they never saw each other, even if he had only been watching on CCTV and listening to the word of the people he had posted around his little brother he hated leaving the country.

What if Sherlock needed him?

What if he got himself into trouble?

Things were different now of course. The likelihood of Sherlock being kidnapped by the mob was almost minimal, he would not be running through the worst bits of London like a child with a sugar high and he would be anything but 'unattended'. Mycroft still hated it.

He was not even going out of the country.

It would only be a night, two days and a night, but he had to go, had to go without his boys.

He had already told them.

He had been so worried about it that he could not delay or he might end up not going at all and with time moving as fast as it was, with them growing so very fast, that was not an option. As soon as the information came in he followed the sound of laughter and grabbed them as they ran past in some strange game that was not quite tag. They never ran far enough from each other for that. He pulled them both into a hug, lifting them off the ground until they laughed and kicked at the air with their bare feet, crushed against himself and each other. They liked when he did that. Liked that he was still big enough to scoop them up in his arms and hold onto them for no reason but to hold them.

The moment he put them down they stared up at him instead of resuming their game and waited for him to speak, as if they had divined his purpose from the resonance of his heart or the millisecond difference in his breathing patterns.

They were getting too smart. Too brilliant, even for them, even for what they were. And they were still so young, so much growing left to do.

Mycroft sighed, half thinking that they might already know what he was going to say but if they knew they stayed quiet, looking up at him with giant eyes of brown and blue that made him want to stay but even more reinforced his need to go.

One night he would be away, one night which he promised that they could stay with their auntie Harry for a sleep over if they liked. Of course they didn't mind. They were excited. Auntie Harry, lord of treats and playtime, discoverer of ice-cream.

They did not ask where he was going, they probably thought he would tell them 'top secret' or perhaps they imagined it would be somewhere boring and they wanted to imagine that he was going somewhere magnificent. Maybe they were waiting to tell him where he had been when he walked in the door the next day and Sherlock would deduce what presents he had brought them before he had a chance to say hello.

Maybe they already knew where he was going. He wouldn't be surprised.

Mycroft kissed them and sent them off to play, still reassuring himself that he was doing the right thing. They ran off together, they never looked back.

It was foolish. This separation anxiety. His boys didn't mind. They would barely notice his absence at all. They would have Harry, and their Nana, and if they ever really needed they could call him.

But even still.

He had never let them be taken from him. Not for a day, a night.

Not since they had become his, not since the moment his little brother decided it was okay to be near him again.

He could not remember the last time that he had not been able to reach out and touch them just because he wanted to, needed to.

He would…miss them.


	43. Chapter 43

Harriet Watson opened her kitchen cabinets, trying to ignore the dust that clung to her fingers as they passed over stained metal and thinking of anything other than the possibility of old cobwebs and the things that lie inside them. Behind her there was a small crash. She tried to ignore that instead.

"Harry?"

Johns voice came from too high, her level almost instead of at her feet. She took another lingering glance at the single tin of beans and an array of old canned tomatoes she thought might have been there since her last live in girlfriend. How many years was that?

Clara.

She closed the cabinet and turned around.

John was sitting on her kitchen island, legs dangling off the side carelessly, blue trainers kicking in the air in the careless way of little boys. All of her stools were still pushed under the lip of the table, untouched.

How in the hell?

"Yes John?"

She turned to the fridge. Slightly better prospects.

Would have been nice if Mycroft had given her more heads up than 12 hours, but then again, he had asked about the possibility, and then continued to ask until she gave the right answer months ago.

She wondered how they felt about pickles. Left over Chinese maybe? It was probably still edible.

"Where are your other doors?"

"What?"

Good god, when was the last time she ate at home? How did she manage to survive?

She opened the freezer door.

Oh yeah. That's how.

"Your other doors." John gestured in the air, hands twirling and shifting in a complicated motion as if that could clarify all disparities. When she raised her eyebrows at him he let out a sigh and did the motions again. Louder this time if that was possible.

The fridge shut with a gust of stale wind against her face.

"They aren't here!" Sherlocks voice betrayed the position of her other little charge, the sound of small feet thudding against the floor as he entered the room purely as courtesy to her. He glanced up at John and the counter before dismissing it as too much effort and slid to the front of the island where Johns legs hung, leaning his back against him, curls falling into Johns lap. Carelessly, effortlessly.

She crossed her arms over her chest and regarded the four armed, two headed creature in front of her, preparing to hear…preparing as much as one could with these two.

"I have doors, two in fact. Back and front?"

John pouted, half frustrated, half excited to go through his elaborate hand gestures again. She was spared the impromptu charades when they did their silent talking thing.

They weren't even looking at one another. Was it the press of a hand? The kick of a foot?

She wondered without meaning to what it would be like to have that with somebody, except she could not even imagine how it felt, not really. Not even with Clara, not even before she had ruined everything when she had been so in love, it had been beautiful but it had never been…like finding the other half of her soul.

Sherlock mercifully decided to spare her more hand signals, his arms busy behind his back, interlocking with John's legs, testing his balance as he spoke, leaning up on his tip-toes as John balanced him, never letting him sway too far.

"You have doors but you don't have _doors_!" Sherlock told her unhelpfully. "They are made of _wood_!" As if the very thought was archaic, like he was telling her she was living in a lean-to. "And you have no guards, I only saw three of Mycrofts when I looked out the window."

"And the one in the stairwell." John added helpfully from his perch.

"Oh yeah," Sherlock craned his neck to smile at John. "four."

The guards Mycroft had insisted on. The ones that he insisted the boys would not notice. And what person in the stairwell?

"Yes, well. Somehow I get by."

Suddenly her once reasonably nice looking flat seemed very small and tacky. A dorm room compared to their usual Chattue Fort Knox. But they were looking at her with very young eyes, they were communicating with each other, a conversation that did not change their expressions so much as hinted at the change of thought shared between them.

And John was trying hard not to smile.

He knew he was caught, felt her eyes on him, and laughed.

"We know about regular flats." Sherlock said through Johns laughter, smiling not at her but cocking his head as if listening to the sound. "We read about them in books." He said proudly, as if this was some rare gem of knowledge he had found. John nodded proudly, laughter slipping into an easy, fond smile.

Harry remembered old doors with patches of rust so deep she would peer into their gullies to see if it had breached the other side. She remembered the edges of the door splitting and swelling so that to lock it was a small miracle, to get the old greasy metal to slide into ill-fitting wood. The click of not-quite-safety.

Once John would have remembered too.

John swayed his legs back and forth, making Sherlock sway side to side playfully. They were not ignoring her, it seemed to them a default state of being. Together, always half in their own world and sparing the rest of their attention for her. It had become even more pronounced since their birthday, since the debacle with Inspector Lestrade and they had come out the next morning refusing to say a word but holding on to each other tighter than ever.

It was probably still more IQ points allotted to her than most people if they had given their full attention.

"Alright guys." She waited until at least one set of playfully amused eyes was looking at her. "What do we want for dinner? We can order in or we can make something. And by make something I mean go shopping and then make something." She was sure no one would appreciate it if the one night they stayed with her _'because they should spend more time with their auntie in a normal environment' _she fed them microwavable meals and pickles.

John stopped swaying and Sherlock's normally well mastered face let wide open surprise slip across his features.

John curled his fingers into Sherlock's shoulders.

She knew what that meant, she had seen it before.

She remembered it.

John's silence, like emotion could strip away his voice. Shock or fear or joy or anguish, because in silence sometimes you could be invisible.

But now Johns silence had a voice.

"You would take us shopping?" Sherlock asked in a voice as wide open as his eyes, as innocent and awed. John was smiling like he could not believe his luck. He looked very young suddenly. The four year old she had just been reintroduced to. He bent uncomfortably, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's neck, hiding his face, his smile, in his hair.

"Grocery shopping? With people and carriages and chip-and-pin machines?" Sherlocks amazement was becoming gleeful joy. He raised his hand to cover one of Johns without seeming to notice as their fingers entwined.

Laughter was never a good choice in moments like this. Shock was a close second of terrible things to display.

She raised an eyebrow and brushed her blond-brown hair behind an ear. "You have never been grocery shopping? Your Nana never takes you?"

"We asked but she said we would just get bored and that the store was not properly equipped to deal with my boredom." Sherlock smiled in memory of all the times he had been 'bored' and the wreckage that had ensued. "Besides-"

Now that the trip was all but assured John was getting over his inverted shyness, rediscovering his voice. He tugged on Sherlock and leapt off the counter island, half into Sherlock's arm and half already on his feet. He smiled up at her with his matching blond-brown hair sticking in every direction and in an almost perfect imitation with the inflection learned from a thousand reciting's told her.

"Not your housekeeper dear."

* * *

The door chimed merrily as they walked inside the artificial coolness of the grocery. Harry debated the merits of a carriage while her charges rose to their tip toes to look down the line of quietly dinging registers accompanied by the murmuring of a dozen bored voices. Without encumberment she could chase after them faster but if need be she could probably stuff them both into a carriage.

As if they wouldn't escape.

She grabbed a basket and started to tell them to stay together but stopped when it was obvious they were not going to listen. At least the two of them would stay together. It did not sound terribly reassuring when put into words, even in her mind. Yes, the two six year olds with the combined intelligence of a dozen super computers and ask about perfectly normal doors will stay together and leave me behind, great idea. But the more she thought about it the more reassuring it was. At least they would protect each other.

John would probably stop Sherlock from putting himself into danger.

Probably.

Unless John thought it might be fun too.

Harry balanced the basket on her elbow and knelt until she was eye level with the two little boys, clearing her throat loudly until they finally tore their eyes from the store and settled on her. It made her want to look again, to see through their eyes. When Harry looked around she saw a little market with bright yellow sale tags and gleaming faces of advertising gimmicks and an ugly tiled floor. But that was not what they saw, not to have the amazement written so clearly in their eyes. Maybe they saw magic.

Harry took each of their hands in hers, shuffling to the side a bit to let other patrons past her, let them tower over them as they smiled the way people do when they see beautiful children.

They did not need to hold her hands, they were not afraid or needy and they desperately wanted to run off into the unexplored abyss but they were polite and held her hands, small and warm and simple. She could feel their coiled energy, the way she was losing their attention with every new thing they saw and wanted desperately to touch.

"I'll make a deal with you." She squeezed their hands, just because she could. John smiled his easy beaming baby smile, Sherlock was interested. "Stay with me, and I mean with me, arm's length, and you can have whatever you want for dinner."

This time it was Sherlock who beamed.

"Anything?"

She had after all done stupider things.

Possibly.

She nodded. "Anything."

Even if it didn't work, even if they ran away and still managed to have a bucket of jelly babies for dinner and she spent the night following two sugar high children it would be worth it for this face. This moment.

She liked looking at them from this angle. Other adults did not get it. They thought she was simple, coming down to their height, a grown woman crouching low. Maybe a tactic to get them to pay attention and be non-threatening, but it wasn't.

When she was this small and the world loomed over her hiding a million wonderful thing just because they were out of reach, when She was two inches taller than John, because she had always been taller than John, she wasn't the woman with a failed marriage and a sedimentary life who had messed up every chance. She was seven years old and looking at her little brother with his huge eyes and his messy hair.

Except this time things were different.

This time they had a friend, a brother, too. This time John was happy.

Safe.

Sherlock nodded, already planning, the word 'anything' to Sherlock was like magic. Anything meant something to a child with that much imagination. He let go of her hand but for now held his end of the deal and stayed close, circling around so that as they walked his arm brushed against John. When they stopped his fingers would stretch out and brush the fabric of Johns clothing even as he reached for a box, a package, to bring back.

Harry picked up the essentials as she walked, following the little brunette through the crannies between other peoples trolleys, in and out of the dip of people. Sometimes he would pick up a brightly coloured box and read the back of it , but he almost always put it back, dismissing it. Other times he would stop and pretend to read a box while studying a fellow customer, the small courtesy of discretion that Harry had taught them, assuring them that their spy games would be much better for it. The illusion might have been more effective if the other patrons had thought he could read.

Harry swung the arm that still held Johns hand, making it sway and him laugh up at her, shaking his head as if she were the child and he the adult but his attention on her was fleeting. There were so many people here that he had never seen, all so preoccupied that he and his entire world did not even factor into their lives.

Sherlock stopped and hopped to Johns side, only stepping on the red squares, which Harry did not understand because the red was obviously lava, and nudged him, pointing only with a look. She watched as Johns mouth fell open, his hand reached up to touch the side of his neck, fingers tracing an invisible pattern across his skin.

Harry saw the man they were looking at.

The basket wobbled uncomfortably on her arm, bouncing off her hip as she crouched down and took both of their little hands in hers, twirling them to face her, Johns hand still on his neck, wonder and speculation forming in his eyes.

"No." She shook her head to emphasis the point. "Absolutely not." The man hit the end of the aisle and disappeared, Harry thought she might have heard him chuckle as he did.

"If you even try to get a tattoo I will never get you icecream again, it will be broccoli for the both of you. Forever." John put his hand down and let the dream of a neck tattoo die silently, his fingers no longer tracing what might have been an invisible flower. Sherlock look less convinced, peering down the aisle as if he might reappear to explain.

Fleetingly Harry debated getting them henna tattoos and giving them back to Mycroft covered in designs of their own making.

Then again maybe not.

She was pretty sure Sherlock would not be getting flowers.

Not to mention what they would want to paint on her.

Children waddled along with their parents, adults ranging from the newly minted university students to the grey haired filtered through the aisles and into queues but few merited more than a cursory glance from her charges. There had been a moment of worry. A little girl, no more than three, who had sat herself in the middle of a row behind her frustrated mother and begun to sob.

They ran half the length of the store, Harry following their zigzag pattern through the maze of trolleys and slow moving people. She was a few steps behind them but they had stopped at the end of the shelves, they just stood there looking at her, the sudden realization slamming over them and shutting down their instincts to find it, to help.

It was probably something silly. Crying for want of a nap or a chocolate bar, but the way she was screaming…

They were very brave. Her little men.

She didn't mention the not running off rule.

When they walked past her, the three of them holding hands, John gave the little girl a smile and made a face, tongue poking out, eyes crossing comically. She didn't scream after that, Harry could see the little girl watching from her mother's arms as they made it through produce.

Girls. Harry thought. She was not looking forward to the teenage years.

The basket had remained mostly empty for the length of the store, no snackie cakes or cookies, only the essentials she had put in, the bread she could make sandwiches with if they hated whatever it was they finally chose.

Which was…weird. Not like them not to take advantage of an opportunity.

Until Sherlock let go of her hand and dragged John away, the two of them tearing a plastic bag and with young unrefined fingers trying to open it. John dutifully followed with his cellophane sack as Sherlock filled it with fruit. One of each kind of brightly coloured, oddly named, weirdly shaped produce in the entire store.

Of course.


	44. Chapter 44

They would not remember him. A little boy from a lifetime ago.

But if they could, if Mycroft could go back in time and walk through this hospital when a fourteen year old John Watson lay in a bed they would tell him that John was a sweet boy. Small for his age, that he always had a smile for the other children and that he laughed even when it hurt. They would tell him that John was very brave.

But even a year later, just a few months, they would not know him, lost in a thousand other patients and a thousand other tragedies.

Because that is the way John would have planned it.

Easy to be invisible.

But there was more going on here than the smile of a forgotten boy.

There should have been an electronic paper trail a mile long. Mycroft should have known about this the first time John Watson ever spoke to Sherlock Holmes and yet: here he was, miles from London in an abandoned hospital holding in his hands the only documented proof that at age fourteen John Watson broke his right femur. An injury that according to the rest of the world- never happened.

Mycroft held the thick folder in his arms and let the smell of old paper wash over him.

It shouldn't even exist.

The old woman his contact had found, the one who was even now speaking in her soft voice smiled at him, obviously reading something from his face, real or imagined, and let her story come to a slow unfinished stop.

She closed the file cabinet with a dull click and reached out and touched his wrist with her dry paper thin skin.

"Find everything you need?" He nodded and followed her out of the archives, watching as she fished a key from her deep dress pocket and locked the door behind them, the tarnished doorknob clicking softly in the empty hallway. Her steps delicate and small as she appeared, a woman who had probably never reached five feet before time had begun to pull her down.

Mycroft felt a rush of sudden overwhelming gratitude. There was no reason to keep any of those files safe, they had all been made electronic years ago, before the hospital had ever been abandoned and yet because of this woman he possessed a little piece of John Watson, one little clue to his puzzle.

The woman smiled at him again patted him on the back as if he were a grandson of hers rather than the official man with all of the government papers that gave him complete autonomy. They were shuffling along the long empty hallway, Mycroft clutching his papers close and nearly lost in the idea of them when she started to speak again in her story telling voice that seemed to require no audience, the voice of the old that so often speaks but is so rarely heard.

"That John Watson, he was a sweet boy." Mycroft stopped walking, frozen in place as the dust danced in the slanted light of the windows.

The old woman kept walking as if she had not noticed but when Mycroft caught up to her at an awkward jog, clutching the papers close, there was a smile on her face.

"You are worried about him. I have been around anxious families all my life, I know the look when I see it." She looked straight forward as she walked, her head bobbing as if checking off the mental list as she passed each empty room, as if she could still see the beds that no longer exist, and the patients waiting for her care. She spared him a comforting smile as they reached what had once been the nurses station, her hand wrapping around his wrist as she looked at him, examined him, peering unabashedly into his face.

"Boyfriend? Friend? Husband?" She laughed before Mycroft could say a word and waved off any response he might have had. "Classified?" She laughed again, a dry soft sound that seemed to wear her out. She leaned against the nurses' station and Mycroft imagined that her hand on his arm grew a little colder.

"But you are here looking for old medical files." She looked him in the eyes and it hit him suddenly how few people ever really do. "Is he alright? John Watson. Is he-" She hesitated, never looking away, looking, tired. Like she had seen the whole world. "-was he happy?"

He should not say anything. It wouldn't help. Not after a lifetime of lost patients.

"John is happy." Mycroft found himself saying, and not really caring how the words sounded, knowing that it did not matter if he ever said the words aloud but just to hear them and to know they existed, that someone outside their world knew. "I will give him a good life."

The woman with the chocolate brown eyes nodded as if that was the right answer. As if a world with John Watson being anything but happy would have been intrinsically wrong. She took her hand back, thrusting her hands back into her dress pockets and pulling out a worn cloth wallet that held more pictures than it ever had money.

"My son." She told him, holding out a faded photograph of a boy of barely more than eighteen, standing there in his military uniform trying not to smile. An old photograph, official, the kind people carried after a loved one had been lost.

"He would have been a few years younger than John now. I used to take him into work with me when he was just a little thing, you could do that sort of thing years ago. He was so shy back then, trying to hide in my skirts." She took the image back gently when Mycroft offered it, brushing away a spec of invisible dust off her son's face. "And then one day I turn around and he isn't there, no one getting underfoot and tugging on my dress, none of those sad little looks he would give me when we still had eight hours left." She was smiling as she tucked the photo away, peering back into Mycroft in that unabashedly honest way. "I never saw him warm to anyone the way he did to that boy. I looked for him everywhere, frantic as can be, and when I finally found him he just gave me this huge grin, a real honest to goodness smile, and introduced me to his new friend John Watson."

She looked down the hallway and sighed, gathering herself up and pushing off against the counter until she stood on her own. "Do you have kids?"

Mycroft opened her mouth but she was already laughing. "Classified? That's what your man said you would say. Of course he also said I babbled." She grinned cleverly and dropped her voice as if sharing a secret. "I already know you have kids." She waited for her words to sink in, to have that moment of 'Aha!' before pointing to the wrist she had touched. "A mother's eye."

A wrist with a stubborn mark of green permanent marker where Sherlock had 'missed' and then smothered his laughter is John's shirt. Mycroft did not miss the way the mark curved into a soft possessive 'S' written on his skin.

She laughed again and the dry warm sound made her body seem to shake. Mycroft offered his arm to her, green marker and all. She took a moment as they walked slowly down the empty barren hallway of the hospital that had once been her life.

"If you have children then you know. You know what it is like when your child does something you never thought they would. When my shy little boy made a friend. The way he smiled." Mycroft did not say anything, but he put a hand over hers and she carried on as if he had whispered her a secret of his own.

"There was something about John Watson, something special that he did not let anyone else see. He came in a mess, I was on the floor that night and he was one of my charges. Poor thing so black and blue it was hard to tell what he looked like at all before surgery. I asked him that first night if there was anyone I could call for him, any family that was worried, and the look he gave me I never forgot…he said, 'Don't bother waking them' as polite as could be, when most boys would have been screaming for their mums. At the end of my shift I went back and asked if he wanted someone to sit with him, distract him from the pain, and he smiled under all of those bruises. 'Don't go out of your way for me.'"

Mycroft wanted to stop her. He wanted to hear it, but he wasn't prepared for it. His little boy almost grown up and yet, still a child, a teenager, in pain and all alone. No Sherlock to make the demons go away and to promise in a broken whisper that he would be alright, no Mycroft to hold his hand through the night or brush the hair damp with sweat from his face. No one to protect him, no one to rely on except himself. No one to love him.

The woman, he had not caught her name he realized, she let the silence stretch as if she could feel the way he was torn between listening and memorizing every detail and running away and not stopping until he was home and his boys were back in his arms.

"John was in and out of here for months between surgeries and physical therapy, and each time he would stop and play with my boy, no matter how much pain he was in, no matter what the hour was. I found the two of them asleep once, my little six year old passed out with a crayon in hand, both of them piled onto one of the gurneys in a heap with John's leg stretched out in front of him as if he had been willing it better and his arm tucked up against his chest, over bruised ribs. It seemed like every time I saw him he had a new bruise, a new sprain, he told my boy that he fell a lot; he would smile and blame his leg with a laugh. But it was amazing in the end, his recovery, considering the injuries he had and the infection that took hold in his leg and nearly took his life when he 'fell' and reopened the wound. John only walked with a limp when it was cold or rainy or when he was worried. Or I suppose, when he was just…a little bit broken. He had old eyes, John. An ancient soul at fourteen."

Her foot caught on the ground and she stumbled but did not fall, catching herself on Mycroft's arm, holding on just a little tighter as they reached the front door and pushed it open, stepping into the breeze and letting the sunshine warm their chilled skin. Leaving the bitter sweet memories in the dark lethean of the hospital

The woman stopped and closed her eyes, tilting her face to catch the warmth, thin golden light falling across her lined face as she turned to him with a sad smile.

"An even older soul now." She smiled in the same sad way he often saw on his little boys faces. A look that ached to exist and yet seemed to follow him, etched into the faces of old and young alike.

"If you could tell me why a man with your credentials is spending his time tracking down old useless medical files instead of delegating or asking John I might be able to help you more." She patted his arm gently. "But I suppose that is-"

"classified." Mycroft said smoothly and watched her sad smile become amused, the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes creasing to form a face that had known a lifetime of hard times and effortless smiles.

She laughed as they came to the place where they had met, the place where they would now separate and go their own ways but the conversation still connected them, John still connected them.

She let go of his arm with a fond squeeze and shielded her eyes from the sun. She paused, stepping back and taking him in all over again. Mycroft felt her gaze as if he were being judged, the conversation they had just had, all the little things they had discovered in the last few minutes being slotted into place on his body. When she was done she took a breath and Mycroft felt a warmth he did not anticipate when she met his eye once more and, with a gentle aged fondness, had found him adequate.

Worthy of the knowledge she was holding.

"Did you know that the place where John…fell and broke his leg, is the same place I had my first kiss? All the kids used to go there to watch the sunset, or ignore it." She smiled at her own mischievousness and then it faded away, her gaze gaining weight as her words grew heavy with intent.

"Smart man like you, you could probably even figure out how John managed to fall when no one else ever had. Just down the road…"

* * *

Too dangerous to go at sunset is what they told him when he arrived; a boy had fallen here once. Some say that his ghost still roams the edge of the cliff face, waiting for the girl who never showed up.

The night was long and dark. The first time he had ever been away from his boys. The first time since he had taken them in that he had complete autonomy, that the world was not filled with the stamping of tiny feet and the voices and laughter of little children. The first time in four years that he could be an adult without restraint. That he could work uninterrupted, that he did not have to worry about confidential files or bed times or whether Sherlock was eating or John was hiding a bruise.

He missed them.

The night was silent and lit a dull blue as he checked his phone to see if the reception was poor, if he had missed a call. Of course he hadn't.

He was awake, lying in bed pretending not to be, when the clock struck two and his phone gave a loud playful chirp that never failed to make him think of John's unabashed laughter.

Harriet's cell phone number appeared on the screen in glowing white.

He smiled and lay down in the bed, cradling the phone against his cheek.

Two familiar little boys whispered him the secrets of their night without waiting for the other to stop talking or for one story to end before beginning another. Their voices so entwined that they did not speak over one another but simply told it together, two voices finishing the same sentence. How flambé was very fun and very very messy when Auntie Harry spilled it into the stove top, how there is one fruit shaped like a star and makes your cheeks suck in because it wasn't ripe but they wanted to try it anyway. How they stole the phone and waited until two because they were playing secret agents and Harry was the diplomat that they needed to protect so she could secure ice-cream for dinner rights for people everywhere.

Mycroft rose before the sunrise, dressing and leaving the empty rooms, only turning off his phone and the sound of two little boys who had fallen asleep with their breath in the ear piece when he had left the night far behind him, sterile adult rooms abandoned.

The woman from before, Wiggins she had told him with a smile, had told him more than the medical files ever could have on their own. A description of John's very words, the way he claimed in a brave fourteen year old voice that he had fallen and did not need anyone to hold his hand as he was wheeled into surgery. Mycroft could picture it even if his own John had yet to reach that age. He could picture his little boy standing here, right here where the sun was rising and washing the valley in burnt orange and he stood above all of it, the wind rising to touch his skin, just cold enough to chill.

The place where John had not fallen, but leapt.

Mycroft was ready to go home to his boys, there were no more mysteries left here.

* * *

_**John**_

He stood on the edge of the abyss looking out over the end of the world. The wind was slight, just enough to feel on his skin, still hot with blood. It was welcome, a distraction from the ache that permeated his body with every heartbeat. Each renewal of life a fresh thrum of dull agony. He pushed it down, away, into the recesses of his mind. He was used to it. Only the feel of his eye swelling was new, the hot blood pooling in places where the world could see. His body black and blue and damning, screaming out the secrets no one else could ever hear a whisper of.

His dirty blond hair lifted slightly in the breeze, a strand or two of too long hair falling into his eyes.

He should feel the adrenalin, that rush that starts in your heart and your feet and radiates out to fill you until you are so very alive, that rush of being nothing but fallibly human and standing on the edge of nothing, looking into the abyss and waiting as your mind fluctuates wildly as it imagines the fall, the single moment, the impulse to jump.

But he doesn't feel it.

Maybe he is numb, maybe he has saturated his body with endorphins for so long that he can no longer feel them at all. Maybe he lives in this fear, maybe this horror is nothing but normal.

He doesn't dwell on it.

The sun will set in a few hours and then the statistics get steadily worse. If no one comes within the next three hours they will not find him until the first morning joggers venture this far out, running in their thin spandex outfits through the gloom as if they are somehow impervious to it.

John likes that. Impervious.

He is impervious to what would have been fear.

This is impervious self-preservation.

It had always been the plan that Harry would leave at 16. That she would leave and no one could bring her back and she would be safe. And then John could run.

Their father wouldn't be able to hurt her if she ran first, maybe he wouldn't even mind. He had never really gone after her, not when John was around, not when he found insult in every breath John took, in every glance of brown eyes.

And when Harry ran, when their father found out?

Well, he would survive. He had survived this long. To fail now would be almost…too cruel.

And one day they would both be gone and he would not be able to touch either one of them ever again.

Harry would get a job and John would go find her and she could be his legal guardian and he would find work and they could make this work.

Just one more year. They only needed one year.

One year with no one asking terrible questions.

One year of hiding in plain sight.

He could buy them one year.

After all.

He should have run faster.


	45. Chapter 45

John woke first. He crushed his eyes closed tight and watched the light burst behind his eyelids, yellow and orange. He listened to the world, listened to the same sounds and the differences in the things that batter him every morning.

He could hear Sherlock breathing deep in sleep, and if he tried hard, really hard, he could feel him.

He did not open his eyes yet. He knew what the world looked like without doing that. Sherlock would be on his side facing him, hands curled up against his chest and tucked beneath his chin, dark curls hanging into his face and his mouth just a little bit open, a stolen phone probably run out of batteries lying between them.

John listened harder. Imagined harder. A game he liked to play.

To know the world before he ever even woke up.

They were alone, it was maybe eight in the morning, nine. Late for them, but they had stayed up late, laying together in the dark pretending to sleep as Auntie Harry checked on them, whispering at the door silly questions like 'are you faking being asleep?'. John was awake the whole night, hiding his smile in Sherlock's hair, their hands pressing tight to keep each other awake.

John almost smiled at the memory but that would ruin the game.

You don't smile, don't move, and the world thinks you are still asleep.

Like being invisible.

Harry was here. She was in the kitchen, probably worried that she had let her cell phone die and now calling on the house phone would not ring it.

It was okay then. Okay to open his eyes.

John smiled.

It was not often that he was wrong, that any aspect of the world would surprise him when he finally 'woke'. But then again Sherlock was almost always a surprise.

He was as beautiful as John had known he would be, bathed in sunlight with his black curls tumbling into his eyes as if they could stop the sun from rising, his legs tangled in the blankets. But one hand was reaching out over the expanse of sheets towards John…and the other tucked close to his cheek, a small contented smile on his face and his thumb in his mouth, gently resting against his lower lip.

Sherlock would not mind if John let him sleep in a bit more. Just this once.

John shimmied backwards until he hit the edge of the bed and tumbled out slowly, feet finding the heavy carpet and muffling his footfall. The door was harder. It creaked a little and John tried to slip out before it was really open, taking one final glance at Sherlock as he tried to squeeze through the door. Sherlock had not woken but he frowned in his sleep, reached out his hand to where John had lain a minute ago and finding nothing, curled it back towards himself, catching the phone in his searching fist and pulling it back to hold against his chest.

John walked a few steps down the little hallway, creaking door left just a little bit open so Sherlock would not hear the 'cli-click' as it closed. And then, because he could, because life was at this moment, perfect, he ran.

He could hear Harry in the kitchen, her footsteps, her voice. John almost let out a laugh but he held it back, ready to surprise her, to make her smile and pretend to be shocked.

He turned the corner almost too fast, bare feet sliding on the tiles. He would have caught himself, would have kept running, but he was lifted up into warm, deft arms.

John laughed as Mycroft caught him and lifted him up, holding him against his chest, arms coming around him tight, the smell of travel and the heavy warmth of old paper lingering in the cloth as John pressed his face into Mycroft's neck in greeting.

John laughed, giggling as he linked his arms around Mycroft's neck to return the embrace. It was a nice way to wake up. Sherlock and Mycroft and Harry all together in this tiny apartment with its silly doors and rooms that meant you were never far from anyone at all. Like every door held someone he loved. Every corner he turned hid something precious. John smiled, because it was perfect and lovely, and he pulled back far enough to press a kiss to Mycroft's cheek.

But Mycroft did not smile the way he should have, the fond one that made John feel warm. He did not laugh and ruffle his hair or press a kiss to his cheek in the prim manner he used, or even the wet loud kisses he used as retribution that made John protest loudly but they both knew he did not really mind.

Mycroft was looking at him, not like he would smile or laugh or tell him a story or ask where exactly he had found enough acid to eat through what had previously been a metal lock. Not like he was the center of the universe or like he had missed him so terribly that now that he had him back he did not want to look away.

It was sadder than that.

It was something familiar, something that made his heart skip a beat and start to ache.

Something...

Desperate and wordless.

Mycroft was looking at him the way he had looked at Sherlock all those years ago when it was not Sherlock breathing, but tubes breathing for him, when he was so small that the machinery beeping in time with his heart, with his breath, buried him. When Sherlock would not wake up no matter how much John promised him, no matter how much he cried against his pillow or how desperately he held his hand.

Mycroft was looking at him like he was about to lose him.

Like it was too late and he was already lost.

John felt his heart drop, all the happiness he had felt when he woke was flooding out of him and spilling onto the ground dead, being replaced with the cold hard black that ached as the morning light turned thin and bitter around him, streaming in to illuminate nothing.

John clung tighter, burying his face in Mycroft collar as the tears rose up to choke him, taking in a shaky breath that smelled like old paper and wool.

It couldn't happen.

Not when everything was perfect.

Mycroft's face turned to shock as John pressed angrily against him, leaving a wet patch on his shirt where the first sobs had assaulted him, small hands pushed roughly at Mycroft's chest, still clinging to the fabric between fruitless punches as if he could not help himself. Needing to hold on as hard as his six year old body would let him. Tears obscured his vision, he blinked them away and felt them stream down his cheeks as a sob broke him and made it hard to breathe. His face turning red.

He pictured Sherlock in the hospital, too small to see.

A world without Harry to sweep him into her arms.

A life without Mycroft to cuddle him when he was afraid.

"Are- " John crumpled. The words too hard. He took a breath and tried again.

If it something was going to happen he had to know.

If someone was going to be hurt…he would take care of them.

He would trade places with them.

A sob shook his body and he did not care what he looked like. He did not try to wipe the tears from his face. He did not want to be brave.

He just-

"-are you gonna di-"

The word died in his throat.

"Are you sick?"

"John-" Mycroft was trying to hold him closer but John fought him, struggling to stay where he could see his face. Where he would know.

"Are you leaving me?"

This time when Mycroft gathered him against his chest John could not stop him, only cry quietly into his chest as Mycroft ran a hand up and down his back, holding him.

"John no one is leaving you. No one is sick."

Mycroft held him tighter. Tight enough to feel. John could hear the worry in his voice, he could feel the rapid heartbeat against his cheek that meant he was almost frantic, but not lying. John always knew when Mycroft was lying.

John sniffed and wiped his eyes on Mycroft's shirt, fists rubbing away the wetness in his eyes as he looked back up at him, as Harry watched silently a shade too pale and afraid to speak. John knew that feeling, knew the way words died. But not now. Mycroft was not lying.

"Am I gonna die?" His brown eyes were wide. Eyelashes wet and clumped together with tears.

Like Sherlock. Like tubes and machines and beds that are scratchy so huge that you disappear and shrink and white and doctors who don't even see you at all and when people say 'I love you' you cannot hear it.

Mycroft looked like he had been slapped. Like all of the pain in Johns heart had gone and infected him too. Fast as a gunshot.

Bullet wound.

Crack of a baseball bat.

"No. No John, no. You are not going to die." Mycroft kissed him, lips touching his forehead as a hand ran through his hair and then arms pulled him closer, tighter. A heartbeat and breath in his ear with a sound like shaking.

"I am sorry I frightened you. Nothing is going to happen. I heard a story when I was away and it frightened me."

John loosened his death grip on the wool collar of Mycroft's Jacket, clinging instead bitterly, like the remnants of a nightmare clinging to your consciousness, his sobs reduced to silent tears sliding down his face.

Harry shuffled her feet, watching with wide brown eyes that looked too much like Johns.

John shivered as the adrenalin left him, Mycroft cradled him in his arms, even if he was getting to heavy to hold for long, little legs in light blue-green footie jimjams wrapping around his waist.

"What kind of story was it?" John asked quietly with a heavy, wet voice.

The 'what could frighten you' left unsaid but no less heard.

Harry began opening and shutting cupboards and drawers, making herself invisible in a hail of small comforting noises as if she was so intent that she stopped existing beyond the placing of a mug or the pour of cold milk. Human scenery.

Mycroft knew she was trying desperately not to think of what John could have heard had he chosen to walk instead of run.

Mycroft demanding to know what else she was hiding from him.

Dark secrets she had been hiding for years.

A psychosomatic limp that was not and never had been psychosomatic.

John needed him, needed him to know all the things that had hurt him in the past so that Mycroft could make sure it never happen again.

"It was about a little boy who did not have anyone to protect him." Mycroft told him in a voice barely above a whisper, the voice he used when he was trying to get them to sleep. The last page of a bedtime story.

The sound of small bare feet against the hardwood floor preluded the little boy in the doorway rubbing his eyes and lost in a tangle of unruly curls. Another child would have walked in and claimed a hug, would have perhaps not noticed anything now that John was quiet.

Sherlock froze on the threshold, blue eyes widening slowly, painfully. His hands falling to his sides.

John let out a little laugh, half broken with old tears but no less real for it. He unfolded himself and planted a kiss on Mycroft's cheek.

"You don't need to worry about that."

Sherlock walked directly towards them, ignoring the mugs of hot chocolate Harry placed on the island with a whole bag of marshmallows, stopping just a little too close. Blue eyes fixed on the place where old tears had dried on Johns cheek.

John smiled at Mycroft, for Mycroft, indulgently, and as if he were being very silly or very slow, and touched the tip of Mycroft's nose with his finger gently, locking eyes with him so he knew that moment that Mycroft understood.

