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Chapter Text

Sherlock is the baby their parents had always wanted. A baby that passers-by in the village stop to coo over when Mummy and Daddy take him out for walks in his pram. His ‘darling curls’ and his ‘big blue eyes’ – Mycroft has Mummy’s blue eyes, too, but they’ve never received the same adoration as they do when they’re staring out of Sherlock’s face.

Musgrave Hall was a quieter place before Sherlock, that much is for sure. Mycroft was always a quiet child - even as a baby, Mummy tells him - and Sherlock is… not. He cries and shrieks and giggles, and even when he sleeps, he makes funny squeaking sounds.

Mummy and Daddy love it, though. When they decided to drop work altogether and raise a family (with Daddy’s considerable Holmes inheritance), this is probably what they had in mind – a baby who does all the things that babies do, who runs them off their feet as they try to satisfy his every whim. When Sherlock manages to smear carrot purée all over himself and everything he can reach, Mummy sings as she cleans it up. And Daddy appears to delight in chasing after every stuffed animal Sherlock hurls across the room, and returning it so he can throw it again. Like a dog.

Sherlock plays with all the toys Mycroft had batted away like an unimpressed cat. And he laughs at the ‘funny’ faces their parents make. And he looks ‘adorable’ in all the baby clothes that made Mycroft look comical (he’s seen the photos).

And that’s okay. Because all that means is that Mummy and Daddy have an actual baby to keep them busy, rather than a sullen little boy who doesn’t want to play games or generally provide them with funny parenting anecdotes for when they meet other couples.

Mycroft can read his books in peace. That’s the important thing.

- 

Turns out, proper babies are so wonderful that Mummy and Daddy decide to have another one almost straightaway – before Sherlock can even walk. When they tell him the news, Mycroft is horrified. He can hardly sleep as it is, what with his room next to Sherlock’s nursery, because even when Sherlock doesn’t cry through the night, he sings himself to sleep with tuneless, nonsensical monosyllables. One night he spent hours just singing ‘My, my, my…’ His what?

Two babies. Mycroft only hopes they learn to synchronise their sleeping hours. He closely monitors Mummy’s growing belly over the coming months in case the new baby turns out to be twins. He knows they can come in bigger bunches than that, but he daren’t think.

But Mummy doesn’t grow very large at all in the end, because the new baby comes too early. They don’t know she’s coming at the time, only that after lunch one day, Mummy declares she feels ‘funny’, and in all of five minutes, matters escalate to a point at which Daddy is scrambling for his car keys and promising Mycroft after a panicked phone-call that Uncle Rudy will be there in no time at all but he and Mummy have to leave right now.

So it is that he finds himself alone in Musgrave Hall with the charge of his baby brother. Mycroft thinks Daddy knows he could look after himself and Sherlock very well without his uncle’s supervision, but he’d never put that theory to the test so long as Mycroft is still a child. Nonetheless, today is the first day he’s been left without adult supervision for any amount of time at all. Now would be an excellent opportunity to do something silly that his parents wouldn’t normally let him do, but Mycroft isn’t prone to silly behaviour. So instead, he waits sensibly for Uncle Rudy in the lounge, with Sherlock stumbling about the carpet at his feet.

They wait quite a long time. He thinks of Mummy, who has probably arrived at the hospital by now, and hopes nothing is hurting too much. And he worries for the baby, though still an abstract concept in his mind. But there are no phone calls forthcoming, and the grandfather clock continues to tick the minutes away, during which anything could be happening. Mycroft pushes his anxieties to the back of his mind and searches for a distraction.

He tries to read his book (their mother’s old copy of Black Beauty) but it’s futile, because Sherlock is currently determined to climb any piece of furniture he can reach. Mycroft pulls his brother off two end tables and a window ledge, managing to rescue several family heirlooms in the process. Every time he returns to his book, he finds he hasn’t reached the end of the page he’d first opened to, and Beauty is still wittering on about Ginger. It’s not as good a book as his mother had made it out to be, he thinks.

Eventually, when he sees Sherlock attempting to scale the curtains, Mycroft gives up altogether on Black Beauty. Instead, he reads to his brother from one of the picture books he finds left strewn across the floor, if only to keep him still for a minute. It’s a story about a family of bears on a spaceship, and it’s ridiculous. He vaguely remembers his father attempting to read it to him when he was a little older than Sherlock, but it hadn’t sustained his interest long enough for them to reach the end. And Mycroft could read by himself at that age, anyway.

It occupies Sherlock’s attention for a while, because Sherlock is a baby of relatively simple tastes. But shortly after the bears land on the moon (Mycroft barely able to keep the scepticism from his reading voice) his baby brother becomes restless again. He howls a bit, leaving Mycroft very stumped indeed, until Sherlock starts mumbling a word that sounds a bit like ‘dinner’. Mycroft is quietly relieved it’s only that.

So he picks him up (with some difficulty –Sherlock’s a lot bigger than he used to be) and they go to the kitchen. Mycroft stands on a chair (he wouldn’t be allowed to do that if his parents were here) to reach a bowl of leftovers on the highest shelf of the fridge, then wrestles Sherlock into his high-chair. His brother makes this quite a difficult task, squawking and throwing his limbs about in the process; he seems quite complacent once he’s seated, however, looking almost pleased with himself. Mycroft eyes him suspiciously, with a strange feeling that he’s been mocked by a one-year-old.

They have dinner together, and it is a strangely civilised affair. Sherlock still manages to get sauce all over himself, but there’s none on the floor (incredible), and he accepts Mycroft’s help with the fork graciously. He hums as he eats (tuneless, as always), and mumbles ‘My, my, my,’ over and over between mouthfuls.

‘Your what?’ Mycroft asks him. He doesn’t get a reply. Obviously.

After that, Sherlock falls asleep sitting up. It doesn’t look very comfortable. Mycroft doesn’t really want to touch a baby covered in pasta sauce, but until stupid Uncle Rudy shows up (what’s taking him so long?) he hasn’t really got a choice. He picks up Sherlock and, highly aware of all the pasta sauce that is transferring from Sherlock on to his own favourite jumper, carries him to the living room, where hopefully he can find a more comfortable surface on which to place a toddler.

Uncle Rudy chooses that moment to show up, at long last. He slams the front door open with such force that the paintings rattle against the walls, and calls loudly for Mycroft.

‘I’m here!’ Mycroft calls back, hurrying into the hallway as fast as he can with the added weight of a sleeping Sherlock. Sherlock wakes up at that, and begins the whimpering sounds that Mycroft knows, from countless dreadful experiences, generally precede a series of high-pitched wails. Uncle Rudy looks vaguely relieved to see them – only vaguely, because Uncle Rudy isn’t a very expressive man.

‘You’ve been ages,’ Mycroft tells him, panting a little from exertion. ‘Mummy and Daddy left at half past four and now it’s… quarter to eight.'

‘Snow,’ says Uncle Rudy, ‘The roads, you know.’

Mycroft raises his eyebrows.

‘It hasn’t been snowing.’

‘You’re very astute.’

‘…Not really,’ says Mycroft over the sound of Sherlock’s howling, ‘There are windows here.’

Uncle Rudy smirks. ‘You sound a lot like your mother,’ he says. ‘Something… significant came up at work, if you must know. Couldn’t very well drop it on the spot because my sister couldn’t find a babysitter. And of course, you’re smart. You’ve managed fine so far, it seems.’

Sherlock stops rubbing his eyes long enough to clock Uncle Rudy, and the distraction is thankfully enough to cut off one of his piercing wails. He holds his little arms out to his uncle, and Mycroft feels momentarily betrayed.

‘Although,’ says Uncle Rudy, taking Sherlock from Mycroft’s arms a little reluctantly (he’s not great with babies, Mycroft knows), ‘I would have thought you’d know to get the food in the kid, not… all over him.’

‘Yes, well,’ says Mycroft, irritably, ‘I managed.’

‘That you did. And not badly at all.’ Uncle Rudy scrubs a hand through Mycroft’s hair – a gesture Mycroft would hate from anyone else. ‘Might’ve expected carnage from any other eight-year-old, but Sherlock appears to be alive and well. He could do with a bath, though.’

- 

Mycroft sits leaning against the bath stall with a bowl of vanilla ice cream whilst Uncle Rudy bathes Sherlock. He manages to forget, momentarily, that they’re waiting on some very important news. Daddy hasn’t called from the hospital, which Uncle Rudy says ‘could be a good thing’. Mycroft induces that it could easily be a bad thing, too, but he doesn’t say as much for fear of having his concerns confirmed.

‘You’ve got a lot more hair than when I last saw you,’ Uncle Rudy tells Sherlock, with the air of a man making small talk with a stranger. Sherlock is clumsily skimming a plastic sail boat along the surface of the bath water, not paying him any particular attention. Uncle Rudy winces as the resulting splashes end up on his shirt. ‘He has hair like his dad’s, doesn’t he?’ he adds to Mycroft. 

Mycroft shrugs. He’s tired of hearing about Sherlock’s hair from every adult that lays eyes on his brother. His own hair could be anyone’s. It’s not blonde like Mummy’s and Uncle Rudy’s or curly like Daddy’s. It’s just straight and brown. And no-one ever gushes over that. He finds himself wondering what the new baby’s hair will be like, and hopes it will be something like his.

‘So what was so important at work?’ he asks his uncle. No-one really knows what Uncle Rudy does for a living. Mummy says they know that they’re not supposed to know, which is very intriguing.

‘Mind your own business,’ says his uncle, scrubbing shampoo through Sherlock’s curls. Then he appears to reconsider a little. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re older. It could be something you’d be good at.’

‘That’s useless if I don’t even know what it is.’

Uncle Rudy laughs. ‘It’s that sort of attitude that makes me think you’d be good at it.’

Mycroft stifles a small smile.

‘Anyway. How’s home-schooling going, then?’ asks Uncle Rudy. He still sceptical of the concept – a Holmes tradition that Mummy had adopted with earnest, but Uncle Rudy tries to talk her out of it every time he visits.

‘Fine,’ says Mycroft. ‘I’m teaching myself for a lot of subjects because Mummy wants to focus on Sherlock’s speech and language. She says I’m way ahead of my age group anyway.’

‘Hm.’ Uncle Rudy looks like he has ‘a thing or two to say about that’, as Daddy would put it. But he doesn’t say anything, instead begins to pour water over Sherlock’s head to rinse the shampoo out. Sherlock shrieks. He’s doing it wrong.

‘Move over,’ says Mycroft, setting down his bowl of ice cream, ‘You’ll get the shampoo in his eyes if you do it like that.’ He rolls up his sleeves and resumes his uncle’s work the way he’s seen Mummy do it. Uncle Rudy sits back on his heels and watches.

‘My, my, my,’ says Sherlock.

‘What’s yours,’ Mycroft mumbles back, ‘You never say.’

Sherlock still won’t say. He continues jabbering to himself as Mycroft finishes rinsing his curls and reaches to drain the bath.

‘You,’ says Uncle Rudy, as the tub finally empties, with the air of an epiphany. Mycroft looks at his uncle quizzically, and Uncle Rudy clarifies. ‘He means you.’

Mycroft frowns. ‘No, he doesn’t. He barely knows who I am. Mummy says I don’t give him enough attention.’

‘Course he knows who you are. My – Mycroft. That’s what he’s saying. He talking to you.’

Sherlock looks up at Mycroft expectantly, as if to say, ‘There you are, he’s explained it for me.’ Mycroft tries hard not to look pleased.

The phone rings. Mycroft is on his feet before Uncle Rudy is, but Uncle Rudy steps over him and pushes him back down again.

‘But I want to know - !’

