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When John finally found Mycroft, waiting for him on the bench shadowed by the nearby tree, umbrella between his knees, and safely away from any and all CCTVs in the park, he did not bother wasting time or mincing words.

"He doesn't want to talk to you right now." John passed the coffee from hand to hand, warming them in the brusque, unwelcoming cold. "He promised me that he'll come around, but for the meantime, he says he needs to get his thoughts in order before he'll sit down with you. If any cameras show up, he's torching them, and I'm helping him do it."

Mycroft, as ever, did not look very surprised.

In fact, if John hadn't known any better, he would've said the elder Holmes looked resigned.

No argument came, no matter how John had braced himself for it. He'd been ready, for the protest it is for his own good, John, because that was always the line, and he'd been ready to throw a Sherlock-level strop if Mycroft had attempted even one iota of his usual lofty meddling today. But none came.

None came, and John, once again, was forced to remember that he and Sherlock weren't the only ones who'd just had the week from hell.

The fight went out of him as easily as air, and John's knees gave for him to sink right down beside him.

He wanted to be angry at Mycroft. He did.

But Sherlock had infinitely more right to it than he did, and Sherlock, somehow, was not.

Sherlock didn't seem to know much of what he was feeling, these days.

"John," Mycroft said quietly, when the silence stretched on. Just that; his name. Unobtrusive. Expectant.

There was another miserable second of silence.

Something gave, again.

"How do you think he's doing, exactly?" John crossed his arms tightly, coffee now pressed to his chest as if its warmth might infuse inside him and this time, stay there. "I'd say he's a wreck, but I still can't tell how much of it is just Sherlock being Sherlock, and how much of it is something more. He quit sleeping three days ago. Rosie is the only one who's gotten him to slow down and even try to eat." Raking a hand through his hair, he pressed back against the wet, icy cold of the bench, tilting his head to blink furiously to the overcast sky. "He's doing better than I would be; I know that much."

That much was true, at least. As true as it could be. John couldn't even imagine how he'd react, if he found out- well, what, exactly? That he had a secret sibling buried underneath traumatic amnesia that had been airlifted out of his life at age six into a super secret supervillain prison, because she'd- Jesus, the well, Victor's skull-

The story was too dramatic and impossible to believe, and he'd lived it.

That didn't stop it from being real.

"We stopped by Baker Street a few days ago," he said, and the words just came out, no rhyme or reason behind them; they just badly, badly had to be said. Because he was worried about Sherlock and Mycroft, for all the lies, was the only one who ever had even a hope of understanding why. "We were just wanting to clear out what we could, what was salvageable and that we could make use of. We found his violin."

"Yes," Mycroft murmured, again passing the umbrella from one hand to the other. It would completely floor John to admit that it just almost passed for a nervous tick. "I can, of course, procure a new one, if-"

"You can't make this go away with money, Mycroft, god!"

The pause between them felt thick as tar. Mycroft, pale, and John taut as a bowstring beside him, heart hammering in his ears and his hand would not shake, because it had been years since Sherlock had chased the tremor, and damn it all if he was going to let it come back now.

Silence. Waiting. Impatience. Silence.

His leg hurt.

"His violin was fine," John let himself admit, at last. The words spilled from gritted teeth; this time, not anger at Mycroft. Oh, he was angry, but not at him. "The case protected it. Yes, I know how unlikely that is; Sherlock spent five minutes spelling out the probability of it. Bow was snapped, but Sherlock said it had been getting time for a new one anyway and- he wasn't even upset. He- I don't know. It was... fine. Normal, even. And."

The sense of helplessness, hovering uselessly at bay for seven straight days, now, made yet another choking attempt to clamber over the walls and strangle him with it.

Sherlock really had been normal, was the thing. In good spirits, which had catapulted to over the moon when he'd found his violin case intact underneath the remains of a bookcase. John had been worried upon seeing the precious, expensive bow snapped so cleanly in two, horsehairs fluttered over chalky strings and spread in a pattern of chaos against the velvet case, but his friend had merely lifted his violin to strum it like a guitar. All things come to an end, don't they, John? he'd said airily, still smiling. Now I have an excuse to try the new brand I've been eying.

Everything had been fine, then. More than fine. Undeniably, unbelievably so.

And then-

"He doesn't play violin because of Eurus. It's the other way 'round- I arranged for her to be offered a violin because Sherlock enjoyed it so much."

"You-" John swallowed a curse, swallowed the bite of surprise and disbelief to temper it all milder, instead, mild underneath the miserable chaos that had been building for seven days straight. "How did you-"

"Please, John," Mycroft said, with nothing more than a dismissive flick of the wrist. He sounded almost annoyed, certainly impatient in a way that rang familiar. Like Sherlock, whenever a conversation went on for too long and he lost his patience for having to wait to hear the conclusion he'd already drawn for himself minutes before.

Because Mycroft, of course, was exactly correct. That had been exactly the problem.

Sherlock had gotten... not upset, exactly. But very quiet, all of a sudden, and very pale, his face bleaching white underneath the streaks of soot and ash. He'd gently settled his violin back into the case, strapping and zipping it shut, and then, to John's bewilderment, even returning it to underneath the splintered remains of the bookcase from where he'd gotten it. He'd dusted himself off, pulling his collar higher, risen to his feet, and walked straight for the stairs with his back now to John.

And John, because he was not Mycroft, had just not gotten it at all.

"Is it not okay after all?" he'd asked tentatively, drawing to his knees beside him. Touching his thin back, feeling scars, old and new, unsure of what to say.

But Sherlock, pale and expressionless, had only shaken his head. "She's fine," he'd said, and nothing more.

It hadn't been until the cab ride home, the detective with his arms wrapped around his middle and his head tucked into his collar and hair shadowing those distant, hollow eyes, that the truth had spilled.

"I remember first picking up a violin when I was three. Mycroft was terrible at it, and I wanted to be better than Mycroft at SOMETHING, god, so I picked up Mummy's."

And again, John, so slow, so stupid, hadn't understood it, because he was not Mycroft, he was not Sherlock, he was just John. John, the slow one. John, the average one. John, the one left drowning down in the frigid well as the Holmes siblings soared so far overhead it made his mind spin. "...Okay," he'd said, careful, slow. "I- guess you enjoyed-"

"That was BEFORE, John! Before-" He'd torn once, at his hair, exploding so suddenly the poor cabbie jumped, face fading from snow white to sickly grey. "Eurus plays it too. Why? Why would she? The universe is not so lazy as to offer such an improbable coincidence-"

"Sherlock-"

"What if I created that memory to cover up the truth? What if I play it because she did first? I can't REMEMBER, John; no, more than that, I CAN, but I can not trust my own recollection. I can not trust that I did not invent it to convince myself of a lie that was kinder than the truth."

"Sherlock, calm-"

"Do NOT tell me to calm down, John Watson!" Sherlock had spun on him, staring at him with the coldest, most dangerous eyes in the entire fucking universe, his breaths rapid and his face twisted and his eyes, holy fuck, that was not his Sherlock. "I can not- I can not-"

Sherlock, on the edge of panic, had rasped out in a voice like knives for the cabbie to stop the car. He had, slamming on the brakes, a little, jarring bruises and sprains from Sherrinford and the explosion before it, but Sherlock had only sprang lithely to his feet without a wince and hurtled off down the street without looking back.

He hadn't returned to the hotel room until well after midnight, his collar still popped and his face still pale, but his enigmatic eyes, considerably calmer.

He'd laid down on his bed, still fully dressed, and had not responded to a single word John had said until morning.

The violin was still at Baker Street.

"Yes," Mycroft sighed, just a long, depressive, unhappy sigh. "Sherlock was tired of coming in last, in every single contest, every single time, and at some point decided he'd just start a new contest. One that he couldn't lose, because Eurus and I weren't even players. As far as I'm aware, Eurus did not even touch a violin until adulthood."

"...Well, that's good to hear." John hugged himself again, unable to push the bite of bitterness out of his voice. "I'll tell Sherlock. Dunno if he'll believe me, but- I'll tell him."

I'm sure he'll be thrilled, he didn't continue on aloud, because he really wasn't in the mood to chance a Holmes' understanding of sarcasm today.