It was a motion that matched the look in his eyes and the complicated smile on his lips, a gesture that said simply, 'I have you'. And without intention, just by virtue of being so strongly believed, said 'I am loved.'

John let himself slide out of Mycroft's arms when the sad desperation lingering in his eyes turned to baffled affection. The moment footie clad feet touched the cool tile of the kitchen floor John was captured Sherlock's arms. Blue eyes looking so very worried and sleep warmed fingers brushing away tears that made his skin tacky to the touch.

Harry dropped a spoon. The tin sound of it hitting the floor making her jump, startled at being so suddenly visible again. They all looked at her as she flushed, cheeks and neck and ears.

John smiled and took Sherlock's hand and together they sat and watched the steam rise from their chocolate breakfasts. Mycroft sat next to Harry and accepted the mug of tea he was offered with a shaking hand, the four of them sitting together over a liquid breakfast.

Mycroft was thinking of falls from high places, was thinking of infection and operations and of heavy hands meeting soft flesh.

John caught his eye and smiled, too purposeful to be just a smile.

Mycroft looked down and found a marshmallow bobbing in his tea.

After that Mycroft could not think of anything except for the fact that right not, he was his boys.

But he couldn't forget either.


	46. Chapter 46

John Watson very much wanted to go on a sleep over.

They had already done it once with Harry and there had been adventures and shopping marts and tattoos and star fruit and smiles and they had stayed up until the sun was rising and the sky was turning orange and the birds had all begun to wake up and sing.

George from football, or Georgey as the boys' mother shouted across the field during games called him, was having a 'big-boy sleep over' with pizza and movies and popcorn and fizzy drinks and John desperately wanted to go.

It wouldn't be as fun as with Harry, wouldn't be as perfect as having everyone he loved being behind silly wooden doors, safe and with him, but it would be fun. It would almost be like an adventure.

George asked Sherlock to go too. He walked right up to him in the middle of practice as if he had been working up the courage to talk to the almost silent boy and had to do it before he chickened out. He ran up to him and panting and sweating and smiling asked Sherlock to come to his 'big-boy sleep over'.

Sherlock had gaped, looked at George as if he was just realizing that he was addressing him, and then turned to John, with a look of 'What now?'

John had laughed, not at Sherlock or George, but because the ball had zoomed past the three of them as they were speaking and Lestrade was yelling and waving his arms. John smiled, took Sherlock by the hand and started running after the ball, a chase, Lestrade waving and yelling and rolling his eyes.

John waited for the moment half a second later when Sherlock's steps had fallen into perfect rhythm with his own and then yelled back at Georgey. 'We will ask our Mycroft!'

* * *

John pouted on the sofa, arms crossed with an advanced physics book laying open on his lap, absurdly huge for such a tiny child. Every day it was more obvious that as adults John would always be the smaller of the two. Sherlock lay across the same sofa, longer limbs laid out across the cushions and tumbling limply off the side, his own book lying open on his face in a show of solidarity with John.

No physics would be learned until they had an answer was their unrelenting ultimatum.

And still Mycroft did not say 'no'. Relativity, he supposed, could wait.

There were a thousand reasons to not let them go. There were the mundane reasons. What if they couldn't sleep? What if they hated it? What if the children, as all children have to capacity to be, were cruel? What if Mycroft couldn't stand the thought of them being out in the world without him?

And then there were more, unique reasons. What if they discussed what they were learning in school and his boys found out how extraordinary what they do so naturally really is? What if they snuck away from their pedestrian caretaker and watched a war movie and John remembered things a child should never endure? What if his security perimeter was faulty or even infiltrated? What if the other children asked where their mummy was?

John is a calm child, even when he is in the midst of an all-out protest, knowing where he stands on the issue and refusing what he could without causing himself too much detriment. Sherlock on the other hand is both exuberant at the best of times and uninspired by their cause except for that it is something John wants.

Sherlock dug his bare feet into the edge of the chair and pushed himself along on his back towards John like some sort of malformed snake until curls and the edge of a book pushed into Johns leg. A long suffering sigh came from beneath the book before it tumbled gracelessly to the ground, the heavy spine thudding unsatisfyingly against the thick carpet. Sherlock took advantage of his new view and peered up at John unabashedly, into his look of dissatisfaction, and reached out until his fingers touched Johns frown gently, until fingers pushed his mouth into something resembling a smile.

Until John was actually smiling down at him.

Sherlock curled his hand around one of Johns', his dominant hand, his left, and pulled Johns arms from his self-embrace. The last vestiges of sadness in John dissolved as Sherlock pulled the hand against his chest, over his heart, and curled their fingers together.

"Bored." Sherlock intoned, squirming on the couch to better settle himself against John, the second book falling to the ground and its place in Johns lap taken by Sherlock's curls. "Tell me a story."

"It's your turn to come up with one." Johns protest muted by the affection in his voice.

Sherlock rolled his eyes but looked ever so slightly pleased. He closed his eyes as if thinking of what story he would tell, what new adventure he had planned, and then after a long minute opened them again to make sure that he still had Johns attention.

John, brilliant boy and only expert of Sherlock in the known world, gently tugged at his curls and at random chose a lock and twirled it around his fingers.

'Yes,' The motion said. 'I am paying attention to you.' Sherlock grinned and closed his eyes as he began to speak.

"Once upon a time…"

Once upon a time, the first time Sherlock Holmes was six years old, three world renowned psychologists diagnosed Sherlock as a Sociopath. Mycroft knew they were wrong about Sherlock but he never said a word. There was no proof. No data that the 'experts' could understand. How were they supposed to know, how could he have possibly articulated that Sherlock was too complex, too different. Special, if a word had to be chosen.

How could Mycroft tell them they were wrong about Sherlock when he had missed the abuse that had lasted the whole expanse of his little brothers life?

To mummy it was almost a relief. They told her that it was possible that their fathers' untimely death would not affect them as much as it would other children. Normal children.

'Them', because after the debacle with father, Mycroft was diagnosed as a sociopath as well, of course.

He should have told Sherlock that they were wrong if no one else. He should have taken him aside and told him that they were wrong about Mycroft, because he cared so, so, very much. And that they were wrong about Sherlock too. That Mycroft knew they were wrong.

But he didn't.

Sherlock was not sociopathic to begin with, but he made himself believe it until it was almost true.

What better shield for a child who was too smart and too beautiful and far, far too broken?

When Sherlock told people he was a sociopath he wasn't lying, but he wasn't correct either.

At six years old Sherlock was building walls against humanity that would last his entire life and would dictate the course of his future. The friends he would never make, the people he would force to alienate him.

Walls that were the only truly impenetrable place Mycroft would ever encounter.

At six John Watson was putting on the mask of normalcy so hard that every friendship he had as a child was another level of cover. At six year old, having a conversation with John Watson would be having a conversation with a smiling, polite, and very practiced set of lies.

There were reasons to let his boys go on their 'big-boy sleep over'.

Now, in their current six year old lives John was listening to every word as if Sherlock were the only person in existence. His lips, as he listened, mouthed ever so softly, the word 'amazing'.

Sherlock was speaking more rapidly now, lost in his story, excited, eyes fixed on the words John was unconsciously confiding in him.

They should go because this time around, despite all the things that could go wrong, despite all of the drawbacks, they could.

Mycroft circled closer to listen to the end of Sherlock's story. It was in English this time instead of the language of Sherlock-John which had only grown more complex and incomprehensible with time. The words were simple, sweet even, charming in Sherlock high childish voice. The words flowed over Mycroft, a balm to the raging turmoil in his mind. And then he heard it. A name too rare to be a coincidence.

"Eve-"


	47. Chapter 47

"Once upon a time-"

"Sherlock only fairy tales start that way!"

"Who says I am not telling a fairy tale?"

John rolled his eyes and tugged gently on the curl tangled around his fingers. "Your stories are never fairy tales."

"I could tell one if I wanted to!"

"Yes."

"I just don't want to."

"Yup."

"Right. So. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted-" John snorted. "Once upon a time-"

"Sherlock!"

"It is a perfectly legitimate way to start a story, and it's my story so that is the way it is going to start."

"But you don't like fairy tales."

"No. But you do."

"…"

"Once upon a time, there was a maiden living in the kingdom of London. She was not the most beautiful lady in the land and she was not the most brilliant, but she was pretty and smarter than most and she was nice. She was the kind of person who would smile at you even if you were always grumpy, and even if no one else liked you and she didn't care what anyone else thought of her. And there was a boy-"

"Does she have a name?"

"Yes. Of course she has a name."

John smiled. "Okay, so what is she called?"

"Her name was Eve but we call her Frank."

"Frank is a girl?"

"Yup. Or was a girl. Now she is our skull. I don't know if sex identity stays after you lose your body, we will have to ask Mycroft to make sure. But she had dirty blond hair that reached her shoulder blades and when she still had eyes they were blue."

"Okay."

"Eve was a student here in London. She lived her for two years and everything was fine and nothing bad ever happened."

"Maybe we should stop the story here."

"Don't you want to know how she came to live with us?"

"If we stop here then in the story she is still alive, she never has to die."

Sherlock squeezed Johns hand tight. "She is already dead John. We can't help her."

"I know." John squeezed his hand back. "Can- Will you tell me the rest?"

"One day the police came to her, they were everywhere, going through her things and asking her all sorts of questions. See, Eve's family was in the arms trade and the police thought she was part of it too."

"Was she? You said she was nice."

"No, she was innocent. Something had gone wrong and her family had contacted her asked her for help and when the police asked her questions she wouldn't tell on her family."

"Did the police help her?"

"No, they said they could only help her if she helped them. So when she wouldn't tell them, they left."

"She should have told the police. Then she would have lived."

Sherlock frowned. "Maybe" He took one last look up at John and closed his eyes, trusting the other boy to watch over him as he spoke. "She was brave. She was scared and she wanted to tell them and be safe but she never said a word. When the police were gone a detective came and told her that he wouldn't tell the police, that he could help her. Or maybe he wasn't a detective at all. Maybe he was just a student-detective. But she just smiled at him, because she was nice and he was trying, and she still said 'no'."

Sherlocks eyes flew open as if the part of his mind not speaking, the part of his mind which should by all rights be resting, had suddenly come up with something brilliant and profound. John recognized the look.

"Would you have told the police? You are kind the way she was. Imagine you were her, try, really try. "

John bit his lips and his eyebrows drew together in thought, he took his time. The question was too simple. He was missing something, but Sherlock was waiting for his answer.

"-yes."

Sherlock nodded as if that had been the answer he was expecting.

"And if it meant giving me up to the police would you still do it?"

This time the answer was instantaneous.

"No."

Sherlock took their joined hands and pressed a kiss to John's palm.

"Maybe that was it then. She must have loved them too."

John almost smiled at the kiss but he was too distracted, still thinking about the skull in their bedroom.

"And so she died?"

"Went missing first. Of course she had been dead long before they found her remains. And that is how she came to live with us. Her family didn't deserve her and the police were just going lock her away alone in the dark." Sherlock smiled. "She was liberated into a second life. It doesn't sound so bad, being a skull with us. At least now she has friends. Well, I say friends-"

"Sherlock?"

"Hmm?"

"Is that all true?"

"Of course."

"How do you know all of that?"

"I- don't…know." Sherlock took a breath.

"Boys." Mycroft had been watching them across the room, debating John's demands, but now he was smiling, sitting himself on the edge of the couch next to Sherlock's lanky body. "I have come to a decision and I have a proposal for you."

He reached down and collected the abandoned physics books, piling them neatly on the floor after straightening their mercilessly bent pages. "You may attend your…sleepover on the condition that your studies are resumed tomorrow." John had already begun to agree when Mycroft held up a hand in pause. "-and that tonight-"A deliberate pause for effect. "-will be just the three of us."

John, who had been ready to object, laughed.

Mycroft pushed Sherlock's legs out of the way and settled into the sofa, letting the little boy drape himself across cushion and body alike, Sherlock's body splayed possessively over both of them.

"Now, how about you retell me this story of… the skull and the detective."

"Once upon a time-"

* * *

"_I want to sit next to George! Birthday boy George!"_

"_When do we get cake?"_

"_Fine, you sit next to George, I want to sit next to John! First time party John!"_

"_Hey that's my drink!"_

"_No, I want to sit next to John! I invited him!"_

John smiled amicably, letting the shouts and laughter and strife whirl around him.

Sherlock took Johns hand and led him to the couch, angling them so that John was sequestered against the armrest as they sat. Sherlock looked at his peers without comment, his face remarkably like when he was deciphering your innermost secrets as if they were written across your chest in blaring neon, daring them to challenge his claim.

Lestrade sighed.

The boys, his entire footballer team come to that, adapted quickly.

"_I get to sit next to Sherlock! First time party Sherlock!" _

"_No! That one is your drink!"_

"_What movie are we watching?"_

"Thank you again for volunteering to help me out tonight Mr. Lestrade. I thought I was going to lose my mind when my husband was called away on work this weekend. What awful timing, he never gets called on to do any traveling last minute!" Mrs. Hopkins brushed her hands off on her pants and set a cup of tea in down on the table in front of him, the cup nestled impossibly between a bowl of cheese curls and what appeared to be every flavor of crisp known to mankind.

"Greg." He offered automatically, tearing his eyes off the boys in the living room. "Yes. Murphy's law I suppose." If there was additional weight or irony in his words Mrs. Hopkins cheerfully missed it. "Just glad I could help."

She smiled, probably thinking about what a wonderful coach he was and how nice it was that a detective inspector would dedicate his time to children. She turned back to her snacks with the same naive smile.

Lestrade snatched his tea from the depths of a diabetics nightmare and turned back to where the boys had all settled in, as much as they were going to, to watch a decidedly child friendly movie starring talking cars.

Sherlock would be mentally climbing the walls within minutes.

It would be interesting to see what won out, disdain for age appropriate tasks or keeping his possessive guard on John.

Five minutes later Gregory Lestrade was empathizing with every agonizingly dull second Sherlock was suffering.

Mrs. Hopkins had one child, one husband, one job doing menial tasks at a school nurses office and the most to say about absolutely nothing that he had ever had the misfortune to be audience to.

He smiled blandly and hoped she would not start another conversation about the neighbors new boyfriend and his 'questionable tattoos'.

The things we suffer for love.

It was John in the end who saved them both.

Lestrade watched as John leaned close to Sherlock and whispered something that made the boys marble face go suddenly soft. The manic energy itching in his tense fingers suddenly releasing.

Sherlock moved as if just waking up and looked at the other boys still raptly watching the animated movie and then turned back to John.

John, who could recite Shakespeare on demand and reference Dickens in casual conversation smiled and pushed him away playfully, motioning for him to go and amuse himself while John covered for him and watched a movie he could have written.

Sherlock did not lean forward and kiss him but Lestrade knew it was a very near thing. With a particularly loud moment from the television Sherlock made his escape and vaulted over the couch without any of the others saying a word.

Mrs. Hopkins smiled her too-large smile as Sherlock approached, the kind made especially for children, and asked the dark haired little boy if he needed another drink or perhaps needed to use the 'potty'. When Lestrade pulled out the chair next to him in invitation Sherlock jumped into it, kicking his feet as his blue eyes bounced between the too-happy mother and the grin-and bare-it look which had taken stubborn residence on Lestrades face.

A single carefully bland question from Lestrade and Sherlock was off, talking a mile a minute, deducing things about the table, the dishware, the pet fish that had been quietly replaced no less than three times and about Mrs. Hopkins infatuation with the postman. It was as if his brain was working in overdrive for every second of 'boredom' he had endured and had become incapable of stopping the outpouring of observations that assaulted him.

Lestrade wondered with a painful jolt how true that might be.

Mrs. Hopkins suddenly found something very pressing to do in another room.

Lestrade pushed one of the less noxious looking plates towards Sherlock and felt a little thrill of victory when the boy reached out without looking and took a handful of food which he held in a closed fist.

Now at least he could text Harry and tell her to stop fretting and for the love of all things not ridiculously overcomplicated, to stop messaging him.

He could tell Mrs. Hudson that she could stop ringing him and that his phone was going to stay on silent anyway until he figured out how to change the bloody ringtone Sherlock had 'picked just for him'.

Sherlock looked around himself more freely now that Mrs. Hopkins was gone. Lestrade watched intelligent blue eyes survey the placement of the windows, the doors, the preoccupation of all of the other children, of John, of the door shut firmly behind Mrs. Hopkins, and settle finally on him.

Lestrade tried not to think of the text still sitting in the memory of his phone and of the call he had gotten from Harry while reading the text, just to make sure he got it.

Sherlock had a problem eating with people.

A relapse Harry called it, summing thoughts of fake drugs busts and a kitchen that had never had any food.

He was losing weight.

He had been good for so long. She told him in a soft voice that made him think of breaking glass. And then one day, he wasn't. She had taken them out, gotten them chips because she was the cool aunt and they held her hands and smiled and asked for something Mycroft would disapprove of, and without a word, without more than a quiet inhalation of breath, Sherlock had panicked.

He was okay. Harry had pulled him into an embrace and carried him outside and he had held onto her like she was carrying him from a burning building and when she sat and John brought their foreheads together, hands holding Sherlock's face in a gesture so intimate it could make your heart stop and brown and blue eyes met and spoke a million words that could never be understood by anyone else, Sherlock could breathe again.

It wasn't all the time. It was like a radio station coming in and out of focus. Sometimes he was fine, he would eat, but only with people he was comfortable with, with those he trusted. Other times it could only be John and he would be panicky and pale and only try because John would refuse to eat without him.

Try to get him to eat. Harry had begged as if she had not expected to break down. Her broken glass voice shattering against a granite floor. Lestrade was glad she could not see his expression.

Because it was worse than that. She sniffed and Lestrade wondered if that was the sound of a wine glass clinking in the background, if that snap-click was a beer. He wondered if he should go and keep her company or if it would be better to call Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson.

It was worse because when she had asked John he had looked at her with the saddest eyes in the world and told him that it was not the first time.

It was just the first time Sherlock could not hide it from the adults anymore.

Lestrade had stopped walking mid-street and changed directions, telling her that he was on his way.

When he got there Mrs. Hudson was already making tea.

So when Sherlock looked at him over a mess of party food with sharp blue eyes that were enough at six to make him feel dim-witted and judged him 'safe', and even 'trustworthy', and ate the grapes he held in his fist between rapid-fire deductions Lestrade felt a strange swell of pride.

It felt ridiculously like an accomplishment, not like a matter of happenstance and a childs trust but like the result of the accumulation of a life's work. A badge of merit. To finally get Mr. I-don't-need-food-or-sleep to ingest something not toxic or experimental.

It had been lifetimes in the making.

Sherlock seemed to be petering down now, his feet were swinging less frantically over the edge of the chair and instead of intensely observing everything as if a gun were being pointed at his head he was spending more time actually breathing.

He was awful slight for a six year old, somehow incredibly small sitting all alone in a chair where his feet could not even touch the ground.

Lestrade had noticed he was losing weight. He saw him every week and had to let him run with boys twice his size, had to watch him get just a little bit more pale, just a bit more…fragile in appearance if not strength.

He looked like a doll, no child should have eyes that big or cheekbones so prominent. He seemed to be made of dark curls and quick curious eyes. Bone structure so perfect and delicate that it belonged to paintings, not to a man who had all at once been indestructible and so incredibly broken.

Of course he had known. How could he not?

He wondered if he picked Sherlock up and held him in his arms would he feel like anything at all?

Sherlock deduced aloud that he had taken his gun with him tonight even though he was off duty and beamed because he knew he was right, eyes shining with the possibility of seeing it. He looked around quickly and popped another grape into his mouth, his eyes skirted over the table filled with food as if he could not see it at all.

Harry had called him crying, Mrs. Hudson had told him stories of their life at home and the three of them had worried together over tea, (Mrs. Hudson had poured Harrys pop down the drain saying it was bad for her bones) talking about the things they could do to help.

Mycroft had been absent. But of course he knew, the bastard knew everything. And he had still not told Lestrade a word of what was happening, not a 'by the way', not a 'just thought you should know', not even a 'since I have hijacked your life and because you so obviously care about these boys and you still miss who they used to be every single day when you go to work and realize they are not coming'.

Just the message to go here, that his schedule had been cleared and that Mr. Hopkins had been sent away. No need to protect them, not physically, they would have a full guard detail, as always. Just go to be…emotional support, someone in the know.

Except Mycroft would have him know nothing, he had spoken to Harry and Mrs. Hudson personally, but not to him. What was he, just some bloke who had been convenient? A pawn? Inconsequential?

What else was he not being told? What other huge life changing issue could be going on that he was not privy to because Mycroft deemed him unworthy? Would they call him one day and tell him that John was not coming to football because he his kidneys had failed? Would they show up one day and Sherlock would tell him with his huge blue eyes and curly black hair that he was going to be murdered?

He could not think about it. Not now. Not here. Sherlock would know.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose trying to dispel the thoughts, the lingering ache behind his eyes, hoping that Sherlock would think it was from the other boys, from the annoying woman who had been chattering at him for what had felt like an eternity.

Lestrade could hear the sound of socks whispering against tile.

Feel the pressure of a warm hand on his knee.

He opened his eyes and Sherlock was there, standing in front of him, staring into him, knowing.

Sherlock did not have to ask, the question was already on his face, in the open and unrepentant way he was taking apart every piece of him.

In the other room the boys laughed, a car sound echoed through the room hailed another bout of laughter.

He did not want to hide what he was thinking from Sherlock. He did not want to leave him in the dark the way he had been by Mycroft. Besides, he had never been able to keep Sherlock out of anything before.

Not only because he would deduce it within seconds, but because he never had the heart to try and keep him away.

They had been friends, once upon a time.

Sherlock was looking up at him expectantly, and in an echo of time gone by, of a party and a birthday past, he reached out and put his small white hand in Lestrades rough lined fist, and waited.

Lestrade held his hand, let his hand be held, the way he had then.

The party when Sherlock had pressed close beside him and told him of a half remembered past that no one else had ever known, a past that had never been told.

When they had sat in the middle of a sea of laughing children and Sherlock had told him what it felt like to be drowned by someone who should have loved him, by someone he had wanted to love. He had told him how the cold could be never ending and how you could learn to be so quiet that you were almost not there at all. He had told him that after the pangs of hunger fade it is not pain that permeates every second of existence, but cold.

Sherlock had told him that you can never trust anyone.

Everyone has the capacity to destroy the things they love.

Lestrade had let Sherlock hold his hand, and their bodies had been pressed against one another sitting side by side in that park.

And he had not reached out for him, not pulled him into his arms and told him that he would protect him now.

How could he?

_Everyone has the capacity to destroy the things they love._

Damn it all. Damn _them_ all. Damn Mycroft for not telling him what was going on with two of the best people he had ever had the privilege to know. Damn him for ever telling him that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had not gone off to live happily ever after together,alive and safe, even if he had never believed it at all.

"Sherlock-" His smile had melted away, the clever one that meant 'of course I know everything about you'. What was left in its place was so much more subtle. The hint of a smile, almost hope. "The nightmares that you told me about-"

"Nightmares aren't real." Sherlock told him resolutely. A child telling him that monsters do not exist. Mummy said so.

"No, nightmares are not real.' Lestrade conceded. A breath. "So what do you call what you told me?"

Sherlocks smile grew until it reached his eyes.

"Others."

"You let everyone think they were getting better. You let them think that once you and John could talk about them together that they didn't hurt you anymore."

"Yes." Sherlock bounced onto his toes, rocking back onto his heels. His hand was tightening around Lestrades.

"They are not better are they? You still have the 'others'. It didn't help."

"See the others." Sherlock corrected. "John does help. And I help him."

His smile slipped down, the edges of his lips turning down, he tossed his curls back and forth in a gesture that said 'no'. Heartbreakingly, emphatically no. It wasn't alright.

"That's why you aren't eating."

Blue eyes darted to John, checking to see that he had not heard, that the words had not reached through the air to break him apart. Sherlock put a finger to his lips.

"I am _trying_." He whispered, frustrated and honest, and so very small.

"They are getting worse." Lestrade told him in the voice he used to tell people that their loved one had not been found alive.

Sherlock did not need someone to ask if he was okay. He needed someone to tell him that it was alright to admit that he was not.

Sherlock's shoulders slumped and his hand when limp within Lestrades, he stayed upright but he wobbled as if all of his energy had abandoned him with his secret. But his face was no sad or broken or wavering like the rest of his small body.

He was relieved.

There was a stab in his chest so sharp and abrupt that it was disorienting. It caught him by surprise and had him holding onto Sherlock's hand as if he might suddenly disappear. His mind stopped and seized and then whirled around one fact.

It was enough to have him blinking to fight back the tears that burned in the back of his eyes because in that moment he helplessly, fiercely, missed Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock just needed someone to deduce him. Needed someone to tell him that he could stop hiding, that he could stop fighting so goddamn hard because he was not alone.

It was all Sherlock had ever needed.

Lestrade curled around the knife edge lodged in his chest and captured Sherlock Holmes in his arms.

This time he did pick him up, he pulled him close against his chest and when that was not enough and the knife twisted harder he wrapped his arms around him, circling until his fingers rested on delicate ribs and pulled him onto his lap and held him so tight that he had no choice but to hold on too.

Sherlock was shocked. He gasped as his hands found purchase in the heavy cloth of the jacket over Lestrade's chest but as the seconds ticked by in engulfing warmth and heartbeats and rising chests a helpless giggle was muffled against the older man. Lestrade loosed his hold enough to look down into the face of the boy in his arms and found familiar blue eyes were staring fondly up at him. And he was smiling.

Before Sherlock could say the 'Took you long enough' that was obvious in the shape of his eyes and the arch of his eyebrows Lestrade crushed him in a bear hug that made Sherlock giggle again. They held onto each other tighter, it was a hug that wanted to be the accumulation of a decade's worth of missed chances and old friendship but ended up being the start of something different.

As Sherlock laughed as if he were helpless under the weight of his joy to stop the sound wrapped around the knife edge in Lestrade's chest and blunted it until the bitter ghost of a friend he had once known faded from behind his eyes.

"Alright Sherlock."

The pain was still there, the knife in his chest, the ache where his friend once existed, the one he felt keenly every time he walked onto a crime scene and knew that the perpetrator would never be brought to justice, where everyone was polite and lied so beautifully and no one ever meant what they said. The wince that he hid behind a coffee and a grimace every time he knew afresh that Sherlock Holmes would not come sweeping in with his piercing eyes and make the world real.

At the beginning, when he was first reintroduced to Sherlock and he still had those ice blue eyes that could tear a man apart he knew, would have testified, that one day the consulting detective would be back. Sherlock Holmes would one day be all he had been, dark swooping coats and brilliance and awkward moments and fundamentally the greatest man he had ever known.

He knew that would never happen now. That the man he had known, the friend he had had, was gone once and for all.

The Sherlock Holmes in his arms with his old friends ice blue eyes and had his small hands fisted in his jacket would grow up to be brilliant and awkward and the greatest man he would ever know, but he would a good man too.

"Tell me everything. Tell me about the Others."


	48. Chapter 48

Mrs. Hopkins came back in to test the waters and presumably to check on the boys and their level of crap food intake. She left the room immediately when Sherlock's blue eyes met her dull brown, retreating into the living room to disappear amongst the laughter and animated entertainment. She stammered something about 'boy time' and tried to force a smile which broke horribly across her face.

It was a horribly inappropriate time for a discussion of this weight and magnitude.

Then again, most of the things Sherlock Holmes does are horribly inappropriate in one way or another.

So they have nearly an hour of uninterrupted dialog, Sherlock talking in a soft matter of fact voice that does not travel past the chair they dually occupy, Lestrade listening without needing to mutter the social acceptable word of understanding or grunt of comprehension. Sherlock already knows.

There is a subtle difference in the stories of the two boys, even though both are uttered by Sherlock and told one after the other without pause and sometimes without even a breath to separate them. John's stories are told in lists. Nondisplaced fracture in ribs 8, 9 , and 10. Fractured coccyx. Concussion (TBI) followed by nausea and emesis.

Johns stories are told in lists of injuries, of medical terminology. He does not have to say more than that. The rest of the story is in what is missing. He never uses the word bandage or hospital, never doctor or x-ray.

Sherlock's stories are told in lessons.

Never let them see that you care or it will be taken away, ended, stopped. Don't let them see you smile, frown, wince, laugh. People will destroy you if you are stupid enough to let them.

No one needs friends.

People, Sherlock tells him while his eyes are fixed to where he is measuring his small hand against Lestrade's, are a liability.

Lestrade stayed calm. Almost.

He is a detective inspector. He has seen children younger than Sherlock left in pools of their own blood, he has seen boys with Johns ancient eyes in hospital beds with organ failure and absolutely nothing to say.

He should be jaded, used to it, because eventually you have to stop seeing the body count, the individual losses, or it will drive you mad.

There is another difference in the stories. Sherlock tells his own in a detached voice, accepting, as if of course these things haunt him, as if there was no other way it could be. As if he deserved them.

He tells Johns like his heart is breaking.

Lestrade is not getting the details of the stories. There are no adjectives or feelings. He never hears the words painful, frightening, or terrible. He never hears the sound of footsteps coming closer, the snap-click of a beer can, he never hears an explanation of what it is like to look up and see ice blue eyes judging and condemning.

There is no time for such things of course, for those words, the feel of the snap of a bone and the burning scratching need of a denied breath. Sherlock would not tell him if there was time. Those words, those whispers, exist only in the dark between two boys.

But Lestrade is not stupid. He can fill in the blanks.

He reminds himself as Sherlock takes another small handful of grapes that these events are decades old. That these boys, his boys, are safe now but for the echo of these crimes.

The men that did these things are probably dead.

Sherlock takes a deep breath as if he is about to plunge himself into the Thames in the dead of winter and eats a single mouthful.

If they are not dead, if they somehow survived all of these years, Lestrade will kill them.

He is after all a Detective Inspector, he should be jaded, decades of murder scenes, decades of knowledge. He knows the ones who never get caught.

The irony would kill Donovan. She always thought it would be Sherlock who would be the one to plunge into the other side of sanctioned law.

It should be awkward, right now. This moment. Sherlock has stopped talking and he is peering up at Lestrade.

He has never known what to say when people tell him personal things. When they are not making an official statement but telling him, because they want him to know, because they want to reach out to another human being and feel like they have a connection in the world. Rape victims, kidnapped survivors, abused and battered peoples, loved ones left behind, hell, his own ex-wife. What do you say, what can be said?

Sherlock is looking up at him and Lestrade hears it now too, the movie is playing ending credits, the boys are on their way.

Their time is up.

Sherlock attention is gone, he is looking away, looking for John, he is already sliding away.

But it's not awkward. Not at all.

Sherlock is on the ground, stepping away when Lestrade bends forward and captures him in his arms and pulls him into an embrace. The tiny brunette is caught off guard; he stiffens for a second, and then melts into him as if there had never been a question. Messy dark curls tuck beneath his chin, and an ear is pressed deliberately over his heart.

When Sherlock pulls away the other boys surround them, they are flooding around the table with their hands in multicolored bowls and laughter spilling from their lips.

No one sees Sherlock stretch up onto his tiptoes and press a kiss that is almost a smile to his mostly shaven cheek.

No one but John who has already stretched out an arm to touch Sherlock, to reestablish the connection between them. They link arms in the manner of old gentlemen and small children and John looks between them once, garnering meaning no one else could. His smile is beaming.

"Family dinners are every second Sunday. Attendance is mandatory." John tells him, pressing a matching kiss to his other cheek sweetly, his eyes warm and not at all like he was the same boy mastering martial arts at an alarming rate. "Auntie Harry will finally have someone to talk 'girls' with." He rolls his eyes in a very clear description of exactly what he thinks of girls but with a fondness that is attached to both him and Harry, foolish as they may be. John tugs at Sherlock and rejoins the group of swirling boys. Lestrade hears a snippet of their conversation as they walk away.

Not about dreams or injuries or lessons.

They are deducing what would be the most appropriate flavor for his 'Welcome to the family' cake.

Mrs. Hopkins looks at him over the pizza she has set on the table and gives him a pleading look as Sherlock and John sit down.

Lestrade laughs so loud the boys all stop and look at him with mouths half full and cheese sauce smeared on their shirts. Sherlock and John smile.

Well. He always wanted kids.

* * *

It is only 2:37 in the morning and everyone else is asleep.

This is not what he read 'sleep overs' would be like. Were his sources wrong, supplying him with faulty data, or was this an anomaly?

Well. Sherlock corrects himself, almost everyone is asleep.

He looks across the semi-darkness of the living-room, over the old shag carpet lit by the blinking green face of the DVD player and into familiar brown eyes.

It takes exactly 3.7 seconds before John breaks into a smile which Sherlock would categorize as 'fond despite himself' which is half lost in the thin pillow cushioning his cheek.

They get up silently. John takes his hand as he passes him in the darkness but Sherlock takes an extra moment.

Lestrade is asleep in the armchair, his neck at an angle that will ache tomorrow and for now makes his breathing audible but not quite a snore. He entertains the notion of stealing his ID badge but dismisses it almost instantly. Slipping something extra in his pocket just to prove he could holds slightly more merit but it is dismissed too.

There will be plenty of time for that.

John is watching him quietly, a warm presence at his shoulder; together they slip into the kitchen.

John surveys the kitchen quickly, the debris of the 'food' from the party. He shakes his head and Sherlock smiles, he pulls out the kitchen chair Lestrade and he sat in earlier and climbs on top to better watch John. He already has the bread out- second drawer on the right, of course- and is making sure that the ding of the toaster won't be loud enough to wake anyone. It won't.

John looks back at him and Sherlock knows that John is reading things no one else could see. Calorie deficit, Sherlock knows the evidence is on his breath and the temperature of his skin when John reached out for him. John pulls out a jar of jam before gently pushing a chair closer to the stove so that he can put the tea pot on, lid open so it won't wistle.

Sherlock watches him move through the darkness. He is flashes of pale skin in an otherwise dim world. When he reaches up for the tea pot his shirt lifts and Sherlock can see the small expanse of skin at the small of his back, bright white.

It has him smiling as John stops the toast early; John knows it is easier to eat when it does not crunch so loudly.

If anyone else were here John would have found a way to keep his shirt in place.

But not with him.

John rolls his eyes as he puts jam on the toast because Sherlock clearly could have already done this while John made the tea, but he is smiling. He puts more than Sherlock would, big globs of sugary strawberries. He can see the calculation going on in brown eyes. How many calories per tablespoon, how much he can put on bread before Sherlock rejects it.

Sherlock folds the bread and takes a huge bite. Too sweet. Too much. Too mushy. There is panic, the thought of mess, of being seen, caught. His throat restricts and the food is dry and thick in his mouth.

But it is dark, everyone is asleep and John is with him.

Only John.

The panic recedes as he swallows and he holds the bread under the table, out of sight.

John has not yet hit the point where Sherlock would reject anything he made for him, regardless of jam quantities.

John has not realized that for him, Sherlock would do anything.

John pulls his chair close so that they can whisper. Their mugs steam on the table and are hot to the touch, mismatched novelty mugs with garish photos on them, one with Georgey as a colicky red-faced infant which is chipped where a right-handed drinkers lips would rest, Sherlock's with a unicorn dancing in a rainbow. The steam when it hits his face is warm and smells a bit like John.

"It could have been worse."

John snorts softly in response. "With that attitude I am surprised it wasn't the best night ever."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit."

"Quoted by possibly the most sarcastic writer in British history."

"There is no proof Oscar Wilde said that, besides he was technically Irish."

"Then there is also no proof that he didn't also say sarcasm 'is the highest form of intelligence'."

"Yes, because sarcasm is obviously the pinnacle of intelligence, far reaching things like rocket science, and neurosurgery."

"Huh, I don't seem to recall hearing that one before." Sherlock watched John hide his barely almost imperceptible smile behind the rim of his cup, hiding it in darkness and shadow. "Who said that? Anyone reputable?" It didn't matter that Sherlock couldn't see his mouth smiling.

It was in his eyes.

"The most reputable. Sherlock Holmes. Foremost expert on everything. But you won't have heard of him. You never can know about the truly great ones once they are dead."

John didn't hide his smile now. It held out just a second, a grim contemplative countenance …and then they both broke into hushed laughter.

John watched quietly as the laughter stopped, wanting to speak but holding himself back, his dark eyes lingering on the uneaten food Sherlock was still trying to conceal under the table.

It was nothing. Sherlock told himself as he quickly, perfunctorily, finished the bread. Fear was irrational.

Mental distractions sometimes helped. Playing little games.

The tablecloth was picnic red and white blocks, plastic, and hung down around the table half way. He barely noticed the thick hurried bite he forced himself to take, closing his eyes as he pushed the game further. The table cloth was there to collect the mess of children and to hide the scars of generations of use. Embarrassment for a hand-me-down table. A salaried job. A tacky, ugly cloth covering the great grandmothers, no, grandfathers old kitchen table, from the father's side. He tried to swallow but the food, no- the bolus- was thick and dry and unnatural. Tacky strawberry sickly sweet and dripping onto his hands. Panic welling, heat gathering and pouring off his skin. Tongue paralyzed. Respiration increasing.