‘You will know,’ says Uncle Rudy, chucking Mycroft a towel as he disappears from the bathroom, ‘You get your brother dry and I’ll get the phone.’

After all the waiting he’s done today, Mycroft is especially bitter to be left waiting again for the biggest news of all. He’d managed to forget for a little while, but when Uncle Rudy picks up the phone it suddenly feels like he can’t bear another second. He strains his ears to hear the conversation, but the phone is too far from the bathroom and he can’t make out a word from the murmuring.

He can gage the tone, a little. If something dreadful had happened, Uncle Rudy’s voice would give away that much, but he maintains his usual steady rumble. So it’s not terrible news. But it’s not good news either. That leaves a lot of in-between, he thinks.

‘My, up,’ says Sherlock. Mycroft had momentarily forgotten he was there, and Sherlock looks like he knows it – his little brow is pinched and he’s holding his arms aloft impatiently. Briskly, Mycroft wraps a towel around him and hauls him out of the tub. Then he promptly trips over his own bowl of ice cream, barely managing to maintain his hold on Sherlock as he does. His stomach somersaults.

Sherlock laughs. It sounds like manic hiccupping.

‘That could’ve ended badly for you, too, you know,’ Mycroft tells him, poking his cheek. That makes Sherlock laugh even more. Mycroft barely manages to restrain a grin of his own. ‘It’s not funny.’

Downstairs, it sounds like Uncle Rudy is reaching the end of his conversation on the phone. Mycroft carries a still giggling Sherlock onto the landing and waits.

Uncle Rudy emerges from the lounge rubbing his forehead.

‘Your mother is fine, first off,’ he says, knowing that’s what Mycroft wanted to hear first. Mycroft feels his body relax, but for a knot in his stomach that remains for his new brother or sister. And that’s what Uncle Rudy reveals next. ‘You’ve got a sister. She was born an hour ago. But she’s very, very early. They’re not sure how’s she’s doing. She… they’re keeping her in for a while, is what your father says.’

They’re both silent for a moment: it’s a lot to take in. He has a sister. But it’s like she’s only half-born, still shrouded in uncertainty and anxiety. The knot in his stomach remains. In his arms, Sherlock is still giggling.

‘Can I go and see her?’ asks Mycroft.

‘Probably not for a few days. Your dad said it would be frightening for a child, at this stage.’

‘It’s not like I don’t understand – ‘

Uncle Rudy raises a hand to silence him. ‘I know you understand, you’re smart. Your parents are scared, that’s all. They don’t want any more than they can deal with for now.’

‘They never want to deal with me, anyway,’ mumbles Mycroft, his eyes prickling. He knows he’s being unfair, but he can’t help it. ‘They’ve got another one to fuss over that isn’t me.’

Now he really does feel stupid. Mummy and Daddy are in the hospital panicking over his baby sister, and he’s standing here crying about attention.

‘My,’ says Sherlock, ‘No, no.’

Uncle Rudy pulls a cigarette from his pocket and lights it, pretending not to notice Mycroft’s moment of childishness – a gesture Mycroft finds he greatly appreciates. For a minute or two, the only sound in the hall is his stuttered breathing. Even Sherlock has gone quiet.

‘Mummy says you’re not supposed to smoke in the house,’ Mycroft mutters finally, freeing an arm from his hold on Sherlock to scrub a sleeve across his face.

‘You’re not going to tell her, though,’ replies Uncle Rudy, allowing Mycroft to dry his eyes before meeting them with his own.

‘You mean like I’m not going to tell her you left me alone with Sherlock for hours?’

‘Just like that.’

Mycroft huffs a laugh. Sherlock pats his face gently, pleased.

‘All better now,’ he says, a phrase Mycroft knows he’s learnt from their father.

‘Lots,’ Mycroft whispers back, and Sherlock grins. ‘So when are they coming home?’ he asks his uncle.

‘Your mum’s going to stay with your sister at the hospital for a little while longer, but your dad’s dropping by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, however…’ Uncle Rudy takes a long drag from his cigarette. ‘Why don’t we put your brother to bed, and then you can show me how that fancy new telly works.’

- 

They watch films late into the night, far later than Mycroft’s ever been allowed to stay up. He isn’t sure Mummy and Daddy would be happy about it, but that, he supposes, is another thing they’re not to know about.

Uncle Rudy drops off somewhere halfway through the last film (they’ve watched three), and Mycroft notices how his brow is still knotted in his sleep, as though he were deep in thought rather than passed out altogether. He thinks about waking him so that his uncle can take up one of the spare rooms for the night, instead of waking the next morning with a crick in his neck. Somehow, though, the thought of Uncle Rudy sleeping in a bed seems strangely out of character for the man, who looks as though he simply sleeps when and wherever it suits him, cat-like.

In the end, Mycroft leaves him in the lounge and takes himself to bed, passing Sherlock’s nursery and the room Mummy and Daddy hadn’t had time to prepare for the arrival of the new baby. His own bedroom is at the furthest end of the west wing; it had been the master bedroom before one of his ancestors had extended on Musgrave at some point in the seventeenth century, and it’s his favourite room in the house. But he thinks now of all the time he had spent here in the years before Sherlock was born, alone with his books, resolutely refusing to be the centre of his parents’ world.

Maybe he’d still be an only child now if he’d allowed them that, he thinks.

 -

When Mycroft arrives in the kitchen the next morning, he finds Uncle Rudy has somehow managed to make frying bacon and eggs difficult for himself. His uncle is cursing over a spitting frying pan, and the pleasant breakfast aromas that had woken Mycroft have veered into concerning. He opens a few windows so his uncle doesn’t set the smoke alarm off – Sherlock (still in his cot) would hate that, and he can make a noise far worse than any smoke alarm.

Uncle Rudy grunts a good morning that may as well have been addressed to the frying pan as Mycroft discretely makes himself some toast, just in case his uncle manages to burn everything. Which is a real possibility, given his track record with cooking. Christmas dinner is always hosted at Musgrave now, after the disaster of 1974 at Uncle Rudy’s.

‘You’re wearing the same clothes as last night,’ Mycroft says, once settled at the kitchen table with a spoon in the honey jar.

‘Forgot to bring a change in all the rush last night,’ replies Uncle Rudy, not looking up from the hob.

‘I’m sure Daddy wouldn’t mind if you borrowed some of his clothes,’ says Mycroft through a mouthful of toast. After a pause in which Uncle Rudy says nothing, he adds, ‘I don’t know if Mummy would like it if you borrowed hers, though.’

Uncle Rudy spins on his heel to face Mycroft, looking scandalised, and manages to drop the spatula as he does. ‘Shit,’ he mutters, bending to pick it up, before pointing it at Mycroft accusatorily. ‘How d’you - ?’

Mycroft looks back at him innocently.

‘Christ,’ says Uncle Rudy, rubbing his forehead, getting grease on his face as he does. ‘You’re far too much like your mother, you know.’

Mycroft privately thinks he’s already a good deal smarter than her (she doesn’t know anything about Uncle Rudy’s secret… hobby), but he takes the comment as a compliment anyway.

-

They hear the gravelly sound of Daddy’s car pulling up in the drive just as Uncle Rudy finishes dressing Sherlock (with no small amount of help from Mycroft). Mycroft races down the stairs to open the door for his father, Uncle Rudy following behind with Sherlock in his arms. The door reveals a man who looks ten years older than the father who left the previous evening, his greeting a vague imitation of his usual cheer.

‘Mycroft,’ says Daddy, pulling him into a weak embrace. He smells tired, thinks Mycroft, his face pressed into his father’s side. Daddy almost leans on him as he wraps his arms about his son’s shoulders, and Mycroft bends backwards a little to take his weight.

And before he knows it, the question he’d told himself he’d keep until Daddy was at least sitting down has left his lips. Leaning back in his father’s hold to meet his bloodshot eyes, Mycroft asks with urgency, ‘Is the baby coming home soon?’

Daddy’s whole face sags.

‘It’s not as simple as that, Mycroft. Let me get in first and I’ll tell you all you need to know, yes?’ He sighs and turns to Uncle Rudy. ‘Hullo, Rudy, thanks so much for this. I hope they haven’t been too much trouble.’ Daddy drops his arms from Mycroft’s shoulders and holds them out towards his brother-in-law to take Sherlock.

‘None at all,’ says Uncle Rudy, gratefully handing over his squirming nephew, ‘Mycroft was better with this one than I was.’

Mycroft looks to Daddy to see what he makes of this, but Daddy, murmuring baby-talk nonsense in Sherlock’s ear, doesn’t seem to have heard.

‘He really was very good,’ says Uncle Rudy, looking on.

‘Was he?’ says Daddy, petting Sherlock’s hair, ‘Did he sleep through the night?’

‘I meant the boy.’

‘Oh, of course he was. He always is – sensible to a fault, eh, Mycroft?’

Mycroft doesn’t say anything, but it doesn’t seem Daddy was expecting him to. He’s already leading them through to the kitchen.

‘This one here’s a terror, though,’ his father continues, addressing Sherlock more than anyone. ‘Aren’t you? A terror.’

Following Daddy a few paces behind, Uncle Rudy gives Mycroft an apologetic look. Somehow, that makes it both better and worse.

-

‘It’s her lungs they’re worried about,’ says Daddy.

All three of them (plus Sherlock, in Daddy’s lap) are sat around the kitchen table, like Mycroft’s parents often do when there’s something important to be discussed. It’s not often Mycroft’s allowed to sit in on such meetings, even though he’s more than capable of understanding them.

‘It’s pneumonia, they think. Common with pre-terms but… well, we’d barely held her before they’d stuck her in one of those ventilator things. And so many tubes coming out of such a little body.’ Daddy scrubs a hand across his face. ‘Christ. We had nothing like this with the boys.’

Uncle Rudy pats Daddy’s forearm where it rests on the table. ‘The doctors will look after her,’ he says, ‘They’re better than they ever were in the day.’

‘We were going to go private again,’ says Daddy, ‘Only it all happened so suddenly, I just drove to the nearest place. So they’re not the doctors I’d usually have – ‘

‘I’m sure they’re brilliant doctors nonetheless,’ says Uncle Rudy, bristling a little. Mycroft imagines Uncle Rudy can probably afford to go to private doctors too, these days – his mysterious job certainly appears to pay well. But he and Mummy grew up on more modest means, and Mycroft knows he’s cynical of the luxuries the Holmes family are used to.

Daddy appears to have been oblivious to his brother-in-law’s defensive tone, because he continues as though Uncle Rudy hadn’t said anything.

‘So I’ll go back to the hospital later this evening, I should think. And we’ll see where things go from there. In any case, Mycroft,’ he says, reaching to place a hand on the back of Mycroft’s chair, ‘I promise you’ll see your sister as soon as your mother and I think right. Things are just very intense at the moment, you understand.’

Mycroft nods numbly. It still doesn’t feel as though his sister is real.

‘What’s her name?’ he asks, trying to forge an identity for her in his mind.

Daddy smiles at that. ‘We haven’t thought of one yet. I thought a good old English one like yours and your brother’s, but your mother is on one of her whims again, so I think we should expect to be surprised. You know I don’t like to argue with her,’ he adds.

‘I’d love it if she surprised us with something ordinary for once,’ says Uncle Rudy, ‘Something that doesn’t look ridiculous in a kid’s birthday card.’

‘I wouldn’t hold out hope,’ says Daddy.

