Work Text:
The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where
But I’m strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother- He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother, The Hollies
“No,” said Mycroft, the moment Sherlock walked in the door.
He turned back to reading through reports; a likely fruitless attempt at deflection, but nevertheless.
“Mycroft,” said Sherlock.
Mycroft ignored him.
There was no point in discussing the matter, and he had a great many things to do, none of which involved expending government resources on pointless and dangerous missions to Eurus.
And, of course, there was the fact that Mycroft hadn’t spoken more than a monosyllable to anyone since the completion of the previous day’s humiliating dressing-down from his parents; since his mother had turned to Sherlock and named him the grown-up of the family.
Sherlock! Whom Mycroft had been the one to pull out of countless crack dens and prison cells and ill-advised confrontations with vice chancellors and landlords and murderers all over Britain, while their parents concerned themselves with lost glasses and line-dancing their way around the world, footloose and fancy-free.
Mycroft had always been the one she’d turned to, expecting him to deal with Sherlock’s latest catastrophe, whatever it was, and now, the first time Mycroft had—in her opinion, at least—put a foot wrong….
You were always the grown-up.
“No,” Mycroft repeated, at his brother’s continued unwelcome presence in his office.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and sprawled into one of the chairs across from Mycroft’s desk. He’d promised Mummy, in Mycroft's office yesterday, that he would find a way. Obviously from the state of his collar, he thought that he had.
Ludicrous plan. As though Mycroft would willingly let Sherlock within half an ocean of her, Mummy’s unreasoning insistence about the whole thing notwithstanding. This kind of upset had been precisely what he’d been trying to avoid all along.
He kept working through the reports of the week’s disasters, one after another, conscientiously ignoring the unignorable form of Sherlock in his peripheral vision. He’d hooked one knee over the arm of the chair, one hand and one foot trailing on the floor, like a teenage boy still growing used to the sudden length of his limbs.
He didn’t look grown up.
“Mycroft….”
“No, Sherlock!” repeated Mycroft, crisply closing one file and opening the next. “I’ve made my mistake with Eurus once; I won’t make it again. No contact. No exceptions. No matter what our mother has to say about my deficiencies as a son, and a human being.”
It shouldn’t have stung; untruths were simply untruths, and of no concern to someone who knew better. It was never for her that he’d done it, in any case. But he’d always imagined her to be grateful for sparing her the pain it had caused even Mycroft, with his perennially cold heart, to see Sherlock like that. To see Eurus like that, too.
He’d known they wouldn't understand, when Sherlock had convinced him to tell them. Blackmailed him, with the promise of telling them himself if he didn't.
He’d known they’d be angry.
He hadn’t known it would hurt.
“It’s not…” Sherlock sighed, looking at the ceiling. “Mycroft, it’s not a kindness to let me see her.”
Mycroft tilted his head without raising his eyes from his paperwork. “Excellent,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be accused of being unkind.”
Again, rang unsaid in the silence between them.
“All right,” said Sherlock carefully.
It was no wonder; Mycroft had been leaking emotions all over the place ever since Eurus’s name had first come up. He’d closested himself in here to read through the seemingly endless reports alone, in the hopes of regaining his equilibrium. His colleagues at least had respected that boundary—but family was always difficult.
“It’s not only a kindness,” Sherlock qualified. “She found her way out of that cell once, and she can—”
“I assure you, security has been—”
“You called her an era-defining genius!” snapped Sherlock. “You think your security can ever be better than her? You can’t get rid of all the nurses, the cleaners, the guards, the wardens! You can vet them, you can put the fear of God into them, you can make what she did to the last lot of staff required annual viewing, but they’re still just people! People get bored, they get careless, they have husbands, wives, mortgages, personal resentments, they don't think things will happen to them, and she will use that.”
Mycroft pressed his lips together and sent a scathing glance up from his papers. “So what would you suggest? A merry jaunt for you off to Sherrinford every few weeks to give her yet another target to practice on? Yet another person who thinks it won't happen to him? No, Sherlock.”
“I’m suggesting—”
Sherlock took a deep breath and straightened in his chair, setting his feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees, apparently digging in for the long haul. Wonderful.
Mycroft turned a page, focusing more intently on the words in front of him.
... found to have developed an alternative channel of egress from the island, a private helicopter whose arrivals were never clocked on...
