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Mycroft is 11 when it happens.
The day starts out wonderfully. Father takes Mycroft with him to a bank meeting that day. He knows most boys his age won't agree, but Mycroft thinks all the discussion over LIBOR and such is very interesting. Mummy's job is also very interesting, though. Maybe he could do both.
But when they get home, everything is wrong. No one comes to the door. They find Nanny unconscious and bleeding. Sherlock is not there.
Father has his phone out and dialed in less than a second. "Put me through to M... I don't care if she's meeting with the Prime Minister. Put me through NOW!... Her husband... Darling, someone's taken Sherlock."
//
An hour later, Mummy, Father, and fourteen men with guns and electrical equipment are in the parlor. Mycroft is there, too. They'd tried to send him away, but when he'd ask them to explain why they thought it would be less stressful for him not to have all available information, they'd relented.
No one has spoken for the last several minutes. Father breaks the silence.
"This is your fault, isn't it?" he says to Mummy. "You've pissed off some government or some terrorist group and now they've come after our children. You swore they didn't know who you were. You swore you'd keep them safe and now..." Father brakes off. Mummy just stares at him.
"I apologize. I did not mean that."
"Yes you did." says Mummy. "But you might be right. And considering the circumstances, I may forgive you."
Everyone is silent again for another few minutes. Then, one of Mummy's men marches a terrified looking messenger in a gunpoint.
"The box checks out safe, ma'am," he says, handing her a package.
Mummy opens the box and looks inside. She makes a noise Mycroft has never heard her make before, like pain. She takes a note out of the box. There's something reddish brown and sticky on it, obviously drying blood. Mummy reads the note.
"It seems they just want money, dear," she says to Father. She's staring at an empty space four feet in front of her.
Father looks in the box. Then he runs to the waste basket and vomits.
Mycroft looks in the box. There is a square bit of flesh inside with black swirls on it. He'd seen it before, just yesterday, on Sherlock's upper arm.
It's Sherlock's soul-match mark.
//
Mummy leaves a little while later. Four hours after that, she is back, with Sherlock in her arms and blood on her blouse. She says something to Father about being glad she didn't let her license expire.
No one needs to tell Mycroft that all the people who hurt Sherlock are dead.
//
The best physicians on Earth see Sherlock in the next few weeks and months. His arm heals beautifully, with barely a hint of a scar. Mycroft knows Mummy and Father hope that if Sherlock heals cleanly enough, his mark might come back.
It doesn't.
Mycroft wonders if an ugly scar might have been better than nothing.
********************
Sherlock is 12 when it happens.
Or the first time it happens, anyway.
He has to take a shower sometime. He's put it off as long as he can, but the other boys are starting to comment, and his house master had a 'chat' with him today on how 'he seems to be unaware of the changes his body is going through.'
He wants to take a shower, but it's a shared bathing room. Anyone could come in.
He decides to do it very early in the morning, before anyone else is up. He almost makes it.
Almost.
He hasn't quite gotten his shirt back on when Steven has to come in.
Sherlock doesn't know what's coming next, but he suspects. He's right.
"Finally decide to have pity on our noses and take a shower, Sher- What?! Where's your mark? What kind of psychopath freak doesn't have a mark!?"
"Steven.."
"Stay away from me, Freak!"
This becomes very familiar, very quickly.
He could explain, but then they might pity him. He thinks pity would be worse.
********************
John is 16 when it happens.
His school has got some grant to take everyone off to an art museum and is loading the students onto the train. Art isn't John's thing. He could probably tell a Van Gogh from a Monet if those were the only two choices, but that's about it. However, John is certainly not going to turn down a free trip to the city.
The train ride is long, and feels even longer coming back. It's late when he gets in. He heats something resembling dinner. He skips his shower and starts getting ready for bed.
Then he sees it. His mark has changed from black and white to full color. He's met his match.
It could be anyone. Anyone at the museum, anyone one on the train, anyone he glanced at in the street... It could take weeks to find them.
He does the usual. He contacts the museum, the train stations, all the train stations in between. He reports to the town registry, the city registry, the registry of every town and village between his home and the city. He scans newspapers. He calls police departments. He borrows a camera. He mails hundreds of pictures of his mark.
He finally convinces his parents to pay for a notice in the paper. In two papers. In three papers. They are in print for a month. He receives dozens of mark pictures. None of them match his own, though two match each other. He lets them know. As a thank you, they pay for a picture of his mark to be printed one Sunday.