-

A little over a week after the baby’s birth comes the day Mycroft is finally to meet his sister, freshly declared ‘out of the woods’. It’s also the day Mummy calls her Eurus. Everyone’s a little startled by the name when she announces it outside the ICU – everyone except Sherlock, anyway, who immediately tries to turn it into one of his tuneless songs. Eurus certainly doesn’t sound like a baby’s name, doesn’t even sound like a person’s name - and it doesn’t make any more sense when Mummy explains its meaning and origin. But you don’t argue with Mummy when she’s set her mind on something, so Eurus it is.

Whilst Daddy waits outside with Sherlock, who has grown tired of singing and turned to wailing, a nurse leads Mycroft and his mother to the little bassinet containing ‘Baby Girl Holmes’, or so her name-tag reads.

‘She’s still very fragile,’ says Mummy as Mycroft approaches. She stands in front of the crib a moment, blocking the baby from his view, and places a hand on his shoulder. ‘But I don’t want you to worry when you see her. Everything’s going to be alright, now.’

Then she steps aside, and Mycroft sees his sister for the first time.

He remembers when Sherlock was born, a little over a year ago, and when he’d first held him. Sherlock had been red and wrinkled and squalling and squirmy and … ugly, really, in the way all new-borns are (Mummy had told him off for saying so, mind). He’d looked like a baby, anyway.

Eurus doesn’t look like a baby. Not a real baby. She’s small enough to be a doll, but not a doll that any little girl would want to play with. Her skin looks like marble, all pale and veiny… and then slightly uncanny for the exaggerated rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. And the tubes that decorate her make her look more like a science experiment than somebody’s child. But Mycroft is especially alarmed by her eyes. They’re wide open, and they seem to be taking in everything. When they fall on Mycroft, they hold him with such a gaze that makes him feel he shouldn’t look away. So he doesn’t.

But they’re Mummy’s eyes, nonetheless.

‘What do you think?’ asks his mother. Mycroft had forgotten she was there. Eurus’ eyes drift away from him and she appears to fall asleep.

‘She’s… tiny,’ says Mycroft, not really knowing what else to offer.

‘When she was born,’ says Mummy, ‘Your father could fit his wedding ring over her hand and along her arm. Imagine.’ She says this as though it were charming, in its own way; Mycroft tries not to look at his own hand to mentally compare. ‘The doctors think we’ll be able to bring her home in another week,’ she continues, ‘but you’ll have to be ever so careful with her.’

Mycroft thinks he’ll be too terrified to so much as touch Eurus for at least a couple more months. Her limbs look so frail, as though you could snap them off at the joints. He shudders at the thought. His mother sees this and suddenly leans her hands on her knees to meet him with a level gaze.

‘I know you’ve never really wanted to be a big brother, Mycroft,’ she says, looking at him sadly.

Mycroft sputters, indignant. ‘T-That’s not – ‘

‘I’m not telling you off, darling,’ she says, cutting across him, ‘You’ve always made it very easy for us as parents, being so quiet all the time. Especially since your brother was born.’ She strokes a hand through his hair, and Mycroft is momentarily mollified. ‘But it’s not just Sherlock anymore. You’ve got a terribly big responsibility now, and we’re counting on you.’

Mycroft fixes her with a stare of his own; he wants to defend himself, but he’s not sure what against.

‘Promise me, Mycroft,’ says Mummy imploringly. Everything is imploring with Mummy. ‘Promise you’ll look after them?’

When Sherlock was born, Mummy and Daddy had wanted him to be happy with them, excited. With Eurus, it’s like they want him to share the load of all their worries. And already, the world feels a little heavier.

For all the times he’s wanted them to see him as a grown up, Mycroft suddenly wishes his parents would think of him as a child again.

‘Promise,’ he says.

Chapter Text

The first few months with Eurus are nothing like they were with Sherlock.

At first, of course, they simply put it down to her prematurity. She’s had a hard time, say Mummy and Daddy, and she needs to grow into herself. They’re telling themselves that as much as Mycroft, because otherwise, they don’t know how to explain their daughter, who appears to exist in a permanent state of displeasure.

For the first hundred days or so after they take her home, she screams all through the night and every waking hour, and nothing can placate her. They go to the doctor after the first week, worried for her lungs - but Eurus is eerily silent throughout the visit, and the doctor can only tell them that she seems to be in better shape than he’d have expected, given her rather traumatic entrance into the world.

At first, this is reassuring. Eurus is fine. But she keeps screaming.

On all subsequent visits (of which there are many), the doctor tells them the same. Eurus is not a sickly child – in fact, she’s doing very well, indeed. That’s when it becomes disturbing. If there’s nothing wrong with Eurus, then what is wrong with Eurus? 

Mycroft begins sleeping in one of the guest rooms on the floor above, for all the difference it makes, and spends most of the daytime in a tired daze. Even in the brief respites from crying when Eurus falls asleep (no doubt knackered herself), Mycroft finds his eyes sting from exhaustion in a way that makes it difficult to concentrate on his books. He wants to enjoy the silence for however long it lasts, but instead follows his parents’ suit, and naps until Eurus wakes again.

Sherlock appears quietly stunned – quiet being the operative word, because Sherlock has never been quiet, never known a force louder than himself. But all at once, he appears to give up wailing like other children give up dummies, as though sensing what he’s competing with. Mycroft’s sure it doesn’t go unappreciated by their parents.

Before Eurus, they hosted guests at Musgrave most weekends – Daddy’s old school friends, Mummy’s colleagues from her days in academia, all sorts of distant cousins. But with Eurus squalling day and night as she does, how could they? She’s like a fire alarm they can’t shut off. Grandma and Grandpa visit once or twice fairly early on, but even they don’t stay as long as they’d planned. And most of the time, everyone is too tired to leave the house. Musgrave, though always isolated, has become an island altogether, ruled by a howling baby girl. 

And then, quite literally overnight, Eurus stops howling. Mycroft doesn’t know it’s happened until he wakes up late one morning, having slept uninterrupted for almost eleven hours. Musgrave is shrouded in silence.

After a minute or so staring at the ceiling from the guest bed he has recently adopted, it occurs to him that perhaps something has happened to Eurus. He runs to her nursery with his heart in his throat.

But Eurus is fine. She’s lying on her back with her hands resting on her chest in little fists, as though in contemplation. When she sees Mycroft, she blinks at him steadily, and Mycroft realises that it’s been weeks, maybe months since he’s seen her eyes open like this, not screwed up tight whilst she screams, or shuttered closed whilst she sleeps. That owes partly, perhaps, to the fact that he has been avoiding her as much as he can, because he is strangely, stupidly, unsettled by her. 

He approaches Eurus’ cot carefully, wary she might begin screaming again. She doesn’t. Then, still more carefully, he leans over the side of the cot and offers her his hand. Maybe just to see what she’ll do. He’s not really thinking about it.

Eurus doesn’t reach for his fingers as Sherlock would’ve done at the same age – as any baby would do, he supposes. Instead, she regards his hand quietly, tracing the lines of it with her eyes. Then, slowly, she holds out her own hand, not reaching to touch his, but rather mirroring the gesture. It doesn’t even occur to Mycroft to move. It’s the strangest moment he has ever shared with anyone.

He doesn’t notice Mummy when she walks in behind him, only when she begins sobbing into her hands at his side.

-

That morning sets something of a precedent with Eurus for every day that follows. She cries when needs must, but otherwise not at all. And when she begins to speak (something she picks up faster than even Mycroft had, apparently), she has something of a minimalist approach, using words sparingly, never babbling. Eventually, her development is of a pace with Sherlock’s.

Mycroft watches Eurus’ mind expand by the day in silent awe. She absorbs everything, anything. He finds her with one of Sherlock’s picture books one afternoon, not long after her first birthday – he thinks she’s talking to herself at first, but she’s reading the words aloud in a breathy little mumble.

He feels bad for his brother, sometimes, as everyone marvels at the wonder that is their younger sister. But of course, none of that seems to bother Sherlock, who still draws plenty of attention from their parents for being the smiley, bouncy toddler that he is. Between the pair of them, Sherlock and Eurus hold the monopoly on Mummy and Daddy, and everyone is happy. 

(Now and then it occurs to Mycroft to feel sorry for himself, but it’s a thankless exercise.)

And if, for now, Eurus has gone from pulling Sherlock’s hair to jabbing him in the eye – they’ll comfort him when he cries, and they’ll laugh about it afterwards. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing, after all. Of course she doesn’t.

-

Four years later, on a summer evening in the June of 1981, the Holmes family meet the Trevors. In fits of desperate search for meaning in later years, Mycroft will recall everything but the date. 

It’s the first sunny day they’ve seen in weeks, after a cloudy spell that had lasted most of May. Father happily suggests they take a trip to the beach – there’s a short stretch of sand not far from Musgrave, a place no-one outside the family seems to know about. On any given day of the year, the Holmeses are virtually guaranteed to have it to themselves. 

Freddy Mansfield, a childhood friend of Father’s, is visiting that weekend. The pair of them had met at Father’s old school (the place Mycroft is to enrol in a couple of years) and Freddy visits most summers. He and Father are reminiscing animatedly at the head of the party as they walk down to the sea together, Mother following up behind, and Mycroft trailing at the tail with his little brother and sister. 

Eurus hadn’t wanted to come today. She’d sulked terribly from the moment Father had announced their trip, and delayed their departure from Musgrave as much as she possibly could, first hiding the picnic blanket (Mycroft finds it in the attic, wondering how on earth his sister got up there), then dressing herself in winter clothes so that Mother has to force her to change. 

It’s Sherlock who eventually gets her to leave the house. He simply plonks himself next to her where she sits stewing in Father’s armchair, and says, ‘Please, Eurus.’ For whatever reason, it works. Eurus collects her sandals from where she’d hidden them in the pantry, and they’re off.

It would certainly be helpful if they could always depend on Sherlock for Eurus’ co-operation, thinks Mycroft, reaching inside the picnic hamper he carries for a sandwich. But that simply isn’t the case. Sometimes, they’re close to the point of excluding everyone else - seem almost to have their own language. But more often, they seem to be speaking different languages altogether. 

And whilst Sherlock can occasionally convince Eurus to do things she doesn’t want to do (like come shopping with their parents or finish her dinner), Mycroft privately thinks Eurus can do the same with Sherlock - when she wants to. 

Sherlock had sprained his ankle last month, jumping out of one of the trees in the grounds from a frankly stupid height. Mycroft hadn’t seen him leap, having returned his gaze to his book for only a few seconds – all he knows is that one moment Sherlock was talking to Eurus, who was gazing up at him from the ground, and the next moment, Sherlock was crumpled in the dirt beside her. 

‘Why did you do it?’ Mycroft had asked him as he carried his brother into the house, Eurus trotting along in their wake. ‘You could’ve broken your back.’

‘I wanted to do it,’ said Sherlock. He wouldn’t say anything else. 

Mycroft had been in a lot of trouble, of course, because he was supposed to be watching them that afternoon. Mother lectures him about ‘responsibility’ for a good fifteen minutes before he is allowed to leave the kitchen. Then Father dresses Sherlock’s sprain and calms Mother down, and everything is forgiven by tea time. 

And that might have been that. But he’d been stood nearby when Eurus came to see Sherlock’s bandage, and he’d heard her whisper, ‘Do you do everything I tell you to do?’ 

‘You’ve taken it out of context,’ said Mother when he told her. ‘Don’t be demented.’ 

-

Maybe I am making things up, thinks Mycroft, leading his siblings along the winding footpath to the sea. Behind him, Sherlock and Eurus are bickering like any ordinary pair of children. They do, sometimes.

‘You always want to play pirates,’ Eurus is saying. ‘They’re so boring.’ 

‘Pirates can’t be boring,’ Sherlock tells her. ‘You’re boring.’

‘I’m not, you are.’