“I’m suggesting,” said Sherlock evenly, “that we give her what she wants. Someone to play with. Me. I can monitor her. Personally. You can monitor both of us to ensure I’m not compromised. Perhaps I can reach her, perhaps not, but I promised I’d guide her to the ground."
“Don't you start going on about vows again, Sherlock, or I'll vow to have you formally ejected from the—"
“If we don’t even try, what will she do?" demanded Sherlock, ignoring the low blow. "She’s been locked in a cell since she was six! Alone! Can you truly blame her for breaking out, for searching for some way to connect with us, the only way she knew how? We can’t deny her that, Mycroft. We can’t make her that desperate again because—while we didn’t precisely win this time—if we force her into it, the next time she breaks out, we will almost certainly lose.”
That… had not been an argument Mycroft was expecting. But it was also not, he found once he thought about it, one that was wrong.
Mycroft stared at his brother, wrongfooted, abruptly feeling as though he was falling very fast, too fast, out of control.
Then he’s very limited.
“Sometimes,” pressed Sherlock earnestly, “sentiment is not just the grit in a sensitive instrument. Sometimes, compassion creates its own solution.”
Slowly, Mycroft closed his mouth. Then opened it.
We can’t make her that desperate again.
Abruptly, the events of the past week had taken on a horrifyingly different complexion.
"Mycroft..." said Sherlock, sitting up straighter, brow furrowed with confusion and sudden concern.
“I really did this, didn’t I?” whispered Mycroft. The iron-gunpowder smell of the governor’s—of David’s—blood tasted thick on the back of his tongue. It was entirely possible he was going to throw up again. “All those deaths. I thought, the treats… Moriarty… but that’s not where it went wrong at all, is it? No wonder she wanted me dead—and at your hands, of all people. I made the decisions on the extremity of her isolation. I insisted I knew best. I....”
I’m not lonely, Sherlock.
He covered his face with shaking hands, unable to go on.
How would you know?
He’d never been able to solve the ritual she gave to Sherlock, any more than he could make her tell them where Victor was hidden. He hadn’t slept for three days running, after the boy had disappeared, running through combinations, desperate to find the answer, until the rains had swept in and Eurus had stopped singing. He hadn’t slept that night either, lying awake listening to Sherlock’s endless screams.
Play with me, Sherlock.
He’d denied her the one thing that could have assuaged her loneliness, because he’d never understood it.
“Mycroft…”
“I did this,” he breathed.
He hoped his voice would be muffled beyond comprehension, but also… also found himself hoping that it wouldn’t. How humiliating.
“Mycroft, no,” said Sherlock, his voice terrible with compassion. “You didn’t make her a killer. You didn’t make her do anything. You were afraid of her, and with very good reason. You were protecting everyone. She wasn’t the only one alone in the sky. It worked for years, for many years—and you were kind to her, too. A Stradivarius? Please.”
Mycroft grimaced at the memory of defending that one against a budgetary review—but the intelligence she’d given him on those terrorist attacks had saved lives—saved a lot of British lives—and in the end, unconventional problem-solving was precisely what his discretionary budget was intended for.
In exchange for that conversation with Moriarty, she’d saved only one life, but that one….
Mycroft raised his chin, the fit of emotion over.
“I knew the risks of engaging with her,” he said. “I took them.”
He should regret it. One life saved, against all those she’d killed for that five minutes. It was his job to regret that, to have the strength to cast one life—even his own brother’s life—to the wolves if it was necessary to protect many others. But even if he'd known what would happen—even if he'd understood precisely what it would cost—he still wouldn’t have traded Sherlock’s life for those of the governor or his wife, nor any number of Garridebs and psychologists.
No matter what kind of a monster that made him.
“I calculated my own life a fitting price to pay for those my weakness allowed her to take,” he told Sherlock coldly. “But Mummy’s right. You’re right. I saw the risks of our sister clearly, so clearly that I couldn't see just our sister. Perhaps if I had….”
Sherlock shook his head. “She’ll never be just our sister, Mycroft. Holding her incommunicado was the safest way. Mummy couldn’t have borne not seeing her, but she couldn’t have protected herself, not from Eurus. It would have got very messy, very quickly. It’s only now that we can see that containment won’t be enough. Eurus can’t be contained, not by ordinary means. Our only chance with her is to change the rules; to try something different; try it as safely as we can. The fact that she’s our sister changes nothing… except, Mycroft, except… that you are not alone in this anymore.”
Blindly, Mycroft looked down at his desk.