He opened his eyes.

John.

John.

He swallowed. Repeated the process.

Not so bad.

When it was done he didn't need the chair to reach the sink like John but when warm hands settled on his waist and boosted him up he let himself be maneuvered.

John let go and smiled, not patronizingly, the way adults do to children because they feel superior, or as if he would break, the way Harry would once she heard everything Lestrade would tell them. John smiled at him like he was an adventure waiting to happen.

They gathered the garish mugs and John crawled under the butcher block table with its one quid table cloth, through chair legs and into a darkness the rest of the room could not afford them. They sat cross legged, so close that their knees touched and the chairs were all pulled in around them like a fortress. Their warm tea was abandoned between the legs of chairs just inside the ring of curtainous table cloth.

Sherlock could see all the words and statements and declarations passing through John unspoken. His eyes had adjusted to their new darkened world and John was shades of darkness and light.

"That was good." John whispered at last, his voice so close that it had no choice but to be intimate. The words he had finally chosen. What needed to be said. "That thing you did, it was-good."

Sherlock shifted, backing away from the light, uncommonly thankful for the darkness.

He could feel the blush on his cheeks burning hotter.

John would know anyway.

"Lestrade needed a family to adopt him." John pushed on shamelessly, pride and fondness clear in his every syllable. "You didn't want to tell anyone our stories but you did it for him. You made him part of us."

Sherlock shook his head. He wanted to touch his fingers to his cheeks and will the heat away but he refrained, instead letting his curls frame his face, keeping his hands very purposefully in his lap. "Mycroft would have found out our stories eventually. He planted Lestrade to tempt us."

John reached forward and took his hand. Part of Sherlock trained onto that touch. When John touched him it was never just another sensation, not something to be categorized and then ignored to let fade into the monotony of repetitive actions. John held his hand like it was important, his fingers caressing his palm and tracing over his fingers as if he were creating a map of Sherlock in his mind, always lingering on the newest cut, the newest changes from sports and growth. Johns hand was warmed from the tea and soft despite their adventures. He was still smiling that complicated mix of emotions as if Sherlock had said nothing to dissuade him, as if he had thought of all of his arguments before Sherlock had even opened his mouth.

John words, when they came again, were said with the ease of a man telling you that tomorrow the sun will rise.

"And knowing Mycroft put him there you still did it."

John gripped his hand tight and pulled him closer, into the small space that had been left between them. The kiss was light and quick and almost like the brush of a hand.

Almost too fast to feel.

But Sherlock could smell him as he pulled away, like warm tea and home and the way happiness would if it had a scent.

"Tonight, you were my hero."


	49. Chapter 49

Lestrade came quite voluntarily to him after the events of the sleepover. It could not have gone better had he scripted it himself. Which in a way, he did, if one could count setting the stage, choosing the actors, and precipitating a few stage directions as scripting. It is however never guaranteed that people will stick to their parts, the people his boys surround themselves with seem to possess an unusual amount of free will.

He could have simply bugged the apartment or even Lestrade or his boys, he had even toyed with the idea for a moment before he was forced to abandon the notion. Once Sherlock and John found bugs they would be tipped off to looking for them everywhere and worse, they would know he had done it. It had the capacity to destroy the aura of safety that was so precariously built around them.

And if he was honest it felt like betrayal to even conceive of. It was different when they were adults and Sherlock was unruly and in a constant state of war with him. He had only done it to protect him.

But Sherlock loved him now, unabashedly loved him, as did John. Their words now were something to be gained through trust and love, not trickery.

Mycroft went to pick them up himself at nine the next morning, two hours earlier than the invitation suggested under the pretense of a homeschool fieldtrip planned for the day. The room was filled with boys with wide eyes and unwashed faces eating left over pizza and digging into their stashes of candies. They ignored him for the most part, a fleeting glance and they had taken him in and dismissed as an adult. As boring.

Mycroft smiled.

Mrs. Hopkins smiled cheerily at him and told him he same bland line she would give all of the parents. 'Oh they were lovely. Angels! Barely heard a peep from them all night!' His statement had a tagline added in. 'Just head on into the living room, your boys are with Greg, dear things.' Her smile one she obviously thought portrayed comradery, her hand resting on the head of her own off-spring in a fond manner. Her thoughts were so loud as to, nearly, cause Mycroft to blink.

_Strange children you have._

He did not offer her a word in return, ignoring both the facilitated smile and the unspoken thought.

The living room was quiet comparatively and upon entering he noted the trademark salt and pepper hair of Lestrade, he was sitting in the large armchair he had obviously slept in but it took until Mycroft was in the room fully to understand how perfectly he had judged his boys.

John and Sherlock were curled up on top of the Detective Inspector, hands curled over their eyes to block the light of day, one tucked into each arm and the slightest of smiles on their sleeping faces.

"Hey-" Lestrade's voice was soft and gravely with disuse and the obvious desire to stay hushed. "Just got them to sleep an hour ago, they got it into their heads that it would be brilliant to stay up all night." His complementing eye roll and muted shoulder shrug was an oddly apt counterpart to Mrs. Hopkins fake smile. "Did you bring a car?"

"My assistant is waiting outside to drive us."

Lestrade nodded down to the boys and Mycroft stepped forward and claimed John, gathering him in his arms. Brown eyes looked up at him for a moment and closed with a soft muttered 'my-cough'.

Mycroft gathered their night bags, matching horrid plastic things Mrs. Hudson had insisted were 'darling' with their vicious looking dinosaurs and lurid yellow zippers. The boys had been allowed to pack their bags themselves, and then allowed to unpack them when Mycroft caught Sherlock trying to pack the skull. Lestrade stood carefully, trying not to jostle the sleeping boy in his arms.

His hold on the sleeping child with his mess of unruly limbs, which dangled no matter how Lestrade held him, was protective and he continued to glance over to John as if deprived of his heat and proximity he found himself somewhat bereft.

Mycroft took advantage and handed him the garish backpacks which, in his distraction, Lestrade shouldered without a word.

John cuddled into his shoulder and Sherlock was dead to the world in Lestrades guarding embrace. His boys could stand to skip their classes for a day while he and Lestrade had the discussion they both dreaded starting and wanted over in equal parts. Maybe later this afternoon they could get lunch, just the four of them, and he could gift Lestrade full glossy photos of the images he had been discretely snapping on his mobile through every embarrassingly endearing pose. The one of him cradling Sherlock's ragdoll head under his chin was a particular favorite.

Mrs. Hudson was doubtlessly already enjoying the image he sent to her mobile.

* * *

If walls could talk. That's the cliché isn't it? If only these walls could talk, the things they would tell, the stories they would keep, the memories they would share.

But with walls as with all inanimate objects, it is all about placement. Some walls witness momentous occasions that affect the world over and mark the pages of history while others measure a thousand intimate moments that mean the world only to a handful. There is a wall which lingers behind the shoulder of the Prime Minister in Downing Street, witnessing acts of war and peace and the march of time through the succession of leaders known the world over. A wall in Les Carrières de Paris is decorated with the bones of the long departed in the pattern of a heart and stands vigil for the dead. And a very particular wall in County Cork Ireland watches a thousand back bending kisses a day.

Other walls…others stand guard over not kisses but coats, not war but washrooms.

Same thing with all inanimate objects. To be placed, to be an accidental witness of only what happens by. Luck is the name of the game, the strength of the story within.

So a wall is placed, an object exists but what could a wall understand? Would a wall see humans as the dominant characters of their lives or would it be the lamps and tables they shared their silence with? Would they watch the floor and the corners and the other walls and the humans would be like insects living their short frantic lives and passing them by? Would a wall which has watched lives joined in weddings and grieved over at funerals be privy to the meaning of its observations? To the humanity displayed before it?

If walls could talk, if they could understand humanity, if they could hold the memory of a species they had never belonged to, would they?

Would walls love?

Would they share their stories to protect their occupants? Would they miss those who lived within their embrace and then never passed by them again? Would they still wonder a hundred years later where their charges had gone?

If walls could love, no wall worth its paper would love Sherlock Holmes. No wall would tell his stories or watch over him with fondness. No wall would know all of his stories.

Clichés are wasted on walls. If walls could talk. The writing on the wall. It's like talking to a brick wall.

No one talks to brick walls and they probably wouldn't listen if they could, even if that is the point of the cliché.

But Sherlock talks to me. Has talked to me in fact, for longer than he can remember. He has placed me where I could watch him debate and growl and suffer and fall in love and be brilliant and fall victim and now…where I can watch him grow up.

I can love, because I do. And I do love him, because, well, he has never shot holes in me in honor if her Majesty and that certainly helps. And he does love me in return, in his own way, even if I make him…regretful on occasion, when he is brooding and too thoughtful. We have a complicated relationship, Sherlock and I, and that started long before Mrs. Hudson started stealing me and using me as bargaining chip to con him into eating, placing me on her kitchen table and chatting to me as she cooked in way that made me feel like an old friend, and long before John Watson ever started looking at me and saying things like 'I don't know why we put up with him' while smiling in a way that made the words seem much more like 'I can not believe he is ours'.

It is a good thing I can love in fact, because the longer I stay with Sherlock Holmes the more people I seem to grow to love.

If walls could talk…

I cannot talk. Not to him, not to any of them.

Oh, I have wished to. Especially before John, when we were all alone and it was just the two of us for days and weeks and months and time ran together and I despaired for him. He rescued me, as best he could, as best as I would allow him to and even in those early days before we really knew each other I cared for him.

But I am getting ahead of myself, or behind myself, wishing for things I can no longer have.

Because that is the thing about being a skull; I can't tell stories and confine secrets the way I used to, now I can only hear them.

Except like this, in the dark of the small hours of the morning, waiting for daylight so my boys can take me with them on the long journey to the washroom to show me how they brush their teeth, comparing with big toothpaste grins mine and theirs.

My stories are my own but not. I observe and I remember and so far as that they are mine, but the actions, the life, that belongs to the living, to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

So for those able to listen, to those who listen to 3 AM whispers in the darkness, this is my story, their story. The story Harriet Watson will never tell Mycroft Holmes.

Mycroft wants Harry to sit down and tell him every detail she remembers from her life with John. He wants to know why the paper trail and all the documents that exist for every man woman and child in Britain do not exist for John Watson. He wants every second of his life explained or deduced until he knows John better than he did Sherlock when they were both boys together.

He wants the good, the friends and the report cards and the smiles and anecdotes, but more so he wants the bad, the terrible. He wants the insults and the beatings and the drunken rages. He wants to know how many seconds John Watson went hungry, he wants each injury cataloged and to know if he was treated and by whom and in what manner. He wants to know is anyone ever kissed his broken skin and told him not to cry. He wants to know the fear that escalates with each lager and how many hours John spent hiding instead of being a child. And if there were others, if there were uncles or friends and they beat him too, if they used belts or if they kicked him or if he was molested or cruel things where whispered or screamed, he wants to know. Needs to know.

But those things, those details, those moments in time, Harry was not there.

It was only ever John.

And deep down maybe Mycroft knows this, that the only way he will ever know them is that if his John wakes up one day and remembers being pinned down and hurt.

Harry is hiding something entirely different. The story Mycroft can see in her eyes and her guilt as she interacts with them is something he has no clue to. Something so well covered that it could have been done by a Holmes.

Was, in fact, done by a Holmes.

Not that Sherlock ever put the pieces together, not when he still had all the pieces in his adult mind to do so.

John made sure of that.

But I am getting ahead of myself again. A head, get it? And now I am making poor puns and messing up the order of my story, giving it away before I really start. Sherlock would be upset with me, or at least pretend to be if the way he interacted with John and his blog was any indication.

The best way to start this story is not to start at the beginning but with right now, with the reason it is relevant at all.

Harry is not keeping her story to protect herself or to protect John. She is trying to protect Sherlock.

There is a reason Harry never visited 221B Baker Street.

There is a reason she never met Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective.

And now, I suppose, for the chronological beginning.

You know my story and my name. Eve, or Frank if you like. And I have a small part to play here, more dead than alive.

I was Sherlock's first big case. There had been little ones before me. Deducing the staff, fellow students, finding lost little trinkets and revealing the dubious affairs of University staff members. But he was young, a student himself and more than little dark and awkward. He was not a consulting detective at all, he was at that point little more than bored and accidentally brilliant. He could have then just as likely have become a brain surgeon or Nobel Laureate as a detective, but then he found me.

I say it like I was the deciding factor, like I was someone important and definitive in his life but it would be more accurate to say it was my wrist, and not I at all, which was important.

The police had come and gone…and my brother…but that is unimportant.

What is important was that during our very first lab together, Sherlock having skipped all of the necessary prerequisites for the university course, he had no pipettes.

The rest of us had gone through more than a year together and we had all gone out and bought ourselves the very particular pipettes, ugly bulky mechanical things that were ever-so precise and had our names labeled neatly at the base of the plungers in blocky script.

And he blundered, he tried at first just to borrow some with soft short sentences, and then tried without asking, and then, when he was left standing at the counter foolishly with nothing he could work on, deduced all of the embarrassing details of the students who rebuked him and hated him for being amazing effortlessly at what they had worked so hard for.

Sherlock was fuming and ice cold and rigid and vibrating with furious energy and the students were staring and red-faced and after everything I had seen in my life, and the way they stared so ridiculously and how all of it was so obviously true, I started laughing.

He turned to me in my silly white lab coat, ready to deduce me, to rip me apart, and I handed him the pipette I was holding, my name blazoned across the top like an introduction. He was very suddenly five years old and took the device from me and held it in his hand as if he did not quite understand what was happening, looking at it like if he tried hard enough he could make it speak to him.

We were not friends, not really. But we were lab partners, sharing a set of mechanical pipettes side by side. The others did not speak to me much after that incident as if it had been a betrayal but with everything else going on in my life I knew it would be for the best. No friends meant no liabilities.

Sherlock did not seem to mind.

And then one day after the police, after the entire affair began and my whole world began to crumble, Sherlock broke the silence of our lab table and asked me to hand him a pipette too far for him to reach. It was almost absent minded, the way he took it with barely a glance. And then he paused. Stared at my outstretched wrist like it was telling him a secret, and suddenly his eyes were boring into mine.

'Why didn't you tell the police about the letter from your brother?'

From my wrist.

I never asked him how he knew. I was too shocked. I had been hiding for years and then after short, near silent weeks he looks at my wrist for the span of a skipped heartbeat and knows everything.

I didn't know what to do. What to say.

So I laughed, helplessly, like the soft sound just wanted to exist.

His eyes widened and his mouth opened as if to speak but he said nothing, at a loss for words as he decided if I was laughing at him or just…laughing.

Ridiculous. I remember thinking. No one should be that brilliant.

I smiled at him. At the ridiculousness of the moment. Because when you are speeding without hope towards the end of your life there is little else left to do but smile.

'Because I couldn't.'

And with nothing else to do but carry on, I picked up the clean petri dish and continued working, not on my own project this time, but his.

That is where it started you know, the wrist glance. He did it first with Mrs. Hudson when she became more than a landlady and then later, in a way that would look psychotic to anyone else, to me, was sweet…if slightly neurotic, with John.

Hand me my phone -your phone –that pen –your laptop –my laptop –keys –coat –scarf –pipette

Better than a 'How are you?', more like 'Just checking' and some days, bad days, a 'don't ever leave me'.

The rest, as they say, is history. The police came and went and tried and failed. And Sherlock Holmes became interested, barged into Scotland Yard for the first but certainly not the last time and found a place where the work was interesting and difficult and…occupied him.

He came back to me. He needed the letters. The correspondence, needed to know what they had said. He would have found them, had I not burned them.

He asked again and again why I was protecting the family who would be the end of me. Like he was actually mad. He could not understand why and that frustrated him, he needed to know not for the case but because it rankled at him. He couldn't understand and he hated that.

Before…the end, the day before I would disappear from outside my flat and never be seen alive again, I asked him if he had any siblings as a way of explanation. He scowled and told me I was an idiot, that I was going to die. I smiled.

It almost felt like we were friends.

'Yes.' I said. 'But it will be worth it.'

Six months later I was found and handled only with blue medical gloves and put into bins and examined and at last, put into darkness and left alone.

A month after that, when I was almost lost, almost as inhuman as a wall, Sherlock came for me and brought me into the light.

He picked me up with pale clean hands that were so warm and human and tucked me into a bag hidden close against his body, beneath his absurd coat as we snuck away, his hand always reaching down to touch me as if making sure I was still with him.

He took me home and settled me on the mantel so I would be almost eye level with him.

He called me an idiot.

I would have laughed if I could have.

He smiled as if he knew, and began telling me all of his secrets.

Friends. Well I say friends…


	50. Chapter 50

For a Tuesday Mycroft found himself unusually grateful to sit down to the relative calm of dinner. He was in the midst of…assisting the Americans with the god awful mess of the GOP candidate primary, and who did Santorum think he was fooling after Mycroft had personally had his assistant write him a note informing him that it would be in his best interests to bow out? He was also quite beginning to lament his bringing the Summer Olympics to London. Conspiracy plots are so wearisome. It would be nice to sit down and enjoy a simple conversation with Sherlock and John.

That apparently, was not in the cards.

It was a dance, one not often seen and executed in complete silence.

Sherlock was eating tonight. Tentative bites, every third fork lift ice-blue eyes fixed on John and then fixed back on his plate. Bites slow and obvious where normally he tried to hide the action of eating, moving quick so he could put down the fork and pretend that he was not consumed by the idea of eating.

John was not eating.

John was also sitting on the other side of the table from Sherlock, the place where he normally sat holding the ghost of his impression. The empty chair like a hole needing to be filled, vast next to the sullen curly haired boy. John, where he did sit, had his legs tucked beneath him and his hands fisted into his lap, his jumper hung oddly from one shoulder.

Odd. To see them not touching. Not trading smiles and silent conversations. Not telling him in overlaps sentences about their day together.

John looked up in between every third glance Sherlock took of him so that their eyes never met.

Sherlock was slumped and defeated, his eyes drooping as if he were half awake.

Mycroft took a deep breath and sat back, waiting for the inevitable.

The gravity of stars themselves lack the power to separate these boys, he had no call to worry there.

The only thing left for him to do would be to pick up the pieces when they were through.

* * *

It was a bad month. Sherlock did not measure time in months and days, he said that it was abstract, that the measurement of time was a human coil. Plebeian.

But it was better to think a month than an ongoing experience, a stretch, a period. A month

ends. Months change, they have a beginning and a middle and an end and they turn into something new with a new name and even if circumstances have not changed then, well, you have survived and maybe the next will be better.

Months, John thinks, are a comforting notion. He doesn't care very much that they may be a plebeian human trapping.

This month hurt, but now it was almost over.

This month dark purple rings crept out from under Sherlock's eyes and even in the warm morning light when they were wrapped in blankets and close enough that their breathes were really just one breath, Sherlock's cheeks, his closed eyelids which should be warm and peaceful and full of life, were sallow.

Last night still lingers in Johns mind. It is not like the way the writers he loves describe nightmares, it was not a phantom in his mind haunting him, the dream did not bid its time waiting for his thoughts to change so it could slip in and derail his mind, and maybe that is because it is different for him than for the characters in his story books. Maybe the writers have it right and he is something…different. Because Sherlock makes everything different. With Sherlock everything is both better...and more painful.

He heard it from his dreams. The soft muted cry, the kind that takes over when sobbing has become too much effort and there is nothing left of you but a kind of almost silence.

It makes sense in his dreams.

The cry has a home there, overlain with shouting and the dull sick thud of something unyielding meeting flesh which suddenly does yield.

He cannot remember the dream when small clammy hands reach out for him and palm against his chest. But the sick feeling lingers in the back of his throat and tightens in his chest, beating and pulling his heart and lungs. He ignored them, pushed back the dream and climbed out of its harsh embrace, wrenching himself from the sleeping place in his mind, letting the barbs of it tear him apart because he could still hear the soft broken cry.

Sherlock needed him.

John pried his eyes open, the darkness absolute. He could still taste the blood in his mouth, the copper tang from his dream, could feel the cracking ache in his ribs and every breath was a heavy wet agony.

He pushed it away, fought it, and found the hand tangled and reaching for him and grasped it tight, crushing the small hand in his and trying not to panic as his dream tore its claws into him, trying to pull him back under. This time the broken sobs were real and the dream fit in around them, the lingering panic and taste of blood telling him to run. Take Sherlock and run.

"Sherlock…don't cry." John whispered across the darkness.

John slid into the hollow place between them where the sheets were cool against his overheated skin and gathered the dark haired boy into his arms, fighting with blankets until it was just them and he could tuck Sherlock against his chest and kiss the tears from his face. He was still dreaming, tears stealing from behind closed eyes. He whimpered quietly as he settled against John, bottom lip trembling and then easing.

John let out a sigh and cuddled closer, resting his hand on his friends dark curls and ignoring the nausea which climbed up his throat.

It was better if Sherlock did not wake up.

It was not that Sherlock was not strong or that John did not desperately want him to open his eyes and tell him that everything would be okay and ease the pain in his chest and convince the nausea to go away.

It was the fact that he was. That he would.

When Sherlock wakes up in the night he is not just afraid, not just lost in the place between dreams and wakefulness where pain exists seamlessly and all fears are real. Sherlock is upset; frustrated that when morning comes he won't be able to eat or he will flinch away when someone he loves reaches out to touch him and that everyone around him will suffer for him. Because of him.

Even if no one else sees it like that. Because they don't.

They would never.

But Sherlock won't hear that.

He sees Nana's face when he flinches away from her, he sees Mycroft watching him not eat, and he sees their pain, that instant before they hide it away when he can see their hearts breaking.

He thinks it's his fault.

He wakes frightened and hurt and frustrated and angry and then no matter how hard John tries to hide it Sherlock would know that he had been stuck in the other worlds as well, that he was suffering too.

That was the worst.

To watch Sherlock stuff all of the pain back until his face was cold, to watch him swallow his agony and then reach out to John to comfort _him_.

John swallowed and took a deep, careful breath and the nausea was mollified for another moment, the panic raging in his chest soothing slowly with the even lilt of Sherlock's breath against his collar bone.

It was better when Sherlock did not wake up.

That morning Sherlock did not say anything about dreaming and John secretly sent out a wish into the universe that maybe this was one of those rare days when Sherlock would not remember. Sherlock smiled at him, the soft sleepy look he always gave him when he woke up to find that somehow in the night he had found his way into Johns embrace. He curled tighter into him for a moment as if strengthening himself for the day ahead and kicked his way out of the sheets and blankets, crawling to the edge of the bed and purposefully tumbling down.

John smiled as Sherlock threw off his sleep clothes and dug around the once organized wardrobe for something to wear.

Maybe this could be the start of a good month, or maybe just a day.

John pushed what blankets remained on him away and watched Sherlock finish de-organizing and dressing before standing up. Sometimes it took a moment for his knees to remember how to work and for his hands not to shake so obviously.

Sherlock's footsteps trotted away, socks on carpet thudding purposefully towards the kitchen. Hardly more subtle than going into the kitchen and yelling for Nana or Mycroft but then again adults are kind of oblivious, even if they do rule the world.

It was hot in their room. Sweltering even if you opened the container Sherlock had built around the heating vent with bits of metal and a _lot_ of aluminum foil. John chose not to open it.

Never open active experiments before breakfast.

It took a moment but his knees eventually remembered how to stand and the pain in his leg faded as he told himself in an inflectionless voice that nothing in the other world could hurt him here. Like a mantra he used in the night.

You are okay. You are okay.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

His hands did not shake as he reached for the drawer of his wardrobe, not even a little.

The t-shirt Sherlock had picked out for him was on top, his in green, Sherlock's in blue (John had made him take the blue). They could match today. Nana would like that and Sherlock would be proud.

Mycroft would roll his eyes like he always did at the silly anatomically incorrect picture of a skull and the phrase written in messy script.

'_My parents told me I could be anything so I decided to be a Pirate!'_

John closed the door with a satisfying click, pulled his sleep shirt off and shivered despite the heat as it fell to the ground in a heap.

The nausea gnawed at his stomach and his chest ached so fiercely that he looked down half expecting to see the spreading purple bruise.

There was nothing. Pale skinny chest, arms without a scratch or bruise.

He reached past the t-shirt and pulled out the striped sweater that was two sizes too big, the one he would not let Harry return for a smaller size. He pulled it on and it was too hot and the sleeves fell over his hands so that only his fingers peaked out and it fell past his hips in stripes of black and white.

He looked at the t-shirt and thought, maybe tomorrow.

When he walked into the kitchen he let Nana see him first, let her kiss his cheek and hand him a cup of juice, delaying the inevitable. He kissed her back and smiled, not for the juice but for her silence. It was bad enough to look up and see Sherlock's shoulders slumped, to see the way his hands lay limp on the table while his eyes tracked Johns every move.

Sherlock did not say anything but when John sat down beside him Sherlock reached out under the table and fingered the soft material of his sweater where cloth ended and revealed the hint of a hand. When John looked again Sherlock offered him the smile John knew well but still made his heart skip a beat every time and took his hand, letting the material fall over both of them.

'_Everything is not okay. But you have me.'_

Classes were okay, education was something distracting and fun and something that made Sherlock shine and forget about everything else, but Tuesdays lacked one of John's favorite subjects. It was not that history was particularly interesting in and of itself, most of it was depressing, no one tells stories about the good days, or about moderate periods of peace where people were just generally happy and getting married and having babies. History was about wars and rulers and death. History was selfishness and advances in science and medicine due to war. Mathematics made machines of killing.

But despite all of that John liked history. Their tutor would teach them what he could, poor thing did not seem to know much and sometimes their questions made him open his mouth like he was imitating a fish and rub his temples like Lestrade, and then he would leave always saying things like 'genius' even though Mycroft hated when tutors said things like that. And then Mycroft would take them into his study and let them roll out his maps and pull out his books and play with them as he asked them what they thought really happened.

They were good at this game. Guess the motives, the conspiracy and the cover-ups, and it was fun to be sworn to secrecy every time as if they had not just deduced the right answers. Not every seven year old in the world had top-level security clearances for Great Britain. John was a little bit better at it than Sherlock because whenever a question was a little too shrouded in mystery Sherlock would roll his eyes and say 'Mycroft did it', even if usually that was mostly true. John was pretty sure Mycroft could not be implicated in things like the possible sexual favors to cement the adoption between Octavian and his future adoptive parent Julius Caesar.

But that was usually on Wednesdays.

On top of not having history on Tuesdays they had languages, which would be fine, but it meant that he would not see Sherlock for hours at a time. Or in fact anyone except his tutors.

Sherlock was reading Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (which he hated) and Victor Hugo (which he hated slightly less) in their native tongues and chatting with Grand-mère on the phone to "perfect his inflection".

John was still struggling not to sound like a six-year old speaking French. Harry told him that it was perfectly reasonable for a seven-year old but John knew that was just making up excuses.

Sometimes though after lessons Sherlock would teach him and he was kind and repeated things as often as John asked him to, both of them huddled at the table together, leaning over the same book. And they would practice at their football games to frustrate Lestrade which was fun. They made a game of using it around the older man as much as possible. They heard him telling Harry one day that it was 'frustratingly as close to comprehensible as they were ever liable to get'.

But one of John's favorite things in the world was when they would curl up on the couch under soft blankets and without being asked Sherlock would begin to read aloud whatever it was he was reading. John did not care if it was half way through a book or on the last page. It was beautiful.

Spanish they were at pretty much at the same level and could share a tutor. Other languages they were picking up piecemeal from documents Mycroft was not technically 'letting' them read and conversations they were technically not 'supposed' to hear. John found he had a surprising aptitude for Afghani but did not ask for a tutor yet.

John was not needy, at least, he didn't think so. He could spend hours alone, hours with people he did not love and then without a break and as much as a hug, go to football and fencing and Hopkido and be with groups of people so big it was still like being alone. It was just life, and he was learning so much and it was always fun, but when it was over, when Nana or Harry or Lestrade collected them and took them home and all of a sudden the mad rush of hours slowed and it was just Sherlock and him waiting for the bath to draw he wanted one minute of peace. One minute to know that even if they went for hours or even days and weeks alone, that they were not actually alone. That they had each other.

John had kept his jumper on all day, putting uniforms over it because the ache was still there and the cloth was the only thing holding him together enough to finish the day. He was disgusting and hot it was only Sherlock here with him and that was okay. Sherlock could see him.

John pulled off his jumper and let it fall into a heap at his feet. It was okay.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

He looked at the locked door and resisted the urge to try the knob, just to test it.

One deep breath and then another and nothing terrible happened. It was still okay. Sherlock waved at him from the tub, clumps of white bubbles clinging to his hair.

He quickly shucked the rest of his clothing and climbed into the bath where the bubbles were so thick there seemed to be more soap than water. The empty bubble bath bottle floated like a buoy next to Sherlock.

One minute of peace.

They laughed as the toy duck accidentally sunk the pink bottle buoy and then buried itself in the fog of bubbles, never to return.

They told each other about their days, how Sherlock had snuck away in a fit of pique and played his violin in the closet for an hour before he was caught. John was a little upset he had missed the performance until he realized that to hide Sherlock's performance was played in silence, bow never touching strings. John told him about his side trip on the way to his new tutor (who did not have the security clearance to come to the flat), which involved a rather small yippy dog and the marriage proposal of a couple they met in the park.

Today was a good day.

And then John kicked the plug to the tub out, water level sinking quickly around them.

He might not have noticed at all but the split second of panic on Sherlock's face. The way his hand flew to his other arm.

John let the plug bounce against his foot, water draining into nothing.

The bath had been warm and the room was almost steamy but he was cold as he stepped out of the bath and dried quickly, wrapping the towel around himself like a sheild.

"John-" Sherlock's voice was soft and pleading and any other time John would have melted and run to him.

He did not turn around.

He dressed, throwing the clean green t-shirt he had picked to the ground, watching it soak in the puddle he was standing in. He pulled his dirty sweater over his head, pulling it viciously over his hands.

Only then, fully dressed and freezing cold did he turn back to Sherlock.

"Show me."

"John-"

"Show me. Now."

Sherlock held out his arm, still in the bath, kneeling in a wasteland of bubbles, almost diminished with soap still clinging to his curls.

The cut was even and deep, torn into the soft flesh which would hide beneath a t-shirt sleeve. There were no hesitation marks. The ice in John turned to fury.

John had taken hold of Sherlock's wrist as he examined the wound. He dropped it and stepped back as if the touch burned. As if Sherlock were something foul.

He left him there. Naked and alone and calling out for him John left him.

He ran to their room, tearing open the door and trampling the clothes Sherlock had left out this morning. John did not use the hinge on the container Sherlock had built around the vent. He tore it apart. The metal pieces snapped in his hands and tore chunks of flesh away, metal and skin and tape fell apart around him.

A thermometer blinked at him as the temperature fell, the gust of trapped heat billowing into his face. He stood there until footsteps, wet and quick, came up behind him, stopping just inside the door.

He was glad Sherlock did not touch him, did not try to come closer.

John thought that if he had, he might shatter. Or explode.

John did not let Sherlock touch him as he left the room. He did not look at him.

He left Sherlock with his petri dishes of blood.

Sherlock could clean up his own bloody experiments.

* * *

There was nowhere for him to go. Suddenly there were too many people. Too much family.

John ran. I did not matter where he went. Just that he would be alone.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

He tore open the cabinet and crawled into the dark, closing the door behind him. Almost too small for him now, crushed in with cleaning supplies and hand towels. He tucked his legs against his chest and tried to slow his breathing.

He had to be invisible. Silent.

His hands stung.

Had he left any bloody hand prints that would give him away? Too late to check. He curled his hands tight into fists and pulled them into his sleeves, praying that the blood would not stain to the outside of the cloth.

He tried to stop his heart from beating. It was too loud. It would give him away. He would hear-

And then the world crashed around him all over again.

He was not getting too big to hide in the cabinet; he had never been in it. That was in the other world.

Dreams and nightmares and reality and the other world and this world all crashing together and none of it, not one bit was okay.

He felt something rise in his throat, not the nausea that had plagued him all day or the tightness that lingered in his chest like a bullet hole. It was a sob as much as it was defeated broken laughter.

John closed his eyes and pretended he did not exist.

* * *

The clock chimed and John forgot that he did not exist. Forgot how to make his breath silent and how to make the stinging in his hands nothing.

Dinner would be soon and if he did not go they would come looking for him.

The other world, the nightmares, were too close to let anyone look for him. He could not give up his hiding spot.

He pushed open the cabinet and the light of the bathroom was too much, too bright. John closed his eyes and crawled onto the floor with closed fists still trapped in his sleeves and the knees of his jeans soaking through when they touched the shirt he had left there.

It was easier this way, he told himself. If he was already at the table when the others walked in they had less to analyze. Less reason for them to look at him.

His heart was pounding as he slipped into a far chair, away from where Sherlock would be. He was furious and heartbroken and not sure yet if the feeling in his chest was one of desperation to see Sherlock or to hide from him.

He tried not to think about it.

* * *

Mycroft and Sherlock came in together. If either was surprised to find him there John could not tell, not with his eyes trained on the dark wood of the table directly in front of him.

Mycroft dished out the food from the take away bags they always had delivered on the days Nana was not there to feed them. John could hear Sherlock slide into his normal seat, across from where John was now. Far away enough not to feel. Far away enough to be alone.

Food slid into his line of vision. He contemplated picking up his fork but his stomach revolted at the thought and the stinging in his hands reminded him that he had not taken the time to wipe away the blood on his hands. As long as he did not move Mycroft would not have enough clues to figure out what had happened.

He did not want to betray Sherlock. Not even now.

In a few minutes dinner would be over and he could be alone.

He could be invisible again until he figured out what he wanted to do.

Because there was a chance that if he asked Sherlock not to experiment on himself he wouldn't listen and there would be nothing he could do.

And every day he would wonder.

And every day would be a little bit worse.

The clink of a fork was enough to make him look.

Today, Sherlock was eating.

John watched in glances as every scrap of food disappeared from Sherlock's plate. More than he had eaten at dinner in weeks. More than even John would have eaten.

Sherlock cleared his throat and when John looked up blue eyes were looking straight into him.

"Your hands-"

John looked at Mycroft and back to Sherlock but his blue eyes had never moved. Sherlock knew exactly what he was doing.

"Please -_John_."

Mycroft was silent as he watched their exchange, calmly waiting behind his untouched plate.

John began to shake his head but then stopped. His own name ringing in his ears. The same pleading as he ran away. The same heartbreak.

A new thought crept into his mind. One shining and bright and ringing that refused to be pushed into silence.

Sherlock crumpled under his gaze, his eye wide open and too bright, the way his eyes would have looked this morning if he had woken up when tears had already spilled, his mouth red where he had been biting his lip.

"I'm sorry. Please, John, I am sorry. I won't-"

Sherlock had never even thought of a reason not to do his experiments with his own blood until it was too late.

John shook his head, forcefully. No need to tell Mycroft and get Sherlock in trouble. It was okay. He smiled. It hurt the muscles in his face, it felt tired and small, but it was real.

Sherlock did not look away from John as he pulled his shirt sleeve up and showed Mycroft the cut he had made on his upper arm. He shrugged lightly, a 'guess I am in trouble again' that was so familiar that John could have done it himself. Sherlock's answering smile was fragile. Tentative in a way Sherlock never was.

John let the sleeves fall away from his hands, the soft dirty cloth sliding up his forearms. His hands cracked with dried blood as he opened them and fresh blood seeped out of opened scabs.

Sherlock was up and around the table in a second, hands grabbing his wrists and holding them in place as he examined his open palms. Then, without warning, John found himself in Sherlock's arms; a hand tangling in his hair to hold him close as a voice that he could feel against his own chest began whispering, fast and so _honest_ that it hurt.

'I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You are okay, everything is okay. I have you. John-'

Today was a good day.


	51. Chapter 51

Tonight is a family dinner, the Whole Shebang. Everyone sitting around the table and the boys are positively beaming. Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson are here of course, and Harry and Mrs. Holmes, and now D.I. Lestrade. If I was going to fall back on my clichés I would say it takes a whole village, to raise two children in this case. And tonight I am invited as well. My presence does get a sigh or two and one halfhearted 'It just isn't proper!' from Mrs. Hudson, but I know she does not really mean it, we have shared too many cups of tea for that. I sit as the proud centerpiece, grinning at our family.

I think they would take me away but John is right, this month has been hard. So even if it is not entirely proper to have a skull at your family dinner I am a distraction from Sherlock's discomfort, I make him laugh when John puts a straw near my mouth. I make him giggle because I am just slightly uncouth. And besides, these boys are as much mine to watch over as anyone else's, I am family now too.

They have adopted me the way everyone else seems to think they have adopted Sherlock and John. An oversight, I think it may be the other way around.

Lestrade is still new enough to be slightly ill at ease with the rest of the eclectic family, but he is fitting in fine. I even got a smile out of him. We go way back, drug bust buddies.

