Work Text:
Mycroft looked out to the horizon. It was grey. The wind bit at his cheeks with icy fangs, the sea air chilling him to the bone. He felt numb already, and so it made little difference. The sound of waves crashing upon rock below were like white noise drowning out the world. If only they could drown out the pain inside him, too.
The water was grey. The rocks were grey. He continued to look down at himself; a grey suit and the grey pallor of his skin, tinged pink from the cold. The rock was solid, bracing against the turbid rage of the waves. It all felt so violent; a battle between strength and time. He’d run out of both.
“You’re too scared,” the haunting voice said over the noise. It was only then Mycroft realised how distant the sounds below were, at the ease of that voice piercing through it. He didn’t respond, but nodded.
“You were always scared,” she stated. Mycroft nodded again.
“Scared of me.”
“Yes,” he answered quietly. He honestly was. He always had been. Eurus was his living nightmare.
“I have tried to kill you so often, and yet somehow you stand here. It never occurred to me that I could just make you do it yourself.”
Mycroft bit his lip. He didn’t want to respond to that. He didn’t want to tell his sister how often he’d thought about it. How many times he’d had to stop himself. He didn’t want to sound a failure, and yet that’s what he was. Both in the duties he was supposed to do, and the end that he should take himself.
“Sherlock?” he asked, dreading the answer but desperate to know all the same. The panic over the response kicked his heart into overdrive.
“Oh, he bled so much,” Eurus sang. “All over that friend of his. He was going to shoot himself to save you. I don’t understand it. I knew he wouldn’t chose Doctor Watson.”
Mycroft swallowed down the grief that threatened to choke him. He closed his eyes, focusing on the crash of water against stone. “He should have chosen me.”
“Too late now. It’s just you an me, now, Mycroft. Sure, I would have preferred to have had Sherlock to play with. I tried taking his friend away so it’d be just the two of us… oh, how they screamed for each other. I mean I was going to kill Doctor Watson anyway, but Sherlock couldn’t stand losing either of you. Why is that?”
He said nothing. He just looked out at the horizon again. He’d failed in protecting Sherlock. He vowed to protect him from Eurus… and he’d failed. His last purpose was gone.
“His loss breaks my heart,” he uttered quietly. He turned to Eurus. “If you cannot understand that, then I cannot explain why.”
Eurus fell into silence. Mycroft’s heart still hammered away, but it was now to keep some composure while being terrified.
“What now?” he asked, his eyes still closed. He hopes for a quick death.
“Honestly I hadn’t planned this,” she admits. “I could just shoot you now, but it seems anti climatic. I’d much rather watch you jump; see what it takes to push you over the edge.”
Rain starts to patter on his face. He opens his eyes to the greyness, and exhales with a frosty breath. He almost smiles to himself; it was fitting that he’d die in Hell, but to die leaping from it?
“Holmes killing Holmes, one way or another,” he says meekly.
The rain intensifies, adding more noise to the crashing waves. For some reason, it suddenly feels quiet and still for Mycroft. Empty. The world feels empty. He exhales deeply. He looks over the edge, but screws his face and turns in shame.
“I cannot.”
“I always knew you were a coward, Mycroft.”
“Yes,” he admits. More than Eurus will know. He turns to face her, the embodiment of fear itself, standing in her white gown and long hair, staring at him with her cold eyes. He takes a step forward and drops to his knees.
“I don’t need to make you jump at all, do I? Look how far you’ve already fallen,” she comments, the hint of a smirk in her voice. Mycroft doesn’t look up. He keeps his eyes closed. The rain soaks through his suit easily, and he shivers in the cold air.
“I am done,” he states. He truly is. There is no fight, no hope, no will left inside him. I tried my best, he thinks solemnly, even if the words are bitter.
A death on a grey day, on a grey rock, isolated far away amidst a grey ocean… it was fitting. He lived a life of greys — always the mid-ground between right and wrong, hidden in the dark shadows but enough light to be seen on the face of it. Grey office. Grey suits. Grey eyes. Grey heart.
His chest tightens. Gregory. The grey that had completely taken his soul. No, not just grey, he reminded himself. It was not dull and lifeless. It was silver. Stunning, precious, solid silver. The bright light of grey that shone in his world. He ached knowing that there was still one thing left in the world he was about to leave behind that he cared about.
A tear ran down his cheek, almost unnoticeable in the rain. He wished he could say goodbye. To explain that he tried. To thank him for all that he’d done, even if unaware of most of it.
As long as Eurus remained oblivious, then he was safe. He would be alright. Mycroft would proudly take his secret to the grave. He’d be honoured to lay in the grey tomb knowing that he’d kept Gregory alive.
He drew in a sharp breath, the cold air stinging his throat. The wind was causing him to shiver uncontrollably. His heart stabbed him. Even if he’d always known there wouldn’t be a chance for him to be with Gregory, he’d let himself imagine sometimes. Imagine sparkling eyes and silver smiles; grey reflected in chocolate in warming embraces.
“You look pleased that it’s over,” Eurus said, sounding a mix of confused and disappointed. Mycroft didn’t care. In the end of it all, he could still find the gleam of his silver lining, and hold onto it until the darkness came. He stared at the grey stone below him, shimmering with reflections, like silver. Yes; he welcomed it.
The sound of metal clicking, a bemused sigh, a loud shot.
Pain; sharp and… precise.
Grey fades to black.
The light is harsh. The grey continues… grey walls encasing him upon a grey floor. A prison of his on devising. Mycroft blinks, sitting upright. Eurus’ cell. He rubs his neck, the last place he remembered the pain.
Dart.
He trembles; the cold has since left his body, but the fear remains. What is to become of him now?
The empty concrete cell filled with the empty grey man.