‘No, you – ow!‘

Mycroft spins around to see Sherlock scrambling sideways off the footpath into the overgrowth, and Eurus standing over him, her mouth twitching.

‘Eurus,’ Mycroft snaps, ‘Did you push – ‘

He’s cut off by Sherlock’s giggling, as his little brother emerges from the tall grass and dusts himself off.

Eurus grins cheesily at Mycroft. Mycroft scowls back. 

‘I’m giving both of you something to hold,’ he says. 

Maybe he really is making things up.

-

After they’ve set up on the sand and had lunch, the adults immediately begin a vibrant discussion of an upcoming wedding, and the Holmes children are left to their own devices. Eurus hums a tune Mycroft doesn’t recognise (it’s probable she’s made it up herself), whilst Sherlock amasses a pile of sand between his legs, looking thoroughly bored. 

Typically, Mycroft is all of a page into his book when the needling starts. 

‘Play pirates with me,’ Sherlock whines, draping himself across Mycroft’s back. Mycroft resolutely doesn’t even look up. He’s been known to humour his brother now and then (only when the pestering gets too much) but it really is too hot to be running around after a five-year-old. 

‘No,’ he says. ‘Ask Eurus.’ 

‘Eurus doesn’t like pirates.’

‘That’s not my problem.’

Groaning, Sherlock pushes himself off of Mycroft and collapses into the sand in a sulk. 

‘We could play something different,’ says Eurus. 

Sherlock looks up, surprised. Mycroft is a little surprised himself; he hadn’t been all that serious when he’d suggested Sherlock ask her – she’s not a child given to games. Not Sherlock’s kind of games, anyway. 

‘What do you want to play?’ asks Sherlock, staring at her intently. 

Eurus opens and closes her mouth, looking uncharacteristically timid. She shrugs, and Sherlock sighs dramatically. 

‘We can’t play a game if you don’t even know what you want to play,’ he says, returning to his pile of sand.

Mycroft goes back to his book.

 -

Freddy, as always, is an endless archive of anecdotes from his and Father’s school days, some of which Mycroft isn’t sure he’s supposed to share in front of him and his siblings. 

‘You’ll love Stowe,’ Freddy tells him, after a particularly lurid story involving a visiting nun and four pigs. ‘Only, hopefully the old beaks have forgotten about what your father used to get up to, or they’ll give you a terrible time.’

‘It was nothing that bad, Freddy,’ says Father, looking a little flushed.

Freddy winks at him conspiratorially.

‘I’ll say no more,’ he says.

Mycroft quietly thanks any god that’s out there.

‘Daddy,’ says Sherlock, just visible behind the large inflatable ball that rests in his lap, ‘I still don’t understand about the nun.’

‘Not to worry,’ says Father. ‘Why don’t you go find your sister, I didn’t see her wander off.’

‘She said she’s looking for seashells,’ Sherlock tells him. ‘For her collection.’

Mycroft hadn’t known she had a collection. But then, there’s a lot that they don’t know about his sister, so he isn’t surprised.

‘Very serious young lady, that Eurus,’ says Freddy, adding her name with a comical flourish. ‘I’m afraid I may have offended her sensibilities. 

‘Oh, she just likes her own company,’ says Mother. ‘Sherlock, darling, do go and get her. It would be nice to have her at least cameo in the video.’ 

Freddy had brought his camcorder along to the beach upon the request of Mother and Father, who have recently decided to follow the American trend of home videos. Mycroft has found himself the reluctant subject of a few shots (and perhaps still a few more than he is aware of), but he notices Freddy more often has the lens pointed at Mother. Mycroft doesn’t think she’s noticed, though. She can be strangely oblivious sometimes. 

Eurus, however, has indeed been conspicuously absent from all the footage Freddy has gathered, and Mycroft doesn’t doubt that this has been intentional on her part. Chewing meditatively on a ham sandwich, he watches Sherlock disappear between the rocks to look for her.

‘Are you looking forward to school, then, Mycroft?’ asks Freddy. ‘I bet you can’t wait to escape the ‘rents after all these years, eh?’

Mycroft considers this. Freddy is only being conversational – in fact Mycroft was sure Freddy was half mocking him this morning when he warned him not to get into too much trouble once he’s at Stowe. It’s readily apparent to anyone that Mycroft won’t be getting up to any of the tricks Father did. That he’s altogether more likely to be the subject of them. 

‘I’m not sure yet,’ says Mycroft, eventually. He really isn’t.

‘Mycie,’ says Mother. Mycroft flushes a little at the ridiculous nickname (he’s told her before), and quickly looks to Freddy to see if he heard – but Freddy has already lost interest, instead filming Sherlock as he trots back to them from the rocks.

‘Mycie,’ Mother says again. ‘Listen to me. If you don’t want to go away to school, you can tell us. I don’t mind if you want to continue your education at home. That’s fine with me and your father, of course it is.’

Mycroft looks at her, and he can see she’s sincere. And it’s true: a part of him (a big part of him) doesn’t want to go to boarding school. He’s only ever known Musgrave.

But another part of him wonders what it would be like to be free from the endless ‘responsibilities’ that come with being Sherlock and Eurus’ big brother all the time. At school, he could be his own person again. 

As if on cue, Sherlock barrels into his side, near knocking him over. 

‘Ouch, Sherlock,’ says Mycroft, undermining himself when he can’t help but smile a little. ‘Get off.’ 

‘No.’

‘Come, now, leave your brother be,’ says Father, hauling Sherlock off of Mycroft and onto his own knee. ‘Where’s your sister, then? I thought I sent you to go and fetch her.’

‘She wouldn’t come. She says she’s busy.’

‘Of course she is,’ Father sighs. ‘Well, thank you for trying, my boy.’

‘No problem,’ chirps Sherlock, squirming out of Father’s lap to his original spot on the picnic blanket. 

‘Now that’s a pretty picture,’ says Freddy, holding up his camcorder. ‘Bit of symmetry. Everybody wave to the camera!’ 

‘Wait a bit,’ says Mother, ‘Eurus isn’t here yet.’ 

‘I’ll shoot some more tomorrow if you like, but it’s getting darker by the minute, you know.’

Mycroft looks across the beach towards the rocks where Eurus is perched, her arms crossed over her knees. She’s apparently given up pretending to be preoccupied, turning instead to silent protest. Their parents, seeing her too, look at each other resignedly. 

‘Action!’ says Freddy.

-

Eurus is still sitting on the same rock when Freddy has switched the camcorder off again and the Holmeses have begun to pack their picnic away. 

‘Really, now,’ says Mother, hands on hips. ‘What on earth is she sulking about? She was alright earlier, once we’d got her out the house.’ 

Mycroft shrugs, folding the picnic blanket into the hamper. It’s better not to ask with Eurus, because you’ll never know. 

‘Sherlock,’ calls Father from where he and Freddy are folding up the deckchairs, ‘Would you go and fetch your silly sister? Tell her we’re going home now.’ 

Sherlock skips away again, and appears to have more success this time. After an exchange inaudible to Mycroft at this distance, the pair race each other back to the adults, with Eurus winning comfortably, despite the inch or two Sherlock has on her in height. She flushes with pleasure at her victory, and Sherlock accepts the loss with easy grace. 

‘We’re going to play violin when we get back,’ Eurus tells Mycroft importantly, as they trudge through the sand.

‘It’s going to be a concert,’ says Sherlock, ‘For Mummy and Daddy and you and Freddy.’

‘I can hardly wait,’ says Mycroft, deadpan. He hopes Sherlock is better than he was at their last recital, his little brother’s screeching rendition of Hot Cross Buns still echoing in his mind. 

The party make their way up a steady incline of sand and onto the footpath. Father sits Eurus on his shoulders, so Freddy sits Sherlock on his, and Mycroft watches their wonky silhouettes sway against the evening sky.

Mother threads an arm through his, watching them, too, with a blissful little smile on her face.

‘You never did tell me, darling,’ she says, ‘What you’ve decided about school.’

Mycroft hasn’t decided, but he doesn’t get to say as much, because that’s the moment they meet the Trevors. 

A rambling couple and their redheaded son have wandered into view, seemingly out of nowhere. They are relieved to see the Holmeses. 

‘We’ve been walking for hours,’ says the woman, laughing. ‘We moved here last week and thought we’d have a look around, but we haven’t been able to find directions anywhere!’ 

Neither Mother nor Father mention this owes to the fact that the family have likely been wandering on private Holmes property. 

‘We’re headed in the direction of the village, if that’s where you’ve come from,’ says Father pleasantly. ‘You’re welcome to join us.’

 -

The Holmeses and the Trevors amble to the crossroads together, and behind Mycroft, Sherlock and the youngest Trevor are making acquaintance. 

‘I have a pirate ship the size of a house,’ says Victor, ‘And I’m going to go looking for treasure in the woods over there.’

Sherlock is very impressed, but won’t be outdone. 

‘I have a whole fleet of ships,’ he says, ‘And a ship’s dog. So we should search together, and my dog will smell where there’s treasure.’ 

‘We don’t have a dog,’ says Eurus indignantly, trailing after them. ‘And you don’t have any ships, you’re making things up.’

Sherlock looks slightly crestfallen, but Victor is apparently a force to be reckoned with. 

‘You wouldn’t understand because you aren’t a pirate,’ he says. 

‘Neither are you.’

‘Pipe down, Eurus,’ calls Father from the head of the party. 

‘I am,’ says Victor, ‘Look.’ 

And Mycroft, curious as to what this proof could be, turns to see Victor produce a plastic eyepatch from his pocket. Sherlock gasps, delighted. 

‘Oh, well,’ says Mycroft, barely able to keep from laughing, ‘He’s got you there.’ 

Eurus doesn’t even smile. 

The Trevors part from them with the promise to get in touch to arrange a playdate for Sherlock and Victor, and by the time the family have disappeared down the lane, Sherlock is pleading their parents to invite Victor for tea tomorrow. 

‘When we get home, I’m drawing a treasure map for our quest,’ he declares. He seems to have forgotten his excitement for the concert. 

Eurus storms ahead for the walk back to Musgrave, setting a pace near impossible to keep up with. 

‘Goodness,’ says Father, wiping a hand across his brow, ‘And things were going so well.’ 

‘You ask why I don’t want kids,’ says Freddy.

-

The following spring, Mycroft might as well have two little brothers for all the time he finds himself watching over Victor as well. He seems, however, to have lost a little sister in the process, because whilst it now proves difficult to get Sherlock to come inside, Eurus can barely be convinced to leave her room. 

They used to be able to enlist Sherlock’s help for such matters, but Sherlock doesn’t seem especially interested in trying anymore. He’s even lost interest in Eurus’ violin lessons (not that that isn’t something of a relief, thinks Mycroft, whose ears can only take so much). Sherlock’s mind is always on he and Victor’s latest treasure hunt (usually, they find a funny shaped stone or an interesting leaf), and Mycroft has gradually forgotten what he looks like when he isn’t wearing his oversized pirate’s hat. 

In Eurus’ case, he’s in danger of forgetting what she looks like altogether. She insists on taking her meals to her bedroom, and refuses Mother’s lessons during the week, claiming they’re of no use to her (Mycroft doesn’t doubt it). Mother and Father try everything they can think of to tempt her downstairs, but with a child like Eurus who strives to be impartial to everything, this is no easy feat. 

He himself attempts to get Eurus to come downstairs one evening, upon their parents’ request. He knocks, pointlessly, before trying her bedroom door and finding it won’t budge (he can only assume she’s piled her belongings against it, because the door has no lock). 

‘You’re upsetting Mother and Father, you know,’ he says, knowing before the words have even left his mouth that it’s futile. 