But no one wants to hear a skulls account of a meal. I can hardly review the food and my conversational skills are not exactly on par with my ability to listen intently. But all of the players are here for the story no one really knows except in pieces. So while they eat and cajole and slight one another fondly I can remember for them.

I remember so they do not have to.

One of the benefits of being dead is that technically, I do not have a heart to break.

I was for all intents and purposes a failure. Not Sherlock's failure but he saw it that way regardless. Convinced that if he could have understood the rational for my actions I could have been saved in spite of myself. But it was worse than that, I was the failure of a family. I was proof that what happened to Sherlock was not a unique occurrence.

I was proof that sometimes, families destroy the innocent.

Failure is never a thing Sherlock has been good with, especially back when he was in university, more wild than tamed, no one to restrain him or keep him from his dark moods and forays into drugs and near madness.

The one good that seemed to come from my death was that beyond university work Sherlock had a developed a hobby. Dogging Scotland Yard.

It was easy for him to bully his way into the cubicles and desks of the lower ranking, to con and blackmail his way into the door and into petty cases.

But Sherlock did not want petty cases. He abhorred how easy they were, how the officers he was forced to work in conjunction with found every deduction so mind-boggling because of their own simplicity and restricted mental capabilities. He hated them for not understanding.

He changed tactics, instead of blackmail going for bribery, going for the ambitious and the stupid, the people who would want to break rules to get him the interesting cases. The officers who would have made slightly better criminals than they did enforcers of the law, or in fact, held both titles. And so he found a man who embodied all of these things. Past middle aged, not risen to a point of prestige and yet yearning to, almost enraged at what he envisioned were dozens of promotions that had 'passed him by'.

Perfect.

Well, almost perfect. It was not out of sense of preserving the security of the public or a fleeting thought to the oaths he had made when he became part of the police force, but the very same traits that had made him so prefect to use that made Inspector Athelney Jones black out the details of the cold case murders he gave Sherlock Holmes.

And maybe it was a little Sherlock's fault, purposefully boasting that from what he had seen in the files the only thing left missing was the written out and obvious conclusion, the way he purposefully made Jones not only feel small and insignificant but know that he was. This was before finesse was even a part of Sherlock's vocabulary, when pawns were fully aware of their status and expendability.

There is nothing quite as certain to make a man take out insurance than letting him know that you are liable to break him.

And so Sherlock's first murderer cases, his first kidnappings and unexpected deaths all had names like Male Victim One and as the pile progressed and Jones had gotten more bored and daring with coffee and self-assurances that he was doing the right thing for his career by using a man that could, in fact, be _his_ pawn, names like with all of the victims of abuse and murder being named variances of Sherlly and Shmerlock.

What had been a pile of maybe twenty cases dwindled down quickly to six as we skimmed them together as the clock was chiming annoying things like '2 AM!' as if to remind us that the world was passing on without us, flooding around us as we glanced back into the distant past.

The dismissed cases pile was thrown haphazardly to the floor, a group of lives in glossy photos and coldly professional black typeface spilled out across our scratched wood floor, lives ended for a second time in a flat that Mycroft threatened to condemn at least twice a week. Some were simply too old, kidnappings that even if the perpetrators could be caught they would likely not remember the crime, dementia and death wiping their sins and lives clean; and some, though he would never say it aloud even to me, were beyond him. The data was gone and the people lost.

But five, five made Sherlock grin the way he never did for Christmas. Five were real, honest to goodness cases. They were misfiled and stretching across England, brought to main headquarters in London for filing or burning, cases never even destined for the modern world of computers, cases closed before DNA testing had ever been conceived of let alone brought into court rooms.

With a single interesting case Sherlock will neglect food and sleep, he will forget entirely that he is human and, at least in his own mind, become a machine for data.

This is Sherlock in the first blush of romance with his yet unconsummated marriage to his work, Sherlock with five cases laid out before him, begging to be solved and as addictive as any substance he had ever injected.

The first case took us an hour and made him scowl and shove away the papers in distaste. It was the butler. In the living room. How cliché! How incredibly droll! Never mind that it was the butler in a whirlwind romance with the wife in the living room and an escape from a mildly political marriage to Casablanca of all places. He threw the folder to the ground in a fit of pique and stormed off to find yet another packet of cigarettes. I asked him to please not smoke so much because he knew better damn it, he had dissected a pair of smokers' lungs last week and didn't he remember their sick color? As he smoked and fumed I wished the best for the couple and their ill thought romance and wondered if they survived their ensuing poverty intact or if they grew to hate each other for it. Both the wish and the reprimand were made as loudly as possible in my absolute silence.

The second and third cases were…not what I would have wished for Sherlock. If I had hoped naïvely in the beginning that detective work would pull Sherlock from his occasional drug use those hopes died in the few days after Sherlock threw the folders into the fire in a rage and watched the photos of children curl and burn. No one would ever say it and it would never appear in the notes of big brother in so many words but Mycroft would never stop thinking 'addiction' after he came into the flat that he hated to find Sherlock on the floor and me silently screaming.

If the cases before were a tribute to the failure of humanity the next was an attempt at redemption. Pallid and emaciated and armed with a new phone from Mycroft that buzzed endlessly but had all of the capabilities Sherlock could never afford on his own, we delved unthinkingly into the next case, Sherlock determined and I desperate.

It took days and the 'befriending' of a well-placed and informed if not technically clever intern at Saint Bart's but the result was phenomenal. John would have loved it, he would have come up with a cute title and written it up and told Sherlock that he was brilliant and Sherlock would have been insufferably pleased with the comment for hours.

Victim 'Sherly' was a 42 year old nurse found hanging in her living room only moments after she had stopped breathing. Heart still beating. She was pronounced dead at the hospital. No enemies, no family to speak of save for her twenty-two year old estranged son, and a widower of at least a decade. No suicide note and one anonymous call saying that an ambulance was needed immediately but no one had tried to cut her down.

Am I too obvious? Giving all of the important details and none of the useless dead ends we had to sift through in the near darkness of the rooms where Sherlock seemed not to notice that outside night had fallen and cast us into dusk with it?

A suicide of course, and wasn't it lovely? Too obvious and unverifiable without the names of the victims but Jones could take care of that in a second, go on his computer and Bam! There in black and white and pixels.

It was the aspirin that did it, the aspirin in her blood during the postmortem, and tucked into its usual place in her purse instead of missing from the scene.

Jones would eventually verify it for us over the phone in a put-upon manner. The husband had died of heart failure, of course, and from there it was only a few illegal clicks away from reading about 'Victims Son' and his recent diagnosis of Fukuhara syndrome, hereditary and extremely rare, and his mortal cardiomyopathy. Hereditary on his father's side. Medical records said that after the heart transplant he did extremely well.

I did not expect Sherlock to have the opposite reaction as he had had to the previous cases, for him to jump for joy, I knew that it would not redeem humanity, but I did not expect the depression that followed either. After the intellectual challenge was gone I did not expect the silence and the self-imposed seclusion, the refusal to take anything into his body that was not smoked or injected, a habit which would follow him for years and be axplained to John Watson as 'days will go by without my saying a word'. Mycroft's reaction of appearing when Sherlock had worked himself into a mild coma however was predictable and, if only from me, welcome.

For a moment, as I watched him abandon the folders and myself on his little work table and sink to the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him and his head falling back onto the cushions in agony and chemical induced bliss I wondered what had happened to the lure of the last case.

He thought then that the last of the five was too easy to bother with. He had glanced over it and that was more than sufficient. The other cases had been interesting but they had not produced results that would goad Inspector Jones into action, the inspector needed murderers, not suicides, to be a hero.

The fifth case was necessity. It would bring him more work and give the inspector a taste of the glory Sherlock could give him, but it in itself was nothing.

It was, Sherlock thought as he drifted in his private oblivion, inconsequential.

We had no way of knowing then that this case would be the second painful failure of Sherlock's career.

Everything is frustrating. One day you are on the top of the world and everything is games and laughter and nothing could possibly take this away because everything is brilliant and perfect. Everything is the way it should be.

And then the you wake up in the morning and before you even open your eyes, before any data has even filtered into your brain to tell you that something somewhere has gone amiss everything is terribly, inexcusably wrong.

Except it is not. It is just him. Just Sherlock.

He tries to keep his mind empty as John wakes up and gives him a sleepy smile like he is content and happy just to be here and like everything is not acid on his skin. Sherlock pushes his face back into his pillow and closes his eyes. He can't think of John now. He knows that, he has felt this before. After days of agony and frustration and acid burns on his mind he knows better. He cannot let himself think about the people he loves when he is like this because on these days, when his mind is filled with white noise, they never look the same.

They are the same, still perfect, still loving him, but they are worse, he is worse. His chest tightens and he wants to crawl out of his own skin and he cannot stop the pangs of frustration. He is bored and he knows he will not be able to get his mind to focus long enough to drag him out of this.

He closes his eyes hard enough to see bursts of light in red and yellow against black and he growls into the pillow. Beside him John laughs and runs a hand over his curls, a breath comes close to his cheek.

"I will tell Nana that you are sleeping in."

And he is gone. Footsteps and the rustle of clothing which is soft so as not to disturb his 'sleep' and even that makes Sherlock swallow back the hot rising pang of frustration and anger until the door clicks and he is alone.

Because that just make it worse. That John is sweet and caring and even that provokes animosity that makes Sherlock want to scream. Because no one is that nice, no one can possibly be that sweet all of the time and Sherlock is never like that and each moment of John caring is another moment of debt he owes. Each kindness is a step that will eventually take him away from Sherlock.

And then the frustration is not just anger and wordlessness, it is guilt and loss. A guilt that rests just under your skin and makes it crawl and itch. And the thoughts he tried to suppress rise up unbidden and suddenly John is not the boy he loves, he is not a history of actions and shared words and the other half of himself, he is a million painful mistakes.

He is blood red hands torn to pieces because Sherlock hurt him so brutally that he had to hide to protect himself. He is sleepless nights because Sherlock is not brave enough, not strong enough to not scream and rail at the bumps in the night. He is tears and hunger and fear and far, far too good.

And then his mind goes static, and his stomach rolls and there are no more thoughts of John.

He takes a deep struggling breath against his pillow and waits for the itch of energy under his skin to fade before he goes out to face the day.

Because he knows that every person he sees will be the same until he can make his mind stop. Until he can take control again.

Sherlock avoids the kitchen. John will be upset and Nana will tut but it is easier this way.

He can't let himself hurt them.

They have no classes today to distract him. They were going on a trip this afternoon. Lestrade was going to come by and take them to see police headquarters. It would be nearly empty on a Sunday afternoon but that was fantastic, less people to see them when they slipped away to go into forbidden places.

And now the only feeling he could muster was hot irritation and intense dissatisfaction. Like it was ruined before it ever happened.

He could fix this. He would fix this.

He just needed to reset his brain, to turn off the white noise, to focus, and everything would be alright again.

He tore into his book bag which was already out of place in the living room, and began throwing the unwanted contents around him as if he were a natural disaster. He liked the comparison. Human tornado. Human disaster. He threw the papers, the books, harder. The books he wanted were at the bottom, huge unwieldy tomes that strained his arms. Two of them he had purloined from his Grand-mère, Mycroft had started dropping them off with her and she would let them into her laboratory, the three of them running experiments together.

He stopped thinking about it. Locked the memory down.

Can't think about that. Can't let the nothing in his brain taint anything else.

The thoughts linger.

He can't handle any more.

He pulled the books out and glanced momentarily at the heavily stained book left secreted under his sweatshirt. It was on poisons, and the pages were crisp with unknown substances that he longed to test but that was not his subject of study for the moment, he had another…more pressing experiment to run first. But it had been an interesting find, not with the other books but in their flat here, packed away in cardboard boxes. He covered it back up.

The thought itched.

A fresh surge of irritation.

He took the two new glossy books and dragged them to the study where chances were no one would bother him, thinking he was too focused rather than…adrift. Numb. Burning from the inside out.

At least four hours before Lestrade was due.

He could do this.

He could- try.

With an hour left Sherlock stood and stretched his stiff muscles. He was lucky. Very lucky. He had hit a break through, he was set to do his experiment next time he had access to the lab equipment and the thrill of it had carried him out of his…fugue.

And now he was not filled with anxiety or white noise or distress.

He was blank.

Nothing.

Not good or bad. He was data. He was chemical reactions and sequences and they surged through him like a living thing.

This at least, was better. He could go with Lestrade and observe and that would be enough.

He did not have to be human at all.

His stomach rumbled slightly and he could acknowledge intellectually that he was hungry. Might as well.

The books he took with him, putting them back into his book bag which had magically restored itself to its organized state. Johns doing rather than Nana's, his poorly hidden book was still there. He felt the twinge of guilt and unvoiced loss but it was easy enough to bury now. He pulled the chemistry whirring in his mind over himself like a blanket.

John had settled on the couch, Sherlock had barely noticed him as he put away his things.

John normally would have said something by now.

Would have come up behind him and wrapped him in a hug.

Would have-

There was a book on Johns lap, something romantic more than likely. Like a flicker if a light in his mind Sherlock imagined John reading it to him, sitting here and letting the hour pass them by with his voice falling into the easy cadence of story telling. John was good at that.

He could be made of chemistry and the sound of John's voice.

There was always a smile on Johns face as he held books up with one hand and gestured wildly with the other, telling Sherlock stories that would never have been worth hearing had it been told by anyone else.

But today the book was open and untouched in his lap, falling slowly away. His eyes were lost behind his hands, fingers pressing into his eyes in a way that Sherlock knew too well.

All of the inhumanity in him, the cold apathy, the white noise that had strung itself through his veins raveled together and bent into a cold stone that fell heavily into his stomach. The chemistry and data that made up his mind stopped in midflight and broke apart, falling the floor in glittering gold fragments.

Sherlock ran for their room without looking back, stockinged feet nothing but a hushed whisper of fabric against the carpet. The blanket was easy to find, easier to rip off the bed and leave the sheets and covers in a trail behind him. Gathered in his arms the orange fabric was soft with age and a comforting weight against his chest, he hugged it close even as it spilled around him.

Sherlock ran back down the hallway, silent except for his heavy breath, not even slowing down as he flicked off every artificial light he passed.

The curtains were open and the sun was streaming through the windows and Sherlock debated the time it would take to access the ties. Too long. Far too long.

They would have to make due.

Orange blanket in his arms Sherlock hesitated, clutching it closer, wanting desperately to touch but frozen a step away from John. He bit his lip knowing it would never be seen or known, blue eyes searching the room for any way but this.

A dance they had done before.

One that hurt every time.

Sherlock laid the blanket over John's shoulders, folding it around him and bringing it to clutch together at his chest with such deliberate delicacy that were John sleeping he might never have known Sherlock were there.

John did not open his eyes but he knew. Knew Sherlock was with him, knew the weight and warmth of the blanket around him was theirs.

Sherlock's kiss, the soft touch of lips against blond hair and the brush against skin was felt but not seen. Sherlock closed his eyes as his heart began to ache and his cheeks to blush. This was the best and worst part of John's migraines.

He could touch and kiss and comfort and never have to hide the way his heart raced and ached at the same time, the way his hands longed to reach out and brush his messy blond hair. No one would ever have to see that he would give anything to take Johns pain away. That he would, given the chance, take all of his pain onto himself. No one would have to see that he would gladly die if it meant John would live.

A holdover, a whisper in his mind and a way of acting so ingrained that it was part of him, inescapable now as blue eyes or black hair.

Don't ever let them see you care, and never, ever, fall in love.

John did not open his eyes to see the look of broken hopelessness on Sherlock's face but curled into his arms trustingly, letting himself be swaddled and held as he adjusted to the feel of standing.

It was barely a moan, more a painful exhalation, a sound so small that John himself may not have heard it but to Sherlock it might as well have been a scream.

It was his touch that caused this, his kiss that made John pull himself to stand when he could not bear to open his eyes.

Heaven and hell.

Sherlock wrapped an arm around him carefully and led the way slowly to their room.

John never said a word, never opened his eyes, not even as he was helped onto the bed they shared and the orange blanket was pulled tight around him. But before the last fold of soft orange dulled by the darkness of their room was pulled in place over his head John reached out and gently took hold of Sherlock's arm, the only bit of him he had found to touch, and beneath the throbbing mindlessness of his pain, beneath the soul crushing agony of having even thoughts stripped away, curled his lips into the smallest of smiles. A tired, broken, I love you.

Sherlock left without a sound. Sounds would hurt John, each whisper and footfall a spike of pain.

He tried to wash away the look on his face, tried to erase each line and gesture that betrayed him so clearly. He tried to make his heart stop breaking, or at least to hide the sound of it.

But when he ran to Nana she bent and scooped him up into her arms and brushed the tears he would not cry away from cheeks and kissed his hair as she set him down.

"It is alright, luv." She promised as she lifted his chin with a finger, watching him as if he really could take Johns pain.

Nana disappeared and a moment later she returned with a few small pills and poured a glass of water.

They went together to the bedroom, Nana in front and Sherlock trailing after her, hiding behind her skirts. Sherlock watched from the edge of the bed as Nana Hudson sat John up and gave him the medication, watched his face emerge from darkness and cloth, the normally happy countenance pinched in suffering.

She cooed and ran a hand down Johns back as she laid him back down, gently righting the blankets and sheets Sherlock had displaced.

John reached out and touched her wrist before curling it back into his cocoon of blankets and forgetting that anything existed but the pain.

Sherlock had not been the first to enter the bedroom but as their Nana stood with a final stroke of Johns back and took her leave without comment, Sherlock stayed. When the door shut and clicked behind him and the world stopped seeing him he lay down in the darkness and unraveled the blankets and refolded them around himself until it was like they were three years old again. Just the two of them, surrounded in dark orange.

John did not move but Sherlock could feel the heat of him, could see the outline of his face and his closed eyes as the day light pierced through the closed curtain and into the soft weave of the blanket.

Sherlock thought of their fieldtrip and knew that somewhere out in the world Nana was rescheduling, still talking in a soft voice as if John were in her mind if not in the room.

He thought of chemistry and of a nothingness that takes hold when bitter frustration has been staved off. Of the impossibility of shrugging off the anger that permeates every cell and of being at best, inhuman.

He thought of the way his heart raced and ached and of the whisper in his mind that never, ever, went away. The way it felt to need to touch when he knows that he shouldn't. That he can't.

Sherlock reached out and blushed at the intimacy of carding his hand through John's hair and feeling the soft strands sift through his fingers when the other boy could do little more than breathe. John didn't smile, half awake and half just lost in pain, but he curled into the touch and the lines of anguish in his face and in the corners of his eyes lessened slightly.

Heart thundering Sherlock did it again, running his fingers through gold hair and over the warm skin at the nape of his neck, watching his touch comfort John in a way that could not be quantified.

He didn't stop.

After all, the world could not see here, and even with John he was still invisible under the blanket reaching out in a way that was not inhuman at all.

And if the world could see, if everyone knew, Sherlock would still give his life for John.


	52. Chapter 52

I hate it when John gets his migraines. They do not happen too frequently, maybe once every two months and last for a day and then he sleeps through the next, too exhausted to do anything more than curl against Sherlock, or whatever adult is caring for him, and drift.

Harry said that he used to get them when he was a child and grew out of them in his teenage years. Mycroft still got him the MRI but nothing ever came of it. It was, as they say, just one of those things.

Today John is sleeping. He woke in the morning and made a valiant effort of opening his eyes and blearily trudging all the way to the washroom before he slumped over the sink and let Sherlock loop an arm under his shoulders and bring him back to bed.

Today John is mine to watch over.

I have companions of course. An army set against the things that go bump in the night. We watch over our sleeping charge with devotion few can claim.

We do not sleep, we do not daydream of lovers left behind or contemplate the chores remaining for us at home. We, the devout army of Sherlock, do not spare the time to blink.

In our ranks the Orange Shock Blanket keeps our charge warm and gives without words a permanent embrace and a feeling of safety that only children can know, one which emanates from every fold into the very skin.

Teddy Bear is our inside man, our body guard, throwing himself against our boys very heart in protection. He is the cuddle that lasts through the day and night and never needs to stand up, he never needs to stretch or take a breath or see the light of day. He would never dream of loving anyone more than the child who holds him.

And then there is me, the overseer of all.

I watch from my perch on the pillow Sherlock used the night before. I stand in for him when he is gone, acting Commander. I watch the light shift and I count the times his chest rises and falls.

I do not daydream of lovers I have not left behind. I do not, can not, spare the time to blink. I never look away.

And when Sherlock comes in on tiptoes and sits on the edge of the bed with a book, knowing that John will not wake, I will give him a full report in absolute silence. I will tell him about every breath and every heartbeat he missed while he was away.

But between heartbeats my thoughts do wander, and sometimes, I fancy that the things I am remembering are the same things John sees in his dreams.

Even if I hope he has forgotten them.

For now it is early. The sun is casting golden morning light through drawn curtains and John is sleeping too deeply to be remembering the things I am remembering for him.

For now, I will let my companions keep him safe and I will dream the dreams I hope he never will.

Sherlock went back to Inspector Jones with the results of the five cases and spite for the ones he had to sift through.

He gloried at first, listing off why the first case with the butler and his lover were too obvious and how could the officials be so dim witted and still not have caused the fall of the British Isles in their entirety? The second and third cases were cold and abrupt in their description. For those who do not love Sherlock it would have seemed he no longer cared at all what had happened to those children, that it meant nothing but an intellectual annoyance that their murderer would never be caught. To those that do love him…let's say that we know better, and that for us, the way he felt would have been written in every word he said and etched into every nuance of his countenance. There was a time long before

John Watson was told not to believe in heroes in which Sherlock had not yet been the actor he grew to be. There was a time when one could see through the armor he built around himself.

The case with the martyred nurse had the Inspector gasping and amazed, but more profoundly frustrated at his own new insight to his own limited mental capacities. Each facts were said with growing contention and each deduction became more condescending. At the end of the short description Sherlock was frustrated and despairing once more at the state of humanity and the fact that his own future hinged on the continuation of interactions with men such as this.

The Inspector fumed for entirely different reasons and dismissed the entire lot as useless.

There was, in his mind, no glory without arrests. No justice without someone's punishment at his hands.

No promotion without putting someone else into the mud.

Sherlock threw down his fifth case as carelessly as one would the trash. Van Gogh trading a painting for art supplies and cigarettes.

"Murder. It was the wife." Sherlock watched as the words sunk in, he let the cruel grin curve the edge of his mouth.

The Inspector frowned in confusion. "Wh- No it…"

Sherlock tossed the glossy images of the crime scene onto the cluttered desk, the dead man staring up at them with blank blue eyes around coffee stains and dirty crunched up napkins.

Jones turned away, pulled his hand back when the image of the back of the mans crushed skull drifted against his skin.

"It is impossible?" Sherlock asked with too much brilliance, fierce and angry. "Would that be because you left almost none of the original evidence? Because you took away the interrogations and thought it would be funny to show me a closed case? The write up you gave me labeling it as an unsolved murder is in a different style of paper done on a cheap mass produced printer, but new, nothing like the quality of the ink from the rest of the papers done what…nine, ten years ago? Because you wanted to humble me with what was closed as an accidental death? Murder. The Wife."

Inspector Jones scowled and crossed his arms in front of his chest, clearly uncomfortable, wanting to stand from his chair and bring them to a more equal height, use his impressive bulk to bully Sherlock into submission. Typical, animalistic, boring.

"Fine." He squirmed and then steeled himself, drawing his eyebrows together in annoyance and partial anger. "And let me guess, you have the power to rewrite history? I was on the case myself. Took me two weeks but I got it. It was an accident. Don't waste your breath, and my time. I am doing you a favor by knocking you down a few pegs, you will not get anywhere in the Yard with that attitude of yours. Now what else have you got for me?"

Sherlock fumed. His hands fisting and then slapping down onto the face of the dead man staring up between them, unflinching as the Inspectors eyes glanced down at where his fingers separated over crushed flesh.

"Murder is what I _'have for you'_." He spat. Frustrated that he was being deliberately sabotaged and dismissed. The faces of the other two cases were burning in his mind even as he forced himself to ignore them, as he stripped their silenced cries from his mind. A baby boy who would have been around his age now, and a girl in yellow pigtails who would not stop smiling from her fading photograph.

The faces that would not go away even when everything else faded into the haze and the oblivion of cocaine and morphine.

Inside, Sherlock was screaming.

"You looked at the post mortem but you only saw his blood alcohol level. More than sufficient to lose balance, to fall and have reactions too slowed to cushion the blow. Bam! One bad night and suddenly you don't get to wake up the next day to regret the fact that you are still alive. At that level he was one drink away from legal surgical anesthesia. It would have been probable even that he could have had a seizure or fallen into a coma. This of course ignoring the cirrhosis of his liver, the gastro-intestinal ulcers, and the malnutrition. The man was a professional drunk. Why then? Why that day? He had certainly been worse off! Or did you ignore the scarring on his arms? How about the poorly healed rib fractures? Was it too off-putting to look at his face? Nose obviously broken more than once, zaphoid process shattered in the last two years. Bar-Bralwer. An angry drunk then. What are the chances of an angry drunk dying comparatively peacefully form the way he lived?"

Sherlock could not stop. He was a train wreck barreling towards the abrupt and inevitable end. Inspector Jones was pushing his chair back even though the desk separated them, pushing himself to stand.

"Oh but it gets better! We have ignored the poison in his blood system! Oh sure, the _Belladonna_ was in medicinal quantities. Is that how you wrote it off? Maybe he had a headache. Not enough to kill him! Because of course the man drinking a bottle of whisky every night would want to use herbal soothers rather than, oh maybe, alcohol? The Belladonna was being used to incapacitate him nightly. He never even knew it. Staggering, blurred vision, dry mouth, slurred speech, why should he, just another night after all! Someone with access to his liquor then, every day. Someone who would want him passing out earlier, rendering him more incapacitated, less able to go after them when he was angry? And who would that be? Who traditionally uses poison through all of history? Who would have the know how and the access? The wife."

Jones was not backing up anymore, he was looking down at the photos, he was watching the clues fall into place.

"But oh she was clever, cleverer than you. Something happened to trigger it abruptly; otherwise she would have just left. Oh sure, some people get trapped in bad relationships but she was clever, too clever for that and she was already fighting back. She could have found a way out, escaped him, the police, no. Something happened and she had to stop him before even the Belladonna did. I was nearly perfect. The placement of the fatal wound, the crushing force with a flat object, the way she pulled things down on top of him as if he was reaching out as he fell. The blood splatter would have been wrong but you would not have noticed it, simple minds and all. But she made a mistake. Pitty. They nearly always do. She should have just left him but she got greedy, wanted revenge."

Sherlock looked up, knowing he was brilliant, wanting to see the understanding in the Inspectors face, wanting to know that this one was his. This time he could put the pieces back together.

"She was short wasn't she? Just a little thing. She probably appeared harmless and small. She probably even cried when you spoke to her. Did she make you believe it? Did she break your heart that she was all alone now? With the quality of her work I would say that she was a sociopath but she then she would have gone for better prospects in the first place. Unrepentant then, appearing completely normal and underneath all of that…calculated brilliance. It was the angle of the wound if you have not figured it out. She got him to turn his back and probably hit him with something handy, a frying pan more than likely, but she hit him in the lower back of the head. The angle would have been right for purposeful trauma, but not as you so readily accepted, the floor." Sherlock smiled, pleased that the Inspector had sunk back into his chair but more pleased that a thought had come to him, one last thread that made the case almost…interesting. She was smart, possibly even brilliant. She could have stood on a chair, worn taller shoes, kicked the back of his knees in, and yet, she didn't. She took the chance of the angle and it must have haunted her, the imperfection, this flaw. But the advantage was clear, at least, to him.

Cerebellum destroyed first. The center for motor control. Beyond that the brain stem, suffering devastating trauma. Breathing. Heartbeat.

Failing death, if she could not hit hard enough, he would never have hit anyone ever again.

Inspector Jones stood again, a marionette dancing at the end of strings. He smiled. Forgetting the insults and the anger.

This was it. His big break.

He shoveled the photos that he would not touch before into his hands and held them against his chest like a morbid paper baby as he called up the file on his computer, giving a shout as the information flooded onto his screen.

She was still alive then. A real live human to capture.

Jones smile turned on Sherlock.

He would have access to the cases he wanted. All of the risk would be worth it for Jones to let him in. His reprieve from the boredom that clawed at him every waking moment.

His perfect career.

Jones made for the door, nearly forgetting Sherlock in his haste. "Two suspects." He said cheerily, happily, as he opened the door to the main floor. "But I am sure I will figure that much out! If worse comes to worse one will martyr themselves for the other if I remember them correctly, horrible messy case this was."

Sherlock felt his heart drop, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin.

"Two-"

"No wife," Jones smile bared his teeth, his mustache pulling grotesquely. "But he had two children."

* * *

The text when it came was short and considering whom it concerned, fairly innocuous.

'Found Sherlock running unsanctioned experiments on human DNA. 3'

The five minute interval between this and the next text message gave Mycroft time to consider 27 likely points of concern. The message, when it came with the sound of an umbrella being opened, considerably narrowed down the possibilities and highlighted in his mind the one that he had dreaded the most nearly all of their lives.

'DNA identified. Samples include both boys. 3'

Mycroft got in the back of his unmarked black car and told the driver that all lights en route would be changed to green.

He always knew this day would come, thought that it would have come sooner. Their questions were never going to be like other children's 'Where do babies come from?', it was always going to be 'What am I?'.

They had never asked, not as toddlers who had never had the cause to say 'mummy', not as children being shown the typical family through stories and peers and knowing that they were intrinsically different.

They had never asked where their parents were. Never asked why they had a Mycroft and a Nana and an Aunty and a host of bodyguards.

Never asked how one day, they had simply begun to exist.

And how would he tell them? How could he?

Most parents debate what age to let their children know that Santa is a story. They wait for the day their children will come to them with wet eyes and ask why they lied.

Mycroft lives every day knowing that one day his boys, broken, and hurt, and betrayed, will ask why they are different from every other child in the world. They will ask how they came to exist.

And while other parents hold their children and say 'We love you and all of your gifts from Santa were gifts of love from us.'

Mycroft would look at his children, look them in the eye and know their pain and their brilliance, and decide whether or not to tell them that once upon a time they had lives and hopes and dreams that they will never know. That they had grown, lived, and in a way, died, and came back amnesiacs with a silenced past and had been reborn in blood; or to lie to them and hope that they never knew how much he had taken away from them by omitting the truth.

Could he tell his boys, his children, that the nightmares that plagued them were true? That once upon a time men had been allowed to abuse and torture them? That bad things happen to the good and the bad and the innocent indiscriminately?

Could he look Sherlock in the eye and tell him that he had failed him as a brother? Could he answer questions about phantoms that had tainted two lifetimes and have the audacity to hope for the forgiveness he had not dared hope for when his brother still lived? Could he be absolved now that the man who had been both tormenter and father lay in the ground for decades?

Worse. If Sherlock had the capacity, the love, the right, to forgive him...how could he face his other charge?

John who had been there for every cry in the night, every hurt, and illness, and compare how he had failed with the very same task? How could he survive Johns pleading questions, his need to know how someone could hurt Sherlock?

How they could let him be hurt.

Could he sit with his seven year old boys and make their ancient eyes timeless? Could he sit and pretend not to die when John, who slept still with a teddy bear and woke every morning with a blinding smile and a kiss for everyone he loved, asked him how many men he had killed in his last life?

What could he do when John asked him to describe war and Sherlock to describe homicide?

What would he do when they knew too much to forgive him any longer?


	53. Chapter 53

When Mycroft arrived at Mummy's Sherlock and John were waiting for him, they were not sitting on the sterile couch but standing at their full height, hands clasped together between them as if claiming one another, their bodies angled towards one another, always in sight.

They reminded him suddenly of when they were three years old and they had stood together like that, hand in hand, with him.

Mycroft had debated reprimanding them for experimenting without his consent, approaching them as he would a misbehaving foreign leader, silent and giving away nothing but a sense of absolute power until he had taken in every detail and every deduction.

When he arrived, when he walked into the living room and found his boys holding hands and looking up at him with twin expressions of stalwart acceptance for their actions, and they were not as his mind had supplied, crying or hurt or upset or worst of all, betrayed; a relief so profound filled him that Mycroft found himself across the room and dropping to his knees to pull them desperately into his arms.

Two shocked bodies held themselves rigid in his embrace.

John waited what he obviously thought was a polite span of time and wrapped his free arm around Mycroft, little blond head resting itself on his shoulder.

"Shh, it's okay." John promised him softly.

Mycroft could feel John tugging on Sherlocks hand, the pull of motion in his own chest.

Sherlock quickly put an arm around him too, his hand only reaching as far as his side, no less heartfelt for having been given the instruction. Sherlock's fingers dug into his clothing.

"Are you upset because of us?" His voice was small and it was the strange meekness in the words which betrayed the first signs of distress he had witnessed in them.

Mycroft willed himself to pull away and stayed on his knees, looking at both of his boys in turn. Gold and raven and deep brown and ice blue and absolutely perfect.

Not hurt. Not frightened.

Not yet hating him.

_Loving_ him.

"Are both of you alright?" Both of them nodded, looking contrite and a little confused, Sherlock clearly the more upset of the two for all his placidity. Mycroft took a fortifying breath and clambered to his feet.

"Then I will be fine too."

Mummy was watching from the doorway, had probably been standing there since she texted him the second time, watching them but not wanting to overstep, too afraid to go forward. He desperately did not want an audience for this, whatever this was, but he could hardly send her away.

Mycroft nodded to the couch and she joined him, so obviously thankful not to be sent away that it made him repress a wince. Had being caregiver to these boys made him so awful as a son? He thought of all of the times Sherlock and John had taken priority over her, of all the times he had told her after the fact that something had happened with them, and knew that of course it was true.

His priorities had changed.

He made a mental note to get the boys to draw her something they could post in the mail together. She would like that.

And it was the most he could, the most he would, offer her. A grandmother, but not…a mother.

As they sat in silence letting the boys contemplate what they had discovered and the consequences of their actions, Sherlock did something which he was far too disciplined for.

He fidgeted.

He was not even aware that he was doing it.

Sherlock was_ nervous_.

John, so perfectly in tune with Sherlock that they might actually be one person split between two bodies, squeezed his hand in silent reassurance. Sherlock glanced over at his partner but it was not enough to sooth him. The edge of desperation in his eyes was almost manic.

Sherlock held on tighter, not simply holding Johns hand but lacing their fingers together and holding on until his knuckles turned white. With his other hand he pulled the chain at his neck and he twirled the ring in his fingers in a way he had not done publicly since they had first announced 'their marriage'.

When the silence stretched out and began to reverberate against their eardrums in a silent crescendo Mycroft schooled his voice carefully, betraying nothing of his own thoughts.

He ignored the way his heart was pounding so hard that the sound thundered in his ears as if it were filling the room, he crushed the tight feeling in his chest and pushed it down, willed his somatic processes to slow, to obey.

He had no idea what his boys were thinking. He was terrified.

"Tell me what is going on."

Again out of character it was John who spoke for them, Sherlock watching the proceedings with wide blue eyes which were unexpectedly…vulnerable.

"We did an experiment. We know that it broke a lab rule and that if you knew you would not let us do it, but it was _important_. We _had_ to." John stepped forward as he spoke, reaching out as if he could make him understand by sheer force of will, little fingers hanging in the air, reaching for nothing. There was a solemnity in his eyes as he implored his caretakers to not only understand, but believe. There was desperation there. "I would never do anything that would hurt him."

"And what was the rule that you broke?" There was no hint of understanding , not even the slant of inflection in his voice. He was impartial, unjudging until the end. He was cold.

"Never experiment on yourself." John blanched slightly. "It is a new rule, we got it after-"

"Yes. I understand." Mycroft stopped the words from coming, Sherlock looked at him gratefully. "Please continue."

"But it had to be on us, we needed just a little bit of DNA, we had to prove to everyone that our genetics-"

Mycroft's entire perception of reality twitched like a faulty computer. The world spun nastily. Beside him Mummy covered her mouth and her eyebrows rose into her hairline.

He held up a hand to stop him.

Mycroft needed… a moment.

He was not ready.

Four years and he was not ready. He would never be ready.

Right now. In this moment. Somewhere between dropping to his knees in a pool of blood, and cookies flying through the air, and a million tiny battles of vegetables and bedtimes, he had become more than the failure of a brother.

He had become almost…_a father_.

And lost in a thousand hugs, and kisses, and countless lingering moments spent curled up together in half wakefulness and mumbled words they had come to love him as if he _were_ a father to them.

They loved him. They trusted him to keep them safe and happy.

They trusted him not to lie to them.

But he was not their father. They were never really his at all.

And now they knew. _They knew_.

Or they would.

And from there it was only a step, the smallest nudge from Mycroft having no claim to them, and the fact that they would never belong to him…

To understanding that they were not siblings, they were brothers in bond perhaps but not in blood. And he had let them live their entire lives believing that they had that innate claim on one another and now that seemingly solid foundation was being swept out from under them.