The anger still thrived between them, snarling and unwell, like a prickly, wild beast. John wanted to be mad at Mycroft, he did, he wanted to think about Sherlock flitting about the hotel room like a wraith in a coat, his eyes darting and his mouth thin, he wanted to think about the giant vacuous hole that had taken the place of his best friend's once bloody unshakeable confidence, the empty look on his face as he'd put his beloved violin back down in its case to stay. Wanted to think about all the times in this past week he'd desperately just wanted to wrap his arms around Sherlock and make that distress go away, promise to him it was all going to be okay, when just one look at the detective's face had told him nothing would be a stupider move than that.

He wanted it to be Mycroft's fault. He wanted it to be the funeral, again, an empty coffin being buried as John turned and socked Mycroft fucking Holmes in the face and told him to never send a goddamned car for him again. He wanted it to be simple. Simple in the way Sherlock's fake suicide had never been, not really, but he'd pretended it had been, he'd been able to believe it was, and-

And it had never been simple, had it?

He'd pretended it was, sure. He'd let himself believe it was.

And where had that gotten him?

Punching Sherlock in the face, the night he'd come back to life for him. Over and over and over.

Shutting out his wife and the mother of his child. Living with Sherlock, pretending he wasn't shot through the chest, pretending he wasn't married, that it was 2010 again, over and over and over until Sherlock shot a man in the head for him and then bowed his neck for execution.

Punching Sherlock in the face in the morgue. Kicking his ribs in. Cracking the bone of his jaw.

Again, and again, and again.

Oh, it could be simple again if John wanted it to be. It could be that simple.

And for the first time since he'd met him, John could now definitively say that he did not want to hit Mycroft Holmes.

"If you think it will help to pass on," Mycroft said, finally. So restrained; so carefully subdued. "I will fill in any such gaps that Sherlock would like to know, when he's ready for it. He really does already know the worst of it, though. Or..." He cleared his throat, finger trailing an easy pattern along his umbrella. "Or, if there is worse, then he's the only one who knows it. There are things that happened to Sherlock that only he and Eurus knew, and now, that only Eurus remembers."

John squeezed his eyes shut. He breathed carefully, once in, once out, and made himself stay still. Made himself not think about Sherlock pacing about London for hours every night, because he no longer could sit still and he didn't want to wake Rosie.

And-

Well, fuck it all, he was angry after all.

"You thought that'd be better, then."

"John," Mycroft said quietly, sickly, unfairly, stupidly patient.

Something in him snapped a second time.

"You thought it'd be better for him to have to wonder. To not know what happened to him. To maybe never know, to torture himself with just what maybe happened."

"No, John," the elder Holmes snapped, "I thought it'd be best for him to never have to wonder, ever. I thought it'd be better for him to not ever remember the name Eurus at all, and, might I remind you, had she not intervened, that plan might very well have succeeded."

And once again, with Myrcoft finally rattled, beside him, his pale fist tightened against the curve of his umbrella, Mycroft Holmes, rattled, and Sherlock not there, because Sherlock did not want to see him, and John there was the intermediary because fuck him if he let so much as a single dust speck hurt his best friend again, and-

And John had to once again remind himself that the villain was not Mycroft, here. The villain was not Mycroft, because the villain was Eurus. Eurus had murdered Victor. Eurus had murdered his therapist. Eurus had tried to kill him. Eurus had tried to kill Mycroft. Eurus had tormented Sherlock. Eurus had tortured him as a child and done it again as an adult and obliterated whatever shards of mental health and stability he'd managed to gather for fun.

Eurus had been the villain, here, and-

John laughed, once. His throat swelled and the breath that caught in it it hurt.

It seemed both Holmes brothers were on the side of angels. Never to be mistaken as one themselves, of course, but when it came down to it-

Just doing the best with the cards that they had been dealt.

(John, thus far, wasn't allowing himself to think about Eurus, in that light. Just playing the cards of who she had been born to be. That line of thought didn't lead to anywhere he was ready to be, yet.)

"Considering the circumstances," Mycroft sighed, when the silence just dragged on and on because John could not bring himself to break it. "I expect Sherlock will not be content to allow me to be arbiter of what he does and does not remember. He trusts you, though, John."

It took only a moment for the hidden meaning to register. Once it did, the anger that reared inside him was hot and tinged bitterly all the way through with stinging, stung revulsion. "No."

"John-"

"The point isn't that he doesn't trust you, the point is that there should be no- no arbiter," he snapped. "It's his life. Not yours, and definitely not mine. He-" he started again, and then, found himself reeling to a stop.

He wanted to tell Mycroft, in no uncertain terms, to keep his mouth shut. That Sherlock's memories were Sherlock's, and John should only hear them if and when Sherlock decided he wanted him to know. He should not hear them here and now, sitting on in this blustery park from Mycroft Holmes and his umbrella, discussed between them while Sherlock himself skulked in a hotel room. The choice to remember them had already been taken away from Sherlock; he deserved, at the very least, to still have the choice of who else in his life got to know.

And as ever, with Sherlock Holmes, it could not be that simple.

Sherlock was going to need support. For once, for bloody once, Sherlock was going to be the one who needed support, and this time, John was damn well determined to be there. He wasn't going to fuck up again, like he had so many times before. He was going to need someone who knew what he was trying to process and remember. And, the thing was, Sherlock, for all his brilliance, didn't know how to actually talk about anything. For god's sake, it had been years, now, and still, the most John knew about Sherlock's two years Away were that he had scars on his back and nightmares when it rained and didn't like the sound of shattering glass.

If he gave the choice to Sherlock, he already knew Sherlock's answer: I don't care what you know, but, God, John, don't be so melodramatic as to make me say it.

John hesitated, again.

God.

He was so, so tired.

"If there's- something," John said, then swallowed, hard, willing the words up through gritted teeth. "If there's anything that you think Sherlock would rather be kept private, then don't tell me."

Mycroft was quiet, for a moment. John wondered if Mycroft even understood the concept of privacy, relating to Sherlock; if he could even grasp that there might be some secrets too shameful to tell. "Of course," the politician said guardedly, his eyes never wavering.

"And another thing." John swiveled around to face him fully, staring head on, his heart racing in his chest, and he looked at Mycroft then and for a heartbeat he saw someone just as tired as Sherlock. Well, that was for Mycroft's keeper to worry about. "I'm not doing this because I'm curious. I'll listen to your side of the story, what you remember that he doesn't, but I'm only doing it because I think it'll help him. If that changes, at some point, then I'm going to get up, and you're not going to follow me, and neither is Anthea or any of your dammed stupid cars."

"I understand."

John wondered again what that one meant. What it really meant. If it was an actual agreement, or if a mere statement of fact- that Mycroft understood his intentions, while having his own, and was, as usual, going to pay no mind to anything John wanted as it played second fiddle to the needs of the British Government and Sherlock.

He wondered if Mycroft would not do like Sherlock, and just keep talking if John turned and walked away, and for a moment, John wondered if the story he was going to hear wasn't just for Sherlock's sake- but Mycroft's, too. That he'd kept the secret for decades and decades, an now it was no longer a secret, and now he had to say it because words had power and silence was poison.

Even just a year ago, John would've laughed himself silly at the prospect. Mycroft Holmes, something as human as that. Please. Please.

It wasn't funny anymore.

They were all fallibly, agonizingly, entirely human, with all the frailties and mistakes that entailed. John was, Sherlock was- and yes. Even Mycroft was.

They were all just human.

Mycroft, with a steady tap of his umbrella, got to his feet. John, quiet, followed. He started to walk, tilting his coffee cup in a way that said it was empty. Perhaps to avoid any eavesdroppers; perhaps to avoid cameras; perhaps just to move.

And it was like that, then, that the story began.

"Sherlock is seven years younger than me, as you know. Eurus is eight. As such, I just was not present for most of their childhoods- most of my days were spent with private tutors, while Sherlock and Eurus were left home with with a governess. A dreadfully dull woman, I assure you- not at all equipped to recognise what was really going on in that house." He tsked quietly under his breath, a very Sherlockian sound, the sort of scoff he made when he had to deal with the stupid mere mortals that populated the rest of the world and didn't have the patience for it. "Even so, Eurus was... terribly skilled at play-acting, even at that age. I knew something was wrong, but it took me months to realize what."