‘Good,’ comes the reply. 

‘They told me to bring you downstairs for dinner.’ 

‘And you’re doing as you’re told,’ says Eurus. ‘Everyone always does as they’re told.’ 

‘I’m sure Mother will give you philosophy lessons if that’s what interests you.’

‘You’re not funny, Mycroft.’

Funny isn’t something Mycroft has ever aspired to be, but the cold voice in which Eurus says this makes the rebuke prickle like kitten claws. 

‘I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to get you to have dinner with us.’

‘Make him come.’ 

‘Who,’ says Mycroft, knowing already. Eurus doesn’t answer, and he sighs. ‘He’s having tea with the Trevors.’ 

Mycroft hears something dropping to the floor and breaking. Probably one of Eurus’ plates from this morning, he thinks.

‘Tell Mummy and Daddy I’m not coming,’ she says. 

‘Eurus, what was that breaking just -’ 

‘Do as you’re told!’ 

And he does.

-

They start to find all sorts of things that don’t belong to Sherlock in his bedroom. Father’s watch appears in his pillowcase, and Mother’s lizard-shaped brooch appears in his sock drawer. Expensive things. Things he’ll get in trouble for. 

‘These aren’t treasure for you to mess around with, Sherlock,’ Mother tells him. 

When they can’t find Mother’s diamond necklace, the one Father’s mother had given her on their wedding day, Sherlock isn’t allowed out to play with Victor for a week. 

‘I didn’t take it,’ he sobs to Mycroft. ‘I didn’t take any of those things.’ 

Mycroft believes him. But they have no proof. 

After seven days, there is still no sign of Mother’s necklace, and Sherlock is grounded indefinitely until it’s found. Sherlock, of course, tries to sneak out anyway – which is when he finds needles in his boots. He hadn’t put them there, of course, and this time he doesn’t have to argue the point. 

Mother decides to forget about the necklace, after that.

-

They have Uncle Rudy over for Easter Sunday, as they always do, and he brings presents for all three Holmes children.

‘It’s more traditional to give chocolate eggs,’ Mycroft says as his uncle begins to pull the gifts out of his bag. 

‘Don’t be so ungrateful, you little brat,’ says Uncle Rudy, mussing his hair. He pushes a strangely shaped package into his hands, and Mycroft unwraps it with raised eyebrows. 

Uncle Rudy has bought him an umbrella, of all things. 

‘What’s this for?’ he asks, waving it a little.

‘What do you think?’ says Uncle Rudy. ‘It’s for whacking any uppity little toffs who want to pick a fight at that school you’re off to.’ 

‘Rudy,’ says Mother, elbowing him. Uncle Rudy only looks pleased with himself. 

‘What have you got for me?’ asks Sherlock, pulling at his sleeve.  

‘Oh, you were easy.’ Uncle Rudy produces a package from his bag that Sherlock unwraps in what might be record time, revealing a little wooden sword that he immediately jabs into their uncle’s thigh. ‘That’s for whacking pirates with,’ says Uncle Rudy, batting him off. 

‘I am a pirate.’ 

‘Bad pirates, then.’ 

Sherlock considers this. ‘I haven’t decided if I’m a good pirate or a bad pirate yet.’ 

‘Get back to me on that one. Now, you,’ he continues, turning to Eurus, who hovers silently at the foot of the stairs, ‘You weren’t so easy. So, you’ll have to bear with me on this one, and if you’re not fussed, I’ll bring you ten chocolate eggs next year. Yes?’ 

Eurus says nothing. 

Watching her closely as he does, Uncle Rudy offers Eurus a flat, rectangular package. She opens it in a decidedly lacklustre manner, picking at the sellotape at the sides before pulling the brown paper away. It’s a respectable box of colouring pencils. Eurus gazes at them blankly, and then disappears upstairs with them. 

‘Say thank you, young lady,’ calls Mother after her, but no-one is expecting Eurus to reply, and she doesn’t. They hear her bedroom door slam shut, and there is an awkward silence but for Sherlock tapping his new sword against the banister. 

Uncle Rudy looks to Mycroft for clarification. 

‘She would’ve left them on the stairs if she didn’t like them,’ says Mycroft.

‘Excellent,’ says Uncle Rudy. ‘I’ll get her watercolours for Christmas.’ 

‘Come through to the kitchen, Rudy, Siger’s just dressing the chicken,’ says Mother, pushing a hand through her hair in agitation. ‘Honestly, we did not raise her to have such manners…’

Uncle Rudy follows Mother through the door, leaving Mycroft alone in the hall with his brother. Sherlock stares at the floor with a pinched brow, a look Mycroft’s known since he was a baby to mean he’s thinking. He gives him time to formulate whatever question it is that he sees forming on his brother’s lips. 

‘Mycroft,’ Sherlock says finally, ‘What’s wrong with Eurus?’ 

Stumped for a moment, Mycroft ponders what best way to answer this. He’d been expecting one of his brother’s usual queries, like last week’s ‘What happens if a rattlesnake bites its tongue?’ Questions where he doesn’t feel he should have to lie to answer them. But he decides to tell the truth. 

‘I don’t know,’ says Mycroft, sitting on the stairs heavily. ‘She’s just not very happy.’ 

Sherlock chews his lip for a moment. 

‘I think it might be my fault,’ he says. 

‘Why would you think that?’ 

Sherlock shrugs. ‘It’s just a feeling I get. Sometimes.’ 

‘It’s not your fault,’ says Mycroft. Whatever ‘it’ is. For some reason, his throat feels tight. ‘So, don’t… don’t worry yourself over it.’

His brother nods, and drops to sit next to him on the stairs. ‘D’you think she’ll feel better soon?’ he asks, leaning his head against Mycroft’s shoulder. 

This time, Mycroft lies.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Soon.’ 

‘I think so, too,’ Sherlock whispers. He doesn’t sound convinced either. Mycroft really must stop thinking of him as stupid. ‘One day.’

-

Father has outdone himself again with Sunday dinner and Mycroft is desperate to tuck in, but Mother insists they wait a little longer for Eurus to join them. Which, of course, isn’t going to happen – Eurus even made a point of bringing a box of cereal to her room at midday to fill herself up before Father was even halfway through cooking. Mycroft suspects Mother is simply putting on a show for Uncle Rudy, if only to suggest that there is a possibility Eurus might join them. 

Another five minutes pass, during which he sees Sherlock sneak three potatoes into his mouth when Mother isn’t looking, and the food on the table grows visibly cooler. Even Father is starting to look a little put out. Mycroft finally offers to take Eurus’ plate of food to her bedroom, and Mother acquiesces with a plaintive wave of her hand. 

‘Go on, then,’ she says. 

‘Does that mean we can start?’ says Sherlock through a mouthful of parsnip. 

Mycroft trudges up the stairs to Eurus’ room, balancing her plate carefully, and vaguely wondering if she’ll have touched it when one of their parents come to collect it later. He finds her door shut, of course, and doesn’t bother to announce himself when he deposits the plate – he knows she’s listening anyway. 

When he returns to the dining room table, the atmosphere is decidedly tenser, and Sherlock and Father are looking between Mother and Uncle Rudy like spectators at a tennis match. 

‘I think, as her parents, you should be able to insist,’ says Uncle Rudy, stabbing a Yorkshire pudding with his fork. 

‘You have no idea,’ says Mother, ‘And don’t even pretend you know the first thing about parenting.‘ 

‘I’m not saying I know anything, Maddy, but anyone can see this isn’t exactly healthy – ‘ 

‘Oh, please don’t try and lecture me, Rudy, I know very well what it looks like, but I – ‘ 

‘The potatoes are wonderful, Father,’ says Mycroft. 

‘Thank you!’ says Father, a little too chirpily. No-one else says anything, so he bumbles on. ‘It was your grandmother’s technique. Never tried it before today, but I think it turned out alright.’ 

‘Yes,’ says Mycroft, inwardly cringing at the sound of his own voice, stretched thinly over the awkward silence. ‘It’s turned out very well.’ 

‘Yeah, they’re good,’ Uncle Rudy mumbles. He has the grace to look somewhat embarrassed. ‘The potatoes,’ he adds, pointlessly. 

Father nods. ‘Glad you think so.’

-

They manage to finish dinner in relative peace, only interrupted when Mother has to stop Sherlock sneaking his vegetables onto Mycroft’s plate. In the end, Mycroft finishes them off for him anyway when his brother declares he’s ‘too full to eat another thing’ – which actually means he’s saving room for pudding. 

But Mother and Uncle Rudy’s argument is still simmering beneath the surface, Mycroft can tell, and it’s ready to erupt again at any moment. They’d avoided looking at each other for the duration of the meal, and Mother had asked Sherlock to pass condiments that were right in front of Uncle Rudy, but Sherlock himself could barely reach. Now that dinner is out of the way, Mycroft is highly aware that things could quickly become heated again as everyone struggles to know where to look. Except Sherlock, of course, who has brought his battered copy of Treasure Island to the table again and is glancing at it discretely where it lays open in his lap. 

Mycroft begins to tidy away the dishes if only the escape the stifling atmosphere of the dining room, and hears Father valiantly attempt to begin a conversation about cricket (unfortunately, Mycroft knows Uncle Rudy doesn’t know the first thing about the sport). Pushing open the kitchen door with his shoulder, he nearly drops the plates in surprise when he sees Eurus, with her back to him, hunched over one of the kitchen counters. 

‘Did you need something?’ he asks, approaching her steadily – Eurus tends to dart away like a skittish cat these days, if one approaches her too quickly.

‘Cutlery,’ she says, not even turning to look at him. ‘You didn’t bring me any.’ 

Mycroft could’ve sworn he had, but decides not to argue the point. 

‘Father made cheesecake for dessert,’ he says, attempting a conversational tone. Not an easy thing with Eurus. ‘You like cheesecake, don’t you? I think he made it for you.’ 

Eurus doesn’t reply. Pushing the cutlery drawer closed with a bang, she stalks out of the kitchen, her pigtails bouncing as she does. Mycroft watches her stride down the hallway, and from her posture he can tell she’s holding something in front of her where he can’t see what it is. It occurs to him to chase after her to see whatever it is she’s taken, but the next thing he knows, there are sounds of shouting from the dining room. 

Leaving the plates in the kitchen sink, Mycroft hurries back to the dinner table, where he finds all three adults on their feet (even Father), and Sherlock cowering in his chair with his hands over his ears. 

‘You’re the ones who started this, anyway,’ Uncle Rudy is saying (shouting), ‘You’ve locked them all away like little hot-house plants – ‘ 

‘Oh, don’t start with that again,’ Mother snaps, but Uncle Rudy only continues. 

 ‘- And now you’re surprised you can’t get her to come out of her room? For months on end? How has any of this come as a shock?’ 

‘There’s nothing wrong with how we’ve raised them,’ says Father, who isn’t shouting, never shouts, but his voice sounds like the words have been wrung out of him. ‘Mycroft and Sherlock are perfectly – ‘ 

‘Yeah, sure, they’re great kids, but you won’t say the same for your daughter, will you? You know something’s gone wrong there, you just don’t want to know what.’ 

Mother and Father are too angry to speak. Mycroft hovers in the doorway, feeling he should at least take his brother upstairs, but he’s afraid to even step inside the room. 

‘There’s something in her eyes,’ says Uncle Rudy, and Mycroft wishes he’d shut up, just shut up and leave so they can pretend for a little longer that there’s nothing wrong with Eurus, she’s just – she’s just…? 

‘Go upstairs, Sherlock,’ says Mother, finally, and Sherlock doesn’t need to be asked twice. Mycroft, still stood in the doorway, wishes she’d ask him to leave, too, but she doesn’t, and so he stays. 