Mycroft had made himself contemplate this moment, how it would happen, how they would react. He forced himself to consider telling them every moment that they demonstrated that they were too brilliant to be kept in the dark.

He reweighed the consequences of hiding the truth every time he witnessed another instances of intense, heart rendering dependence on one another.

And each time he had stopped himself with the certainty of knowing someone for more than three decades that Sherlock would break down. That to take John from him, even in claim, would cause him and his entire glass world to fracture. That the wild depression that had plagued his last life in fits and lingered so close to the surface even now, would steal him away from them.

Sherlock shared that trait with him, out of all the brotherly peculiarities to bind them together.

The need to have love as a written thing. A promise of forever.

It would be funny if it were not so intensely painful.

The need they both have for what they love to be bound to them in a way that so irrevocably that no one in the world could take it away. A claim so intense, so jealous, that words and promises were not enough.

Like bugging your little brothers flat every few days and kidnapping his flat mates.

Like scaring away anyone that gets too close to your only friend, a parade of women who seem to blend together in the end.

John was looking at him like he had lost his mind, half wondering and half riled, ready to defend what they had done and utterly unafraid.

And Sherlock…Sherlock was holding onto John so tight that he might never let go.

Sherlock was not pouting, not collapsed in a heap on the floor. His eyes were not that of a person sinking into their own mind.

But Sherlock was nervous, twirling his ring desperately around his finger in complete silence.

Oh, _god_.

He was an _idiot_.

Mycroft Holmes, was an _idiot_.

Sherlock was trading one certainty for another.

John sucked his bottom lip and bit into it. The seconds had ticked by and the moment Mycroft's hand fell away John was released in an unstoppable torrent of words tumbling over one another in their rush to exist.

"Everyone always assumes that we are brothers but we aren't! And if everyone thinks we are related then we can never get married because you can't marry your brother, because that's gross. We had to prove that we are not closer genetically than first cousins and we aren't, not at all!" John finished desperately, looking between them for support.

They knew. Of course they knew.

_They were getting married._

When he got twin looks of what Mycroft would generously in the future refer to as 'stupefaction' from the adults he trusted to be competent, he continued with a slightly more desperate air.

"We know now that we can't legally get married at nine like we planned but if a guardian signs off then we could get married at 16 and that is_ ages_ from now so we know that by then you can make sure that you fix the government so that boys can get married to each other."

Mycroft closed his eyes and wondered what it would feel like to have 'normal' children.

And then the thought cracked through his mind and left him mentally gasping.

Not his children.

"So the tests showed that you are completely unrelated?"

"Yes." John answered resolutely, happy that someone else was speaking again.

"And you have known this without the DNA evidence for how long?"

John made a face. "Um…forever?" He looked at Sherlock who shrugged and nodded. "Forever." He said again, assured.

Mycroft could not stop himself, or rather, wouldn't. It needed to be asked.

"And this was the first question you posed as opposed to say…how the two of you came to be with me?"

From his silence Sherlock smiled.

"We have theories."

John turned to Sherlock and was lost momentarily into the profound understanding between them. This was a conversation they had had a thousand times.

John laughed as soon as their eyes met. "Sherlock's favorite involves test tubes and government plots."

Sherlock rolled his eyes and seemed to unconsciously step closer to the other boy, pressing their sides together as he spoke to Mycroft. His rigid posture relaxing slightly into John and the distraction of talking.

"I have two dozen working theories at the moment. Without testing I would say that there are close genetic ties between Aunty Harry and John and you and I." He squinted slightly at Mummy. "-and Grand-mere."

Sherlock sighed exasperatedly and nudged his shoulder into Johns. "Johns favorite theory involves aliens."

John grinned, at both the comment and the playful shove, he bumped gently back.

"Like Timelords." He added helpfully.

_They knew and they did not care at all._

_They still- _

Mycroft looked back and forth between the two boys, holding hands and completely lost in one another.

The same two boys who had kissed him hello this morning. The same two boys who would kiss him goodnight tonight.

_They still loved him._

It would be foolish to try salvage his perception of reality today Mycroft decided. Rarely had things ever gone so profoundly Not According To Plan.

Sherlock was smiling at John, both them thinking of the same shared joke. When Sherlock turned back to him the laughter that had so briefly filled him ebbed away and something desperate fell into place behind sharp blue eyes.

"You can't tell us the answer. You would ruin the whole mystery." Sherlock was smiling as he spoke but it was for show. Deliberately placed to look sweet and light but not enough to fool anyone who was actually looking. John, standing against his side and holding his hand was too close to see it.

They fell into silence and it was obvious again that this was not a casual chat; they were prisoners waiting for the final verdict to come in. They had broken a rule.

John managed to look simultaneously bashful and begrudging steadfast about his decision to break the rules. Sherlock looked only at his ring, fingers far too small against the golden band.

Mycroft wanted nothing more than to pull them into his arms and make them swear not to ever grow up. To kiss them and tell them that they were the best thing that had ever happened to him and that he would never regret a single second of their lives together.

But this was the first time they had broken a dangerous rule. House rules were one thing, tiny explosions, controlled fires, 'borrowing' supplies, that was normal, to be expected, punished with a look, with chores.

But there were rules that should never be broken. They knew the difference. They knew what they were doing was wrong but there was no way they could see the consequences.

For other boys breaking big rules could mean they break a leg, a poor mark in school, a ride home with the police.

For Sherlock and John big rules could mean setting off a cascade of memories, a half remembered experiment that ends in an explosion, it could mean kidnapping, exposure. The wrong rule broken could mean their deaths.

Mycroft wished he had his umbrella. He felt sick. "You were wrong to have gone behind our backs and betray our trust in you." The words in his mouth were thick and bitter as ash. Just because they were alive and safe and somehow, remarkably, still happy; did not mean that they would survive the next transgression.

This was something like betrayal. Punishing them for finding out what they should have been told all along.

"The rules we create are not for our own benefit or to punish you, they are to protect you and keep you safe. By undermining them you are implying that we are just as meaningless to you." John looked stricken. Tears were welling in his eyes and he was looking between Mummy and himself as if he were expecting them to leave him. Mycroft felt like _–was-_ a monster.

"If you had come to us we would have found a suitable compromise but you did not. The rule you broke was your grand-meres so the punishment will be hers to give. However you broke my trust as well." Sherlock was ice, frozen in place. John, empathetic passionate John, was barley holding on.

"I am disappointed in you."

John was crying. He did not sob or mutter apologies as another child might. The tears ran silently down his face, pale and blotchy as it may be.

Sherlock was panicked. More troubled by John's pain than his own.

_That was it,_ Mycroft thought. _That was enough._

"I love you." The words were fast and easy and real and he had never thought they would be like that. They always sounded so cliché, so meaningless, better to leave them unspoken. He had thought actions were enough, feelings. Words could go unsaid as long as the underlying meaning was there. So he never said them.

But the words were not meaningless, as much as they were overused.

They were perfect.

And the tears running over John's cheeks stopped and two sets of eyes fixed on his face.

It was John who needed him so it was John whom he pulled into his lap and wiped away his tears with his fingertips. "I love you and nothing will ever change that." Sherlock was edging closer, reaching out a hand to touch John's trousers so Mycroft pulled him closer and held him tight against them both.

"And if you want to get married then I will be the first person to make that happen. I will gladly walk you both down the aisle myself. But you have to trust me. I only want what is best for you. I-worry."

"I'm sorry." John blinked the moisture away from his eyes and a final tear escaped from beneath clumped wet lashes. "I- _I love you too_. I'm sorry. We didn't mean to make you worry."

Sherlock opened his mouth and the words are there so clearly that Mycroft can see them. Silent in the air.

"I-I…am sorry." He mutters and they are not the words he was thinking but it took Mycroft fifty years to say it. It doesn't matter.

He knows.

Not the failure of a brother, not a biological parent…but something just as…vital.

He kisses them both. Because he wants to, and because they need it. John kisses his cheek in return, wet and leaving the trace of salt on his skin, and Sherlock stays very still, his blue eyes as incomprehensible as ice.

"Your experiments are done for today." Mycroft tells them. "John," Mycroft kisses him again, because he can. Little hands twist against his suit. "You will go with your grand-mere and help her clean up in the lab. I think some time apart will suffice as punishment for you both where I am concerned."

John lets himself fall out of Mycroft's lap and straight into Sherlock. They clutch each other and John buries his face Sherlock's clothing and hair. Sherlock is watching him over Johns shoulder, pale blue eyes startling in a seven year old face.

John pulls back reluctantly and Sherlock smiles at him and wipes at the tear streaks on his cheeks.

"I will see you tonight." Sherlock tells him and John turns to Mycroft with hope written all over his face.

"Tonight?"

Mycroft wonders how long John thought they would be separated for. Did he think he would be left here alone?

Of course he did.

"Tonight."

John beams. His smile, if Mycroft was prone to poetic waxing's, could persuade the sun to shine. He nods, dashes a kiss to Sherlock's cheek, and takes Mummy's hand and lets himself be led away without a backward glance.

If he had allowed himself to look back, Mycroft knows, his cheeks would have been red as his ears.

Sherlock is a much different boy than John. They share a life, two lifetimes, countless adventures, meals, and a bed. There are times when one could imagine that the accident that made them what they are linked them psychically, joined their minds so that they lingered in the back of each other's thoughts. It was hard at times to imagine that they were not actually speaking when their eyes locked across a crowded room and all of a sudden they were both laughing.

Sometimes Mycroft caught himself telling one child a story and assuming that they both would know it after.

But there is some part of Sherlock, some part of him that is deep and unchangeable that is the same little boy Mycroft had watched for the first time all those years ago.

Some part of Sherlock was still that little boy who believed he would always be alone.

"So you intend to marry him then?"

Sherlock nodded, once, succinctly. His engagement ring, the ring that had once belonged to Johns mother, rested against his chest. His open palm pressed against it gently and fell to his side, leaving it in plain view.

"He will not leave you, even if you don't marry him."

"Yes. I know."

"You love him."

Sherlock holds himself up to every inch of his seven year old height.

"Yes."

Mycroft felt the smile begin in his chest and spread upwards until it pulled at his cheeks and flitted into his eyes. He allowed the emotion.

He never thought he would see the day.

"It was John's idea to do the testing wasn't it? You wanted to let people think that he was your brother until you could make him your partner."

Sherlock's silence was answer enough. The fact that he had allowed and even participated in the experiment proof of something else entirely.

Mycroft could not believe he was doing this. It was absurd and absolutely inappropriate to encourage it two 7 year old boys.

But the little boy who believed he would always be alone was reaching out.

Sherlock Holmes had admitted to loving someone more than himself.

"You know, being engaged to someone is almost as binding as marriage once it has been celebrated…" Sherlock perked up at this new tidbit of information, his sharp eyes taking in Mycroft's smile, his laugh lined eyes. "We never threw you an engagement party did we?"

The sound of Sherlock's laughter high and jubilant pressed against Mycroft's chest in the impromptu embrace. The sound clear and resonating like the sound of bells as Mycroft swept the little boy off his feet and spun them in together in a circle.

Not entirely unlike brothers at all.


	54. Chapter 54

Sherlock Holmes would do anything for John Watson. He would take a bullet, he would fraud anyone in the world, he would sacrifice the best of himself and pretend to be normal. He would sacrifice the worst of himself and pretend to be a god.

For John Watson Sherlock would jump off a building and spend his last moments falling through the air thinking that it was worth it. Good. If it helped him. If it saved him.

But what would Sherlock do for someone he knows nothing about? Well, not nothing. He knows important things.

He knows that they were abused. That they are clever, truly clever, and if he was honest, brilliant even. And that they hide it, they shove it back under a shield of mediocrity, which is even more interesting because- _why_?

He knows that they wanted to make sure that their father never ever hit them, or anyone else, ever again.

He knows that they are innocent in mind if not in actions, that they did not mean to kill the man and even if they did he deserved it. It was survival. It was Darwinism. It was better.

He knows that because of him, because his mind never stops and because he felt the need he show off and demonstrate his superiority to some Cro-Magnon of a police detective, that he betrayed them.

He thinks of Mummy and Mycroft and himself, he replays the minutes they stood around his fathers still body, the way it looked like it had never been alive at all.

He thinks of me, of Eve the living girl instead of the skull on his mantle.

He thinks of the children in the second and third cases that still wake him up in the middle of the night. The little girl with the yellow pigtails. The baby boy who would never grow up to be brilliant or dull or pedestrian; or grow up to be anything.

He thinks that somewhere they are laying in the dark, glistening white bones like milk. No longer human at all.

What would Sherlock Holmes do when faced with the second big failure of his career?

"No. I was wrong- " Sherlock lied. And it was stupid and foolish and impulsive because Inspector Jones remembered he was there and spun on his heel to go back to his computer.

Sherlock whipped around the desk just as Jones reached to shut down the screen. He only had the fraction of a second and it was gone. Too late. He was too late.

"I'll handle it from here. Don't worry about that." The man laughed, jubilated. "And once I have my murderer you will have your cases."

The computer shut down. Blank and silent.

Thick clubbed fingers closed around his arm, pulling him from the room and into the mild chaos of the open police floor. Roughly he was pushed into the fray, the man's smile twisted gleefully, his mustache garish against the background of his homely face.

Sherlock ran.

He had two days. Maybe two and a half if Jones took his time. The inspector would need to gather enough evidence to show that he understood everything Sherlock had told him before he could consult his superiors and make an arrest. He would have to consult a mortician, a blood splatter analyst, make an official record of pulling out the case file.

He would need two days to erase Sherlock Holmes and place himself as the conquering hero.

Sherlock would not need two days.

He had a phone number.

A fraction of a second had been enough. Not for a name or an address, both had been off screen, but for a phone number.

A phone number of one of the two people who survived that family.

One of two children. Two suspects.

The payphone was two blocks from the station but his heart was racing in his chest and he could not waste another second. No one would ever link it to him.

Sherlock drummed his fingers against the cold metal of the phone, cramming himself against chewed gum and scrawled graffiti.

It had to work. There was no other way.

Pigtails. Baby boy. Skull on the mantel. But this one, this one had gotten away. This one had survived.

Until now.

The phone rang. Once. Twice.

On the fourth the ring was cut off, the sound of a person picking up the phone, the shift of fabric and the swish of hair.

"You or your sibling killed your father ten years ago in the kitchen, probably with a frying pan. Don't argue and don't pretend not to know what I am talking about and for gods sake don't blubber you will just waste time we do not have. The police will be at on your doorstep by Friday. If you value your freedom you will tell me where to meet you. Now."

They did not hang up.

Thank god they had not changed phone numbers.

* * *

It was not her. He had the wrong sibling.

He knew before she opened the door, as he stood there shuffling his feet and counting the seconds that she was wasting by peeking through the curtains as if it would help her deduce his motives. It wouldn't.

When she finally opened the door (23 seconds after she could have reasonably done so) he bullied his way inside and pulled it shut behind him, locked all three of the excessive locks and pulled the chain across before pushing the curtain away with his fingers an inch and peering into the empty street.

No one would be following him, but she did not need to know that.

He needed her to believe in this.

She was everything he had imagined her sibling would not be. She was tall even in her trainers, old enough to have been almost this tall ten years ago. The flash of anger that had all but exploded across her face as he had pushed inside and the immediate trepidation as he had faked looking for a tail meant she had a short fuse, hardly someone who would use Belladonna and maintain the self-control not to kill as they spike every day's supply of food or liquor.

An anger that was not well disciplined, obvious, not the main victim, she would have learned to hide her reactions. Survival tactic. Children learn faster than their adult counterparts, even the average ones. So it was the killer took the brunt of the day to day abuse and curbed their impulses every day drugging the father.

What stayed their hand for so long? Stockholm syndrome? A twisted sense of familial love?

Or was it something more interesting? Was this sibling planning escape all along? Taking the beatings, the drunken rages and remaining disciplined enough to administer medicinal levels of a deadly poison to their abuser?

Is it possible to be brilliant and good at the same time?

Morality blended with intellect.

Sherlock let the white gauzy curtains fall from his fingers, the sunlight already muted by the grey rain darkened sky.

She opened her mouth, this woman, blond bob, average attractiveness and intelligence. Altogether forgettable. Would her sibling have the same look, like camouflage? Would you sweep your eyes over them, stand in line behind them and five minutes later be unable to recall anything but the vague impression of a person having once been there?

A thrill went through him, shot through his spine.

He wanted to know.

The woman had shucked off some of her trepidation and was sliding back into fury and…although slightly more interesting than denial, annoyingly enough, martyrdom.

"It was me. I will tell the police I did it. I won't fight." She crossed her arms over her chest as if daring him to prove otherwise.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and took a step back when it looked as though she might hit him.

"Wasting time! Your sister? Brother? Yes, thank you, brother, does not have."

A boy. _He, his survivor is a he._

Sherlock pushed through to the main living space and he knew it the moment he saw the room but he pushed away the thought, deleted it, kept looking anyway.

He was not here, had not been here for years.

She followed him into the room and he turned on her, coat billowing around him.

"Are you still in contact with him? Will he listen to you?"

She scowled, her face flushed with anger, clashing horribly with her blond hair.

"I told you it was me! I killed the bastard all right?" She was stage whispering, better than screaming but hardly helpful if the place had been bugged.

"Yes, that is all very touching that you would sacrifice yourself but even the police will see through your little act. If I had time to stage the evidence so that you could take the fall I would but there Is. No. Time." She gaped at him, silently raged at him, but she stopped. She believed him. Finally. "Now will he listen to you or not?"

"How do you know the police are coming?" Her brown eyes flashed with new hope, like a flood that would drown her and damn her brother. "Maybe it is routine and they are just checking up on us- Maybe-"

"Stop."

"Maybe they will not be able to prove anything at all-"

"We don't have time-"

"Maybe-"

"I know because I told them!"

She stopped, froze with her mouth open and the words dying on her lips.

He was sprawled on the floor with the taste of copper filling his mouth before he realized that she had punched him. His leg seared with a white starburst of pain that lanced up to his thigh and he realized belatedly that the glass table that had existed moments ago was in a thousand pieces beneath him.

She towered over him, knuckles on her right hand split open against his cheek bones.

"You told them." She growled. "You told them and you came here to what? To gloat? To watch us squirm?" She aimed a kick at him but her wind up was too obvious. He rolled away, splitting his hands open as he pressed them into glass shards and wrenched himself further across the room.

He had underestimated her. Stupid, foolish, because no one had ever hit him like that, because she had seemed so average, so harmless.

He should be worried, should get up and push her back, protect himself so he could protect the brother, the killer, the grown up little boy who survived where all of these others failed. Where he had failed.

But he could not think straight. His head swam with the implications of his own guilt and the tiny niggling inkling of _you deserve this,_ and with her fury and she prowled closer, unbridled wild protective rage hidden in such an innocuous package.

Her brother must be _magnificent_.

"Do you want to know why he killed him? Since you condemned him do you want to know what you have condemned him for?" She spat, the glass crunching beneath her thin rubber soles as she followed him across the room.

She came close enough to kick, to punch him, but instead she squatted down and her eyes were not dull, they were burning.

"It was because he was coming after me. We were only a few months away from escaping once and for all but then he came after me." Her eyes flicked to the blood streaming down his chin, to the spider web of blood rising across the split flesh of his palms. She hunched back on her heels and pushed back the regret that flashed across her face, grasped tighter to her anger, letting it carry her further and make her voice lower into a growl.

Her voice was firmed with accusation and hatred. "Every other time in are whole lives that scumbag went after my baby brother and I didn't do shit." Her eyes flashed back to the blood dripping into his shirt collar and Sherlock realized it was not his blood she was seeing at all. "I let him beat him, _fuck_, most of the time I did not even know it was happening. My brother-_he never even screamed_."

She stood, pale and drawn, hands shaking, and then she walked away, out of the room, leaving him dashed apart on her living room floor. She was only gone for the span of seconds, long enough to go to the kitchen and get a clean dishtowel to throw at Sherlock and then, when he made no move to use it, to press it against the freely bleeding gash in his leg. But in the seconds she was gone her face had fallen, the anger filtering out of her. By the time she was pressing the crimson towel against the darkening material of his pants the venom that had fueled her was gone.

"It's funny." She said as she sank back to her heels as if she were oblivious to the fact that she was hovering inches from razor sharp shards of glass.

Sherlock let her press uncomfortably against his leg, it had not bothered him until she forced the rough material over it and he realized with something like indifference that had been too sharp to feel. He was not very good with people, not yet, but looking up into the solemn woman's face he was pretty sure that she did not think anything about this was funny at all.

"He just finished med-school. My brother the doctor." She finished the thought with a smile that looked brittle and ancient. "He would love to do nothing more than stich up a wound like this. He loves the traumas, the little flesh wounds like this. 'You can fix them.' He tells me. 'You can put them back together and send them home.'" She lets out a bark of laughter and checks under the towel to see if the bleeding has stopped.

It hasn't.

"He says he wants to work with traumas because it is easier than watching them waste away." She presses harder, Sherlock winces as he is pushed further into the glass on the ground but he doesn't say a word.

He wants to know.

She looks into his eyes and she cannot see his pain through the haze of her own. "I don't think that is the only reason."

A whisper.

A confession.

"He is better than all this. He made something of himself. It should have been me. I should have done it." Sherlock is afraid she might cry but she doesn't. Maybe, he thinks, she does not know how. "Is he going to lose the life he made over one less scumbag alcoholic in the world?"

Sherlock does not want to say 'Yes', but it is closer to the truth than not.

"No." He answers finally. The bleeding has stopped. He swallows the blood that has been pooling in his mouth even though it is oddly thin and metallic and makes him feel hot and sick. "But it is going to be different."

His options are limited.

* * *

Sherlock hangs up the phone and closes his eyes. His entire body aches. He looks like a monster, wrapped in gauze that the brother has left around, in tea towels and duct tape. She offers him painkillers but he refuses.

Later, he promises himself. Right now the pain is sharp and brutal and it is keeping him in the game, keeping his mind on task.

It would have been simple to help the man run away, to give him a new life and a new identity.

But he had to go and make something of himself. He had to go and get degrees other people only dreamed of, had to choose a life that was so perfectly almost ordinary. He had to go and be clever.

"You are sure that he will listen to you?"

The young woman looked over at him, across the room of blood and glass.

"I am his sister."

'_Irrelevant' _he thought. But not to her, and apparently, not to their man either.

"He will need to get to the address I gave you within the hour. By this time tomorrow he will be part of the Queens Army."

Thanks to Sherlock and enough blackmail to take down half a dozen high ranking officers.

By the time Jones got to him the man would be nothing but the ghost of a whisper. An honorable man, beyond reproach, and deployed out of country and out of jurisdiction. No chance of Jones being a conquering hero until he came home.

And Sherlock would have enough time to meticulously destroy each shred of evidence; to falsify new evidence, and make sure that every step Jones took in action to pursue the case defamed him. By the time Sherlock was done the dead man will have never laid hands on a child in his life and his two children, the girl made of all jagged edges in front of him and the man he will never meet, they would have been born, gone to school, and lived their lives until today without a single note of mark.

When their childhood killer came home Jones would be silent, or forced out of London.

Best he could do.

Sherlock pushed the heel of his hand into the deep gouge in his leg, the pain was beyond excruciating. He fought the urge to scream. He dug his nails in until the makeshift bandage crumbled under his ministrations and blood ran around his thigh, dripping into his pants.

It was the best he could do. Give him this life. A life of servitude was better than no life at all wasn't it?

Not for Sherlock maybe but for…

For a man that wants to put people back together again.

Better than nothing.

Better than taking that away from him.

Like he had taken everything else.

When she made the call to her brother he left the room. Lifting himself laboriously and shuffling off to the bathroom.

The water still ran red under his hands when the woman leaned against the door frame four minutes later.

"He was so calm." She caught his eyes in the mirror. "I told him that he needed to go, that he had to leave behind everything he had ever worked for and go and he went just like that. It was almost like he had been waiting it."

The tap was cold and smooth and the water stopped. Eventually the blood would too. It was all superficial. Nothing more than a temporary hindrance. There would not even be a scar.

"You have to clean up before the police get here. They won't look very hard but try not to make it look as if you have just murdered someone in your living room. Or that we have just secreted away a murderer." He flashed her a smile as he limped past her.

He expected the blow, braced for it even, but it never came.

Odd.

She waited until he was at her door, until the ugly brass knob was in his hand before she slammed her hand flat against the cheap wood paneling of the door.

"Is that it then? You ruin our lives and just walk off like it never happened?"

"Yes." And it hurt. And it was not the cuts or the bruises, they were not enough anymore. It was his chest. _It ached_. "I am afraid that is exactly what happens now."

"I want you to say it. Just _once_ you inhuman bastard. I want you to say my brother's name. The name of the man you just destroyed. You avoided saying it the whole time like this is just some kind of game to you, like we are just pawns. You cannot just waltz into our lives and fuck everything up and not even have the decency to pretend you at least know we are human fucking beings. He could _die_ over there."

"I don't know his name. Or yours. The less I know the better. A friend-" _a blackmailed person "_will help me erase all history of this ever having happened. Once I walk out the door, effectively, we have never met, and your father died in a tragic accident. If I do not know-" _I can never accidentally betray him again_ "it is safer for both of you."

She let her fingers drift away from the door. That was it.

It was over.

He opened the door and stepped out into the grey raining world that looked just as it had this morning. As if nothing had happened at all.

The rain slipped uncomfortably into his jacket and saturated his dressings, blood and water mingling and turning the soft cloth pink.

A few more calls, a few more hours of work, and he could practice not existing at all.

A trick he learned from the little boy who survived where so many others had fallen.

"And you?" She was standing in the doorway watching him. Lost. "Do I get your name so I know who to hate when he realizes how much he has lost?"

He took another painful limping step and smiled.

A boy that clever, a man with that level of knowledge and intellect and _morals,_ he was too _good_ to be happy with anything less.

"The name is Sherlock Holmes."

* * *

You of course know the rest. You can figure it out the way I did. Even without hearing those first phone calls from John.

Oh yes, John knew exactly who Sherlock Holmes was.

He never meant to say yes to being his flat mate but it was …surreal.

He had heard these stories from Harry. Her little house like a crime scene and Sherlock Holmes like some dark tragic hero from an epic poem or as if he was a 1950's romance mystery novel character, walking away in the rain.

He had just wanted a look. Just a peak into his life.

He didn't hate him, not really. After all, it wasn't Sherlock who had killed the man.

He was not even going to go see the flat at Baker Street…until he found himself standing at the door of 221B watching Sherlock Holmes embrace an older woman with a smile that made him think of picture book grannies that always have a treat for you that they press into your palm with a wink and a smile, the kind he had day dreamed about coming to take him away as a child.

And then one thing led to another and this sweet older lady was holding him and whispering in his ear like it was a secret how nice it was to see that Sherlock was not alone and sounding so sincere that John did not have the heart to correct her.

And as it turns out, Sherlock Holmes was not a cheesy mystery novel character, he was not the devil come to ruin their lives, or some sociopath genius creating monsters in the attic…he was…oddly sweet.

He was as socialized as a child, all awkward energetic motions and fumbling to say the right thing and never getting it quite right. And there was this way that his eyes got very wide when he got caught off guard, a moment of complete defenselessness that was enough to make his heart skip a beat and want to hold his hand and smile and tell him that it was okay, because John knew without being told that if he had even the slightest reservation about it being not okay, that Sherlock would know.

He bumbled around the flat, oddly proud of its clutter and slightly worried that it was wrong; and was it really possible for the same man who had figured out a decade old murder without new evidence to not know that Mrs. Hudson was taking care of him? She followed him up the stairs and gathered up some of his mess and he just looked at the mess of cups in her arms as if he had no idea where they came from.

And did he have any idea how…_human_…how incredibly endearing it was when he jumped into the air like that, like he didn't understand that people just don't do that, that people are never that happy? Did he know how it looked? That smile that he flashed him before he ever meant to.

Did he know the way it hurt because he was so incredibly childlike and brilliant and bizarre and he could obviously not help himself, to know that each smile John gave him, each compliment or laugh was reacted to so strongly…with such shock. Did he even know that other people thought he was brilliant, even without the deductions?

Did he know how much it meant when he looked at John like he was the only person who had ever been kind to him? When those blue eyes opened impossibly wide and said that most people told him to piss off and then, because John laughed not at him, but with him, the first real laugh John had had since the war, he bit his lips and fisted his hands into his lap in a way that was…no, not childish, just, unspoiled. Delicate, if the force of nature that was Sherlock Holmes could ever be delicate.

And then. From wanting just a peek, a glance, just to know the man in the stories, the man who had found him out, they were off on an adventure and flat mates and partners and even…friends. And he had killed a man for him.

With the training he got because of him.

Funny how these things work out isn't it?

And Sherlock, Sherlock who deduced everything, never knew.

Of course, who would imagine that John, the boy with a frying pan who hid in washroom cabinets, would have liked the army? Who would have imagined that after being swept from his life and dumped into the embrace of her majesty's army he would sign up voluntarily for more time because it was the only place he felt alive?

Harry. Harry wanted to kill him.

John called his sister after that first case with the cabbie, pacing the living room when Sherlock was off in full dockworker attire, curls stuffed under a cap and dirt smudged onto his cheeks, grinning as he left to consult his homeless network.

He told her about the restaurant and about the candle and how brilliant he was and the adventures they had, about the way he stopped shaking when Sherlock was around, the way he left his cane miles behind him and did not even notice. He begged her not to tell, pacing in front of the fireplace. Worse, he begged her never to visit, never to call the flat.

Sherlock would know her if he saw her, he would be forced to put the pieces together. For now the present shielded the girl he had met years ago. He knew about Clara and the alcohol and he knew that they were not close, not anymore, but Harry had been different back then, when they had met. She had been…full of potential.

She blamed Sherlock Holmes for her alcoholism, for having taken John away from her.

She blamed him for every missed Christmas.

She blamed him for every bullet wound and tremor he suffered.

But she loved him, and he…was happy.

Really happy.

Even if Sherlock never knew. Especially because Sherlock never knew.

It was nice, having one up on him. Knowing he was less than perfect without ever letting on he had proof.

And if had to live with a few heads in the fridge for happiness, well, he had seen worse. Army doctor after all.

And later… once they knew one another, once it was okay to tell him-

He would have told Sherlock.

But- well- he had almost been shot once with Sherlock, had been shot– _a little_, Just a graze. But Sherlock had not known. _He had thought-_

And he was frightening. He almost killed the gunman. With his bare hands. And what he said- _the things he though John could not hear-_

John could not tell him. Maybe, if he had not been invalided home- _but the scars were_-

Sherlock was happy. Happy as Sherlock ever was. He was even eating, even if he would deny John being the reason. Gained a whole seven pounds.

John smiled when he thought of it. In biscuits eaten with one hand on Mrs. Hudson's shoulder because food was always better when it was pilfered. In 2 AM dinners shared from cartons with chopsticks on the floor of their living room because the chairs had looked like too much of an effort and laughter came so much more readily with your legs sprawled in front of you and your bare feet pressing into your mates.

No reason to stop that. To create dissonance and sadness.

Not now.

* * *

So if Harry Watson chose to uphold her promises to her brother, at least in part, in spirit, because nothing would keep her from Sherlock Holmes now, it was a choice that John_, if he was around- if he could make the decision_- he would approve of.

Because Sherlock Holmes as an adult was a windstorm of emotions that he never understood and the worst moment in his life had been when he watched John Watson get shot. For him. Because of him.

Like having your heart torn from your chest.

Imagine Sherlock Holmes at seven, the way he slept curled around John as if together they could fight off the monsters of nightmares, the way he had never known a day of his life without him, never known a day of being alone, the way he slept, ate, fought, learned, drew breath for John.

Imagine telling that boy that he had sent the center of his entire universe, the other half of his own misshapen soul, and the love of his short life, to be shot. To be captured. To be tortured.

John could survive knowing what had happened to him once upon a time. He was brave and strong and for Sherlock he could do and forgive anything.

But Sherlock…

Sherlock would never forgive himself.


	55. Chapter 55

"Sherlock?"

"Hmmm?"

"Why do people always think we are brothers?"

The question is supposed to sound annoyed but it doesn't. He already knows the answer, it is the kind of question you can ask yourself and it will be just as real as having the conversation aloud…but there is pleasure in having someone else say it. There is warmth in the words.

Like an embrace.

A conversation he could curl up in.

He knows Sherlock does not mind.

Sherlock turns his head to look at him and then turns back to continue staring at the ceiling as if it were the place all thoughts came to exist. He is spread out on the floor of their room like a starfish.

"Because people are simple and they ignore the obvious. Because people see what they want to see. Two boys our age? Obviously close? They can probably tell we are communicating but not necessarily how. If they are perceptive they might see a smile that is meant only for you but not know why, maybe they even catch a glance or a laugh. We are young and happy together. They want to see their own past relationships in us, brothers, sisters, they want to remember being us, being at this point of life. Of course they were never as close to their siblings as we are to each other but that hardly matters to them. But that is because we are young. It will be different when we are older." Sherlock grinned to the plaster ceiling and its perfect white flatness.

"When we are old people will put more stock in our physiological differences and they will think we are like everyone else, like we have only known each other a few years, instead of our whole lives." Sherlock stretched out his arms further; fingers stretch out towards where John sits.

"As if I could have lived more than a day without you." The words are softer than the rest, they are a gift. John blushes and ducks his head even though Sherlock's gaze is still on the ceiling. "When we are old I bet they will try to sell me flowers to give to you. We will get booths in dark corners with a candle. Candles-" He tells the ceiling with an air of authority "are romantic."

"I don't need flowers." John flops down onto their bed and tries to see what Sherlock sees in their blank ceiling. He stretches his arms as far as they will go and crunches the orange blanket in his open palms.

"I will get them for you anyway." Sherlock promises, his voice rising from where he lays on the floor.

John smiles and rolls his eyes because Sherlock can't see him.

Maybe he could convince Nana to get him those glow-in-the-dark-stars and arrange them like the night sky, it would be nice, so the next time Sherlock came looking for thoughts he could find them among the stars.

"Sherlock?" He asked, because tonight Sherlock was talkative and warm, and starting an inquiry with his name always put Sherlock on the edge of a smile.

John closed his eyes. If the ceiling was whispering its reservoir of thoughts to Sherlock then it was keeping its secrets hidden from him. But that was alright. When he closed his eyes he could quiet the parts of his mind waiting for color and shape, focus himself down on the floor next to Sherlock. It was easier like this to listen the sound of Sherlock tapping his fingers against the carpet, a new piece by the sound of it, the way it started and restarted just ever so slightly different, like the stutter of a heartbeat. A piece he was composing in his mind.

"Sherlock…why can't brothers get married?"

Because it was obvious. But it wasn't.

In the story books brothers never got married, but just because it never happens does not mean it is impossible. In story books brothers and sisters never got married either, but they had had enough history lessons to know that it happened.

"It is supposed to be a different kind of love." John could feel Sherlock shrugging against the carpet, the brush of carpet and shirt and skin. Love was a conversation they had had before, but it had always been in the abstract. They talk about the stories that John loves, the books and the fairy tales with their star-crossed lovers and their epic romances, with a prince and a princess and a happy ever after or tragedy of death and a forever that almost makes death seem kinder. They talk about the people they know or see and the foolish things they do for love.

They never talk about themselves.

But that is okay.

John doesn't need flowers.

"Brothers-" Sherlock continues as if Johns mind had not traveled a million miles away from where they lay. "are supposed to punch each other and give noogies and put each other in headlocks. Apparently."

But John knows that this is just what other boys have told him. Like when they say that brothers don't hold hands, not when they are big boys like six and seven years old.

They don't have brothers.

They just have each other.

"When you are married, you don't want to attack whomever you are married to." Sherlock tells him in the same authoritative voice that he uses when he knows something for certain. Like when he is trying to find out the right amount of lithium carbonate to precipitate to make their explosion burn bright red the way they like it, or when someone says something that is just a little too cruel and Sherlock closes his arms around him and whispers so that no one else can hear, that they are too dull to understand what they were saying.

"Married people," Sherlock tells him in a voice that is so soft that it barely rises about the level of his breath and mingles perfectly in time with the rhythm of his fingers tapping against the carpet. "-want to kiss."

John knows about kissing. Every story he has ever read has kissing. Even the really gruesome tales. That is how you knew they were in love. There was always a kiss.

And John gave lots of kisses too. And got lots of kisses.

When Harry came to see him she would swoop him up in her arms and when she was really happy she would press kisses against his eyes and cheeks and nose. And every morning he woke up and kissed Mycroft hello, even on the days that he had not had his tea yet and Sherlock said that he was probably a zombie and to watch out lest his own hello kiss become a bite. It never did. John was not worried. Zombie Mycroft would never hurt him, even if he was hungry. And Nana, Nana would give them kisses for anything. She was nice and warm and caring like that, and she noticed all of the things that were just a little bit harder for them. For John wearing a t-shirt would mean a kiss and a proud smile like he had done something brilliant.