After three months, he wonders why his match hasn't contacted him. They must know who he is by now.
After a year, he thinks he knows. John Watson, in council housing, with an unemployed father who lives in a bottle and an unemployed sister setting up to do the same. They think he's not good enough for them.
Well, fuck them. He may not have money, but he's smart and he'll prove it. He's got a university scholarship and will be a doctor in not too many years. And if the posh arsehole ever decides John is finally good enough for them, he'll tell them where they can go.
********************
John is 33 when it happens.
It is amazingly bloody hot. John figures anyone who gives him grief about having his shirt off in the break tent can sod off.
He and Peters are midway through the usual exchanges about the awfulness of the coffee when the other man suddenly freezes. He is staring at John's shoulder with a look of horror.
John glances down and fixates on his upper arm. The color is draining out of his mark, turning to grey, black creeping in around the edges. Then, a second, a minute, an hour later (no, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes) the color rushes back in.
John's a doctor. He knows what just happened. His match nearly died - was in fact clinically dead for a moment - but someone brought them back. He takes a breath, finishes his coffee, grabs his shirt, and starts to head back to work.
Peters stops him.
"Don't you want to call someone John?"
"No. I wouldn't know who to call."
********************
John is 38 when it happens.
Sherlock has managed to get himself cut up, and is refusing to go to the A & E. John doesn't bother to be surprised. There is no way he is letting Sherlock treat himself, though.
"Take your shirt off."
"No."
"I need to clean and stitch this, and I can't do that with your shirt in the way."
"No!"
John sighs. Sherlock is the biggest prude he has ever met. He's been living with the man for over two months and has yet to see him not covered neck to knees.
"Don't worry about your virtue. I'm not going to jump you while you're bleeding."
"I'm not worried about my virtue."
Another thought occurs to John. He doesn't like it. "I'm a doctor. You're my patient," he says more gently. "Anything I might see will be strictly confidential. I won't judge you or harass you about it."
After a moment, Sherlock finally starts unbuttoning his shirt.
John can't contain the gasp when he sees Sherlock's shoulder.
There is no mark. Where his mark should be there is instead the smooth shiny paleness of a very old, very well healed scar.
"...Sherlock?"
"Kidnapping. I was four. My mark was deemed more identifiable and more of an incentive than a finger. Yes, they are all dead."
Even with everything he'd seen in Afghanistan, John has never seen this before. He knew it could happen, knew it did happen, but it was usually talked about in the same breath as Nazi war crimes. It was heresy to every religion on the planet. That it had happened to Sherlock...
But then a small selfish part of him thinks 'Maybe this why. Maybe I wasn't rejected. Maybe it's Him.'
He stomps on it. The chances are ridiculously small, and in any case, this is certainly not the time to bring it up.
He cleans the knife wound.
//
A few weeks later, John asks Sherlock if he ever went to an art museum when he was in school.
Sherlock says "Deleted."
John doesn't ask again.
********************
Sherlock is 37 when it happens.
He knocks on the door of 221b Baker Street. It feels odd to knock. It's his home. Or had been when he was alive. But that's the point, after all. He is alive, only John doesn't know that, and it's finally safe enough for John to know.
He wonders how John will react.
He should have expected the fist.
//
Later, Sherlock is sitting on the couch, an ice pack pressed against his jaw. Across from him, John speaks up.
"You never asked me about my mark. Why, if I'd met my match, I wasn't with them."
"I thought it must have happened in Afghanistan. There might have been long stretches when you wouldn't have the opportunity to see that your mark had changed, and if your match was a local civilian - or an insurgent - you'd likely never be able to find them. And... I know you think I have no limits, but I just don't ask about people's marks. You know why."
"I thought it might be something like that. No, it happened on a school trip when I was 16. I, my family, we did all the right things. Notices in the paper and all that. But no one with a matching mark ever turned up. I eventually decided they just didn't want me."
Sherlock makes a noise.
"No, let me finish. When I found out about what happened to your mark, I thought, maybe this is the reason my match never claimed me. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe they didn't know. Maybe it was you. But I couldn't bring myself to suggest it.
"When you died, when you fell, and my mark didn't turn black, I... It seemed clear it must not have been you after all. But a part of me still hoped it was you and it meant you weren't really dead. And here you are."
"...Well, I could always try dying again. If your mark turns black, you'll know."
"Don't even joke."
Silence.
"Does it matter?"
"No."
He pulls the other man to him.
********************
John is 98 when it happens.
======END=====