John smiled bitterly, once, hardly a smile at all. The same woman who'd played his therapist, the woman on the bus he'd fancied, and Faith Smith, all at the same time- a born actor; a born liar? No, he never would've guessed. "So how did you, then," he prompted, allowing Mycroft to lead the way aimlessly about a corner.

"Hm. How, indeed." Out of the corner of his eye, John saw a cigarette appear- a cigarette he was reasonably sure had been pickpocketed from a passing stranger. "I recognised that Sherlock did not like being left alone with Eurus, but without a healthy toddler's development with which to compare him, I assumed the tantrums and fits were- simply normal. Mummy said he was a fussy child." A slow, acrid plume of smoke appeared, swirling gently above them in a wispy hiss of slow heat. "One afternoon, I had to be the one to recognise that Sherlock had not left his room in three days. Even I knew that this was not normal behavior, and determined it could be interesting to ascertain why." His mouth quirked, faintly. "Two hours later, we were at hospital, and Sherlock was receiving X-Rays for a fractured arm."

Somehow, this revelation served only to leave him nothing but numb.

"That's not in his medical records," John noted flatly- as if that was all that was mattered, as if that was the only factor of importance he'd garnered from the story. He'd seen Sherlock's NHS file multiple times, courtesy of Sherlock being a reckless and danger-seeking and mad git, and there was no arm fracture in his childhood. "That should be in his NHS records."

"There are a great deal many childhood injuries that are not in his NHS records, John," Mycroft snipped, and for a breath, almost sounded just like Sherlock. "Because I considered the psychological ramifications of Sherlock realizing his records detailed a great number of traumatic injuries that he could not recall, versus the consequences of an A&E doctor being unaware of, for example, a minor break three decades ago- and decided to settle for the latter."

As ever, John thought sourly, and did not respond. As ever. Mycroft Holmes meddling, deleting records, erasing truth, drawing neat lines of white out through years' worth of things as if that just made it all go away. As ever: Mycroft Holmes meddling for the greater good. As ever: Mycroft Holmes being fucking right.

He was tired of life being so complicated.

"He was hiding his broken arm, then," John said listlessly; permission for the story to continue. To go back to Sherlock and Eurus as children, as fucking babies, and already something had been very, very wrong in Eurus' head. "Let me guess. Eurus told him to?"

"I deduced as such, yes." Mycroft breathed out another cloud of smoke, his brow furrowing. "When they had to position his arm, and Sherlock didn't make a sound, and the nurse was genuinely shocked. They'd been telling him what a good boy he was being the entire time, but this time she turned to Mummy and said Sherlock was being amazing, to not cry at that, and Eurus- had this... look on her face. Sherock looked like he felt sick, and Eurus was proud, and I knew."

"And you just kept that little tidbit to yourself, then."

Mycroft sighed heavily, slipping his cigarette down for it to join the hand with the empty coffee cup. "Tell me, John. What exactly would you say, if a ten year old boy spoke up in interview to say his brother was lying, and his two year old sister had broken his arm for fun and games? And based off what? A look? A smirk?" Mycroft smirked himself, but it was as sour as John's heart was heavy. "I had eleven theories before they'd even finished fitting him for a cast. I suspected Eurus had been conditioning him for months to keep quiet when he was hurt and do as she told him."

It was quiet for a few more moments, their aimless pacing continuing on through the park, cadenced on by the tapping of his umbrella. "We've never been the most adept at comprehending social convention, as you know. Sherlock had already been reprimanded for making his little sister cry in the past, and I'm sure their governess was always chiding him to play nice with her, to not hurt a lady's feelings. Without any other children to compare the situation with, he analysed all the data, and concluded that it was normal." He paused again, sharing what might've once been a smile in John's direction, tempered again by old regret and bitterness. "At that age, the three of us thought Sherlock was dreadfully stupid. I believe it did not occur to him that there could possibly be something that he realised was wrong, while everyone else around him had not. He likely assumed just the opposite: that he was too slow to understand the sense of what everyone else was already smart enough to grasp."

John shook his head. Not in a denial to Mycroft's words, necessarily, just- a denial to everything. A refusal to hear it all. Picturing the Sherlock he knew as the young child that Mycroft was describing just simply was not on. Picturing Sherlock as a child at all didn't jive; it was impossible not to look at him as he was now and imagine him just springing to existence full-grown and smart-mouthed, six feet fall and deducing his own mother right out of the womb.

It was so much more impossible to look at Sherlock, and see in him a child who'd once been convinced he was stupid. That someone as fantastic and brilliant and bloody confident as Sherlock had actually thought that, to the point that he'd let someone hurt him because he'd thought he wasn't smart enough to be able to say this is wrong.

Next time Sherlock put on a dizzying deduction display with that smirk of his, the one that said I'm a bloody show off, John determined, he was going to let him do it. He was going to stand there and listen, and when he'd talked himself out to stand silently preening and proud of himself, John was going to kiss him and tell him he was fantastic. And if that got Sherlock to stare blankly or quirk his eyebrow or start off on a rant of verbal derision, well, then John was just going to smile, and tell him he was fantastic again.

And he was going to keep saying it, until he knew Sherlock believed it.

"A few weeks later," Mycroft went on, airily. He stopped for a moment, narrow eyes sweeping the park, and for a moment John was afraid they were being watched or listened to, but then the elder Holmes just made an abrupt left to turn and walk straight for the nearest vendor that gave off the promise of coffee. "Sherlock was punished again, this time for power-sawing his own cast off and straining his arm far beyond its recovering limits. He refused to answer, when Mummy asked why he would do such a thing, and Father demanded to know just how, exactly, Sherlock had gotten into his tools." He shared a final glance with John, just before drawing close enough to the stand to temporarily put their conversation on hold. "I'm sure even you can manage this deduction on your own, John."

And, yeah, he really could.

Now, actually, he wanted to toss a punch at Sherlock's parents, rather than Mycroft.

John bit at the inside of his cheek, weighing his next words and searching the passerbys around them, now that their conversation was no longer in relative privacy and secrecy. "How'd you hide that from him, then?" he asked softly, the words carefully neutral. "That probably left him with some degree of chronic pain. Or can the British Government delete that from his head, too?"

"Two coffees, please," Mycroft said, in that unnatural purr of his. "One black, one with two sugars." He glanced back at John, eyebrow raised, his features schooled as well into perfect neutrality. "No need to be cheeky, John. Sherlock misdiagnosed himself with carpal tunnel syndrome in university, and thusly ignored it. He hardly notices the pain, I believe- as far as he remembers, its pained him his entire life. He's never been unduly worried by it."

John swallowed a curse and kept silent. Again, he wanted to protest, wanted to drag Sherlock to an orthopedist, to run muscular function and nerve conduction tests, to berate him about keeping quiet when he was in pain, to- fix everything, but- wasn't that simple. Of course, it wasn't that simple. At this point, there was probably nothing to be done for the old injury to begin with. Perhaps a carefully structured regimen of strict physical therapy, perhaps a decompression procedure at the wrist or humerus, but John was kidding himself if he thought Sherlock would sit still for any of that for more than two minutes.

This damage, too, had already been done.

Mycroft got and paid for the coffees, handing one to John without a word and briskly leading the way with his stupid umbrella. No words were exchanged between them at first, the politician immediately taking them away from listening ears and watching eyes, and for once, John followed his lead. There was no sense in saying the name Eurus anywhere where anyone could be listening.

It wasn't until that they'd turned another corner entirely, John with a fist stuffed in his pocket to keep warm and Mycroft, pale and detached as ever, that the story started up again.

"Sherlock was actually who inspired my next decision," Mycroft said, cigarette hanging loosely down from two fingers. "He asked to start going to church with Mummy, for Sunday mass. She was thrilled. Sherlock only wanted to get out of the house."

Despite himself, John smirked a little into his coffee, a smirk that he used to choke back a laugh. "Sherlock. At church."