John collapsed into giggles, his laughter bright and helpless, infectious in the dark, quiet room.

If all kisses meant marriage-

Sherlock married to Nana. To _Mycroft_.

"Hey!" Sherlock protested and John laughed harder, curling onto his side and watching as an indignant face came into view over the side of the bed, raven curls in complete disarray, sprawled and clinging in a thousand directions.

Sherlock and Mycroft in a room of _flowers_. In _wedding dresses_.

John was gone. Boneless. Utterly at Sherlock's mercy. He gasped his laughter and Sherlock growled and his hands gathered fistfuls of the orange blanket and pulled John and the blanket straight off the bed, arms slowing his fall, John landing on legs and chest and floor in a way that made laughter even more impossible to stop. The world was a tangle of limbs and Sherlock and orange and the white ceiling with its thousand untold secrets gave way to raven curls and blue eyes and a smile that was made of silent laughter.

John clutched his tummy as the last of his giggles escaped into the air and Sherlock waited for him, a last tangle of orange blanket slipping free of his curls.

"Not funny John." His voice was a low playful growl and his nose wrinkled in distaste even as he grinned. "That is not the same kind of kiss."

"No." John agreed through cheeks that hurt from smiling. "It's not."

"It is fine to use every day kisses on Mycroft and Nana and Harry because they are ours." Sherlock conceded, his voice dropping into the whisper that almost disappeared into the song being tapped onto a strand of blond hair. "But you are the only one I would want to _kiss._"

"Sherlock-"

Sherlock's words came in a rush, unstoppable and helpless, and his eyes were frantic and warm and imploring and desperate. Like he couldn't stop himself. The thoughts he found in their starless sky. "I know that we can't get married yet- and I know that I don't have flowers or candles and I have never saved your life and I am not a hero but I just wanted to make sure that you know that-if could have those things. If I could be those things- I would. For you."

"Sherlock." John whispered because he did not think his voice could survive anything else. "You are the only one I want to kiss too."

* * *

It was hard. It really was. Getting information on these two boys.

But that just made it more interesting.

It made it _fun_.

Life does get so very dull. So _boring._

So many people in the world and almost all of them mean absolutely nothing. Ants busy expending their lives fucking and eating in an endless stream of mindless monotony, none of them ever even knowing to look up and see the giants holding the looking glass with its burning stream of sunlight.

It was not quite like old times, searching for information on two not-quite little boys, putting the pieces together, placing the pawns. Not quite stringing along the little mouse detective, poisoning the cheese at the end just to see if he noticed. And it was always so-_fun_-when he did notice.

Almost like not being alone.

But then again, it would never be like old times again. That was the point.

That was the _plan_.

And oh god how the plans had changed! And who would have guessed in a million years that the puppy would be so fun? Such a gift!

Not so very fun as little Sherlock of course, Sherlock was special. Playing with him would be like, like coming home, like having a doll built especially for him that says all the right things at all the right times. And he was not vain. Okay, yes he was. But _god._

Those ice cold blue eyes.

Those razor sharp lips.

It would be glorious.

Like. Like having a son made of perfect, broken, mangled parts.

Victor Frankenstein had it so wrong.

His monster would be beautiful.

Sure the village had him now, his angel yet-to-be-fallen.

Yet to be scarred.

But he was still maturing, still growing. But it was all an artificial womb, nurturing him until he was ready to fall. To be pushed.

And his little pup. Who would have thought the daft little blond had been yapping between his legs would last this long? And now, now he was almost…interesting.

Not his angel, not even close. Not the prodigal son or the arch angel but perhaps, a minor deity? Everyone should have a pet, even if it has to die.

It is character building.

Frankenstein's' creatures' kitten. His little adopted family that had to die for him to become magnificent, the monster in the cave reading Paradise Lost with a black soul that borne a desire to burn the heart out of his creator.

He had even had his own once, his own little pet that belonged to the side of the angels. He would thank her but it would probably be lost on her. Piles of bones decades old do not listen very well at all.

But! Early days! He could change his mind. Keep one. Keep both!

Keep neither. Let them rot.

Moriarty clicked through the images of the two little boys. Pausing on one frame in particular.

Ice blue eyes and razor blade lips.

Yes. A creature. A monster.

A son.

Fallen angel. Side of the demons.

* * *

Mycroft wondered not for the first time if John Watson made friends out of a sense of self preservation, a lingering holdover from a life he did not remember.

Sometimes it was easy to forget, to watch a football game and some silly little dance and imagine that this was easy. That John had yet to be anything other than a charming little boy.

Friends normalize us, if not internally than in appearance. A boy with many friends must be normal. Happy. Okay. Be good at sports. Be mildly intelligent. Have many casual friends. And never, ever shine too brightly.

Bright lights get extinguished.

It had been a prerequisite of his last life. To appear normal in every way. Because if anyone ever found out, if anyone actually took the time to look again, to really see him…

He did not need Harry to tell him that. He should have known in the moment he set eyes on the ex-military doctor. He should have seen what Sherlock had that made him so desperate to keep him even in those first critical days. But with the ghost of the man in his mind and the child firmly ensconced in every waking moment of his consciousness Mycroft knew how brightly John could shine when you looked beneath the mask.

Oh his smiles were real enough. Mycroft knew all of John smiles now. The slow sad ones that meant a wordless ache that he could not imagine a life without even at 7 years old; the quick brilliant flashes of blinding light and the thousands of smiles which existed in between.

He did not want to devalue normal childhood friendships, they must have some merit, some social benefit. For most people they start the foundations of adult interaction that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

But with friends, with school age boys who had been born less than a decade ago and were all yet undiscovered potential and as innocent as little boys will ever be, boys who should be every bit as worthy of friendship as the next person, Johns smiles were ever so slightly- _off_.

They were…_wrong_.

He could fool the world, their little John with his blond hair and round cheeks and quick charming smiles like an angel any artist should dream of painting.

But Mycroft was not the world and Johns thousands of smiles when aimed at friends, when given to the world, were ascetically perfect. There was not a single thing that could be dissected by the most brilliant analysts. But it was as if a note was ringing just a fraction too high, too shrill, a dissonance only a master could hear. It was but the difference between the modern violin Sherlock played in living room concerts with child hands and the Stradivarius hidden away from the last time he stood as a man. His smiles were the difference of a hair, of a beat of a heart, something indefinable and yet, once you knew of its existence, inescapable.

For the world Johns smiles were perfect crystal imitations, flawless and beautiful and if you knew how to look, if you knew the way John smiles when he thinks no one can see him, the smile he gives to the world are hollow and cold to the touch.

False and brittle and shining and amazingly, blindingly, _average_.

The other little boys, their parents, the world, accepts Johns the way one accepts a placebo. With a smile and a nod and a belief that everything is exactly as it seems.

In reality, hidden from the world and behind locked doors John is letting Hamlet slip from his gaze as his fingers light in a delicate touch against Sherlock's wrist, nothing but the brush of skin, but in the next moment John is pushing the book away as if fed up with it and asking Sherlock to play him something beautiful.

Not because he is fed up, John would never be bored with Hamlet, he is at heart a incorrigible romantic, but because he can feel a pulse and know that boredom and frustration are creeping in on Sherlock before a single dramatic sigh had even been expelled.

In reality hidden from the world Sherlock gathers up his violin as if he is doing John a favor and plays something new that Mycroft has never heard before but John seems to already know.

It is beautiful.

And the smile-

He would love to tell John that he did not need to fake the smile for the world, that it did not matter if he had other friends as long as he loved a few. But it would be a lie. Mycroft could not protect them forever. Johns smile, however false, would save them untold heart ache.

Mycroft can recall the moment like a dream, all white and fog and illuminated from the inside the way a child imagines heaven would be. Their French grandmother had stayed with them before she died, a quiet companion to Sherlock's lonely adventures. A moment he was not meant to see at the end of her life, gaunt and fragile and in his memory, all in white, and a five year old Sherlock reaching up to touch the white curls that curl wildly around her neck the way his hung over his eyes.

Before the psychologists. Before father died. Before anyone ever took the time to see him.

"Mon petit ange," Her smile so sad that Sherlock refused to speak. "Cette vie ne sera pas facile pour toi."

Sherlock played on and Johns smile created echoes of itself wherever it touched, on Sherlock's stoic face as his blue eyes wandered from the strings to linger as if compelled by unseen forces to his companion, to Mycroft as he contemplated issues resoundingly beyond his help.

He wishes he could ask him. Wishes that he could ask if it felt hollow to be around little boys who had never known the life that lingered beneath the surface of his own skin. If there was ever really a moment that he could forget that he was something else, even if he did not know what that something was.

He wishes he could ask if it hurt.


	56. Chapter 56

The unseasonably warm wind took the napkin from beneath the crumbling remains of Gregory Lestrade's scone and sent it dancing into the lush green grass. With a grunt he levered himself off the stone wall and caught it under the heel of his boot before it could make a clandestine flight and he would be sent embarrassingly chasing after it or be the tourist, and worse, English, prick who littered. His tea soaked into the dirt at the base of the stone wall where he had kicked it, turning the ground a slow deep brown with every gush.

Harry, with a smirk of infuriating superiority placed her fingers against her own napkin as she removed the temporary paperweight of her take-away tea to her mouth.

In the middle of the dirt road Lestrade stood for a moment, enjoying the ocean breeze coming from the cliffs they were supposed to be visiting. He plucked the napkin between two fingers, glaring at its crumpled white surface and wondered if there was an isolated moment where this had become inevitability. He had accepted his life years ago, he had been ready if not content to be the hard London D.I. with the ex-wife and two nieces whom he never saw. The cliché stereotype of the cop who lived alone and had all his hair turn grey far too early because he never learned to balance work and family in a way that kept people not only alive, but happy.

At what moment had he become 'Uncle Lestrade' who goes on family holidays to the Irish countryside?

Maybe the cake at that first dinner with the words 'Welcome Home' scripted in frosting had been an indicator, although significantly past the point of no return.

Lestrade turned away from Harry with her smug tea superiority and the cliffs that rose up behind her, green and rolling hills decorated with abandoned rock formations and 'fairy houses'.

Across the dirt road and off into the tall grass and mud his boys were climbing a roughhewn fence that had seen better decades, legs swinging over the top rung, antagonizing an oddly rapt group cows.

Group? Herd? Clones were more like it. How did two boys get thirty odd cows to stare at them like that, all in a row along the fence? It was unnerving. That many huge brown eyes blinking at them.

Sherlock let out a peel of laughter and teetered on his perch as if the idea of falling had never occurred to him.

Johns giggle was softer but it carried across the road just the same. Lestrade watched Sherlock's black curls bounce against his cheeks and neck as he turned to John.

They fed off each other, laughter feeding laughter, ideas feeding ideas.

John touched the back of Sherlock's hand and together they began mooing enthusiastically, their bovine minions blinking at them and then, one at a time, like a trickle turning into a waterfall, they all started mooing. Thirty cows and two boys mooing at the top of their lungs into the Irish countryside.

Lestrade thrust the crumpled napkin into his pocket and trudged through the grass and mud, lifting a still mooing Sherlock into his arms and up onto his shoulders. Lord Commander of the World. Today bovine, tomorrow mankind.

How did he even do that? Was it possible to start a revolt using brainwashed cows? No, probably not, but best not to tempt fate with these things.

Lestrade waited as John thrust out a hand and patted the closest cow on the snout a bit too gingerly, and extracted himself from the fence.

Lestrade marched past Harry and her unspilled tea with Sherlock threading his fingers into his short more-grey-than-brown hair and holding on, John jumping over the small rocks that made the pathway to the cliffs, running ahead and then waiting for them with his blinding smile.

If Mycroft wanted to make his conference calls in the bed and breakfast they had 'acquired' or create a dictatorship or plan the bloody fall of Rome then that was fine, he could miss the spilled tea and escaped napkins and the chorus of frantic mooing still echoing up the hillside. But he was not waiting around for Sherlock to start a bovine rebellion just because Mycroft was too busy to keep his promises.

He was not going to sit and watch their faces darken as the hours ticked past and they realized that they had been bumped to the bottom of the list.

They were his now, after a fashion. And he was a Detective Inspector and honorary uncle, more than qualified to watch two children.

Still. He was glad when Harry stood up to follow them, pushing her sunglasses into her hair. And if he slowed his pace for Mrs. Hudson to catch up with her purse filled with 'emergency supplies' from the little café and at least three more of the blueberry scones that Sherlock had picked out earlier, well, that was only polite wasn't it?

He felt the cold prickly anger in his chest loosen and turn into something oddly familiar and wrap itself around his lungs.

The walk was short, even with Sherlock on his shoulders, tapping on his head and pointing in the direction he wanted to go in, because obviously ten feet to the left was far, far more interesting than say, the other side of the path.

Their original plan had been to go to the Cliffs of Moher because John had picked it out and unlike the other places they had chosen was not in an active war zone or a 12 hour flight from home but Mycroft had found something 'more Sherlock friendly'.

Meaning that somehow he had found the same view with none of the tourists.

Except of course, themselves. Mrs. Hudson with her pink camera hanging from her purse and John with the smudge of sunscreen on his cheek.

When they got to the top Sherlock wriggled impatiently and when not immediately set down like the proper lord of the universe should be, he began to climb down on his own, arms and legs everywhere as he half fell and half slid into Lestrade's arms to be lowered to the ground. A cheeky smile was his thanks as Sherlock took off towards the edge and really, Mycroft could not have found a place with a railing?

The remains of what might have at one point been a stone church patterned the ground, the most intact only rising a few feet from the grass.

Sherlock jumped as he past the rocks, darting a look over the wall to see if it merited slowing down. It didn't.

Lestrade on the other hand found it a perfect place to slow down. He sat down on the time worn shelf of rocks, it was not too far from the edge of the cliffs, maybe twenty feet. He could feel the ocean breeze and watch the place where the ground disappeared and looking miles away and alarmingly close, the crush of blue that honestly looked fake.

Harry lingered uncomfortably for a moment, hands twisting her blond hair anxiously as the boys stopped scant feet from the edge.

"-shouldn't we?"

Mrs. Hudson sat down next to him with an exaggerated sigh of exhaustion and a hand fanning herself even as the light breeze ruffled her collar.

Lestrade stifled a smile and stalwartly waited until the older woman had begun fiddling with her camera to roll his eyes pointedly at Harry.

Mrs. Hudson had been the first one to the top, hiking up her skirts and powering past the others once she had her things in order and tucked under arm. She was quite the actress.

In fact Lestrade had found himself wondering not for the first time since really getting to know her how many times she had put him off Sherlock's trail.

'_Looking for Sherlock dearie? You know that boy, disappeared without a word! Haven't seen him in ages!'_

'_Lost him too have you? Well when you find him you tell that young man that he is not to put those in the blender, he will know what you mean, it just isn't proper!' _

Probably listening at the top of the stairs the whole time, the bastard.

Lestrade found himself shaking his head to clear the thought, a smile miraculously, hopelessly, on his face.

Harry had devolved to shifting her weight from foot to foot, chewing her bottom lip and watching the two boys as if at any moment they might decide 'why not?' and jump. Hell of a game of walk the plank, that.

"I am just going to-"

"He is afraid of heights love." Mrs. Hudson cried out with a 'Ha!' as she finally found the settings she wanted on her camera. She stood and made her way spryly over the ruins to where the boys were standing, holding hands against a surreal backdrop of black rock, dark blue ocean and bright blue sky. Lestrade didn't like it. It made his boys look unreal too. Like you might blink and then-

"Sherlock." Lestrade told her when her face pinched into what made confusion look painful. "He hates heights- always has." He winced at the unusually bitter taste and hollow ring of the words. He covered the reaction by pulling his coat closer around himself.

He had thought that if he tacked on the last bit they could overlook the fact that nothing about Sherlock seemed to come without a horror story attached to it. As if the great Sherlock Holmes could fear anything without cause.

Of course he had just stuck his foot in it. Nothing says 'holiday away' like bringing up child abuse.

Harry pretended not to notice the dense ringing silence that he had inflicted upon them.

"But in the stories John told me, Sherlock was jumping on roof tops, over alleyways like some overgrown bird of prey."

"Yeah, adult Sherlock did that. Of course adult Sherlock also thought that the need for sleep and food were a sign of weakness. Hell, that is probably why he did it, just to prove that he could."

It was the first time they had ever spoken about the past together. It was strange, but this was the first time they had ever acknowledged that Sherlock and John had ever been more than children to them.

Harry swished her tea with the shake of her wrist, judging the weight of it and then with a completely casual gesture handed it to him and sat down close beside him. He took the cup and took a swig of the too-milky, warm drink, the kind of sip where you realize just how cold your mouth is when the liquid warms it, and with equal casualness handed it back.

"John should be afraid of heights." She wasn't watching him but her smile was for his benefit, to make the words warm and friendly rather than cold and factual. "I never figured out why he wasn't."

By the cliffs Mrs. Hudson was standing ten feet off from the boys, where Sherlock had yelled at her to stop, had put up his little hand up with his delicate fingers spread wide and shaking and asked her to not come any closer. And even though the wind was pushing them inland Sherlock was holding onto John like it might blow him away, an arm wrapped around his middle, hand curled into his jacket. He bounced on his heels and whenever Mrs. Hudson played with her camera he chanced a quick involuntary look at the cliffs beyond as if they might have crept in closer behind them.

John was holding on tight too, but when he glanced away it was not at the cliffs.

"So what do you think?" Harry asked without preamble as she placed the drink on the rocks between them with only a nod at the boys holding tight onto each other, as if she were carrying on with a conversation they had been in the middle of and had just been interrupted. "You saw them together every day."

"Not every day; and I hardly think crime scenes are the place for romance, or at least for finding out about them without Sherlock being the one to tell us. But do I think they were together?" He picked up the drink and let the warmth seep into his fingers. "They were hardly ever apart. We had bets going on at headquarters. Everything from when they would come out to when John would finally have had enough and leave him."

Harry rolled her eyes but she was smiling the way John used to when Sherlock had done something only slightly 'not good' and he had turned to look at John a half a second later with wide imploring eyes and innocent confusion to make sure everything was still okay. The smile John got when he Sherlock looked at him like he was the one real thing in the universe. "You didn't answer my question."

Busted. Harry was more like her brother than people credited her with. They both had a way of sweeping through the bullshit while still come off so understated. She would have made a good cop.

"You didn't know Sherlock before John. Even the bad times, even the really messed up stuff, it is nothing compared to the way he used to be."

At the cliffs edge Mrs. Hudson had backed off to a safer distance and Sherlock was edging closer to the side. It was all rock at the edge, safe as you could be while suspended hundreds of feet in the air. He could do it. He could look over the edge, and he would, he would make himself. But he had to be alone.

He had to be alone of course, because alone there is no one there to push you off.

Lestrade almost wished he didn't know that.

Sherlock lay down on his belly and peered over the edge once everyone else was away, the toe of his shoes curling into the ground and fingers white and bloodless around the edge of the rock. He looked back over his shoulder and with trembling fingers held out a hand to John.

Lestrade shook away the memory of Sherlock and focused on the warmth in his hand, his eyes resting on the edge of the horizon and two little boys. A sigh preluded his words, bits of conversations he had had a thousand times since Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had disappeared.

"Before John showed up out of the blue and fit into place like he was meant to be there Sherlock was… he was like a child. He was mad and brilliant but nothing, I mean nothing, mattered to him. Just to get him to act human I had to use false drugs busts, it was not enough to call him, I had to show up and drag him out of bed and see if he was still alive. Huge grandiose productions just to make him look at things like they mattered."

Harrys face was a mask. Blank and unreadable. She would have made a _great_ cop. He took another sip of Harry's tea and let his eyes go to the horizon, drawing out the silence.

Below the horizon John took a careful step forward, pausing to see if it was too much.

Sherlock's hand stopped shaking.

"Before John I believed that one day I would get to a crime scene and Sherlock Holmes would be the body I was standing over. That one day his luck would run out."

Harry took the drink from him and together they watched as John reached out for Sherlock, bending because he did not want to get too close. And then Sherlock said something that the wind carried away and John lay down next to him, their sides pressed together, peering over the edge where there was nothing beneath them but air.

"I didn't bet in any of the pools." He told her at last, it got him a smile. "They were my friends. They made each other alive in a way most people never even dream of being, and there is no doubt that John was his moral compass. I don't know if they were together but I hoped like hell they were. If they couldn't manage it what hope is there for the rest of us?"

She nodded and he could not tell if she was disappointed or if it had been exactly what she thought he might say.

"He was your brother."

He winced when the words escaped and he had no way to call them back and force them into submission.

'Was' because nothing saying 'holiday away' like reminding you that you no longer have the one person you always thought you would.

She laughed. "No- you're right. It's okay." She nodded to the edge of the world where the two boys were letting pebbles fall from their fingertips into the abyss, their laughter like the ghost of an echo, thin as the sunlight on their skin. "He has more now than I ever gave him."

The laughter faded from her face and she pressed the cup back into his hands with a weight heavier than a simple drink, and then, surprisingly, punched him in the shoulder.

"Besides, they have the right idea not putting too much stock in blood relations. We make our family where we find it."

She gestured back at the boys with her hand blithely even as a red blush crept into her cheeks and ears, as if she not just claimed him as a member of her family.

_Huh._

So that's what it was. That niggling feeling that had flickered at the base of his spine all day, waking up to Sherlock sitting on his pillows and a handful of god-knows-what alarmingly close to his hair, the half-awake breakfast sitting down between John and Harry and not having to mutter a word of 'hello' to either. A shared cup of tea in the Irish countryside. That something so familiar and a million miles away.

He had forgotten what it was like to be part of a family.

He didn't expect Harry to say more. She was too good an investigator to give something away freely, wasn't the overly emotional talking type either. The arm she punched ached sweetly, not pain, but a touch that lingers.

"John would never have told me if he was with Sherlock. We weren't close- in the end. It was hard for me to approve of him. He was still my baby brother and here he was letting some lunatic drag him into danger and he certainly didn't approve of me..." She tucked her hand under her chin as she watched them. "John was different too you know, after Sherlock. It was like- it was like part of my brother never came home after Afghanistan and then Sherlock found it again."

He had known as much. John's first blog entries. _'Nothing ever happens to me.'_

He would have let silence fall between them, natural and easy in a way that it had not been with his own sister since they were young enough to share a room.

"They loved each other." The voice preceded the large purse that was dropped heavily onto the stone wall beside them. Mrs. Hudson let out a deep breath, still clutching her camera in her hand as it chirped merrily at her with each picture she reviewed.

He had not even heard her coming. Lestrade took a long glance at the unassuming woman he had seen countless times before without ever really observing. He was glad she was on their side, whatever side that may be.

"But that's not what we are guessing is it?" She settled herself beside Harry and showed her the tiny image on her screen. "We already knew that, it went without question didn't it? Of course they loved each other. Still do, and that's what matters now isn't it? Not what they were before." She took the camera back.

"Oh look."

Down the hill Mycroft was making his way up holding the two warm looking jackets the boys had shucked before the day had even begun. A warm feeling, oddly like joy, filled Lestrade as Mycroft closer and it became obvious that he was holding the same damn take-out tea cup, crushed and empty in his hands, the remnants splashed on his pant leg and seeping into the dirt somewhere down the path or at the feet of an escaped brainwashed bovine.

Harry laughed and held out her cup. "Want a sip?"

* * *

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"Close your eyes."

The ocean disappeared. The sky. Only the sound of the birds and the wind and the solid feel of the rock, gritty and real beneath him remained.

Hands warm and small and welcoming - soft- and not at all like forcing him took his arms.

The feeling of the ground beneath him disappeared slowly. Not lying down or sitting. Two points of solid beneath his feet and the wind and the sound of birds and warm arms wrapping tight around him and a body against his back and a voice in his ear warm and close and solid and -

"Open your eyes Sherlock."

-John

Like flying

* * *

Sherlock counted their breaths.

Mycroft across the room, barely more than a darkened shape hidden beneath the mass of thick, hand crocheted blankets. Average 16 respirations per minute, in sleep, now, 12.

And John, less than a foot away, sharing the same blankets, the same heat, his face a play of shadow and light because even though it's late and the lights are off and the world is asleep outside the moon is out and John is starlight. Average 20 breaths per minute, not including laughing, John laughs all the time for him and that reminds him of starlight too. But now he takes in 14 breaths per minute, 14 times that he is close enough for Sherlock to watch the rise and the fall of his chest, 14 times that he can feel the air from Johns lungs warm his fingertips that are reached out and so close and not touching.

John is wearing his jimjams, the long ones that seem to cover every inch of him. John says that it's nice, that…it's like a hug all night long. But if that's what he wanted Sherlock would have held him. He wouldn't have minded.

John is curled on his side facing him and beneath his eyelids he is watching a dream, something Sherlock cannot see. It is easy to reach between them, they are so close the sheets do not even dip between their bodies, he rests his fingertips over Johns heart. Light. Barely a touch at all. But he is warm, and his chest is rising and falling and there is a heartbeat just beneath his fingertips now and John is sleeping so deeply that he won't wake up so Sherlock lays his whole hand on his chest and splays his fingers as wide as he can so he can cover as much of his heart as possible.

John, whose face is starlight and who is so loved that even his jimjams hold him close, smiles in his sleep.

Sherlock never wants the sun to rise. He never wants to spend a single night of his life not knowing the way John breathes or the feel of his heart beneath his fingertips. He never wants to forget the way his breath feels warm on his fingers and intimate as a kiss.

But he has to let go.

His hand is cold and empty without John's heart inches away but he has to move it so he does. He covers Johns lips with a single finger and he can't help but think 'soft' but he pushes the thought away as his brown eyes blink open and after a pause, after two heartbeats Sherlock has not felt but knows happened, the lips curve.

The moment is gone and lost forever and they will never be in this place asleep together again but sacrifices have to be made.

John is smiling against his fingers and it is slow and warm and sleepy looking and he doesn't care at all that Sherlock woke him.

John is good like that. He never complains and he almost always wakes just like this. Like he is genuinely happy to see him, even when it is two in the morning and he should be sleep. Even if any other person in the world would have let him sleep.

Sherlock takes his hand back and presses a finger to his own lips, it's unnecessary, John knows how to be silent and untraceable, he would never give them away. But there is a thrill in the obvious gesture, in shushing themselves, like the beginning of a secret yet to be told. It folds over them as they lay in John's starlight, watching each other from a breath away, waiting as the last vestiges of sleep are swallowed in secrets yet to be made.

The blankets fall away and the cold is bracing and how could anyone be asleep now and still be alive? How could anyone stand not being here, teetering on the edge of normal and adventure? How could people breathe when they do not have a John looking at them like that?

The floorboards don't squeak and Sherlock already has his backpack with the dinosaurs packed so all he has to do is shrug it onto his shoulders and lay a hand on Johns shoulder, turning him away from the door that squeaks in the bottom hinge.

They cannot wake Mycroft.

The window when he opens it is silent and easy and the excitement that started with the press of a finger is there, wrapping around his heart and filling him as he sits on the edge and swings his leg over the side.

John looks as him with wide eyes and then Sherlock thinks '_trust me_'.

And John does. The look fades and before Sherlock is fully out the window John is there climbing down after him.

They run the moment they hit the ground. Bare feet sinking into dark grass, the hems of their pants darkening with dew. Their breathes catch as they run not over the path they took in the day but up the hillside through fields of fairy houses and lambs and each breath is drawn into their chests and is exquisitely cold and deep and tingling with how alive they feel with familiar stars twinkling overhead in the black velvet sky.

And as they run their hands catch and hold and their fingers tangle and lock.

By the time they reach the cliffs and it feels like the end of the world because there is no way the ground can simply stop and fall John is laughing as much as he is breathing. Sherlock can't count his breaths like this and his mind stutters as it reaches out for it but it is alright.

They sink to the ground.

Sherlock needs this to be special. Tonight they have to be alive in a way that no one else ever is. They have to overcome the slipping moments of holidays away and smiles that die and are forgotten and going to work and school and the way you can miss the passage of years in the blink of an eye.

He needs to make a memory that lasts an eternity.

In a way that only ever exist when they are together. In a way he hopes no one else can ever be.

Because Sherlock can do this. He can give John this.

This moment needs to burn into Johns mind and be so perfect that it hurts and gnaws at him every time he thinks about it.

He needs-

Sherlock crawls to the edge and lets his feet dangle off the side of the world and he is terrified.

His heart is racing so fast that if John reached out with his fingertips the way Sherlock had and pressed them to his chest, to his heart, he might cry out in alarm. Think he was dying.

He would almost be right.

Half of it, the way his heart is speeding in a way that makes him slow his own breaths before it becomes panic, is that he cannot look away from where the ocean blends into the sky and the starlight blends with the white of the moon and makes the water shimmer and dance and that the wind is cool here but not harsh, like it is brand new, just beginning, curling and forming over the dark blue reaching out in an impossible forever in front of them and it is so much data and not enough at all and there should be so much more-

And part of it is because John has not said a word.

Because he is a warm presence at his side that needs to be there forever. Needs to be surgically attached, because without him everything stops making sense. Because he needs John to be there the way his body needs air in its lungs, because he fits the way chemistry fits into all of the dark crevices of his mind and makes things real, because he is to his heart the way his violin is to thought, interchangeable, synonyms.

And he has not said a word.

John doesn't shiver but his skin is cooling and his bare feet are swinging over the void and still damp and stuck with dark grass. Sherlock pulls the backpack off and lets it fall behind him because everything this close to the edge makes him feel like he is falling. Like everything has a potential to fall away here and be lost forever.

He is careful with the zip and even takes his hand back from John because it is worth it to take the blanket, stolen from Nana's purse, and wrap it around John's shoulders, to tuck it around him and have John look at him like _that_.

Like he has done something brilliant when he is _starlight_ and he has _no idea_.

Please. Sherlock thinks and it is irrational and he doesn't care. _Please._

He needs this moment to permeate John, to seep into every pour, into every dark place and every smile that has yet to be.

Because John has promised 'yes' and 'I do' and 'forever' and he wears his ring around his neck and tells him that it doesn't matter that they are not brothers and he understands everything that matters that goes on in Sherlock's brain, everything that no one else ever could.

_But he doesn't know_.

He doesn't know that he is made of starlight. That everything he does, every thought that goes through his mind is good in a way Sherlock will never be. Because he knows when people hurt, and he knows what is 'not good' and what is 'right' and he doesn't need to think about it at all, like it is natural and innate; and sometimes Sherlock doesn't even know that he is wrong until he hurts someone.

John doesn't know that the world will love him. That friends will be easy for him, that hearts will break for him. That he is so good that he will have no choice but to break himself for the people he loves.

He sits here and smiles at Sherlock like he holds the world in his hands just because Sherlock wrapped him in their blanket at the edge of the world and he has no idea that Sherlock will break him.

Even if he doesn't mean to.

Even if it is the last thing in the world he ever wants to do.

Because Sherlock knows that he is not good; and it is not the after effects of a nightmare or biased or self deluding. It is fact. The way he knows that that the sun will rise and steal this moment and that time will fade the colours of this impossible night into grey memory; and that John is good in a way that can not be helped, a good so deep that it is rooted in his bones and flows through his blood and is as much a part of him as his laughter or his hugs or his smile.

This is the way Sherlock knows that he is not good, the way he knows night will turn to day. Whatever else he may be, whatever he may want to be, he is not _good _the way John is.

John is on the side of the angels.

But _he_ is not an angel.

John does not know this yet; that he is perfect and that every time he does something right and Sherlock does something not good for the whole of their lives it will take John further away from him, it will make him better and more than Sherlock can hope to be.

And eventually, when John finally understands that he is good and is surrounded by people who adore him, people who would be good for him, he might regret saying 'forever', and 'I do' and 'I promise' to someone like Sherlock.

And John might not want to be his anymore.

And he will forget that they had ever been _this_. So close that Johns tears are the silent sob in Sherlock's chest, that his victories are Sherlock's proudest moments.

So he needs this. He needs to create the perfect memory.

A gift.

Something for John to hold onto when Sherlock is being brutal and hurting him because he doesn't always know better. For when John realizes that Sherlock always be in a debt of good that he will not repay.

So when John finally _knows, _when he understands that he can do better than Sherlock, when everyone else is nice and sweet and adoring him without effort and they are all good and simple, John will remember this, which is not _good_ but it will be _beautiful_; and maybe not regret that he belongs to Sherlock. Maybe he will still think 'forever' and be content.

For now John is happy, he is smiling like nothing could ever be as brilliant as this. He untucks the blanket from around his side and curls it around Sherlock, pushing over so that their bodies are pressed close from shoulder down to where their feet hang naked over the abyss.

Sherlock tries not to flinch.

He feels like he is falling.

Worse.

He feels like John is about to fall.

He wants to grab him and _pull_ until they can no longer see the edge. He wants to collapse in the grass and feel the dirt all around him and John's heart _safe _under his palm.

Johns hand is on his cheek and it brushes over his skin as if he is something precious and rare that exists behind the glass in museums. His arm wraps around Sherlock's shoulders tight and the blanket encases them completely dark and soft and warm.

He knows what this is costing Sherlock. And that is the point.

John thinks it is because he is being brave, but he isn't.

He is sitting on the edge of the world because he wants John to remember that this is how far he would go for him.

He would risk falling off the edge of the world.

He would fall, for him.

John still has not said a word.

Sherlock does not break their silence.

They should be in bed. They should be asleep. Safe and unconscious and warm and being utterly forgettable.

But Johns silence is not uncomfortable. It feels like- It feels like John is reaching into his chest and cupping Sherlock's heart in his hands and he is _warm _in a way nothing else is, in a way that never burns.

And John is wearing his ring around his neck. John is thinking 'perfect' and 'forever' and 'I promise' and even 'I could never leave you'.

But John is sweet and good and of course he thinks like that, he is John.

He thinks everyone is as intrinsically good.

And he doesn't even know that he is magnificent.

Which is ridiculous because he is Sherlock's moral compass and his heart and the starlight falls on his blond hair in a way that should drown him out but it doesn't at all, it makes him shine. And he has no idea that sitting on the edge of the world where the wind is new and fresh and cold and the water sparkles in the moonlight like liquid diamonds that he is the most beautiful thing Sherlock has ever seen.

John kicks out his bare feet over the abyss and smiles indulgently at them, the thrill of sharp adrenalin piercing Sherlock at the sight, but it is over quickly. John is pulling his legs back over solid ground and pushing his heels into the rock, forcing himself away from the cliff, the orange blanket is sweeping off his shoulders and tumbling dark orange to the ground.

Sherlock closes his eyes. It is too much motion too close to the edge. He is terrif-

Arms wrap around his chest from behind, they fold over the blanket and a cheek presses against the back of his neck and he is being _pulled_.

They collapse into the sea of grass yards away from the edge. John tumbles onto his back and folds himself back into the blanket, back into his place against and half on top of Sherlock. So tangled that their limbs are undistinguishable; so close that when John's body moves with breath Sherlock can feel blond hair whisper against his cheek.

Sherlock can feel the beat of his heart.

John does not say anything.

It is just one more thing Sherlock owes him.

* * *

A/N: Fellow Sherlockians! Lend me your ears! (All permanent donations will be left in the care of the vegetable drawer at 221B. For science.)

I am going on a mini hiatus…actually come to think of it, I am following Holmes in his Great Hiatus " I spent some months in research into the coal-tar derivatives, which I conducted in a laboratory at Montpellier, in the south of France." Ok, well, maybe without the coal-tar. I trust he has that covered. I will be writing…just not with access to a computer.

I know it is a shameless plug but if you need perhaps just a bit more to read during the hiatus… this is honestly the one piece of completed work I cannot believe came out of me. It is my baby. Ignore the description; I handle seemingly odd plot devices well :)

http:/archiveofourown. org/works/188447/chapters/277114 (remove space before org)

Much love, type to you all soon,


	57. Chapter 57

Sherlock hates him.

No.

That's too harsh a word, too long lasting. And compared to what he had known, to years of his brothers ire, from honest loathing, this, is nothing. Sherlock will still crawl into his lap, still give him a kiss on the cheek and roll his eyes in a way that means 'you may be tolerable'.

Just not today. Not tonight.

Today, Sherlock wants to hate him.

But he is putting on a brave face for John's sake.

Mycroft had made a decision based on their age and their emotional maturity, he could not have consulted his boys. They would never have agreed. They would have fought and screamed. A simple matter then, to take them on holiday and upon their return the alteration would be complete, a fact to accept, not one they could hope to fight.

Sherlock had known about it for days, god only knows how, the information had been classified. Did he have a tell? Had Sherlock looked at the way he grasped his umbrella and deduced that his thumb was too close to his knuckles? Was it the way he blinked? Failed to blink?

Worrisome. But better in the theoretical to be found out by your child than a foreign power.

Again, in the theoretical.

Sherlock had sent John down to breakfast and cornered him alone days ago in the room they shared on holiday. His sleepy face and mussed curls transforming the moment John was out of site, the softness of his curls and inherent in his youthful face belayed by the cold steel of his eyes and sharp brilliance of a biting tongue.