‘I’m telling you now,’ says Uncle Rudy, ‘You should have an eye on her. You don’t know what she’s capable of.’ 

Mycroft wishes desperately that they could dismiss all this as mad, because that’s what it sounds like: completely mad. But the ongoing silence is perhaps a stronger testament than any that whatever Uncle Rudy has seen in Eurus’ eyes, they’ve all seen it, too. 

‘I think you should leave, Rudy,’ says Father, eventually. 

‘Think I’ve been on my way out for a while, now, don’t you?’ 

‘I think you have.’ 

There is a scream. Sherlock’s. Mycroft runs to the hallway, stumbling around furniture like a blind man, and finds his brother racing down the stairs to meet him, his face ashen and his eyes streaming. 

‘Sherlock, what – ? ‘ 

Mother pushes past him, her eyes manically scanning her younger son for hurt. Sherlock seems fine – but now he’s sobbing frantically, like nothing Mycroft’s ever seen. Father and Uncle Rudy appear behind him, dumbstruck. 

‘Darling,’ says Mother, trying to pry Sherlock’s hands away from his face as he moans. ‘What’s wrong, what on earth’s – ‘ 

‘Eurus,’ Sherlock sobs, ‘It’s Eurus, she’s hurt herself.’ 

Mother lets go of Sherlock and scrambles around him to the stairs. Father chases after her. 

‘Hurt herself how?’ Mycroft is dimly aware of Uncle Rudy asking behind him as he himself ascends the stairs two at a time. 

‘W-With a knife. Her hand, it’s all – there’s blood everywhere.’ 

They find Eurus sat on her bedroom floor, blood-spattered drawings splayed at her feet. She is holding her hand to the light to examine it, and her hand is a mess. In several places, she seems to have cut gaping wounds into her palm and fingers, exposing the muscle beneath. Blood trickles down her wrist into the wool of her white jumper. 

Beside her is a knife Mycroft recognises from the cutlery drawer. He feels sick. 

Father hauls Eurus into his arms (she puts up no protest), and rushes her out of the room, Mother following. Mycroft can’t move. The world is shifting around him in a frenzy, and he’s not sure what it will look like when it becomes still again. 

He lets his gaze fall to the floor, to the patchwork of red spotted pictures Eurus has produced with her new colouring pencils. Hands, all of them – recognisably a child’s drawings, but immensely detailed. 

Mycroft crouches to the floor and pushes them into a pile for no especial reason, perhaps just so he has something to do with his shaking hands. As he does so, there is one picture in particular that draws his eye, because unlike the others, it doesn’t depict a hand at all. 

Mycroft holds it in front of his face, careful not to touch the blood that stains its edges, and frowns. Looking back is an empty-eyed figure with orange hair, etched onto a sea of blue.

Chapter Text

Uncle Rudy stays just as long as it takes for their parents to return from the hospital with Eurus, and Mycroft can only imagine they’ll be seeing a little less of him now. Mother hardly exchanges a word with her brother as he packs up to leave, and whilst no-one mentions anything of the argument at dinner, the same tension still permeates through the house.

Even though Eurus, in the very same afternoon, had proved Uncle Rudy right: they should be keeping an eye on her. They should be worried.

Only, Mycroft had spent so long worrying she’d hurt his brother, he’d never dreamt she’d hurt herself like this. 

Why did she do it? Will she do it again?

There’s so much they need to know, and so much they don’t want to. 

But for now, Mother and Father want Uncle Rudy gone. They won’t even see him to the door, so Mycroft does it himself. 

“Well, keep in touch,” says Uncle Rudy, climbing into his car. “And don’t put up with any rubbish at that school.” 

Mycroft tries to smile, but it comes out as more of a grimace. Not so long ago, school had been the foremost worry in his mind. It seems utterly inconsequential, now. In fact, he can’t wait to get there. 

(Away from Musgrave Hall, anyway.) 

“I’ll write,” he says. He’s never written letters to anyone before. Except ‘thank you’ letters to relatives for various birthday presents, but that doesn’t count. 

“Christ, no,” says Uncle Rudy, fumbling his keys into the ignition. “We’re not bloody Victorians. You have my work number, don’t you?” 

“Yes, somewhere.” 

“And I reckon that school of yours will have a telephone or two?” 

“… Probably.” 

“Then you’re all set.” 

Uncle Rudy starts the engine of his car and begins to reverse out of the drive. Mycroft watches, chewing his lip to stop himself saying something stupid like ‘don’t go’ or ‘let me come with you’. He doesn’t want to be left here with his terrified parents. 

(And his terrifying sister.) 

“Mycroft?” calls Mother from within the house. “Come inside, now.” 

But just for the moment, he pretends not to hear.

Uncle Rudy stops reversing and frowns. He stares at the steering wheel a moment, then turns and points a finger at Mycroft, as though to accuse him of something.

“Listen to me,” he says, gruffly. “Don’t let anyone give you shit for doing your best.”

Mycroft blinks.

“Okay,” he says.

“You got that?”

“Yes." 

“Good.” Uncle Rudy nods approvingly. “Good. Right, well. I’ll be off, now.” 

“I’ll see you soon,” says Mycroft, though he’s sure he won’t, the way things stand. 

Uncle Rudy scoffs. “Ask your mother about that one.” 

He gives Mycroft a despairing smile and a wink, and then finally drives away. 

Mycroft stands in the porch for a little while, watching the headlights of his uncle’s car wind through the shadows of the landscape, until they are eventually snuffed out by the night. 

He allows himself a few more moments of solace before he walks back inside.

-

Mycroft finds his family in the living room. The Disney film he’d put on for Sherlock (a distraction, he’d hoped) is still blaring in the background, but nobody’s watching it – least of all Sherlock. He’s curled up at one end of the sofa, clearly trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and their sister, who occupies the other side. 

Eurus, with her thickly-bandaged hand laying in her lap, stares blankly at the television screen, the bright colours bouncing off her face. But Mycroft doesn’t imagine for a second she’s taking any of it in. She’s always been disdainful of children’s films. Of all films, come to that. 

Their parents are sat by the fireplace, speaking in hushed tones, wringing their hands, casting concerned glances to Eurus on the other side of the room. When they see Mycroft, they stop their conversation, and Mother turns to his brother. 

“Sherlock,” she says, “Time for bed.” 

Sherlock doesn’t offer a single protest, despite the relatively early hour, and scurries upstairs. Father follows behind him, probably to provide some inane platitudes before they send him off to sleep. Eurus didn’t mean to scare you, she was just being clumsy. Now, how about a story?  

Mycroft waits for Mother to send him to bed as well; he’d like nothing more than a book to take his mind off all this before he attempts sleep. But she doesn’t. With a tilt of her head, she gestures for him to follow her out of the room, and he does. 

“Could you watch your sister for a little while, just whilst I talk to your Father?” she asks in the hallway. She speaks in a whisper, like Eurus won’t just read the conversation right off their faces as soon as they walk back in. “Just make sure she doesn’t… pick at her bandages, or anything like that.” 

The last thing Mycroft wants right now is to be alone with his sister. But Mother looks so tired, like a different, older woman. 

“Of course,” he says. “As long as you need.” 

Mother squeezes his shoulder, weakly. 

“Thank you, Mycie,” she whispers.

-

Mother and Father relocate to the kitchen and close the door behind them. In the living room, Mycroft strains to hear what they’re saying, but the murmuring is wholly indistinguishable. And he can’t imagine they have any more answers than he does, after all. 

On the television, a cast of obnoxiously happy animals are singing and dancing, their frivolity and general merriment entirely at odds with the stifled atmosphere of the room. Mycroft turns the film off, only to find the resulting silence just as uncomfortable. 

Eurus is sitting perfectly still, examining her bandages with the same look of mild curiosity on her face as when they’d found her. 

“I was watching that,” she says, without so much as looking up. 

“You weren’t,” says Mycroft. 

He opens his book to the first page and stares at it. The words won’t go in. His head is ringing, his mind a carousel of desperate questions. The same one, over and over. 

Why? Why did she do it? 

“I wanted to see,” says Eurus.

Mycroft stares, and it’s only then that he realises he’d spoken aloud. 

“What?” he asks, his voice a near whisper. “See what?” 

“How my muscles work.” 

Of course. He’s seen her drawings. But somehow it’s still impossible to process. 

“I… I have books,” he says. “With pictures and… and labels, and everything. They’re proper grownup books, if you wanted to look at them.” 

Eurus blinks. Mycroft feels as though he’d just suggested vegetables to a shark. 

“They’re not the same,” she says. 

Of course not. 

There’s something else he hasn’t asked, doesn’t really want to ask, either. But as is his nature, he does. 

“Didn’t it hurt?” he says. “When you – don’t you feel pain?” 

Eurus’ eyebrows twitch upwards, as though he’d spoken in a foreign language. 

“Which one’s pain?” she says. 

Mycroft doesn’t ask her anymore questions.

-

Uncle Rudy had done his best to remove the blood from Eurus’ carpet, but something of the metallic smell remains, and so their parents decide she will sleep with Mother tonight. There’s also the fact that they’re now too terrified to leave her alone for even a second, but that goes unspoken. 

Mycroft watches from the doorway as Father drifts about the kitchen, collecting all the sharp instruments together. He looks hollow. Like a sleepwalker. 

“What’s going to happen now?” Mycroft asks. The question feels both too big and too small. 

Father stutters a sigh. 

“Well, we’re – we’re taking her to a child psychologist tomorrow morning.” He’s trying to maintain something of his usual even tone for Mycroft’s sake, but it comes out sounding like thinly-veiled frenzy. “And I suppose we’ll have to see where that leaves us. We need to know what she’s thinking if we’re to help her, you see.” 

Mycroft nods vaguely, and finds he’s putting off telling Father that little insight he’s already had into his sister’s mindset. It seems too alarming, too unthinkable to share, and his parents look distraught enough as it is. But the thought of keeping such a thing to himself… 

“There’s something she told me earlier, Father,” he says. 

Father looks up – the first time he’s looked at him since they’d returned from the hospital, now that Mycroft thinks about it. 

“Something Eurus told you?” 

“Yes.” 

“But she hasn’t said a word since… well, she wouldn’t speak to us at all at the hospital. She didn’t – ” Father stops, scrubs a hand across his face. “She didn’t make a sound whilst the nurse did her stitches, even.” 

“Well, that’s like what she…” 

How on earth should he word this? 

“She said she doesn’t feel pain.” The words alarm Mycroft as he speaks them, and Father stares at him, uncomprehending. “I asked her why she did it, and she said she wanted to see her muscles. How they worked. And I asked if it hurt, and she said… she said she didn’t know what pain was.” 

In that moment, he hates Eurus. That she told him, not their parents. He hates that he’s the one who has to receive Father’s stare, that appalled look on his face, as though Mycroft ought to have kept her words to himself and saved them all the grief. 

He waits for Father to say something, but he doesn’t. They just stand there looking at each other until Mycroft can bear it no longer. 

“I think I’m going to go to bed now,” he says. 

Father doesn’t seem to hear him at first. 

“Goodnight, Fa-” 

“Mycroft,” says Father. “Listen.” 

Mycroft listens. 

“I’ll talk to your mother. And we’ll talk to the psychologist. We’ll – ” 

He breaks off, covers his face with one hand. Mycroft lowers his eyes as his Father composes himself. 

“But – listen, Mycroft.” It’s been perhaps a minute’s silence between them; they pretend to each other that it has been seconds. “I’m not sure that… I don’t know that we’re to take everything she says literally. She’s in… a bit of a funny old way, right now.” 