"Oh, yes, it went as disastrously as you're imagining, I'm sure," Mycroft said, with no small hint of amusement. For him, anyway. "He was only three, going on four, now, and was picking out inconsistencies in the sermon. Didn't understand why Mummy got upset when he told them to her. But he cared more about being away from Eurus than on proving his points, then, so when he realized how unhappy it made her he kept his newfound atheism to himself, though I'm really not sure how much good it did him." He broke off for another moment, his smile turning sour. "It is also where he met Victor Trevor."

John's own smile faded, and his gloved hand, ensconced back in his pocket, went cold.

"But, I digress." Mycroft, again, turned another corner. "I recognised that the only strategy at the present time might be to separate Sherlock and Eurus, and I took what steps what I could to assist. I requested to enroll in a chess organization, of sorts, for young, well-to-do boys, under the guise of wanting to do something with Sherlock. Our parents were, once again, thrilled." He paused, and this time, his smile was vicious in a way very, very suiting of Mycroft Holmes. "Sherlock hated it, and so did I, to be quite honest, but it kept him physically safe. Sacrifices have to be made in war, John."

"War, yeah." John, for some reason, scoffed, though the moniker was actually rather apt and certainly not at all funny. "Sherlock hates chess." It had been to his surprise, actually- Sherlock had seemed exactly like the kind of bloke who'd love chess- but getting him to play it, even for a case, had been as excruciating as pulling teeth. His parents' present of a chess set was still utterly unused in the back of some closet at Baker Street.

Mycroft smiled again, his pinched and pale version of one. "Yes, I know. He remembers the chess club, even if he does not remember his reason for enrolling. I was the only one who'd play a three year old seriously, so it really just ended in Sherlock being cripplingly bored for a few hours every week and being treated as if he was even dumber than he already felt. It was enough to sour him on chess for life, I'm afraid."

"But physically safe."

"Yes, of course. Physically safe. That was rather the point in it all, John."

Another swirl of smoke spiraled upwards between them.

John took a few moments to try and lay out the history in his head. To picture an excruciatingly young and brutally intelligent Sherlock, trying to outsmart Eurus and grab slices of security, of safety, wherever he could. Kicking his feet in church and pouting at chess sets, bored out of his mind. His parents somehow being blind to it, terming Eurus as exceptional and Sherlock as fussy.

It was still irreconcilable with the Sherlock that he knew now. The one who was loud and brash and brilliant, who threw tantrums for attention when he was bored and who'd once upon a time murmured alone protects me, and had more than once let John strike him because he'd believed he deserved it.

It was still irreconcilable, but, John considered, sick to his stomach, maybe Sherlock did make a little more sense after all.

They walked on again. They passed a small playground in the park, populated even in the blustery cold by small, squealing children. Squealing, happy children Rosie's age. The age of Sherlock and Victor and Eurus, in the story Mycroft was now telling.

Mycroft was the one leading the way, still, and John was endlessly thankful when, after only a few moments of introspection, the politician abruptly switched direction again and headed off away from the pealings of children's laughter.

"The situation continued to- escalate, from there. However, regrettably, I really don't have much concrete to add. Sherlock and Eurus both got more adept at hiding what was going on, Sherlock got more adept at hiding out of the house, and I got more and more involved in my studies. Eurus was-" Mycroft stopped for a moment, his frown twitching back into place. "Eurus never was afraid of our parents. She was only ever afraid of me."

"Afraid of you?"

"Yes, of course." His eyes flashed dangerously, and the umbrella continued its rhythmic tapping along the ground. "She knew she was no match for me, physically, and was also aware that I knew about her behavior. I was the only one she tried to hide it from, and at least to some measure, she succeeded. If Sherlock had perhaps been more vocal, the matter might've been resolved sooner, but Eurus had quite a firm control over him. The word no, and all its variants, exited his vocabulary for three whole years, I'm afraid."

John grimaced to himself. Not for the first time, he again doubted if this really ought to be a story he should be hearing, least of all without Sherlock's permission. It was also of next to no comfort at all to remember that Sherlock was okay now, and had not only survived his childhood with Eurus but soared past it to thrive to unimaginable heights.

Not for the first time, he had to tamp down on the vicious little core in him that wanted to lash out, and blame Mycroft for not speaking up. For not stopping it.

If he wanted to blame Mycroft, he could, just as fairly, blame Sherlock for not speaking up.

Neither one of them had said a word. And now, here they were.

John went over what Mycroft had just said, again, worrying at his lower lip. How Sherlock had lost the ability to say no, entirely, perhaps because Eurus had told him- perhaps just because his nos had never been listened to and he'd just stopped trying. Something horrifying settled in his gut, a thought that he'd never wanted to have but once it was there, it grabbed into him like a fucking bear trap. "Mycroft?" he asked again, and this time the words stuck like a stone in John's throat.

"Yes?"

"There wasn't anything-" John swallowed hard, trying to rid the lump away. It wouldn't go. Fuck. Sherlock. "You- you don't have to answer if there was, but there wasn't anything." Oh, god. "Sexual. Was there?"

It was a fight just to get the horrible word out at all, catching in his throat and coating his mouth with the taste of ash. His stomach lurched, and somehow it only lurched again when in the next second, god, thank god, Mycroft Holmes shook his head.

"No. Not that I am aware of." He paused again, hiding his mouth behind the styrofoam rim of his coffee; something about the stony look on his face made John want to be sick. "Not that she wasn't capable of it, but I believe she simply had no interest in it- she was, for everything else, only a baby. Though I have always been extremely grateful Eurus was removed from the house before the onset of puberty." Mycroft dithered for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. "If it did happen, I never saw any signs of it, and Sherlock's disinterest in sexual relationships and pornography has always seemed to be purely biological rather-"

"Okay, Mycroft, okay, got it. Really. Really." His face warming, now, John started to walk just a little bit faster, coughing and fuck, he was really, really god-dammed relieved that was the answer, but could the Holmes siblings be normal about anything, for once. Please. "Remember when I said not to tell me anything Sherlock might want private? Yeah, this is, um- this is one of those things."

Mycroft stared back at him, evidently startled. He blinked once, momentarily slient, as if having to fish for the words, and John had to resist the urge to stick his hands in his ears and start singing like a child. "I think you overestimate how much Sherlock cares about-"

"Mycroft!"

The politician narrowed his eyes for a moment, seeming to appear genuinely perplexed by the protests. John, meanwhile, was just as perplexed by the fact that Mycroft apparently monitored his brother's porn habits (Sherlock? Porn? Really? Did he? Really? John doubted it, wow, did he doubt it, Sherlock might've been human but-) oh, god damn the Holmes brothers. God.

There was another awkward stretch between them. John could only hope the look on his face was firm enough to permanently change the subject from the topic he now wished he'd never brought up in the first place (but god, was glad he did, because at least that was one thing Eurus hadn't taken from him, at least that was one thing that was still okay, at least, at least, oh, Sherlock-)

They rounded another corner, together. John's coffee felt half empty, and Mycroft's cigarette was dwindling lower and lower.

The politician started again.

Short recollections of what Eurus had termed experiments and play; what John termed stories of horrible trauma and child abuse at the hands of a bloody three year old. The little slices that Mycroft had been smart enough to grasp evidence of for his own; probably dozens more that he'd deduced but had no proof of, and then dozens upon dozens more beyond that that Eurus had successfully hid and Sherlock had blocked out because they were too terrible to remember.

Musgrave Hall had been an old house, with unused corners and dusty spaces an ancient, creaking cellar. Eurus had housed a family of, thank god, non-venomous spiders, and had, by Mycroft's best guess, had Sherlock "play" with them. He'd wound up with bites all over his arms and, on the last occasion, inside his mouth.

Mummy Holmes had been busy working, many nights, and many nights would send Eurus and Sherlock off to bathe together, saying that they were smart enough between them to not have any accidents. There had been no accidental drownings. There had been a five-month long experiment in increasing lung capacity, and determining if repeated near-suffocations would increase Sherlock's ability to both hold his breath and recover after fainting from being forced underwater.

Mycroft had volunteered to watch the siblings for baths, after discovering that one.