Mycroft did not deny anything. It would have been foolish and honestly, insulting to his intelligence. He simply agreed to Sherlock's accusations and informed the child that his stance would not be changed.

It was the first time since he had by all rights adopted his brother that Sherlock had informed him that he hated him.

That he would never as long as he lived, forgive him.

The honest quick burning hatred was derailed by childish fury and however much Sherlock wanted to lash out and hurt him the words served as proof that this new disposition was a childish whim.

He tried not to take to heart that he was a 'pig headed idiot' and 'if he couldn't even raise two boys no wonder why there was so much war and famine in the world.'

Mycroft frowned but refrained from further action as the niggling of guilt that had caught in his throat choked any words of reprimand.

Sherlock's fury disappeared in a flash and his little body slumped, world weary and defeated, leaning against the doorframe as if it were the only thing keeping him up. Powerless, and suddenly very small in a way that had nothing to do with his size.

The same blue eyes that had a moment ago proclaimed him the worst kind of arch nemesis looked up at him laboriously, the sheer effort of existing draining his life away. His mouth opened to throw another scathing remark but the frown, the pain, was etched too deeply on his face now. The words mutated as Sherlock gazed up at him. A command turned into a plea.

'Don't tell John.'

Mycroft promised.

And when Sherlock took in a breath that was too ragged and he stepped away from the doorframe only to remember that there was not an ounce of life left in him Mycroft dropped to his knees and let the little boy fall into his arms.

A sob was choked into his neck and tears and the wet press of a nose were as distracting as the painful hiccup that convulsed in the little chest and birthed an empathetic hopelessness in his heart. A guilt that _pulled._

Sherlock was begging into his neck. 'Please. _Please _don't take him away from me.'

It did not matter that he did not say anything in return. Sherlock would not have heard a word of it. It was enough to hold him so tight that his feet needn't touch the floor, to soothe his hand down disastrous curls and wait until the hopeless sobs died and were tucked away.

Sherlock pulled back and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Mycroft could feel the wet patch of tears cooling on his skin and he held the little boys waist in his hands. He forced his face to remain passive as tear drenched lashes clumped together around blue eyes.

This had to be done. There was no reason to feel guilty. He was doing the right thing for his boys.

But when Sherlock asked him to stay away for the morning because there was no way he could look at Mycroft and not cry or scream, and then John would know, he promised.

Even though it hurt.

He made his excuses when the others came to take him to breakfast, to take him up to the cliffs. The detective Inspector was annoyed with him but he could do this for Sherlock. He could grant him a few hours reprieve from him if that is what he needed.

Hours later, when he climbed the path alone he was distracted enough to scuff his shoe on a rock and crush his take-away tea in his hands as he saved himself. The tea seeped into his pants and burned just enough to be uncomfortable and the guilt in his chest gave a satisfied sigh and told him it was balance. He felt three pairs of eyes on him as he made the solitary climb, Sherlock had already taken John and hidden him inside his own world, hidden him away from the reality Sherlock had discovered.

Would John hate him too? Mycroft wondered as he reached the top and saw two little boys standing on the edge of a cliff.

After all, it was his fiancé who would be moving across their shared room to a new bed of his own.

* * *

John as an adult was utterly unafraid to show Sherlock exactly when he was angry, why he was angry and exactly what Sherlock could do to make sure John kept making tea and refrained from throwing away every single experiment he found in communal living space. He was also unreservedly frank in what should have been an enormously intimidating meeting with a strange man in a dark suit and an umbrella in an empty car park. In fact John Watson retained his characteristic snark and general smart-ass sentiment while being strapped into a semtex vest by a lunatic which is not only a nod to the incredibly steel of his character but something very few people would be able to claim if put in similar circumstances.

John Watson as a child learned to keep a blank face.

The moment John Watson looked into the bedroom he had shared for all of his known life and saw that two beds now occupied space on opposite walls and a hole like a wound had sunk into the place their bed existed only days ago, he failed to make a single sound.

Mycroft waited.

Sherlock had demanded, insulted, rationalized, and then when all this was battered as ineffective as rain upon a windowpane, he had broken down. He had pleaded as part of the world he had created for himself with its silent rules was destroyed. Children do that to protect themselves, adults even. Humans.

We create myths to keep us safe. There are the simple superstitious myths we laugh at and share freely as useless impersonal thoughts.

Don't step on a crack.

Don't walk under a ladder.

But there are the myths we tell ourselves. The lies we whisper so quietly that sometimes even we fail to hear them.

If I just do not have that cigarette then she will not die today.

If I take the long way to work and do not pass the place I had my accident I will be safe.

_If I keep the idea of my brother alive I will never have to acknowledge that he is never coming back._

Sherlock who has the mind of a scientist or a philosopher, the knowledge of an adult, and the emotional capacity of a child never had a chance of knowing the myths he told himself.

An orange blanket that is frayed and not as vibrant as it once was but that is soft to the touch will protect you from all manner of evil.

Hiding food when the very idea of chewing and swallowing causes your heart to quicken counts as eating as long as no one find out, because the smiles you earn are just as real.

Knowing the pulse of John's heart and the cadence of his breath while he sleeps is knowledge so helplessly intimate that no one else in the world could lay a claim more legitimate or intense.

And being the first thing John sees in the morning and the last thing he thinks about at night is the unspoken promise that no matter who occupies his waking hours he will always begin and end with Sherlock.

As long as they share a bed John will not leave him all alone.

Which is why it has to end.

It is unique to watch, singular developmentally in the debate of nature verses nurture; a lifetime ago Sherlock had trouble seeing anyone as useful let alone necessary. A human heart behind brick and mortar walls_, 'alone is what keeps me safe'_.

And now, that same nature, that same irreparable heart, was paralyzed by fear that he would be left alone.

And now a few self-deluding myths apropos of nothing were adequate to bring him to tears. To make it feel as if it were his life on the line. Or more to the truth, that his reason to live was being taken away.

He could not let Sherlock delude himself into thinking John would stay with him simply by virtue of being the one to count his heartbeats.

He could not put that weight on John.

The full jealous force of Sherlock's great heart was something that needed to be guided with the same care of his great intellect.

And when they emerged from the death of their self-delusions, their safe guards against loss, and found they were not alone they would be closer than ever before. They would know that it was not superstition and ritual that held them together, not continuous proximity, but something invisible and significantly stronger.

Even in this lifetime the guidance of Sherlock's errant heart would not rest long in Mycroft's possession.

John looked at the two beds in their room without outwardly changing expression. His brown eyes were a calm careful blank but there was an internal shift, an understanding of what was taking place instead of a disregarding of an inconsequential change.

The dinosaur bag across his shoulder slipped down to hang in the crook of his elbow. Without skipping a beat John swung it into his arms and walked over to one of the beds as if it had been his aim all along and he had gotten caught up by a momentary fancy. He tossed his things on the light blue bedspread the way travelers might dismissively claim a hotel bed and flashed Mycroft a broad beaming smile that did not reach his careful blank eyes. He marched out the door without a backward look. Sherlock stood in the room with a look of surprise that quickly melted into delight, and with a parting nod to Mycroft, ran after John

This was war.

* * *

The twin beds had been arranged over the holiday away and they themselves had arrived home in the morning, their group having to disband to various places of work. Additionally there were no plans for the day, no tutors coming, no trips into the city, not even a sanctioned activity and Mycroft's work had piled up abominably.

The boys had the advantage of him.

Before breakfast every cushion in the flat had been conscripted as building material for a fort of epic proportions in the living room. This includes any and all cushions which cannot be removed from their respective furniture pieces.

As first strikes go it was mild. Acceptable even.

Mycroft let it lull him into a false sense of bravado and security.

Within the hour which Mycroft had used for a really quite necessary conference call, every solitary curtain had been removed and the hanging parts left to dangle from the windows like bleached bones. The curtains disappeared into the depths of the fort which had by this point been booby trapped. The obvious entryways were 'locked' with cumbersome items, a hindrance for adults whom lack the dexterity shared by spider monkeys and children and more…interestingly with noxious homemade gasses made to disgust rather than harm, small electrical shock devices, and darts of pen ink that launched with trip wires and soaked into clothing with astounding ease as quickly became evidence on Mycrofts wardrobe.

I was childish, effective, and intelligent.

Two sets of eyes peered out of the depths of fabric and cushion, a fort with the look of a fairytale castle. Certainly magic must play some part in keeping it upright and twisted so.

"Hullo Mycroft." Johns brown eyes blinked and opened again too widely, framed by red above and faded yellow below, the fabric cinched around the peek hole. His voice too sharp and happy. "You can't try to break in now, we are still working and we are in the middle of a delicate process right now."

Pale blue eyes turned away from the peek hole, clearly more interested in the boy at his side. Soft breathy laughter matched the way his eyes closed and opened again. Sherlock was taking a back seat in this rebellion. He was enjoying it. The implications of love for him, the joy of annoying Mycroft, the way the little blond with the simple smile could be so incredibly…unique.

This was Johns show.

"Maybe you should go back to work, you did seem to miss it while we were gone." The voice was unchanged and friendly as if he were being asked to tea. But John had chosen not to hide completely, he had not ducked down or pulled the blank mask over his face. If this were an invitation to tea Mycroft would have had to decline. Arsenic is so unpleasant when trying to have something as civilized as tea.

John meant it to hurt. The implication and the accusation were clear but his voice was the perfect counterbalance of angelic child to just a hint of malice. Cutting with a knife so sharp you do not realize until you are bleeding that you have been cut.

For their own good.

This was for their own good.

He nodded at John shortly, nothing more than an acknowledgement, and he left them to it.

By lunch a flag had been erected in the middle of their fort. A pilfered curtain dyed bright shock orange, the lace torn away and the skull beaming from its center, their silent watchman in spilled pen ink and flanked by two inky handprints.

Lunch was a negotiation.

Mrs. Hudson refused to take his calls, pretending to not know how to answer and hanging up over and over again with an 'whoops!', Lestrade told him to fix his own mess, and Harry, texted in a weak moment, wished him the best of luck in an oddly sincere message, against the ex-military child with a grudge and a protective streak. She did not sound hopeful.

Mycroft wanted them to eat.

John wanted nothing.

Everyone wanted Sherlock to eat.

Sherlock wanted permission to leave the fort to use the restroom, but was at loathing to miss anything.

They ended in a forced silence in the kitchen. John watching the food preparation from his place at the table where his military demeanor was at odds with the way his feet did not touch the ground. Mycroft adopted a pleasantly oblivious demeanor and Sherlock quickly escaped to the WC.

Fried cheese sandwiches grew cold on their plates and the milk warm as they waited for Sherlock.

The water in the bathtub began, inexplicably, to run, the sound of water rushing past the kitchen and into where the room Sherlock had apparently gotten lost in. Mycroft decided to hazard a chance at breaking their unspoken cold war reenactment.

"It doesn't change anything. He still loves you." Brown eyes flashed to him, losing their 1000 mile gaze and fixing coldly onto his face. Mycroft found himself wanting to fidget.

"I know." John's lips thinned into a hard line and all of the warmth that had been forced into his voice before was strikingly absent. "And you can also tell me that we are too old to share now, that big boys sleep alone. _I know_."

He was so small. Even for his age, for a child, he was small. Sweet and round-faced and ash blond and always full of smiles and laughter but right now John did not even need to be able to touch the floor to fill up the whole room.

"But that isn't us. We aren't normal." His hands splayed on the table top, fingers scratching at the wood. "Everyone knows, they talk about it when they think we cannot hear them, even our friends." Brown eyes were cold and hard and world weary and betrayed all at once and his voice was devoid of inflection as the worlds were said with deliberate crisp enunciation.

"Strange. Creepy. Alien. Freaks. They don't know what we are and neither do we, but we are _different _Mycroft." His hands curled into fists so tightly that when they released Mycroft expected blood to run free. His brown eyes reflected the pain and horror and suffering and utter hopelessness Sherlock had only days before. _"What if we need this?"_

The water stopped in its rush through the pipes. A burst of laughter trickled down the hallway and wet feet slapped across wooden flooring in something closer to a lopping run than a walk.

The conversation died as Sherlock stepped into the doorway with a beaming face breaking smile that crinkled his eyes and bunched his cheeks and gleaming in a way that meant something for someone has gone horribly awry. His curls dripped discolored water onto the floor, past his bare chest with patches of blue around his neck and past the hand clutching the stained blue towel around his naked waist.

He turned to John.

Sherlock dashed forward to stand at Johns chair and when he got no reaction shook his curls wetly so that they sprayed around his beaming face.

"You said I look good in blue." A blue tinged water droplet caught in his eyelashes and then fell down his cheek in a streak. He reached up with the hand not holding his already precarious towel and ran it through his gleaming dark blue hair. "Now I am always in blue."

Johns mouth opened but had yet to curl into a smile or a frown, his anger at Mycroft leaving him hollow and reeling.

"Not good?" Sherlock asked carefully.

John finally laughed, weak at first and then building into honest joy, tumbling off the chair and sinking his hands into Sherlock's curls, his hands and wrists staining blue.

"You look beautiful." He told him sincerely, shaking his head as he lifted the curls to reveal Sherlocks decidedly smurf-like neck and blue tiger striped forehead. He pushed away the dark blue curl that fell into his eye and tucked it away behind his ear.

"But you look beautiful just the way you always are too."

* * *

Mycroft's work was abandoned for the next hour and a half. John and he called a temporary truce and they met outside the bathroom like two generals from opposing sides who had accidentally married into the same family. Sherlock beaming, blue, dripping, and half naked between them.

The tension dissipated slightly he shucked his coat, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and sat on the water saturated side of the bath, abandoning his normally impeccable attire to disaster and causing Sherlock to let out a surprised giggle at the debauchery.

John, in a slightly rebellious move, that was similarly an act of anarchy and peace, toed off his shoes and climbed into the tub with Sherlock fully dressed, soap bubbles clinging to his top. When Mycroft simply nodded his acceptance of the move the truce was solidified and for the hour and half they spent scrubbing the blue from Sherlock's skin they were nothing more than allies, holding Sherlock's hair out of his eyes as they lathered him with soap, sharing sponges as Sherlock was forced to submit to them utterly, letting his head fall forward and all his hair tumble down and away from his blue shoulders.

His skin in the end was very nearly white and only patched with stubborn blue, particularly his right ear which remained obstinately vibrant. _His hair_-

Mycroft wrapped his arms around the little boys waist and hoisted him up, balanced and held against his chest to gaze in the mirror over the sink.

Sherlock whipped his hair back and forth, tumbling damp curls against Mycroft's chest.

His hair had always been dark but now when it moved and caught the light blue shimmed within the twists of hair. He let out another laugh and his eyes moved up the mirror to Mycroft.

"No. Absolutely not. It's one thing to dye your own head blue, you will leave mine alone." He held the little boy tighter in his arms until Sherlock pulled a face of annoyance and playful affection. "And not Johns hair either." Sherlock looked as if he might be debating the merits of doing just that. It was cheating of course, and Sherlock could see right through him but that hardly mattered.

"Unless you think John needs to change?"

Sherlock squirmed and wriggled and after a moment and a single lifted eyebrow Mycroft let him slip to the ground.

"No." Sherlock said directly to John, hand ghosting over his blond hair and then falling away untouched. "He is perfect."

Food, cold and supplemented with an assortment of biscuits, was taken into the fort and presumed eaten. Or experimented on. Hard to tell.

Midafternoon the fort was finished and the truce abandoned.

Any attempt at breaching the perimeter would turn out rather poorly, he was informed when he squeezed himself into the doorway and stood flush against the wall, the fort reaching out to brush his chest. John explained sweetly, so Mycroft would only have to suffer the ill effects if he chose to do so, the new traps. It was quite clever. Each layer of fort was reinforced with Sherlock's pervasively blue dye and an assortment of confidential and highly convoluted work papers.

He could print them all out again, hardly anything is only on paper in this century, but John had not only found his safe, broken into it, bypassed the biometrics and the fact that he was simply too short for the entire endeavor, and then slipped papers from each file.

There was no way Mycroft could know where data was missing from.

One spill would mean the whole safe, all of the notes in the margins, all of the messages, would be a wash.

John blinked sweetly at him through his arrow hole.

He had made note of each place, he could put them all back just as he had found it, as if it had never been touched at all.

But Mycroft really should back out of the room. Immediately. Carefully.

Sherlock made a sound from within reminiscent of a teenage girl with a crush, of an art student finding themselves tripping through the dark and tumbling suddenly face to face with the Mona Lisa.

Mycroft knew when to employ a tactical retreat.

He edged out of the room without turning his back, burning brown eyes watching his every step with narrowed eyebrows.

He was actually quite proud. Terrified and feeling vaguely like Dr. Frankenstein, but proud.

Mummy would be so pleased.

Supper was a predictable con, really he had been hoping for better from them. But it was effective, and had the sort of brutal efficiency that meant that they would not be able to hold out for forever.

It was John who spoke, this time coming all the way to the mouth of his fortress, letting it spill open to reveal him, shoulders back, head held high. It pained him to use this trump card.

"We will not be eating. We are at a critical stage and cannot abandon our foothold." He gazed up expressionless. Blunt, yes, but gracefully executed.

'We' and not 'Sherlock'. No direct mention of the trump at all. A plausible excuse not directly hindering their ability to eat and leaving out the obvious solution with the double effect of not making it a demand, still a cold war then, and the added bonus of allowing the enemy to believe they had a thought of their own. A slip up however, a worrying one. Foothold.

"I suppose you might be able to manage if something was brought to you?"

Johns smile was plastic explosives. "We might be able to, yes."


	58. Chapter 58

The dishes were taken and returned half filled with food with a look from John that meant something had gone wrong. It could have been anything, a smell, the flick of a hand, a word in a book, a color or experiment that maybe, for whatever reason, set him off. It was not Johns fault. Just as likely to have happened at the dinner table.

John would not see it that way.

His shoulders were slumped with the weight of the world and dark with tears that never had the chance to well but agonized themselves into existence through frustration and barely restrained bouts of panic.

Another day and Mycroft would have swept the boy into his arms and plied him with kisses he would not protest and tell him that tomorrow would be better. But this was not another day. This was war, and this broken defeat was his immanent victory.

War had never seemed so grotesque to him before.

Mycroft clattered the dishes onto the ground and dropped to a knee; tumbling his hand onto John's weary head and messing his blond hair in a way he hoped would earn annoyance but only won belated despair.

Mycroft slipped his hand behind John's shoulder blades and pulled him close, just for a second. Releasing before John could protest. Before Sherlock hidden deep within the bowels of their fort could note that anything was amiss. They had time before that happened. Sherlock would be lost to himself now, not in the memories perhaps but in the disappointment on Johns face, the pain he perceived as his fault echoing and amplifying in the two of them until words would seem too much of an effort to bare.

"Why don't you two sleep in there tonight?" Mycroft dropped his forehead against Johns.

Johns weary eyes blinked and he managed to nod, his hair brushing Mycroft's face.

Mycroft smiled, even though he did not feel inclined in the least to do so. This was no victory.

"Good. I will bring you snacks and movies and books and it will be a proper sleepover. I dare say you already have the pillows."

John cracked a smile.

He stood and let his hand linger on the boys shoulder for a moment before pushing him back towards the fort. Best not to push his luck. This tenuous thread of happiness was hard won. He could only hope that it would catch.

"Go on, back to your fortress. I will come back with everything that will completely ruin my diet."

He gave them another hour before returning, letting the sun fall and whither and night drop around them and gleam in through the half obscured windows. The flat was a hushed quiet of a library as he entered the living room laden down with a bags of goodies, the whispered voices of two children muffled by layers of blankets and pillows and the hushed quality of their own voices.

The whispers stopped and Mycroft had the feeling of eyes turning to him. The soft sound of footsteps against cloth and carpet shuffled closer and John emerged from the main passage way of folded cotton and silk. It had been enlarged since the last time he had seen it. John did not even have to duck his head to step into the open air of the living room with a stack of papers bundled in his arms.

John eyed the bags warily, sizing up their weight, the smells, and the protruding shapes. Whatever he deduced he found it acceptable, even daring the smallest hint of affection as his eyes flicked up to Mycroft's face.

"I organized them." John held out the papers that had been held tight against his chest and Mycroft could see the post-it notes of bright pink detailing each folder and page placement tacked happily to each page in John's small neat handwriting.

None with a single blob of blue ink.

The release of the hostages.

Mycroft settled the bags on the floor and took the offered papers for the gift they were.

John shuffled his feet and stared down at his trailers, scuffing the rubber on the floor. Behind him grey blue eyes peered out of the darkness of their fort. John did not look up until Sherlock had pressed himself against his back and wrapped his arms around John's stomach, still the watcher.

John started but did not shake the hands loose, but rather seemed to be grounded by them.

Although the flush never left his cheeks.

"We were wondering-" John started and then stopped to chew on his lip. "You can come inside if you want. It's safe. We moved things around so that-"

And that seemed to be too much information, too much of a giveaway and John looked down at his feet again.

And John was thinking of how he hated Mycroft and loved him all at once, because that is what you do with people whom you love. He was thinking about their bedroom and the feet which stretched between where they would have to lay at night and how it seemed to stretch for miles. He was thinking about nightmares being fought all alone and growing up and how big boys had to act. He was thinking about Sherlock holding on to him without saying a word.

Brown eyes closed in though and then rose, resting stolidly on his face as he reached a hand up to cover one of Sherlock's twined over his own stomach.

"You are invited to our sleepover." He glanced back at the fort and for a moment his eyes caught on Sherlock and the tightness in his shoulders loosened and when he turned back his eyes were gleaming. "We have incorporated the TV into the structure of the fort." His laughter explaining something of a story behind the remark, something that make Sherlock beam and burry his face against the back of Johns neck in silent amusement.

Johns hand tightened around Sherlock's and when he spoke next it was not the voice of the defeated or of a little boy who only wanted everyone to be alright. It was the benevolence of someone who has everything they could ever want in the world. "You can pick the movie if you like."

Hours later found Mycroft in the open space of the fort center, like a little theater, the roof rising in folds of gold to the top of the screen and pillows laid out on the floor like a Persian palace. Decadence was strewn around them in empty Chinese take-out boxes and bags of candies. Changes that had taken place in the fort before and after his arrival with the bags, accommodations made for his adult size although there was no doubt that they had enjoyed watching him crawl through on his hands and knees, face mashing into a covered chair leg to get inside.

He was leaning against what may have at one point been a bureau but was now only the place where their flag had been placed so it could be admired from the inside like a war trophy. If he turned to look over his right shoulder he would find a blue handprint caught in an eternal wave.

His boys had begun the night at a distance from him but then as food was stolen from foreign containers they came closer, insinuating themselves into his arms the way they had when they were barely more than babies.

But they were not his babies anymore, not even close, and they ventured away again when the movies caught their attention and drew them closer to the screen like moths to the flame, eyes wide and soaking up each moment as if the actions on the screen where their own. And that is where they lay now in the striped shadowed darkness, two bodies tangled on heaps and mounds of pillows where they had collapsed, blankets thrown and tucked over sprawled limbs and brought close to cheeks and tangled hopelessly.

In the darkness Mycroft sat and watched them sleep. He watched the rise and fall of their chests and counted them in the back of his mind like an endless lullaby.

Today it had been John who was the protector, the king in his castle breaking against Mycroft impenetrable forces. It had been John fighting to keep them together.

But tonight it was Sherlock.

John never seemed so very small as he did in sleep, where his personality could not raise him to the size of any man or imagined foe. He was almost swallowed by the swathe of material, his arms tucked tight against his chest and his face pressed into Sherlock's chest.

The taller boy, and from this point on he would always be the taller of the two, seemed more buoyant somehow, floating on top of the pillows rather than engulfed by them with John. His face was clear although in shadow, more peaceful in sleep than he ever managed in manic wakefulness.

It may have been nothing more than a nearly sleeping body gravitating towards warmth or the happenstance of thrown out limbs and an oddly shaped sleeping surface but in the last moments before falling asleep Sherlock tucked John into his arms and then succumbed.

That's how they lay now hours later, although closer somehow in the convening hours. With John tucked against Sherlock's chest and in the circle of his arms so that Sherlock rested his chin on blond hair and his arm tightening around the smaller boy whenever John let out more than a whisper of breath in his sleep.

They looked…perfect. The way people never do but in fairy tales and stories, in paintings that stand not for reality, but for the idea of love.

And that was why he had to separate them. Why this has to end.

Because one day, if they are very lucky, they will end up exactly the way they are now.

* * *

John is sweaty and bruised and dirtied. He toes off his mud slicked shoes at the door and carries the rest of his gear through the flat like a sacrifice through an unseen crowd of saved villagers who watch his bent back with awe and admiration.

His football things are tumbled to the ground as he stumbles through the door and falls to his knees and then, in a final surge of life, falls onto his face, arms spread out at his sides like angels wings.

"The game was fun then?" The cool voice washes over him like water. Electrified water.

"Went alright." John alters his sprawl and watches Sherlock close the book he had been balancing on his knees. The book which had been so adored a minute before falls to the bed abandoned as Sherlock sits on the floor beside him.

Grey eyes peer out of a pale face and past shocking black hair; they examine him ruthlessly, reading every secret. Most people flinch under 'the gaze'. John smiles as fingers fall directly on the small purpling bruise hidden beneath his shirt sleeve. _There is no way he could have known-_

"Lestrade wishes you would come back."

John squirms as Sherlock presses on the bruise, testing it the way he always test new things about John. It shifts Sherlock's hand enough so that his fingers are on unblemished and painless flesh. It is a small bruise. He moves on to the next injury, the shin kick to his right leg. It had been worth it. John moves his leg obligingly as Sherlock pushes down his sock and examines the mark, fingers ghosting over it. John had stopped what would have been the winning goal for the other team.

"Lestrade is a grown man. He can wait until Sunday dinners to see me or take us to New Scotland Yard."

"Our friends miss you. It was more fun when you played with us."

"Your friends. They nod when you express the sentiment. Hardly the same thing."

His fingers have found the last of the new injuries and they make a circuit of old wounds, quick and familiar.

The paper cut from yesterday.

The slight acid burn (Grand-mere had had a fit) on the soft skin of his inner arm.

The bruise on his hip from nearly two months ago from Hopkido and it had not_ even hurt_ at the time because he had been laughing so hard.

Sherlock's fingers splay there, over his clothed, bruised hip. It is the oldest wound. The most familiar. Natural to leave his hand there.

John turns on his back and pillows his hands under his head. Sherlock's steel grey eyes had dropped in thought but now they rose to meet Johns gaze.

"Fine. I miss having you there. And they would be your friends if you let them."

The conversation is an old one, an argument like a worn sleep shirt, you slip it on and wear it without ever seeing the acid burns and singe marks. Sherlock bats away the words he does not require and latches onto what John knows he locks away in his mind as jealous as a dragon with his treasure.

It is not his imagination and it is _not _the 'product of too many adventure novels'.

When John says 'I miss you' calculating grey eyes that make strangers squirm and once, a grown man cry, turn liquid electric blue.

"I am perfectly happy with what friends I do have but if I ever find myself in need of a group of typical, hormonal pre-teens I will keep that in mind."

Johns frown is perfunctory at best, because yes, they are friends, but they may be a wee bit hormonal. They are loud and hyper and a mess of fumbling uncoordinated limbs and all enjoying growth sprits that he personally was not.

Sherlock ignores his frown of disapproval utterly and flops himself on the floor next to John and looks up at the colorful plastic stars.

"I don't see how you can read those books of romanticism and friends dying for one another and staying together against insurmountable odds and after traumatizing events that would obviously rip them apart, and then gel those ideals with the boys on your football team."

John knows Sherlock is watching him. He can feel his laser gaze. So he closes his eyes and lets the smile tug at his lips.

"Not every friendship has to be worthy of fairytales. That's why the relationships in books _get_ books. Because they are something rare and special." He waits, letting the words twist and settle over them.

He turns his head as the words gain meaning with silence, his smile is easy and light and half twisted in dismissive laughter on the brink of existence.

Sherlock's face is calm but his eyes are black wrapped in a razors edge of blue and _hungry_.

John is on his side and pushing himself up onto an elbow to peer down at Sherlock, free hand hovering over the clothed circle settled over Sherlock's heart, delicately touching the ring with a fleeting unconscious gesture.

"What happened?"

Sherlock's lips thin, they are the only hint that he is debating the words he could loose, that he is not ignoring the question but reliving an event with the perfect clarity of a too observant mind.

John presses his hand over the outline of the ring, not forcing it into the bone of Sherlock's chest but cupping it in the yielding flesh of his open palm.

Blue rimmed eyes flicker back from their thousand mile gaze and John can feel the words stuck in Sherlock's throat, the heart pounding too quickly beneath his fingertips and locked in his own ribcage, debating the weakness of telling, of needing help.

No matter how old they get this has never changed.

Some moments don't need words.

John moves silent and lightning fast just like he was taught. John has always been good with fast and silent.

He dumps his weight onto Sherlock and can feel the 'oof' of wind knocked from his chest. He threads his arms around his back and they flip, rolling across the floor and Sherlock's grin is as lightning fast as John's pounce and they are tussling, all muted laughter and knocking hands and elbows until John slams into the wood panel of one of their beds and pins Sherlock's wrists on either side of his head.

John's skin is roughened in places with dirt and he smells like crushed grass from practice but he knows Sherlock doesn't mind.

The melancholy is chased from Sherlock's lips as they repress all but the hint of a smile. They are too close together to fit a hand between them but John can feel the heart against his chest even if he can't really and it is more of a feeling in his mind but words can't explain that and he doesn't ever try to.

John drops his forehead to Sherlock's and they thump together pleasantly and Sherlock smells like tea and lightning and shampoo and he keeps his eyes open but he is too close to see, black and blue and white and John smiles.

"You are an idiot." He says it fondly, the words echo through time, recalling with three words a lifetime. The past and present mingle in the air and they are so close that John can feel his words brushing across Sherlock's skin.

John closes his eyes. He is willing his thoughts into Sherlock's brain. He wants to copy what he knows as fact into the other boy by sheer force of will and physical proximity. He wants him to know all of the things that don't have words, he wants to exist in every corner of his mind and destroy the things that would hurt him, words and dreams alike.

He wants Sherlock to believe him, to know his convictions so doubtlessly that it lights up Sherlock's mind the way it does John's heart.

But he doesn't.

Sometimes John can read Sherlock's mind but Sherlock can't read his.

It is never in silly moments. When it is inconsequential Sherlock will look at him and smirk at the rude joke John did not tell, will agree out loud with plans he never voiced.

Right now, in a moment when it matters, Sherlock is watching his with open eyes that _need_ and he can't deduce John at all.

"I can believe in the friendships in my novels, _especially_ when they die for one another and surmount incredible odds just to stay together. I have you."

John butts his nose into Sherlock's fondly. He releases Sherlock's pinned wrists and begins to pull away to check that the desperation has really left Sherlock's eyes when arms wrap around his chest and he falls onto his side and is wrapped in limbs and drowning in dark hair and pale skin. His cheek where it presses against Sherlock feels like it has a thousand times the nerve endings that it should, like it is more alive than the rest of his body combined right until the moment Sherlock growls into his ear.

"You are never allowed to die. Not for me. I wouldn't- "

And then John knows what happened. Not the fellows at the lab being cruel or the razors edge of doubt suddenly cutting.

A waking nightmare. Like a flash. Like you can age a lifetime in a heartbeat.

John knows what it is when Sherlock turns pale and pushes away his dinner plate with careful, trembling fingers. When suddenly, holding Johns hand is not enough.

John knows because he gets them too. Because sometimes he finds himself scrambling at the doors of cabinets, ducking to crawl inside before he remembers that he is home and home is safe. Some times are worse than others and it is harder to wake up, if wake-up is really the word. Sometimes he doesn't know that he is safe until he finds himself gasping for breath in the dark and pressed between old coats and he has pushed Sherlock into the back of the closet where it is safe and he is holding on so tight that no one could ever take him away, not that anyone had ever tried.

In books John has read it sounds like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but that doesn't make sense because nothing bad had ever happened to them. Mycroft would never let that happen.

So John stays where he is on the floor and holds Sherlock close, and more importantly, lets himself be held.

John can dispute insults and solve problems and make bad people leave them alone, but there is nothing he can do to fight the things in Sherlock's mind. Just like Sherlock can't save him.

But without having to look John knows that the hunger in Sherlock's eyes is fading, that it is being mollified after what could have started hours ago while John was away.

He knows because he can read Sherlock the way Sherlock can read the rest of the world.

He knows because when the situation is reversed and all he can think is _not safe,_ waking up and having Sherlock whole and unbroken and_ safe_ in his arms is the only thing in the world that makes sense.

Time passes and Sherlock's arms loosen and John knows that the worst has passed. He has counted his heartbeats, spent the minutes with his mind carefully blank of anything but the slowing pulse of Sherlock's heart.

Sherlock lets go first, he cuddles him very, very close, and it is like they are little children again, tucked beneath their blankets and holding on to each other like they would never let go. Tight enough to feel…safe. Sherlock's mouth moves against his temple in a word John cannot hear and then the next moment he is sitting up and John is lying on the floor alone watching Sherlock rubbing his nose with the back of his hand and staring at the place where Johns mud has transferred to his clean trousers.

Sometimes John wishes they could go back to being little children again.

John laboriously levers himself to his feet. He needs to change his clothes before Nana catches him getting dirt on everything and Sherlock will be quiet for a few minutes now, a mix between a shyness that never occurred to them as children and letting his thoughts shift into place and waiting for reality to reassert itself.

Sherlock is still studying the dirt stain on his leg, his fingers tracing the shape of it with more intensity than it merits when John picks up his change of clothes and turns to the bathroom. He pauses.

"Would you tell me, if I asked?"

Sherlock takes a deep breath and John expects the words to be strangled the way they normally are. They don't talk about it. Talking makes it real. It makes the horror linger.

Johns back is turned when Sherlock whispers.

"-a pool"

John's heart skips a beat and races to catch up, blood flushes his neck and cheeks and ears and he can hear his pulse like a war drum slamming. He pretends not to hear, the words were mumbled, Sherlock won't repeat it. It cost him too much. He takes a step, another, and he is in the hallway, racing towards the bathroom and locking it behind him as if he is locking out a physical threat and sinks to the cool tile floor, dropping his things to the ground and watching his hands tremble.

John has never been so grateful to be Sherlock's blind spot.

* * *

A/N: Thank you all for the support and your words! This story continues because of you. 3


	59. Chapter 59

Gregory Lestrade arched painfully backward and rolled his shoulders in attempt to dispel the knots that had formed during his afternoon of paperwork. The coffee he swilled back had long since gone cold and somehow more bitter before it hit the back of his throat. He did his best not to taste it.

You know it says something about your life when you take your coffee black so it won't go rancid by the time you finally find your way back to it. Greg just wishes he knew what that something was.

He twisted in his chair, half attempting to stretch out abused muscles but mostly to get the sideward glance of the outside world through his solitary window. Outside. Where crimes were being perpetrated. Where he should be.

And nurses and doctors should spend time with patients rather than charting and teachers with students rather than budget meetings, but as much as misery loves company it doesn't make him feel any better about it. Maybe Sherlock had had the right idea with his freelance work. No paperwork.

Of course Lestrade had always ended up doing mounds of extra and somewhat creative paperwork for Sherlock.

Sherlock had been something that could stand on its own. He did not need the force to stand behind him, even if it sometimes did. Greg needed that, the badge and the comradery of being part of something, and yes, the help.

Greg was a good leader, a good worker and his people respected him. But he was no Sherlock.

He could never inspire the world to fall around him like Sherlock had.

Best stick to his police work and just deal with the bloody paperwork.

His mobile vibrated in his pocket just as the phone on his desk started trilling.

With a sigh he put down his pen and purposefully ignored where the ink smudged into the cracks of his right hand. He fished his mobile from his pocket and thumbed it open with an aborted eye roll without reading the incoming number.

Probably Mycroft. For a man who hates texting he has thrown himself into it with vigor Greg would call spiteful if it were anyone else. Just because he had rung him back that time and informed him that proper phone calls require a give-and-take and not just a barking of ord-

'Bit of trouble- SH'

Greg picked up the phone.

* * *

This is exactly how he wanted to spend his Friday evening.

The constable knocked on the door and ushered in two not-quite teenagers in front of him.

Their shoulders were slumped and their heads hanging low. Sherlock sniffed desperately as if he might at any moment shatter to pieces on the carpet and start to cry, his thick eyelashes clumping together with tears.

The constable, new to the job and nervous, stood at an awkward facsimile of parade rest and looked at him with the unbelievably relieved eyes of someone who has no idea how to handle children, particularly ones on the verge of tears and apparent complete disintegration.

The constable cleared his throat awkwardly, trying not to appear as desperate as he was to hand off his burden. "They were caught trying to break into the evidence lock up Sir. When they were apprehended they asked for you."