Mycroft’s brow spasms as he tries not to look incredulous. A funny old way, indeed. 

“The important thing,” Father continues, looking more sure of himself now – he’s told Mycroft what he himself wants to hear, it seems, and is allowing himself to be comforted by it. “The important thing is that everything is going to be fine. I promise.”

 Nothing was ever fine, thinks Mycroft. That’s what we’ve been ignoring all along.

  You can’t promise that.

 “Okay,” he says. “Goodnight, Father.”

-

‘A cry for help.’ 

That’s the psychologist’s verdict.

Eurus is desperate for attention, he says, but afraid to seek it directly. She’s a smart girl, just a bit confused. 

That doesn’t explain the drawings, thinks Mycroft. Doesn’t explain anything. 

But somehow, ‘a cry for help’ is easier to stomach than whatever the truth might be. At least with that explanation, there’s some hope that Eurus wants help, that whatever is broken in her can heal. Without it… perhaps nothing in Eurus was ever broken. Perhaps this simply is Eurus. 

There’s very little hope in that.

-

In the weeks that follow, Mother and Father scarcely let Eurus out of their sight. Father removes her bedroom door from its hinges, and sharp instruments are kept under lock and key. Perhaps it’s not enough, but it’s all they can think to do. 

It’s not unlike those first few months after she was born, thinks Mycroft. Those days when she wouldn’t stop screaming, and no-one could remember what rest felt like. Only, now the house is completely silent. They spend their days watching – waiting, almost.

Because the reality, of course, is that if Eurus decided she wanted to ‘see her muscles’ again, there’s precious little anyone could do to stop her. One only has to look away for a minute. A second. 

That’s what’s keeping them all awake.

Yet, unlike everyone else, Eurus seems to be sleeping just fine – as though just to spite them, in all their worry. (Mycroft sometimes wouldn’t put it beyond her.) 

She’s still quiet, she always has been, but she’s strangely compliant with their parents’ demands (which always sound more like polite requests) that she stay downstairs where they can see her. They eat as a family of five again. She plays the violin, sometimes, even if Sherlock won’t play with her anymore. She sings. 

In fact, Eurus seems… sated, for lack of a better word, thinks Mycroft. 

She spends a lot of time in the kitchen with Father whilst he cooks, drawing with the pencils Uncle Rudy had brought her at Easter. Her new hobby. There are pictures of Musgrave, the beach, the sun, fields, flowers, meadows. And their family, in the foreground, smiling. Always smiling. 

The hand drawings are nowhere to be found – Mycroft had looked. Instead, he discovers portraits of beaming family members scattered across her bedroom floor: Mother, Father, Sherlock, even Uncle Rudy. And himself, too, grinning like a clown.

When their parents tell the psychologist about Eurus’ ‘change in attitude’ (with Eurus herself sitting with Mycroft in the waiting room, drawing a happy whale), he suggests that perhaps her ‘mishap’ had released a pressure valve of angst and frustration. Mycroft dares himself to believe that. He doesn’t, can’t, not quite, but it’s a warmth to bask in. 

It’s remarkable, the psychologist says as they leave, the way she’s committed to the road to recovery so quickly. They should all be delighted. 

Mother and Father decide that they are. It’s the easiest thing. 

On their way back from the psychologist’s office, they stop by a toy shop, and Mother and Father tell Eurus she can choose any toy she likes. 

Eurus comes home with a little blue plane, of all things.

-

“Do you think she’s better?” says Sherlock.

 “I don’t know,” says Mycroft. “The psychologist seems to think so.” He pauses. “Do you?”

 Sherlock shrugs, and pretends to be distracted by the film on the television. That’s what children like Sherlock do best, pretending. Sherlock has a pretend ship, a pretend dog, pretend mortal enemies – and yet even he can’t pretend they’ve somehow come out the other end of this.

 Sherlock hardly goes near Eurus anymore. Won’t sit next to her at dinner, even. And in Sherlock’s position, Mycroft can only imagine he’d do the same.

 But being the big brother – the biggest brother – doesn’t allow for that. I know it’s a lot to ask of you, Mycie, says Mother, but we need your help like never before.

 Keep an eye, won’t you?

-

Mrs Trevor only came by Musgrave to drop off Victor for the day, but as usual, she and Mother have ended up chatting over tea. And of course, they’d chosen the very room Mycroft had been reading in to have an animated discussion about an entirely unremarkable incident at the bakery this morning. From the way Mrs Trevor tells it, thinks Mycroft, anyone might think she’d witnessed the single most important historical event of the twentieth century. 

Eurus, who is generally required to be in a room with at least one adult (or Mycroft) these days, seems similarly unimpressed by the narrative. She’s sat at Mother’s feet drawing a smiley giraffe, but does so with a sour expression – one that would be almost comical on a five-year-old if that five-year-old weren’t Eurus Holmes.

But it really is quite a tedious story. 

Mycroft is about to get up and seek peace elsewhere when, disastrously, he finds himself the subject of small talk. 

“So how about you, Mycroft?” says Mrs Trevor. “Aren’t you off to school in the autumn?” 

“Yes, in September,” says Mycroft, reluctantly settling back into the wicker chair he’d been preparing to evacuate. “In Buckinghamshire.” 

“Oh, how exciting! But it’s an awful long way from home, isn’t it?” 

“Not that far.” Just far enough, though, he thinks. 

“Ah, but when you’re young, just a few miles feels like a world away, doesn’t it?”

 “I think I’ll manage,” says Mycroft, bristling. He’s not five.

“Ah, you say that now…” 

“Well, if he doesn’t like it once he’s there, we’ve told him he’s welcome back here,” says Mother, earnestly. “You know you can always change your mind, don’t you, darling?” 

Mycroft shrugs, and pointedly returns his gaze to his book. “Of course,” he says. 

Mrs Trevor, remarkably, seems to take the hint, and turns her attention to his little sister instead. 

“And hasn’t Eurus grown?” she says. Actually, now that Mycroft thinks about it, Mrs Trevor probably hasn’t seen his sister since that day they all met on the way home from the beach; indeed, Eurus had kept to her room in the months afterwards. “What a lovely dress you’ve – goodness! What happened there, sweetheart?” 

Mrs Trevor is staring, horrified, at the jagged scabs that run across Eurus’ right hand. 

And what are they supposed to say when Eurus is right here, in the room? Mycroft turns to Mother, but it doesn’t seem she’s prepared for the question, either: her mouth opens and shuts, but no sound comes out. Do they just tell Mrs Trevor the truth? 

“I hurt it on some rocks at the beach,” says Eurus. 

Mycroft stares, before he remembers that it probably shouldn’t look like this story is news to him. He says nothing, and neither does Mother. 

“How dreadful!” says Mrs Trevor - utterly oblivious, of course. “Poor girl, it must have hurt terribly.” 

“I had stitches,” says Eurus. 

At that moment, Sherlock and Victor come barrelling into the room, and any remaining tension is successfully steamrollered. 

“Mummy,” says Sherlock, louder than necessary, as usual. “Can Victor stay for a sleepover? It’s important.” 

“Oh, important, is it?” says Mother. “Have you finished all the homework I set you?” 

“Yesterday, Mummy, I told you.” 

Actually, Sherlock had tricked Mycroft into finishing most of his quadratic equations so he could go back to the film he was watching. Mycroft might have tried to get him to do them all again if he weren’t certain that his brother knew exactly how to do quadratics, anyway – naturally, Sherlock just couldn’t be bothered. (That, and Mycroft equally couldn’t be bothered with the strain of getting Sherlock to do something he didn’t want to do.) 

“We’re going to go on a ghost hunt,” says Victor. “This house is full of ghosts, but they only come out at night.”

Sherlock nods gravely. 

“I’ve seen them,” he says. 

“Well, that confirms it, then,” mutters Mycroft, feeling just a pinch of guilty gratification when he hears Eurus snort behind him. Mother glares at them both. 

“That does all sound very important,” she says, pouring Mrs Trevor another cup of tea. “Would it be alright with you, Helena? He’s very welcome.” 

“Oh, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it, Victor?” says Mrs Trevor, as though Victor had just been invited to tea with the Queen. “What do you say?” 

“Thank you, Mrs Holmes!” 

Mycroft silently mourns any sleep he might have expected to get tonight. 

“And don’t play too roughly with Eurus,” adds Mrs Trevor, “She’s had a nasty fall, haven’t you, sweetheart?” 

But neither Victor nor Eurus are paying attention anymore. The boys have got what they came for and wandered off upstairs again, whilst Eurus continues furiously colouring her giraffe yellow.

“Oh, not at all, Victor is always very good,” says Mother. “We’ve never had any trouble.” 

“Well, you know what boys can be like!” 

-

“Do you think it will rain today?” asks Eurus at lunch. She plucks a carrot from Mycroft’s plate and chomps on it loudly. 

“I don’t know,” says Mycroft. “And I didn’t know you liked carrots.” 

“Only sometimes.” Eurus chews with her mouth wide open, and Mycroft looks away in distaste. She knows he hates that - which is probably why she’s doing it, actually. “Anyway. I hope it doesn’t,” she adds. 

Mycroft sighs, and takes the bait. “Why’s that, then.” 

“Well,” says Eurus, “I want to go to the stepping stones today.” 

Mycroft frowns. He knows where she means: the stepping stones run across a little estuary some twenty minutes’ walk from Musgrave Hall. But Eurus has never been there, has always outright refused to come – it’s Sherlock and Victor who love to drag Mycroft out to the stepping stones, because it’s their favourite spot to play pirates. 

“Why do you want to go there?” 

“It’s just an idea.”

“Well, I think that sounds like a lovely idea, darling,” says Mother, walking into the kitchen with her arms full of laundry. “Mycroft, why don’t you take the three of them out after lunch?” 

Perfect.

“I was going to do some reading for school,” he tries.

“Oh, Mycie, you’ve got months. I’d send your Father, but he’s busy in the garden this afternoon.”

Naturally. 

“Please, Mycroft?” says Eurus. 

Mycroft stares out the window and hopes it does rain. 

- 

After lunch, Mother tells Sherlock and Victor with a big smile (her smiles are always too big these days, just like in Eurus’ drawings) that Mycroft will be taking them to the stepping stones this afternoon. The boys are delighted until she adds that Eurus will be coming, too. 

“I don’t want her to come,” says Sherlock, glaring defiantly from beneath the rim of his pirate’s hat. 

They’ve all seen how reluctant Sherlock is to go near Eurus these days, of course. That he nearly always insists on going to Victor’s house to play, now, rather than the other way around. And no-one has forgotten about the needles in the wellington boots, either. 

“If you won’t let your sister come, then no-one’s going,” says Mother. Mycroft knows she’s not just being obtuse; she can’t please everyone, and she and Father live in fear of displeasing Eurus. 

“Mummy, that’s not fair – “ 

“It’s perfectly fair,” says Mother. “It was Eurus’ idea, after all, wasn’t it, Mycroft?” 

Sherlock frowns at him from across the table. Eurus’ idea? 

“Yes,” says Mycroft. “Yes, it was her idea.” 

“That’s weird,” hums Victor through a mouthful of crisps. “She never wanted to come before, Mrs Holmes.”

“Ah, well, there we are,” says Mother. “But I know you two will play nicely with her, won’t you?” 

“’Course,” says Victor. “I heard that there were girl pirates in some places.” 

“How marvellous!”

Sherlock scowls. 

“Fine,” he mumbles. “But if she’s – if she does anything – “ 

“It’ll be quite alright, darling,” says Mother, interjecting before Sherlock says something she really does have to tell him off for: Victor is listening, after all. “Your brother’s going to be keeping an eye on everything, aren’t you, Mycroft?” 