A three inch long gash was discovered, slicing through Sherlock's left Achilles tendon, festering and infecting, and stitched shut with hair from one of Eurus' doll's heads. Eurus had cried like a baby, when Sherlock's limp was discovered, bawling that she'd only wanted to help her big brother, they'd only been playing, she was so sorry, she was so, so sorry, and Sherlock had again been derided for keeping secrets while Eurus was praised for being so smart as to be able to stitch the wound shut.

No one had asked how Sherlock had gotten such a peculiar wound in the first place, and Sherlock, of course, had not said.

Eurus took an interest in knots. Eurus got annoyed that Sherlock kept playing on the nearby shore with Victor. Eurus drew a conclusion: Sherlock wants for experiments to be on the shore. Eurus dragged Sherlock out to shore, and experimented with different kinds of knots by tying an anchor to Sherlock's foot. Either he'd get swept out by the current or he'd eventually stop treading water or Eurus, most eventually, would get bored, and let him swim back in.

Mycroft, then eleven-year-old Mycroft, had smacked Sherlock across the face when he'd found out, and told Sherlock in no uncertain terms that if he ever found him doing that again, Eurus wouldn't be the only one he'd have to be afraid of.

It had terrified Sherlock, Mycroft said.

It had also kept him off the shore at serious risk of drowning.

As always, for the greater good.

A day had come, and five-years-old Sherlock had stopped speaking. He had not spoken again for seven months.

A hopeless team of expensive psychiatrists had diagnosed him as a low-functioning autistic. (John hadn't been able to help it; he'd snorted a miserable, coughing laugh into his coffee, and Mycroft, thin eyebrow raised, had smirked back). Private tutors had quit coming, proclaiming they couldn't teach a child who wouldn't speak. Mummy Holmes had been near distraught, while their father had spent more and more and more time working on his car.

And Eurus had only watched, and smiled.

Mycroft still wasn't sure as to the exact cause, he'd said. Perhaps Eurus had told him to stop speaking, and Sherlock had complied. Perhaps Sherlock had taken the initiative himself, slowly losing his ability to keep quiet as Eurus hurt him worse and worse so he'd just made the choice to stop speaking at all.

And while everyone else had tried to make him talk, and Eurus had smiled, Mycoft had understood what was going on, and had silently taught him Morse code instead. For seven months, Sherlock spoke through his fingers to his brother, and through his violin to his mother, until his fingertips bled. He never breathed a single word, or spoke to anyone else.

Then Victor had gone missing.

Sherlock had been frantic, tearing through Eurus' cipher over and over, scrawling diagrams and cryptography axioms and theories all over his room, and he'd panted as he'd sprinted and dug in the ground and torn in the sand at the sea for a body he'd never find. He was silent.

Then Victor had died.

Sherlock had been inconsolable, and silent.

He had not, in fact, spoken a single word still, until Mycroft had been woken up by Sherlock himself, dragging him out of bed, and- for the first time in those whole entire seven months- screaming his head off.

Eurus had been playing with matches again, and this time, her target had not been Sherlock.

"Sherlock wouldn't stop speaking, and for the first time in his entire life, he was blaming Eurus. Our parents were so relieved he was talking at all, so out of sorts from the fire, that it took them a little while to realize exactly what he was saying- and of course, they didn't want to believe him." Mycroft grimaced darkly, his thin mouth twitching downwards. "It didn't matter. Sherlock started shouting and wouldn't stop until someone listened."

"Your uncle Rudy."

"Yes." Mycroft finished his cigarette with a long, almost impressive drag, one that made John's eyes burn and his shoulder ache. "I believe he'd already been planning something, when Victor disappeared, but when Sherlock was shouting to anyone that would listen that she'd killed his best friend, the gears turned that much faster. Eurus was gone within the week. Sherlock had forgotten she existed entirely within the month."

If John hadn't already known this part of the story, he wouldn't have believed it. Not because he doubted Sherlock's ridiculous brain, but because it was just so unbelievable. A whole entire sister and his best friend, deleted from his head. Six years of childhood edited into something palatable, something that he was able to process and grieve and understand because the truth had been none of those things.

It was ridiculous.

Or it would've been, if John hadn't spent the last week watching Sherlock lose himself in his mind palace again and again, wandering for hours at a time, and every time he'd rouse it'd be with such a sense of violent frustration that he'd never had to ask.

Sherlock really just didn't remember.

He'd met Eurus, now, and he'd seen pictures of Victor, and he'd held his bloody skull in his hands. He'd seen the remains of the fire and he'd heard what had happened from Mycroft and Eurus themselves. Sherlock, quite clearly, wanted to remember.

And he just didn't.

"I still don't... understand," John said tiredly, rubbing an exhausted hand over his face. It felt like he hadn't slept in a month. God, in a bloody year, by this point. "The research on repressed childhood memories is sparse enough as is, but for someone with Sherlock's mind?" He shivered again, trying to mentally wipe out the image of Sherlock delving into his mind palace, face twisting with more and more violent frustration, frustration that was morphing by the day into self-loathing. "Did he really just- make the conscious decision to forget? And then just delete the memories himself?"

"Mmm. Yes. On that matter, actually." Mycroft picked at his watch, cigarette tapping against the face- like Sherlock, he seemed to just really need to have something to occupy his hands with. "I... had a little more to do with that development than I first disclosed."

Oh. Yeah. Good.

Because that wasn't foreboding at all.

"Mycroft," John started, a silent warning thrumming in the undertones, the voice that he'd been told was his Captain Watson voice. Do as I say or so help me voice. Sherlock Holmes, stop being a brat and answer me voice.

Well, it wasn't Sherlock, but it was still a Holmes, and at the moment they were similar enough for the difference not to matter.

The politician scowled, a little, likely annoyed to be one receiving the orders, for once. And when he spoke, his voice was tinged back with annoyance, but he was speaking, and that was all that mattered. "You understand, John- at that age, Sherlock and I both thought he was an idiot."

John glowered again, fingernails scraping against his cup, but the politician was already continuing on with a borderline dismissive wave of his hand. "It's not an insult, but a statement of objective fact. We both thought the world was full of people like me, that I was the average, and Sherlock, therefore, as below-average as could be. Our parents, however, did not have such a narrow world-view, and recognised that I understood how Sherlock's mind worked better than any specialist they could hire ever could. They recognised Sherlock required assistance, and they also correctly recognised that he needed someone who could understand and relate to him on an intellectual level."

Mycroft Holmes: thirteen-year-old therapist. Bloody hell.

It was so absurd, John could've burst out laughing aloud and not stopped for the entire day.

Part of him wanted to say, then, that it was no wonder the pair of them had ended up so bloody screwed up. It felt mean-spirited so he kept his silence, but still- well, fuck.

Not that Sherlock's parents had even been wrong. Mycroft was probably more suited than anyone in the world, to make sense of how his brain worked. No psychiatrist could've ever come close, especially not with a Sherlock that was only six years old.

That didn't make this not absurd. Not ludicrously, impossibly, ridiculously absurd.

And still, if he really thought about it, not at all funny.

"Of course, no matter how stupid we thought he was, Sherlock was smart. He'd already began to construct his mind palace for himself, and he'd already been trying to delete sections for Eurus and Victor. Not very successfully, but- he was trying." Mycroft, again with an air of something approaching utter dismissiveness, tossed his cigarette away, dousing the lingering sparks in the wet almost-snow clinging to every surface seemingly without a single care in the world. "It was Sherlock's idea to delete them, but I chose to encourage it. I chose to instruct him in how to do it, and to tell our parents it was for the best."

Mycroft was quiet for another few moments, seeming to be considering his next words very, very carefully. John wanted to interrupt again, to ask something, but he was just so far out of his league there was nothing sensible for him to say.

Don't think, John, Sherlock would say, with that easy smirk of his. Not your area.

"John, what you must understand is: despite popular belief, I am not omniscient. I was thirteen. I was studying differential equations and multivariable calculus, and had absolutely no interest in psychology, and had no experience in traumatic stress reactions myself. I had no access to advanced psychology texts or studies- I didn't even have the ability to google a question." His fingers twitched irritably again, curling as if he already missed his cigarette and dearly wanted another. "All I knew at the time was that Sherlock was trying to delete a large amount of traumatic memories that were causing him a great amount of distress; namely, Eurus and Victor. Sherlock was struggling to delete the memories on his own, and- I believed if that was what Sherlock wanted to do, then that was what would be best. I did not consider until I was in university myself that perhaps a six year old's first instinct is not always wisest, and that in disallowing Sherlock the opportunity to ever properly process those events, there was a chance that I may have done more harm than good."