Greg watched the diminished figures shuffle together, the back of a hand wiping a small nose, John's arm curling over Sherlock's thin bird like shoulders, each of them disappearing into the weight of the other. John soothed a hand over his friend's curls, dipping his head to whisper something that made Sherlock bury his face in John's shirt collar.

"I know this is not protocol but-" The young man swallowed uncomfortably and took a step forward, lowering his voice as if he imagined children could not hear the slightly lower register, the look of panic warred with one of pain. "Sir, Margret, the secretary down in evidence lock-up, she is still crying. The boy just lost his mum-" He chanced a look back at the boys still standing just inside the door and winced at how much more broken they looked. "They just wanted her locket but it must have been on her body when she was –murdered- sir." The constable was flushed, anxious at having to tell the whole story in front of the boys and a superior and beginning to look slightly ill. "When they asked for you I just-"

Lestrade held out a hand to stop him.

"Was there any damage?"

The young man cleared his throat and shuffled back into his aborted parade rest stance.

"J-Just Margret Sir."

"Right, well I expect you can sort things out downstairs. Thank you constable, I can take them from here."

The door shut so quickly behind the retreating man the sound echoed through the area. Luckily no one else would be hanging around this late on a Friday night. God if the old crew came in now and saw these two little boys standing in his office looking like…

God, like Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Sherlock sniffed and looked up at him through tear stained lashes, head resting on Johns shoulder like the picture of agony itself.

"Stop it."

Sherlock grinned.

Lestrade frowned.

"Sherlock there is a woman crying down stairs! And this is police headquarters, you cannot just waltz in!"

Utterly unrepentant Sherlock bounded to the window overlooking the city he had just been daydreaming over. He threw a cheeky grin over his shoulder.

"Well we don't have mums. For all we know it could be true."

"That is a terrible excuse, I expect better from you, God knows you are capable of thinking up better alibis. And you probably just traumatized that woman! How did you get here anyway? Does anyone know where you are?"

Sherlock abandoned the window and made as if to stand casually by the desk next to an open case file. Ice blue eyes darting across the upside-down text.

Greg closed the folder and with a smirk put it on the highest shelf in his office, which, while terribly childish and petty, was amazingly satisfying to be able to do.

Sherlock frowned at the folder and sat on the edge of the desk instead. "We did them a favor. The constable will go down and comfort her now and finally work up the nerve to ask her out. Without us they could have been dancing around each other another six months and when, in all probability, she gets fired in three months for all those international personal calls, they will already be an established couple."

Yes. This is exactly how he pictured his Friday evening.

"I didn't hear that." Greg closed his eyes against the migraine building behind his eyes. "You can't just go off and disappear. People need to know where you are." People like body guards. How the hell had they slipped their body guards?

The tugging on his sleeve made him open his eyes, right into Sherlock's open eyes. There was no fake smile, no more tears, just that wide-open look of not quite understanding that Sherlock never lost as an adult.

"You know where we are." Sherlock released his sleeve and held out a hand blindly behind him for John to take. "And I was bored and Mycroft is being boring and you never take us here anymore. Are you ashamed of us?"

And Sherlock wasn't shamming him. He was not feigning anger or upset. He was serious.

God _damn_ it-

"Of course I am not ashamed of you." He watched John step closer and take Sherlock's hand. The two of them watching him, picking apart every detail with all too familiar eyes. And John had gone along with Sherlock's plan, escaping, breaking in, Sherlock would do it if he were bored but John…

John who had asked if they could go to work with him. Who had smiled even while he said 'No' and told him that it was okay, that he understood. Like he had not just been rejected by someone who was supposed to love him-

They actually believed this.

His heart sank into his stomach, thick and heavy with dregs of cold black coffee.

"Why would you think that I am ashamed of you?"

"Because we are freaks. Everyone says so." Sherlock blinked up at him, the picture of calm detachment except that his fingers were curling tight around John's hand. He was trying desperately not to care. John was looking at him with the same blank face that said 'I did not shoot the cabbie.'

"Everyone says- Sherlock is that why you quit football?"

"I quit because everyone there is dull and stupid except for John and occasionally you."

"Of course you did." Greg ran his fingers through the hair of his temples, an exercise that only ever made it stick out like a mad man but at least it expressed his feelings on the matter accurately. "That isn't where this is coming from at all. Well listen, 'everyone' is wrong. You are not freaks and I am certainly not ashamed of you."

"Then why don't you take us here anymore?"

"It is where I work! This is no place for children."

"But it is interesting here! And you took us before and you did not seem to have a problem with it. Why change that now unless you are ashamed of us?"

Sherlock was getting frustrated, his lower lip quivering with building rage. He had built himself up to be called a freak and now Lestrade was just prolonging the torture by making him ask for it. He was demanding to be insulted so it could at least be on his terms. But it was John who surprised him. Mild, sweet mannered John with his blinding smiles for everyone he met. John was squaring his shoulders, tightening his mouth. He took a half step in front of Sherlock and closed his eyes tight. He looked like a child preparing to be struck.

His hands sunk to his sides.

His coffee stained heart gave a painful lurch like small fingers had twisted a blade in it.

He was going to vomit.

Sometimes it was too easy to forget that they were not normal children, even brilliant ones. That they did not start off with a clean slate, that they fought every day against demons no child can reconcile and without even knowing why. They fought so hard to make it easy for everyone else to forget; their smiles, and their laughter, and the long silences behind their closed door.

Greg has been called to the scenes of murdered children. He has seen hopelessly small bodies broken and mangled to the point that he was glad they no longer felt it. He wonders how close the world came to losing John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, before they ever even had the chance to grow up.

Too easy to picture it.

He does not give Sherlock the chance to think, it is a trick he learned years ago. He takes two steps towards the desk and the next moment he has Sherlock trapped in a hold that is meant to be an embrace, his arm sweeping him off the desk. Sherlock is stunned momentarily, his rage and his pain cut off and derailed and that is all the time Greg needs. By the time Sherlock starts to struggle weakly John is in his other arm, brown eyes blinking open in shock and arms reaching around them, pressed against them both. John melts into his arms like has been waiting for him.

Gregory Lestrade has never hugged Sherlock Holmes, never in all of their years together.

Like clutching a live grenade to your chest.

The two boys are all limbs and heat and messy curls he is holding against himself.

And it feels-_right_.

* * *

The ceiling is white above him, plain and tiled, but he stares up at it as he speaks. He is out of practice. Bad at this. He is aware of his heart racing in his chest. He swallows and he knows they feel it. "You two are the most important people in my life. So don't insult me by asking if I am ashamed of you. I am proud to know you. All right?"

Sherlock has fisted a tentative hand into the side of his shirt and John is holding onto both of them and he is beginning to think that it is not so hard, taking care of these two. He could have even been a good dad. He chances a peek down at them and watches a cheek rest against his chest. Quiet. Thinking. Judging his words and his action and weighing them against the worries in their minds.

Of course that is exactly the moment when the doorknob begins to twist and a voice calls through the door. "Sir? Everything alright in there?" The door opens before he can respond.

Sally Donavan.

_Fuck._

"Oh-" He can see the thoughts passing over her face. The first flash of embarrassment for having walked into something, and then the change in her stance when she registers two children alone with him and in his office, on a Friday night, without a case with children going on, _and in his arms_. And then Sherlock pulls away, his walls shooting back into place. Blue eyes and sharp cheek bones and black curls standing protectively in front of an all too familiar sandy haired boy already reaching out to take point.

Her mouth drops. Her face twists for just a second into something more menacing and then falls away as she schools her features into careful blankness. She crosses her arms and then uncrosses them a moment later so that they hang awkwardly by her sides.

Greg's mind is racing. His heart is pounding.

The boys will find out. About themselves. From Sally Donavan of all the people in the world. Freaks.

But children, would she say that to children? Even if they- No. No, Sally is an adult, she is smart, she wouldn't. She will wait until she knows for sure. No leading the witness. No name dropping. Not with children.

They can convince her not to tell anyone. He can tell her that they are nephews of themselves. Mycroft can pay her off- _Mycroft_. Mycroft will have her sent to Siberia, if she is lucky. Have the body guards noticed the boys missing yet? Maybe he can keep Mycroft from knowing.

It only takes her a fraction of a second to put her most docile smile on her face, the one she uses for victims she thinks will break, the one for injured animals trapped in a corner. She puts her hands on her legs and crouches until she is eye level with John. She ignores Lestrade with every fiber of her being.

"You boys alright here? Do you need help?" Her smile widens. "Come on, we can have some biscuits out here in the bullpen and talk."

It is Greg's turn to let his mouth hang open.

Sally offers a hand to John, John who looks young for his age, she smiles placidly, demeaningly.

Sherlock snatches Johns hand in his own and sits casually back on top of the desk. John is watching the exchange calmly, brown eyes taking it all in silently. But when Sherlock sits he lets himself be pulled in closer and leans himself casually against the other boy. Some of Sherlock's sudden cold burning fire ebbs with Johns calming proximity.

"We are not being abused if that is what you are going to ask. No one is touching us inappropriately." He rolls his eyes and they narrow slightly as they take in the woman standing in front of them. "Not really the best way to stay on good terms with your boss is it? Suggesting something untoward is going on?"

Sally's smile is strained; Greg is actually worried she might pull something if she continues like this.

"I am not saying they are." She swallows and Greg can see it. The way her gaze washes over them and back to him. The way they look too much like them. She is putting together his failed marriage, how messed up he was after Sherlock and John 'disappeared', the odd jobs, the bizarre hours and sudden holidays. Her eyes flicked to him. "Did someone bring you here? Do your parents know where you are?"

Greg is torn between insult and pride that she would go with her gut.

Sherlock was not torn in the slightest.

He clutched John closer, closing his arms around Johns chest and his mouth opened and Lestrade knew he was going to say something too adult, too _Sherlock_.

"Donavan." He barked before Sherlock could utter another word, three sets of eyes turned to him. "Leave it. Do you honestly think they are in danger with me?"

The woman stood, abandoning her façade. He expected suspicion, disgust, fear, anger, what he did not expect etched into her face and creating deep painful hollows, was pity.

"No, I don't." She squared her shoulder, ready to take on the burden of the words she refused to hold back. "But I can see you getting too involved in whatever case these two have for the wrong reasons. Sir, -this isn't healthy. I think you may be a danger to you." He watched her eyes dart back down to the boys on the desk. To Sherlock building up walls against them, ready to be explained away, dismissed, to John holding them together.

Two friends that he had lost.

How long had he mourned them?

"Sir-" She took a step forward. "Greg. They are not-"

"Donavan. I would like you to meet my godsons." He crossed the space between them in the deafening, thick, silence and put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, claiming him and John as a whole. He could feel their shock. Two sets of eyes on him, weighing this new unpredicted action. He could feel their fear melting away in the inch that Sherlock drifted towards him, in John reaching out to take a fistful of his jacket in his hand.

It was nice to finally surprise Sherlock Holmes; he would have chuckled if it would not have ruined the moment. Instead he kept his head high and met Sally's shocked and quickly becoming embarrassed face. "They came to visit me and I have kept them waiting."

He smiled down at them and because he could, because right now there would be no fight, he ruffled Sherlock's messy curls. John laughed.

"Ready to go?"


	60. Chapter 60

The thing about families, all families, whether you are born into one or surround yourself with people you love until they become your family, things always go wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect family. No such thing as a perfect life.

Sometimes love is not enough, and sometimes…it is too much.

The boys would never say so, but Sundays have always been their favorite day. When you ask them what their favorite moment in a week is they tell you all the things that make them unique. They talk about martial arts and fencing, they talk about the violin and chemistry, spend long enough talking and John will list your organs and the actions of each the way a college professor would, Sherlock will look at the same body and tell you what you had for a snack yesterday before bed. And they do love those things, the mad, busy moments of their lives. Learning things they never truly forgot, things that once upon a time, made them the happiest they could have imagined being.

Only, when they tell you, when you ask, there is a hesitance. A slow, soft kind of look and if you really quite lucky, a smile that says 'you already know'. And then they tell you Football. Chemistry. Literature.

But the things is, on Saturday nights they almost always sleep well. They wake up on Sunday and wander around in their half wakeful daze and fall into the couch together whispering, and if you walk through the room two pairs of eyes follow you and it does not feel like being watched. It feels like walking through a room of beautiful paintings and meeting the adoring eyes of each painted figure and imagining for a moment that these creatures can see you. That somehow they gaze out from their beautiful worlds, and they love you.

Sundays their flat slowly fills with people. Mrs. Hudson is always first, cleaning away things that you did not realize where even there until she was sweeping it away with a 'tisk', bending to place a kiss on each of her boys, her bag of 'just in case' hanging heavy at her side with the promise of presents Mycroft insists will 'spoil' them.

Next is always a toss up. Normally it is Harry, waltzing in the door as if she were secretly Queen of it All and somehow bringing the outside breeze in her wake. She is the mad energetic blond who pokes fun at them for still not being dressed at noon and then takes them out to laze about in the sun or to some 'normal childhood fun' that they will make fun of later. Then she gives them too many sweets and holds them when they crash from the sugar.

Sometimes it is Greg Lestrade who comes first. He always comes with a pile of work under his arm that he always has every intention of doing and then never touches. He will let Sherlock slink around him, blue eyes on the folders, he will let John distract him, and then he catches them both in his arms as a small hand reaches for the papers and drags them both to the couch. They all laugh and Sherlock pouts, even though his face is straining against a smile, and Greg will tell them stories. Sometimes he we will give them a folder he put together that morning and the three of them end up on the floor with pictures and clues scattered all around them, Sherlock pacing between paper clippings and photos or flopped on the ground with his fingers steeple beneath his chin. The ending is never too bad and no one ever dies, but sometimes the bad guys gets away. On those days John makes sure to tell them both, Sherlock gazing up at him as if he were a reservoir of all the hidden knowledge in the world, and Greg with his self-depreciating smile, that sometimes the bad guys win, and that it is okay. And always, no matter what the case was, they both believe him, this little boy telling them it is okay.

Sometimes, and Mycroft is starting to suspect that they communicate what weeks they will get to preoccupy the boys first, Greg and Harry show up at the same time, one of them carrying enough take out teas and coffees for everyone like a benevolent barista god of good will. And then all four end up scattered on the floor with clues or running through an aquarium with sweets in their pockets.

Mrs. Holmes is always last. Coming in while the others are still out or lost in the midst of a game and she will sit with Mycroft with cups of tea that are usually forgotten minutes into the conversation. The boys always come to her when they have finished, interrupting with tales of victory and embraces that sometimes flow over to Mycroft the way they do with younger children with enough vivaciousness to fill the room. A head on his shoulder, a hand pulling at his shirt as the other boy spins out the story of their adventure.

Sometimes Mycroft forgets himself. Forgets Mummy is watching him, seeing the child that was once hers happier than he had ever been with her. They come and fist a hand lazily into his shirt and he pulls them into his arms. They laugh and curl into him like they have not yet outgrown him. Like they are still his.

And if he has John in his arms, laughing or pressing his face sleepily into his neck, grey-blue eyes watch him, the story stutters and then continues. And when they are headed to dinner and John and Mummy lead the way and Sherlock will lag behind, blue eyes catching. Mycroft catches him up in his arms and lifts him off his feet and Sherlock wraps his arms around him tight and doesn't say a word.

Dinner itself is the purported reason for coming, ignoring that most of the guests arrive well before noon.

When the tradition first began dinner was usually catered by Mycroft's people, dishes delivered by stern faced people in black suits for everyone and then a few plates made in their own kitchen under watchful blue eyes in the hopes that Sherlock would find something to eat. Now Sunday dinners seemed to be equal parts people wandering into the kitchen on a whim and cooking and cartons of take away scattered over the table. The hesitance and decorum of years before had long since melted away and as their family grew dinners grew rowdier and more playful.

Sherlock never ate a lot, but when everyone was there, and telling stories and laughing and John was sitting next to him ready with a word and a whisper, no one worried that he wouldn't find something to eat.

This Sunday Sherlock and John were still sitting together on the couch, Sherlock lazily fingering his violin, his bare feet ticked beneath John who was talking too low for anyone but Sherlock to hear. Mrs. Hudson had come in and placed soft kisses on both of their heads, the boys pretending not to feel it so they would not need to react the way all the other boys their age did, with annoyed scrunched faces. But when she wandered away they both had smiles on their faces that had not been there before. Sherlock's plucking became almost a tune, light and simple.

Mycroft got the alert before she ever entered the main door. He could have stopped her before the boys even knew she had arrived. Could have her taken away where the boys would never have to see what she had done.

But he didn't.

It was a choice.

He gave the word and the guards allowed Harry to pass through undeterred, her steps weaving slightly, her eyes glassy. It was her choice to come here.

He couldn't protect them from the world. He could try in vain to protect them from the past, he could keep evil at bay, but they would always have their own demons warring with those of the world.

And it was better to learn this way wasn't it? Through them, through the mistakes of others rather than letting them fall on their own?

The loved one falling back into drink.

They had to know what the world could make them do.

Harry would understand. Later.

John-

John who was still his little boy, who seemed to be made of nothing but good, of smiles and laughter and giving too much of himself without a second thought. The boy with too much darkness in his past to begin to fathom, the child who was still haunted by things that happened in another lifetime and hid the screams behind a smile.

The man and the child that had made Sherlock Holmes come to life.

He had to know that if you are not careful you can become the demon in the night. The aunt drowning in drink, the man gambling away his life.

He had to remember that he could defy a predisposition of genetics. He had remember why he had to.

And a memory is so much more tangible than a dream.

So he let Harry in.

The second Harry stepped into the room the boys went still, frozen as statues. Eyes fixed on her and silence fell in a way that made you long for sound. Her bleary eyes turned to them and the emotions were written across her face as clearly as if they had been words. There was sorrow and love and desperation and heartbreak and a desire to not be alone so fierce that it seemed to pour off of her like a miasma that threatened to fill the room.

She took a step towards the boys.

John flinched.

He wanted to be invisible.

Mycroft stepped out of the shadows.

"Harriet sit down."

She obeyed the order, collapsing into the chair closest to her and just feet from the boys, her head falling into her hands limply. Up close they could see the redness of her eyes, the tear tracks stripped down her face. They could smell the wine clinging to her breath and clothes.

Every muscle of John's body was taunt and ready to fight or flee, his eyes were blasted wide open but he was so still he seemed not to breathe, a perfect doll.

"How much did you drink?" She looked up at Mycroft with eyes too much like Johns. Counting in her saturated mind the hours and the bottles.

"Three bottles." It was Sherlock's voice, thin and vulnerable as he looked between Harry and John. "Three bottles since this morning. Since she ran into Clara."

Harry broke down. Her short blond hair covered her face, swinging around her hands as she cried into her fingers, her voice muffled and choked. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I saw her and I always imagined that she was happy without me, but I saw her and she-I wasn't there for her- I wasn't- and I wanted to be here but it was too early so I just had one drink. I wanted to come here because you boys are the only thing I have not messed up and I wanted-" She looked up as a sob choked her and she was not the energetic, lively, beautiful aunt they loved. She was a ruin. Her face was a disaster of tears, of anguish and blackened sorrow, and all of that agony was directed at them in eyes that echoed Johns.

"I'm sorry John- I never wanted this. Sherlock you have to promise me, you have t-"

"Stop it." Sherlock's wavering voice cut into her drunken litany.

She looked at him and took a breath that filled her thin body. Her eyes filled with determination and the dedication of a drunk, blind to everything but what she needed to say "Sherlock you have to take c -"

"STOP IT!" His scream stopped their hearts, tearing their eyes to him.

Sherlock was up, his violin crashed to the ground, his bow thrown to the floor and he was standing as tall as his eleven year old body would allow. His grey eyes cutting and cold, and more human than they had ever been.

"You are hurting him! He is shaking!" Sherlock was screaming. He was fury. It rippled off of him and arrested the attention of every person present, a power a child should not possess.

And he was right. John was not still. He was trembling.

Sherlock turned, his knees sinking into the couch in front of John, blocking the other boys view of Harry and forcing two far off brown eyes to come back to him. Two pale hands ran through dirty blond hair.

They were intruders watching an intimate moment as Sherlock bent to kiss Johns forehead, stealing one more moment to fortify himself, to be strong enough, before he looked back into Johns eyes. Their noses touched, and Sherlock tried to be the whole world for him.

Whatever he saw in John's eyes in those moments Sherlock was sure he could move him. That John would not fight him, that he would trust him, even if he was scared. He pulled John off the couch and for just a moment, into his arms. They were moving, Sherlock always staying between him and Harry. Slender white arms touching and bullying John as he moved like a wooden puppet, without thought, without his grace. Lost in a nightmare of a dream.

Mrs. Hudson was at the door before another word was spoken. She took in the scene in an instant and hurried forward, her skirts flaring out, a single sympathetic look for the room and then all of her attention was on her boys. There was no wondering where her loyalties ,or her heart, lay. She flew forward with the speed of a woman half her age and bundled them off together, arms curling around them as she whispered promises of tea and safe places. A wall of sheer will and love between John and Harry.

And then they were gone.

Harry stared at the place they had disappeared, her thoughts slowed by the drink but not stopping the tears from leaking from her eyes.

It had been worse than Mycroft had thought. A grave miscalculation. He meant it to be a lesson. He never dreamed John would be so affected-

The horror in his eyes, the way he shook.

Sherlock's screams.

Memories too close to the surface.

They sat in silence, Harry and Mycroft, weighed down by guilt of their actions and the suffocating pain that had been left behind by the people they were meant to protect. The horror of what they had done and the scars it might leave.

Mycroft could have stayed that way for days. Lost in thoughts and the melancholy of poor decisions, sinking into a strange lethargy, too shaken by his failure to offer help. His helping is what had hurt them.

He should never have exposed John so crassly. He could still hear Sherlock screaming in his mind. His cold-burning eyes looking straight into him, accusing him. 'You are hurting him!'

Gregory Lestrade had no such compunctions. He walked in with a smile like the first day of a holiday away and four paper cups still warm from the shop. His 'Hello' died on his lips.

He knew them, knew what had happened. Harry sloppy drunk and crying, the way Mycroft would have used her. He sighed and closed his eyes, it was a habit he indulged in when he felt the world was going mad every time he turned his back. He put the drinks down on the ground and left them, jogging further into the flat. It was one of the things that made Lestrade an excellent Detective Inspector. He never lost the bigger picture; never let himself crumble beneath the weight of too much pressure.

He never lost sight of what really mattered.

He came back in minutes. Running his hands through his hair and fetching the drinks from the floor. He put them on the table and sat down on the settee, reassured that they had waited for him, that nothing important had been discussed in his absence. He motioned for Mycroft to sit with a world weary determined gesture that did not broker discussion.

Greg leaned forward, his body bent like Atlas, arms resting on his legs as if the weight of the last minutes was tangible, resting on his shoulders. But when brown eyes looked up at Harry they were clear, ready.

"Now tell me from the beginning."

Harry scrubbed the tears off her face, soaking them into the damp material on the edge of her sleeves and staining it dark and obvious against her light blue blouse. Before she could draw her hands away her face was a mess of tears again, water slipping down her cheeks, eyelashes clumping, her blond hair tangling as she pushed it forcefully behind her ear as if it were the source of her anguish. She stared at the floor, wringing her hands.

"Just bring him back. If you bring them back I will stop. I need to apologize- I need to show him- I-" Her words were dark and quick and wet. Determined as wine, as a desperation that has no resolution, a child begging for it not to be real.

"They are gone Harry." Greg met her eyes, watching as rage flared and muscles tensed, ready to scream, to spiral into a self-destructive rampage. He never changed position, that same world weary posture, the same look he gave her every time they had a fight, every time they went out for dinner to talk about how fucking weird their lives were. "I sent them with Mrs. Hudson." He pushed a warm paper cup into her hand and motioned for her to drink. Harry hesitated, torn between the energy of rage and the lethargy of guilt.

"Was he-"

Greg took another cup and handed it to Mycroft, fixing him with his best DI 'don't-push-it' look. Mycroft accepted the paper take away cup after a moment of hesitance, as if he knew the effect it would have. As he settled into the settee with his cheap cup it made him look like one of them, drawing away from his immaculate suit and untouchable air, guilt and worry tingeing his features and making him look inexplicably worn. Making him human. Three refugees huddling together after a storm.

"John will be fine, Sherlock was holding onto him when I got there and there was this look on his face-" Greg paused and shook his head as if to refocus himself. He looked directly at Harry, knowing he was telling her what she already knew, letting her take comfort in the words. "I don't think there is any better place for John right now than where Sherlock is."

Greg cleared his throat and sat back. "Now, like I said, why don't you tell me from the beginning?"

John is safe from her. Two doors separate them. Two doors and space and carpet and Nana and him and he won't let her touch him.

And John is breathing and holding his hand; but he is not smiling or laughing. He is not looking at him and reading his thoughts. Not telling him that he is okay and that he doesn't need to worry. Because he is not okay. The pulse Sherlock is counting under his fingertips is bounding and quick, fear is pooling in John and washing over him, rising so fast that he might drown. His cheeks are flushed and his breath is quick and shallow. The skin under his fingers is hot with blood and panic.

Sherlock will protect him.

More doors, more space and air and carpets and floors. More people between them. Separating. Protecting.

And then when they are alone and safe Sherlock will fix John. He will make it better. Because he is older now. Smarter. Things can be different now and he doesn't have to be helpless when John is hurt. He is the only one that can help John. He knows he can.

Because when John hurts, he hurts. He can use that.

But this is not like the nightmares and the man haunting them. John is not lost in dreams. It is different.

How is it different?

Why?

John squeezes his hand hard; Lestrade walks in with a face that crumples when he sees them.

Two doors and Nana and Sherlock and now Lestrade. Good. Better.

Sherlock folds John against his chest. He is warm and solid in his arms, in a way that shouldn't be shocking but somehow it is. Johns rests his head on Sherlock's shoulder, hiding in the darkness of his neck, dark curls brushing his cheek. Sherlock can feel eyelashes brushing his neck as John closes his eyes and inhales, and the patterns of his breath deepens and slows against him. He can feel it on his skin, in the rise and fall of his arms wrapped around Johns back.

He lets Sherlock hold him. And John's arms wrap around him and his fists curl into the cloth of his jimjams. Holding onto him like he is the only solid thing in the room.

He holds him in front of everyone. It is something he has not done in a long time. John would never stop Sherlock from holding him- he would never push him away- but he has not held onto him like this since-

Sherlock holds him tighter, secure in his arms, and thinks. 'I will never let you go.'

Lestrade is talking to Nana. Sherlock is trying to listen. He has to protect John. But John is in his arms and if Harry comes in then Sherlock has him so it will be okay. And it's just auntie Harry, and Sherlock will explain why she is broken again and John will forgive her when he hears about Clara. So he doesn't listen to them, not really.

He is listening to John breathe.

All he can do is nod when Lestrade asks them if they want to go with their Nana for the day. And he is speaking to the rhythm of Johns heart beat and it is distracting. Like John is erasing the rest of the world, making order of the mad screaming chaos and taking the logical parts of his mind that race in circles every moment of every day and filling it with the cadence of a heartbeat that leaves room for nothing else.

When Lestrade goes off to get their coats and their boots Sherlock doesn't say a word about still being in their pyjamas. He doesn't care.

Sherlock let's go of John reluctantly and feels his heart lurch as Johns embrace tightens as if he cannot stop himself. Sherlock takes both coats as Lestrade comes in and drops his own to the floor. Lestrade and Nana huff at him. He doesn't pay them any attention.

John would not want anyone else to touch him right now.

John lets him thread his arms through the sleeves without a word. He doesn't even look up. Sherlock is zipping it up carefully. He doesn't want to catch the material in the zip. John hates when that happens and later when he can notice again, he will know Sherlock was careful for him.

Brown eyes look up just as fingers stop under his chin.

Sherlock was right. John is not being chased in a dream or a memory. It is there, that haunted look of terrible lingering things, but it is pushed back, under control. Like recovering from a nightmare and knowing that you are safe. John can still see him but he is lost the way Sherlock gets lost sometimes. Stuck in his brain, thoughts taking over and shutting down the parts of your mind that let you speak and function and be alive.

Sherlock will speak for him until he can speak again. He will protect him and take care of him until John can be alive with him again.

He is emboldened by the look, by the ghost of John's hands curling into his pyjamas and breathing against his skin. He tips forward and kisses John on the nose. If John were okay right now it would make him laugh, instead brown eyes watch him. They don't leave him.

Sherlock throws on his own coat and doesn't bother to zip it. Lestrade brought their wellies because it is raining. They look ridiculous in sleep clothes and rain boots and coats but they are easy to slip on so Sherlock does and holds Johns hand and prompts him to do the same, the motions as thoughtless as a doll, only functioning enough to trust in him. Because he trusts.

Sherlock doesn't let go of his hand as Nana leads them out the back door and into the waiting car as body guards slip around them pretending to be unseen. He doesn't let go as Lestrade holds up as hand in a silent goodbye, or as the door slips closed and they slip into the rainy streets of London.

They drive silently, the three of them ensconced in the back of one of Mycroft's black cars. Nana hesitates and she looks at them as if deciding something profound. Sherlock has pushed himself into the corner and pulled John between his legs to hold him back to chest, arms coming around his slender belly. Because if it were Sherlock, when it is Sherlock who gets lost, when John holds him it makes him feel like he is not alone.

John should never have to feel alone.

John is holding on so tight to the arms around him that Sherlock's bones ache beneath his grasp and nails are biting crescent shapes into his flesh, he doesn't say anything.

Whatever Nana sees in them makes her decide, it is there in the set of her mouth and the crease in the corner of her eyes. She looks tired, old in a way she never has to Sherlock. She smiles at them in a way that Sherlock knows means that she is sad. He has memorized this look, it is complicated the way adults so rarely are, one that he had John explain to him when they were alone. John is always brilliant at emotions, at knowing when things are good or 'not good' and he always helps Sherlock when he doesn't understand. It's the smile that means they have done something to break her heart, even if she never says so. She tells the driver to take her home.

It is raining hard when they finally stop. Nana gathers herself and puts away her sad smile. They won't see it again today, she has banished it to somewhere deep inside of herself, not like she is erasing it, but saving it for later. She is brave for them the way Sherlock is brave for John. The smile she gives them as she pulls up their hoods and zips up Sherlock's jacket is bright and cheering.

She takes Sherlock's hand and leads him out onto the pavement. John is tucked into the crook of Sherlock's arm the moment he is out of the car and he is staring at the ground, watching water ripple around his blue boots. Sherlock is staring at John. Nana is holding her breath.

She bundles them through the door and it is warm even in the front landing where she makes them leave their wet things, hanging up their coats and taking off their boots with such a flutter of motion and life that they do not think to protest. There are stairs that loom over them, straight ahead like it is the only place you should ever want to go. Sherlock counts 17 to the landing as John tugs off his boots, he stands on the bottom step, sure that they are going upstairs. But Nana leads them through the door on their right. A momentary, irrational flicker of confusion and even something that should not be loss but feels too close, flashes through him. But then they follow Nana inside her flat, and everything radiates safety and warmth. Everything smells of her and looks like it should be with her and it makes him think of fresh biscuits she lets him steal and sweaters that mean she loves them which smell of her and this place and this is where he wants John to be.

John is watching them through wide eyes that seem to see again, tempted by new surroundings, new things that push the thoughts in his mind away and replace them with Nana and something that feels like home. Sherlock is going to fix him.

He takes Johns hand and he does what Nana does. He smiles. It's not fake. John would know, he always knows when Sherlock is faking. But it is for John, he can always smile for John.

They explore the flat together, silent adventurers in foreign lands. They walk through the sitting room, dazzled by trinkets, discovering photos of Nana like a looking glass through time. She is young and smiling and holding a little boy, she is a girl and she is smiling like it is the best thing in the world to be riding a horse, she is the way she is now with pretty silver blond hair and she is holding both of them and the three of them stare out of the photo laughing. All of it, all at once and the evidence, the echoes of these moments in time surround them in her things. He points out a photo to John. Brown eyes blink and watch. Fingers curl around his and it is almost like being alive.

Nana watches them and laughs with a huff as they push open the doors of her flat, sighing as if she knows she should be annoyed but really isn't. Adults, Sherlock knows, are weird.

By the time they get to the last room, the single bedroom with its hand crocheted blanket in soft shades of purple John is reaching out to touch. His fingers are tracing over soft fabric and the smiling faces of another photo that had drawn his eye the moment they entered the room. The hand in Sherlock's tightens to get his attention, brown eyes meeting his and sparkling. Sherlock pretends he was not already watching, he lets John show him an image he is too young to remember being taken. Two little children, babies nearly, look out at him, holding hands the way they stood now. Protective of each other even then.

There is another photo. One placed on top of a bookshelf and toppled over on its front so only the edge of faded gold frame shows. An empty place on the bedside table gleams like an unnatural dissonance in the flow of the room, whispering of things that once sat there, of people Nana loves enough to wake up to. Sherlock wants to know who she loves the way she loves them and why she hides them.

John is holding his hand and still staring down at the photo, and the hint of a smile is not yet on his face but it is almost there. Sherlock would not let go for the world.

Nana stands at the door, regarding them with a smile that is much more soft and warm than the one in the car, waiting for one of them to catch her eye. Sherlock thinks of warm biscuits with chocolate and fuzzy sweaters that look better on John than on him and the smell of tea, and those are silly things to associate with a person, they aren't facts, Nana doesn't mean warmth and tea and hugs, and a look can certainly not be all of those things. But it is John who pulls him towards her, who lets her kiss his hair as she motions them back to the sitting room for milky tea and toast. And he doesn't care. Nana, Sherlock decides, can be an illogical thought.

They have tea together and Nana puts on old music, she puts on a waltz and big bands and men that croon like they are in love and their hearts are broken all at once. John is not talking yet, silent as he smiles at the two of them. He curls into Sherlock as Nana tells them love stories that sound like fairy tales but she insists are true. Love, she tells them, can always sound like a fairy tale if you tell it right. Sherlock is doubtful, but John is warm against him and in his silence pulls the idea over himself like a blanket.

She stands as the music, an old record player sitting in a proud place in the corner (which she insists sounds more like 'real music' than anything digital), switches over. She holds out her hand to Sherlock and waits. John watches in silence.

She teaches them to waltz.

Johns silence turns into laughter.

When they finally collapse onto the settee the sun has long since fallen and John tugs at Sherlock's clothing with a giggle. The message is clear, even though the dance is still floating through their minds, twirling, and the music sways and carries on without them. They never changed out of their pyjamas.

The smile Sherlock gives John is victorious and feels like dancing.

They never get to spend their day in their pyjamas. Mycroft would be scandalized.

Nana tries to put them to bed in her room but John looks up at her with disapproving eyes and for the first time all day, finds the words to speak.

John tells her in no uncertain terms that they will not take her bed and that they are fine on the settee.

Sherlock looks again at the frame on the bookshelf of the bedroom, unseen people, unseen loved ones, facing nothing but dark wood, hiding their faces from the world. When John turns to him for support he agrees. He would agree with anything John wanted in this moment. The picture frame fades from his mind as John takes his hand and they go back to the sitting room. They lie down, letting Nana cover then in blankets and tuck them in as if they were little children. She kisses them and tells them to wake her if they need her.

They wait until the light flicks out and they can here Nana settle in her own room before Sherlock crawls under the blankets, emerging on Johns side of the settee and wrapping an arm around his middle so neither of them will fall. John turns in his arms so they are face to face. It is dark but Sherlock can see the outline of his face, he can tell when John closes his eyes.

He waits, and John asks, so he holds him, because right now he can. He holds him close and tells him about Clara and the story Harry would have told Mycroft and Lestrade over tea and tears. He wonders how long it took for Lestrade to convince Harry to spend the night at his place once they were done.

He hopes they take good care of each other.

Sherlock remembers what Nana said about all love stories being fairy tales if you tell them right, and how John seemed to glow with the idea of it, John who faded into stories until he seemed not to breathe, how his eyes had watched her. He thinks of Harry and how much it would hurt if John were taken away from him.

He can't.

It's not a happy fairy tale, but not all love stories are.

Sherlock tells John that Clara had left Auntie Harry even though they still loved one another because sometimes things get in the way. Sometimes drinking is more powerful than love. He watches Johns closed eyes in the half light as he describes how Harry had imagined Clara happy, that she had found a family like Harry had found one with them. She would have been okay if Clara had been happy.

But Auntie Harry had seen her at the market and it wasn't like she had imagined with her heart only half broken. She was not beautiful and married; she did not have a baby on her arm the way she had always dreamed of when she was a girl.

Clara was skinny and alone and still beautiful, but sick. Clara was dying, and she was all alone.

And instead of Harry's heart being half broken, it fell apart.

Johns hand reached out of the darkness and pulled Sherlock tight, holding on to the back of his neck, fingers playing in his curls. Sherlock closed his eyes.

John begged him to promise that he would never leave him.

Sherlock could feel the wetness on his cheek that was not his own.

He promised.

Sherlock did not ask for anything, but John whispered it into his skin as he fell asleep. A promise Sherlock would never have thought to ask for.

"I promise to never drive you away."


End file.