He shuffled papers for a silent moment.
This one: the transcripts of every attempt at a psychological assessment, every official interview she’d had—at least until those records petered out. This one: the report on the psychiatrist who’d killed his family, checking into whether she’d given him any other, more insidious tasks before he killed himself. This one: the report of the psychologist on his follow-ups with all the patients Eurus had seen while masquerading as Doctor Watson’s therapist. This one: every requisition order, personnel change, or registered flight in and out of Sherrinford over the past five years. This one: the details of the security upgrades, the increased elaborate precautions everyone was required to take around her. This one: the results of the medical exam, the confirmation of his sister's descent into catatonia.
He looked up at Sherlock, whose eyes were still fixed on him, intent.
“You’ll be under strict supervision at all times,” he said. “Video, auditory, and a heart monitor. I want to know instantly if something subtle she does frightens you—or if it makes you stop being frightened enough. No games, Sherlock, not with this. You’re going to have to tell me if you find yourself doing anything… unusual, or if anything she does or says—no matter how trivial it seems—becomes a recurring thought. The very moment you become aware of it. I’m sure you’ll find that… invasive, but it’s for everyone’s protection. It won’t necessarily mean things stop if you come to me with something, but we’ll need to assess whether it’s related: whether it’s from her, whether it poses a danger. Together.” He paused, pressing his lips together. “And you’ll need to stay clean. Drug tests before every visit. Not negotiable; it’s absolutely too dangerous to risk you going in there in anything other than top form.”
Sherlock blinked slowly. “Agreed,” he said. “On all points. And… I’ll need clearance to bring in my violin.”
“Oh, Sherlock,” said Mycroft, understanding immediately. “So literal. Yes. I’ll have hers returned to her at once. It may take a little longer than that to set up an authorised schedule for you to visit, but I'll make it happen.”
“I’ll need some time anyway,” shrugged Sherlock. “I should compose something specifically for her. I need to give her something real, something me. She’ll be able to appreciate the sentiment that way. The end of the week?”
“Done,” said Mycroft.
Sherlock stood up, straightening his jacket, but he didn’t leave, standing somewhat awkwardly in front of his chair and looking at Mycroft, his intentions unclear.
“Was there something else?” asked Mycroft warily. After that conversation, surely there could be very little that Sherlock was reticent to say.
“I talked to Mummy again this morning,” his brother admitted.
Mycroft’s control of his expression was exquisite, as always. As almost always.
“I wanted to know,” Sherlock pressed on quickly, “if we’d played duets, Eurus and I, when we were young. But we didn’t. We couldn’t. Because we never had two violins. I remember it now: one day I admired her music, told her it was beautiful, and she just… handed me her violin. It was a gift, she said, and she would teach me to play, too. She guided my movements, corrected my tuning, borrowed it sometimes to demonstrate, but we could never play, not together. Mummy remembers she asked for another, that last Christmas before Victor died—but they were already concerned she was losing touch. She’d always seemed so remote when she played, Mummy said. And the family already had a violin. She hadn’t even played it for months, apart from my lessons. So they bought her a dollhouse instead. They thought that might… warm her.”
“It sounds like their kind of thinking,” said Mycroft, sneering a little at the naivety.
He remembered the dollhouse, it had been an extraordinary thing: as tall as her, the front swinging open to reveal rooms populated by miniature furniture perfect down to the last tiny porcelain teacup. At Mummy's prompting, Eurus had moved the pretty little inanimate people about it aimlessly, blank-faced.
Then you should have done better.
Even at thirteen, Mycroft would have got that one right, if they’d consulted him.
Perhaps if they had….
“Mummy will come around,” said Sherlock. “Hindsight makes fools of us all. You’ve always been the good son; always the favourite, and for good reason. It’s the shock, I think, of finding out she has a second chance. It seems to affect people’s minds.”
Then Sherlock smiled, rueful.
“Certainly no one in their right mind has ever mistaken me for a grown-up.”
Mycroft smiled back: a small, pained thing cut with an incredible pride for the curly-haired, open-hearted little boy who’d once so loved to catch Mycroft reading alone; so loved that in his distraction he could ambush him, tumbling over him to hug him tight around his neck.
Sometimes Mycroft had taken a book on family outings for no other reason than that.
“Well, my dear brother,” he said. He raised his eyebrows, letting them speak to his sincerity. “Allow me to be the second to welcome you to adulthood.”