John snorted. No, he wanted to drawl, perish the thought, Sherlock was only about the most well-adjusted psychologically healthy bloke in all of London. He hadn't spent the week not sleeping and stalking the city all night, no; he wasn't sitting back in their hotel room right now with Greg as a babysitter, no no no.

But this time, the cause of his ire wasn't even present in the first place. Mycroft's actions had inadvertently led spurned this catastrophe to worsen, perhaps, but it was abundantly clear even now that Mycroft had done the best that he could. Thirteen year old Mycroft hadn't known the neurological affects of severe childhood trauma, affects that could not just be deleted away. Thirteen year old Mycroft hadn't know the lasting physiological results of long-term stress and abuse at such an early age. Thirteen year old Mycroft could not possibly have known that Eurus would suck them all back into a bloody remake of Saw three fucking decades later and resurrect Redbeard as a human skull in John's hands.

Oh, there were still villains in this story, but John was losing the will more and more and more to identify Mycroft as one.

"You know," John said tiredly, "the more you tell me, the more I decide I think I really don't like your parents." He burrowed his hand deeper into his coat, still gripping at now lukewarm coffee that he wasn't so sure he wanted after all. "Or did they just think it was all hunky dory when Sherlock suddenly didn't remember he'd ever had a sister and had replaced his best friend with a fucking dog?"

"John..." With a begrieved, heavy sigh, Mycroft rubbed a hand over his face, looking as weary as John felt. "Their only other option was to have him sectioned. Eurus had just been committed, probably for life, and Sherlock was probably the most stable they'd ever seen him." Then he gave another paltry attempt at a smile, one that reminded him of Sherlock's fake ones, but this one was pinched and thin and so, so weary. "A police psychiatrist did, as a matter of fact, sit down with him, just after the fire, and it remains my firm belief that he made matters all that much worse. Sherlock's memories were still intact, at that point, but he was already displaying a dissociative reaction- perfectly normal, to extreme trauma, and especially at that stage of development, but this was the 1980s, John. The field of childhood psychiatry and disorders was... woefully underdeveloped."

He lingered in his pacing, for a breath, umbrella tapping as they came to yet another juncture in the path. There was something heavy, here, John could tell- something beyond all the recounts of child murder and torture and psychopathy that he'd already heard today. It felt best, again, to keep silent, biting his tongue as he waited beside Mycroft, holding his breath for the other shoe to drop.

When the politician, after another umbrella tap and grimace under his breath, turned again towards the nearest park bench, moving like someone who was very old or perhaps, just very, very tired, John followed in silence, and waited.

"Sherlock was extraordinarily detached, in interview, if not dissociated entirely. He was also extremely intelligent, and immediately recognised that he was being spoken to as if something was wrong with him, so he did his very best to act as normal as he knew how. Considering his only standard for how other children behaved was myself and Eurus, his interpretation of normal was likely somewhat- chilling." Mycroft broke off for a moment, narrowing his eyes to frown down at the sidewalk, as if it, somehow, was responsible for all of this, and everything that had ever gone wrong in the world all over. "He diagnosed Sherlock as a high-functioning sociopath. Then he asked our parents if there'd ever been any neighbourhood animals to disappear, and advised that they keep an eye out to make sure none did so in the future."

John cursed.

Then, he cursed again.

"John-"

"Fucking hell."

"I-"

"That's when he was diagnosed? Then?!"

Mycroft pursed his lips, saying nothing. The look on his face told enough, but John wasn't interested in silent interpretation, at the moment. He cursed a third time and kicked at the cobblestones, his heart pounding in his chest alight with a sick rage. A sick rage on behalf of an injustice that Sherlock surely wouldn't even mind, but Sherlock had shown time and time again to have a badly broken sense of how much to allow others and the world to hurt him, and right now John was really just done with hearing about all the ways his childhood had apparently started it.

"John," Mycroft said again, gaze shadowed. "I know you've had your doubts about Sherlock's exact diagnosis for a long time. You are a doctor, after all."

"Well- yes, but I never thought-" He raked his hands once through his hair, snarling under his breath. Where to start, bloody hell. "We don't even diagnose minors with personality disorders any more; it's not accurate. You have to be over eighteen- certainly older than six. And just after such a severe trauma? By someone clearly unqualified, mind-" John turned back and paced, taking the lead with a racing heart and steps too fast because he was fucking pissed off, now, and it was going to get worse before it got better. "That quack medicalized a perfectly normal dissociative reaction into a personality disorder! It's not even my speciality and even I can see how ridiculous this was!"

"Mmm." Entirely too patient, entirely too calm for the bloody subject matter, Mycroft looked at him again, with that stupidly piercing gaze of the Holmes brothers that made him feel like he'd just been shoved under a microscope. "Then what would you diagnose him with, Dr. Watson? If this one is so dreadfully incorrect?"

"I-" John drew up short, breath catching. "...I've just said- it's not my speciality. Not my area."

"Yes, but do give it a guess, doctor." Mycroft paused a moment for a slight, slippery sort a smile. "I know that you have one."

Fucking Holmeses. God.

"...I don't know, exactly. I really don't know anymore." John turned another aggravated corner, scratching at his coffee cup, deep, at random furrows just because he could. Mycroft was right, of course. He did have his array of guesses. He had for a long time- he'd just never realised Sherlock's initial diagnosis had been so woefully unethical until now. "Sociopathy and psychopathy aren't even proper diagnoses anymore. We use anti-social personality disorder, nowadays. And Sherlock does tick a lot of the boxes, but- he's not an exactly an average patient. Any diagnosis of a personality or mood disorder in someone with such an exceptional mind isn't going to look textbook, and Sherlock's..."

John trailed off, the words turning over in his head from comfortable fact to unsure opinion. Well of course he'd wondered at Sherlock's self-proclaimed label as a sociopath; he was a bloody doctor. He'd wondered for a while if Sherlock was maybe somewhere along the autistic spectrum, and begun to put serious doubt in the sociopathy label the longer he'd known him. Sherlock had had difficultly relating to others, but for a genius who occupied such an entirely different playing field than the rest of the world- of course he did. And maybe after being told enough times he was a freak who wasn't capable of it, he'd gotten tired of trying.

John had known it was a load of bollocks for a long time, now.

But in the end, he'd just decided it didn't matter.

Sherlock was clearly neurodivergent- that was readily apparent to anyone who'd had a thirty second conversation with him. Sherlock's exceptional intelligence and memory ensured whatever presentation of whatever disorder he might or might not have had would be atypical, and overall, what had it mattered? Autistic or a sociopath or willfully talking circles around every psychiatrist he'd ever met, Sherlock was just that: Sherlock. He hadn't needed a diagnosis to define his best friend.

"What do you want me to say?" he grumbled at last, forced reluctantly back into step by the ever unflappable Mycroft. "I told you, I'm not a child psychiatrist. I can say his first diagnosis is a load of bollocks, but you clearly don't need me for that."

"I'm asking," Mycroft said, "to prove a point- to prove my entire point, in telling you what I have today. I've known Sherlock was not a sociopath since the police psychiatrist defined what it was. Sherlock likely has also known it on some level, ever since he'd bothered to read the diagnostic criteria for himself. Nevertheless, he has chosen to fully and proudly embrace the diagnosis since he was six." He settled further back against the bench, sharp eyes flickering about the park the same way Sherlock's did, when he was particularly bored or restless.

John wondered how many life stories he'd seen, in that one glance. How many affairs and petty criminals and proposals and birthdays and lives he'd read, in that second alone. The infinite spectrum of truths Sherlock and Mycroft could read in less than a heartbeat, and they still, somehow, managed to hold so many lies between themselves.

"You, John, are the first person I have seen Sherlock be willing to accept his own humanity for. For better, and... for worse," and Mycroft did not elaborate, just silently looked at him with dark eyes, but John did not need elaboration. John swallowed and could see Sherlock, keeling over bleeding internally from a bullet Mary had put there. Dragged off in handcuffs with Magnussen shot in the face on the ground. Collapsing on his hands and knees, spitting blood, that John had put there.

Mycroft did not need to elaborate, and by the look in his eyes, John knew then and there that it was only by Sherlock's will that Mycroft allowed him within a hundred mile radius of his brother ever again.

John swallowed hard again, willing his stomach to settle. He did not apologise.

The very sorely needed apology was not Mycroft's to hear.

"The three of us have always defied conventional labels, but Sherlock has only defied the ones he ascribed to himself upon your input. Though he may not consider it my business, I would like to see that continue." With a brisk clearing of the throat, Mycroft rose to his feet, his ever-present and dangerous umbrella tapping stridently against the ground.

"He trusts you," he said. "More than he has ever trusted me. For once in his life, I believe he might just be willing to let someone help him- and if that someone is to be you, I would like for you to be able to operate on the fullest dataset that is possible. Do not let him down, John."

Then, without any further fuss or ado, Mycroft clicked his umbrella along the ground, turned his back, and kept on walking.

"Mycroft?" John asked, tossing his third coffee of the day. The conversation was over, now, the telltale black car in sight. "Can I ask you something?"

The politician smiled thinly again. He, quite apparently, had very little wish to continue story-telling, and considering just how awful this story was, John could hardly blame him. "This little meeting is, in fact, to answer your questions, John."

"Uh. Yeah. Right." Actually, the meeting had been for Sherlock first, and Mycroft second- John, if he did rank at all, came in at a very, very distant third, but he was used to such unequal rankings, when it came to the Holmes siblings. "This- everything that you've told me, today. Everything that went on, when you were kids."

Mycroft was quiet. His umbrella continued its tapping.

"This is why you're so lenient with Sherlock, isn't it? You feel- guilty. Or... responsible."

The politician bit out a short, disparaging laugh, entirely restrained and ice-cold. "There are many words you could use to describe my tumultuous relationship with my brother, John- I doubt anyone would choose to use lenient as one of them."

"Oh, yeah, I know, because you two can't do normal if your lives depended on it- but that's what it is, isn't it?" John shifted to face him, and the brick wall of Mycroft's solid facade was all that was waiting for him, but he pressed against it anyway. "You've said that Sherlock would never get special treatment on account of brotherly compassion, and that's true; it's not because he's your brother. But come on, Mycroft- you were his keeper for how many years? And I seriously doubt it's because Sherlock repaid the favours with kindness and gratitude."

Mycroft gave him a positively withering look, one of exhaustion and disrepute, but John pushed on, now, not about to stop now that he'd found his speed. "Come on; how many times did you put him up in rehab? How many possession charges have you made disappear, how many assault charges have you gotten dropped? How many times have you footed the bill for some bullshit that he's pulled or quietly mopped up a catastrophe that would've landed anyone else in- god, I don't know- an MI6-funded black hole or something?" John shook his head again, tearing his hand through his hair at the continued look of bloody indifference on Mycroft's face. "Look, I love him, but I think we both know the only reason his insufferable arse and smart mouth wasn't in jail before we ever met is you pulling strings."

Mycroft grimaced darkly, apparently seeming to give up the facade, upon regonising that John had already seen through every inch of it. The politician gave him another sour look, still seeming rather as if he'd been made to take a bite out of a whole lemon, then just averted his eyes away with a sigh.

"Five," he said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Five," Mycroft stressed again, as if he thought John was very, very stupid. He probably did. "You asked how many times I put Sherlock up in rehab. The answer is five."

"...Oh."

Mycroft huffed a little, his face again turning bitter. "I sent him to the best facilities the continent had to offer. Sherlock rabbited as if I'd locked him in an asylum from the 1800s. When he did, finally, decide to get clean, he did so by spending the month handcuffed to Inspector Lestrade's radiator." He sniffed, once, in a manner that almost made him look offended, in a very high-brow, smarmy, British sort of way. "I offered a pamphlet for a sixth rehab facility to Lestrade. I was informed the next day that Sherlock had eaten it."

"Had- Jesus."

"Yes," Mycroft purred. "Naturally, I took this as a refusal of any such aid, and left Sherlock to his own devices."

John passed a hand over his mouth, shuddering and halfway to smiling. He hated to admit it, but he could imagine it. Sherlock, halfway through a detox and out of his mind, being presented with the expensive, well-meaning, utterly unasked for meddling of his brother. Spitting it back into his face in the most succinct way he could think of. Not for the first time, he was reminded that the manic bundle of chaos that he'd first met years ago was Sherlock corralled, that that was Sherlock subdued and healthy and in control, and John once again shuddered to think at the sort of person he must've been before he'd gotten clean.

It was no wonder, really, that Sherlock had turned his nose up at all the help Mycroft had had to offer, point-blank refusing to get clean until it was what he wanted to do.

"Well, we digress, don't we?" Mycroft murmured, though it was perhaps closer to an utterly sulky grumble. "You are, by some measure, correct, John. I suppose my brother's aptitude for deductions has begun to rub off on you after all."

"You do know that the world is not entirely populated by braindead goldfish, just waiting for the golden intelligence of the Holmeses to come along to enlighten them, right? We are, on occasion, capable of independent thought as well?"

The look Mycroft gave him was then was so withering that John felt like he was considered no more than a goldfish after all.

"Regardless," he murmured, fiddling with his umbrella only to close it back again with a snap. "Sherlock's very existence demanded leniency. I first caught him smoking at fourteen, when he was busy being a right little terror at Eton, and didn't even realise he had graduated to more illicit substances until he took his university entrance exams so stoned he signed them USS Holmes."

John snorted, and didn't even come close to feeling bad about it. "Let me guess- still top ten in the country?"

"Top one in the country, John."

Offf course he was.

They shared another amused glance, or, at least, whatever was as close to amusement as Mycroft was capable of. "Yes, well," the politician said, "as I've said- you're not entirely wrong. I did have my selfish motivations, in wanting Sherlock to get clean- an asset of his abilities truly is indispensable, and his company is not entirely intolerable otherwise- but Sherlock has always been allowed another second chance. That was our unspoken agreement, in those years." He pursed his lips, pale and wane. "As long as his self-destruction did not harm others, I would always ensure a safe landing was cleared for him- should he ever choose to take it."

And he never had, then. Not until Greg had offered him a spot at his crime scenes as a consultant, and given him a reason to get clean besides you're going to die if you don't.

John, once again, looked away.

"Because you felt guilty," he said again, and he never would have believed he was saying those words to Mycroft Holmes, but here he was and he wasn't even blinking an eye. "You thought the drugs were your fault. Because of Eurus; because of what he couldn't remember."

"John," Mycroft sighed, looking incredibly pained. "The first time I found him in a crackhouse, he was holding a dog collar."

"Oh. Well-. That's-"

"Yes," Mycroft said.

John's stomach knotted just a little tighter.

"It's not that Sherlock's stated reasons for his varied addictions are lies, of course," the politician purred, waving an utterly dismissive hand. "I'm sure they do alleviate crippling boredom; I'm sure they do help him sleep when it's been days and he can't, I'm sure they do help him focus, I'm sure he does weigh them as merely interesting when a saner man would call it suicidal. But many children have a pet be put down in childhood, John; none of these children then go on to be so affected that they fondle the pet's collar in a crackhouse two decades later."

"Do you think he could... I don't know. Remember something?" John wet his lips. "When under the influence?"

"I know he did, John."

There was another uncomfortable silence. John, as unnecessary as it was, found himself making a mental note to call Wiggins, and pay him off to keep the fuck away from Sherlock, if he bloody well knew what was good for him. Not that it would stop Sherlock, if he wanted to get high, but-

Well, he'd had enough of sitting by to quietly observe Sherlock self-destruct. He wasn't Mycroft.

Rather than a provide a safe landing for the crash, John preferred to prevent Sherlock from taking flight to crash in the first place.

When John did not interrupt again, Mycroft drew to a halt, his arms folded tightly and that annoying black car just out of his line of sight, circling the block yet again and for one last time. "Eurus was the product of a mistake of nature, if you'll allow such a layman's term. Sherlock, however, was a product of mine." He broke off to scowl again, still looking more as if he was discussing a problem with the afternoon tea than his brother's mental health. "Exceptional as he is, considering the circumstances, it was a statistical likelihood that he fell into drugs; it was a statistical likelihood that he fell into any number of things, which I'm sure you do not need me to list off. Don't misunderstand, I am not taking credit for Sherlock's accomplishments- but that he has succeeded as much as he has is an outlier to be grateful for."

Something about that didn't sit right, with John. Well, to be frank, bloody none of this nightmare of a day had, and he hoped none of it ever would, but this- he didn't know why it bothered him so much, even.This was hardly the first time he'd discussed Sherlock's drug habits with Mycroft, and no matter how well-intentioned it was this felt... different, somehow. Unsettling.

Whatever it was, John knew that he didn't like it.

He pulled his jumper tighter about himself, clenching his jaw, and said nothing.

When it became apparent that he had no response, Mycroft cleared his throat, taking a step forward to be easily visible to his driver, upon making another circle. "Until next time, then," he said, his face utterly calm and inscrutable as he turned his back. "I trust you'll contact me if a situation arises that requires assistance."

John hummed noncommittally, knowing the statement did not need a response. If a situation arose that required assistance, then Mycroft would surely know before John could tell him- likely, in fact, before John knew it himself. It was just the way of things. He just nodded into the cold, still shivering and unsettled and just downright unhappy and he couldn't quite say why.

He didn't land on what he wanted to say until the black car had already pulled up again, and Mycroft, with a silent look that held a thousand heavy words in the space of a single heartbeat, headed to walk away.

"Mycroft."

Mycroft heaved an impatient sigh, edging just on the border of frustration. "John," he returned, and his voice was steady, but John could tell that today's conversation had already well exceeded the Emotional Quota that the Holmes brothers had for the day. If he'd been Sherlock, he wouldn't have even bothered to turn back around at all.

Unfortunately for him, John had one more thing to say, whether he was in the mood to listen or not.

"Sherlock is not- a mistake. No-" He held up a hand to forestall the tired interruption he saw coming. "Not your mistake, really, but what I mean is he's not a mistake at all. He's not a statistic, he's not an outlier, he's not an addict using cocaine to recover repressed memories, he's not an abused child to get praise just because he get out of bed and can dress himself. He's not your baby brother that needs a minder anymore, Mycroft. He..." He tugged his jumper straight again, staring hard at Mycroft, trying to drive that point home no matter how heartlessly cold the politician was trying to be about it. "He's an insufferable twat with the sensitivity of a rock, and he's a fucking marvel that I'm begging to develop the slightest sense of self preservation, but he is not the sum of the first six years of his life. He never has been, Mycroft. Sherlock is... just Sherlock."

Mycroft said nothing, for another long, few moments. He yielded no visible reaction at all, in the manner that he had become accustomed to long, long ago, the manner that had been Sherlock's defense mechanism against the fly in the ointment and he was now starting to see that perhaps he'd learned it from Mycroft. Perhaps, as John had realised today, he'd learned a great deal from Mycroft, whether he'd ever admit it or not, whether he'd ever, ever thank him for it or not.

Then, still perfectly silent, Mycroft slid into the backseat of the car, and shut the door behind him.

No words had been exchanged at all. But somehow, as he watched that damn bloody black car pull away to leave him alone there in the park, John thought that maybe, he'd said something that he needed to say- and heard something that he'd needed to hear.

Maybe, just maybe, Mycroft Holmes was just as human as the rest of them.

John smiled to himself, hands back in his pockets. He hesitated, lingering still along the edge of the sidewalk; then, with a tired swipe at his face, turned back.

He had time for one more stop, before he wanted to get back to the hotel.

It was perfectly silent and perfectly still, as John slipped back into the room, and on instinct alone, eased the door inch by inch shut behind him.

Greg met his gaze first, having situated himself at what passed for a desk, a file of paperwork in his lap and five others scattered about the table behind him. The inspector looked at him with warm eyes, holding a finger to his lips in the universal gesture for shh.

John only had to slip a few careful steps into the room to realize why.

Sherlock and Rosie were together on the detective's travesty of an unused bed, Rosie napping in a nest of some of the myriad of pillows, and Sherlock upright in what was possibly the most precarious sleeping position known to mankind. He looked as if he'd dozed off mid-deduction, still neatly dressed in a suit and the Belstaff, sitting almost entirely upright with hands steepled together and crumbling under his chin; John, honestly, would've been fooled, if his head wasn't sagging so severely to the right the idiot was going to wake up with a crick in his neck.

It was the first time John had seen Sherlock asleep in three days.

Which, actually, now that he thought about it, was really not a good thing, but he couldn't help but beam anyway.

"Thanks," he whispered, sharing a conspiratorial smile. "For babysitting."

Greg grinned right back. "The big one was a bit fussy, but he settled down quick enough."

"Oh, did he now...?"

Greg smirked, looking as if he was about to say something else, but this time was broken off by Rosie. Alerted by the hushed sounds of speech or the sound of the door or just a bloody psychic connection because she was bloody amazing, his daughter was roused from her mound of pillows, squealing and rolling upright with chubby arms, and that was the end of naptime, then- for the little one and the big one.

Sherlock started, bright eyes opened wide as his legs kicked, inhaling deep and blinking with the look of a man who'd just realized he was about to fall off the bed. It was a pity- two hours sleep after three days of not was really nothing at all- but Sherlock was awake, now, and there was no sense crying over spilled milk. "Good morning, love," John called, giving Rosie a hand to hug. "Good morning, love," he said again, and grinned to Sherlock.

The detective blinked fuzzily, still looking all but half-asleep. "It is 2:47 in the afternoon: decidedly not morning." He inhaled deeply again, sharp, inquisitive eyes flickering over John in the space of not even a half-second. Absentmindedly, if it was, indeed, possible for Sherlock to do anything absentmindedly, the detective lowered a hand for Rosie to play with as well, and sent another unreadable glance towards Greg.

"Do tell Mycroft to piss off next time he comes calling; when I want to talk to him, I will let him know. Additionally, walks through the park are just unnecessary this time of year; go to a pub like normal people rather than run the hyperbolic risk of frostbite. And-" He reached out without asking, plucking through John's arms to latch long fingers around one of the three snowcones that he'd purchased in the park: strawberry for Rosie, strawberry for himself, and chocolate, for their resident raving madman of a genius with a sweet tooth. "-if my dear brother does persist in this violation of human decency and sanity with Lestrade- oh, good lord," and he melted, he just positively melted with the most obscene of sighs as he bit a far larger than polite bite out of the frozen chocolate, "-he must stop carrying about a pack of cigarettes with him, no matter the affect on his weight. He's ruining Lestrade's seventeenth attempt at quitting."

"He-" Greg spluttered once, flushing right there in his chair. "He's not, I-"

"You have been convincing yourself to buy a pack of cigarettes from the gift shop downstairs for the past hour. What is potentially more odd is that you seem to be under the delusion that you could possibly hide it; the signs are obvious, Lestrade." With an eye roll, Sherlock folded his legs up underneath himself, back all spry and wide-awake for a man who'd only been awake a solid sixty seconds. "Three coffees is really overdoing it, don't you think, John?"

John, once again, beamed.

"Fantastic," he said.

Sherlock, busy losing himself face-first into a handful of cheap, street-quality ice cream, double-taked so vehemently he choked on his latest mouthful. "I- beg your pardon?"

"Fantastic," John said again, smiling the biggest that he had all day long. "I said that you are fantastic, love- you bloody dramatic show-off. That was fantastic."

"...That. Erm." Sherlock coughed once, and honestly, couldn't have looked more takenaback if he'd tried. His licked his lips, eyes stuttering through a round of blinks, then shook himself and tried again. "I know it's fantastic to you, as you have stated as such repeatably since our first meeting. Why would you state the obvious out loud, John?"

"Oh," John sighed, his heart warming for the first time all day, "no reason." He maneuvered around the snowcone to kiss him, and he kept kissing him until he'd finally gotten Sherlock to smile. "No reason at all."