Mycroft shrugs. He hadn’t exactly been offered a choice. 

“Yes,” he says. “It’ll be fine.”

-

To Mycroft’s great disappointment, the weather remains perfectly pleasant. The sky is so blue, it doesn’t even seem worth the precaution of bringing along that umbrella Uncle Rudy had bought him. 

Pulling on his boots with great reluctance, Mycroft watches his little brother check his first, shaking them upside down before feeling inside; he always does, now, after what happened before. 

Out the corner of his eye, Mycroft can see Eurus watching Sherlock, too. 

“Are you ready, Yellowbeard?” says Victor, practically bouncing on his toes.

Yellowbeard. Mycroft had once asked his brother why, if Victor was Redbeard, Sherlock wasn’t Blackbeard. Sherlock had looked at him like he was stupid and said that Victor’s hair was “ginger, not red”, and anyway, his pirate jumper was yellow. “Obviously.” 

“Yellowbeard?”

Sherlock yanks his boots onto his feet and straightens up.

“Yep. Ready,” he says.

The front door is barely open before Sherlock and Victor are charging out of it, holding their wooden swords aloft and shouting piratey things at the tops of their voices.

“Don’t run too far ahead,” Mycroft calls after them, and winces. He sounds like Mother.

And said Mother, who’s seeing them off from the hallway, laughs and squeezes his shoulder.

“Really, Mycie,” she says. “I don’t know what we’re going to do without you.”

Ah. She’s thinking about school again. 

There’s a pause as Eurus skirts around them and scurries after Sherlock and Victor, clutching her little blue plane. In moments like this, she makes for a very convincing five-year-old girl.

(Instead of what? For goodness’ sake.)

“I know I’m always reminding you,” says Mother, her hand still resting on his shoulder, “But you honestly don’t have to go off to school, if it’s not what you want.”

“You’ve told me, Mother,” he says. She has. He’ll be off to Stowe in a matter of months, but recently, Mother has been putting everything into the case against it. What if it’s too much too soon? she says. What if the classes are too slow? But those aren’t her real reasons.

“I know, I know I have. I just don’t want you to feel like we’re forcing you out.”

That’s not it, though. It’s something else.

Mother’s gaze doesn’t leave Eurus’ retreating figure.

“And you know we’ll always need you here,” she says.

There it is, thinks Mycroft. They need me here.

It’s not about what he wants. It never is.

- 

Mycroft hangs at the back of the group as usual, mentally identifying each tree they pass by genus, if only so the trip doesn’t numb his mind completely. It’s going to be a long afternoon. Sherlock and Victor, who know the route off by heart, lead the way at the head of the party; Eurus occasionally breaks into a trot to keep up with them, but each time, the boys run ahead, only slowing down when she gives up the pursuit.

“Can you walk a bit slower?” Mycroft calls to them, for his own benefit as much as Eurus’. They pretend not to hear.

When they arrive at the stepping stones, Sherlock and Victor immediately engage in a vicious duel of swords, and Mycroft wanders somewhere peripheral so he doesn’t get caught up in the crossfire. Eurus stays hovering by the bank, seemingly at a loss of what to do with herself. She stands there looking like an awkward guest at a party, and Mycroft wonders what expectations of hers this trip has so far failed to meet.

“Do you want me to teach you skipping stones?” he asks eventually. That said, he’s not very good himself. But of course, Eurus doesn’t even reply, so he goes back to selecting suitable pebbles from the ground. He thinks bitterly of the book he’d forgotten on his bedroom windowsill -  The Aeneid - which promised significantly more exciting battles than the one currently being enacted before him by two six-year-olds.

“You’re going overboard, Redbeard!”

“Not before you!”

Sherlock and Victor’s duel has turned aquatic. They lumber past him through the shallows, flinging water at each other as they do. Mycroft can’t imagine how getting soaked in dirty water is supposed to be fun (Mother and Father had once encouraged him to jump in a puddle when he was five – “We’ll let you just this once!” – and Mycroft had politely declined), but Sherlock and Victor are giggling themselves silly.

“Don’t go too deep,” says Mycroft, shielding himself feebly as his brother delivers an enormous kick at the water’s surface. “And do you mind?”

“You’re so tedious, Mycroft,” says Sherlock. Victor guffaws with laughter, and Sherlock looks a tiny bit pleased with himself.

“Tedious, that’s a big word. Reading the dictionary again, are you?”

“Shut up. I know bigger words, too.”

“He does,” says Victor, with an air of wonder. “He knows the longest word in the English language.”

(Bet he can’t say it, thinks Mycroft.)

“Well, I’m terrified.”

“Shut up, Mycroft,” says Sherlock.

“And with that attitude, I won’t be diving in after you if you do go too deep.” 

“Doesn’t matter. My dog will. Ludo’s very good at swimming, and if I start to sink he’ll – “

“Ludo’s not real,” says Eurus - shouts it, almost – and Mycroft startles. He’d forgotten she was there, and by the looks of things, so had Sherlock and Victor (but then, they’d clearly been trying to). Sherlock looks like he’s about to retaliate for a moment, but Eurus, as always, is faster. “And you’re never going to have a stupid dog!” she snaps. “Daddy’s already told you a hundred times! When will you ever get that through your thick skull?”

Sherlock’s lip quivers, and Mycroft instinctively feels the need to defend his brother, for all the good it will do – Eurus is hardly intimidated by him. Only, when it comes to it, Victor gets there first.

“He’s not real for you,” he says, rounding on Eurus. “You don’t play with us. So why did you even come, if you don’t want to play? Why didn’t you just stay in your room like always?”

It’s Eurus’ turn to look startled. The Holmes children aren’t used to arguing with anyone but each other, and even Mycroft and Sherlock don’t argue with her these days.

 “I – I wanted – “

“You’re not better than us,” says Victor. “You think you are but you’re just… a loner.”

From the stunned look on his face, Mycroft imagines Sherlock is thinking along the same lines as he is: that regardless of what Eurus has said, she’s their sister. They have a duty towards her. They can’t let Victor, an outsider, speak to her that way. Surely? 

Yet Sherlock doesn’t move to defend her and neither does Mycroft. They don’t speak a word, don’t move a muscle. Maybe they need to let her fight this one on her own, thinks Mycroft. She started it, after all. Perhaps this could be good for her.

Then again, maybe they’re just curious to see what she’ll say back.

But Eurus has taken a few steps backwards from Victor, and doesn’t say anything at all for a long moment. She just stands there, shrinking, fumbling with her little toy plane. She looks pitiful, and yet Mycroft can feel the shamelessness of his own stare, watching and waiting for her reaction. 

“I… we could play a different game,” says Eurus. She sounds uncertain. That’s new. Is it new?

“Like what,” says Victor. “Do you even know any games?”

No… That day at the beach last summer, with Freddy – hadn’t she run off because –

“Hide-and-seek.”

“Huh?” Mycroft snaps out of his train of thought. “Hide-and… could you not go where I can’t see you?” 

“That’s the whole point of hide-and-seek,” says Sherlock, rolling his eyes. He’s recovered from Eurus’ affront, apparently, and the moral dilemma of brotherly duty is up. He’s back in game mode. “I know where I’m gonna – “

“You’re counting first, Sherlock,” says Eurus. Mycroft looks at her, and something’s changed – or restored, perhaps…

“What should I count to?”

“A hundred.”

“Why don’t you play something else for now,” says Mycroft, “And you can play hide-and-seek when we get back home?” 

“Stop being so boring, Mycroft,” says Sherlock, covering his face so he can begin counting. Eurus and Victor take off in the direction of the nearby woodland. “We’re not going to go far.” 

“Fine,” says Mycroft, “Never mind that if one of you gets lost, it’s me that gets into trouble, not – “ 

“One,” calls Sherlock, “Two… Three…”

-

Ten minutes later, Sherlock is off searching for Victor and Eurus, and Mycroft is sat on a rock, waiting for them to come back. He glares into the distance. 

He should’ve gone along with Sherlock, but he’s tired of keeping watch all the time. He’s tired of being surrounded by children half his age, he’s tired of never having a moment to himself, and he’s tired of being a big brother before he’s anything else. 

There’s no way Mother will keep him from going to school, he thinks. He’s had enough of this.

And in the meantime, he waits for the children to come back.

(When did ‘children’ stop meaning him, too?) 

But another five minutes pass and they don’t come back. 

There are no sounds from the woodland, and there’s no sign of Sherlock, Eurus or Victor.

Is fifteen minutes a long time for a game of hide-and-seek? He wouldn’t know. He can’t remember ever playing it.

Mycroft begins to feel queasy. But everything’s fine, of course it’s fine. It hasn’t been that long, and they won’t have gone far. Eurus has probably just found a very good hiding spot, knowing her. Any moment now, they’ll tear out of the woods, back to where Mycroft waits for them by the stepping stones, and he’ll probably wish them away again.

But they don’t.

And it’s so quiet. 

Another minute passes and they still don’t.

Mycroft gets up and goes to look for them.

-

“Sherlock!” he calls. “Eurus!”

But his calls only echo back to him, fruitlessly.

“Victor!”

Nothing.

Mycroft listens for muffled giggling, any sign that they’re hiding and waiting to spring on him. He’d welcome it, at this point. But there’s still nothing, only the shivering of the trees and distant birdsong. 

“This isn’t funny!” 

How far could they have gotten in… how long has it been? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Which direction would they have gone?

“Please,” he says, “I’m going to get into trouble.” 

No-one is listening. The trees look down on him, impassive, indifferent, and the birdsong rings mockingly in his ears. 

“Sherlock! Eurus!” 

-

He can’t find them anywhere. He can’t find them anywhere. And the more time that passes, the further away they could be. 

Mycroft is running (he never runs), and he doesn’t even know what direction he’s headed in. He just needs to find them, one of them, at least, how did he let this happen?

Did they pass anyone on the way to the stepping stones? No, there was no-one, not even dog-walkers, and he hasn’t seen anyone since. And there’s three of them, anyway, the children, no-one could’ve… not with three of them, surely… 

Mycroft finds he’s running up a steady incline, and eventually he’s standing overlooking surrounding countryside. It’s vast – there are trees farther than he can even see, and to the east, the endless sea.

He let them run off into all this alone? 

(What were you thinking?) 

But why would they have gone so far? 

They couldn’t have been as stupid as that, thinks Mycroft, his head pounding as he runs back through the woods in what he hopes is the direction he came from. No, they’re smart, and if they aren’t already waiting for him at the stepping stones… which they aren’t, he sees as he emerges from the trees… if they’re not here, then they’ve run ahead back to Musgrave, surely.

And if they’re not there? 

They’ll be there. They just went home. He knows Sherlock and Victor know the way, and they’re only little, they wouldn’t understand what they’ve put him through. 

Everything’s going to be fine. 

What if it’s not?

-

He hears Sherlock before he sees him, and the relief suddenly drains him, like he’s been running on borrowed energy.

“Mycroft!” calls Sherlock from across the graveyard. He’s sat by the tombstone of ‘Nemo Holmes’, his favourite reading spot. Why is he reading? Where’s Victor? Where’s – 

“Mycroft, I looked for you! Why didn’t you wait by the stepping stones? I couldn’t find anybody, and I know you’re mad that I went back by myself but it’s your fault for not – “ 

“Sherlock, where are the others?” 

Sherlock frowns, and leans to look around Mycroft from where he clings to him about the waist. 

“I – I thought they’d be with you.” 

“I couldn’t find any of you, I’ve been searching this whole time!”

“But I – I couldn’t find them either.”

“What do you mean you couldn’t – “ 

“Sherlock,” comes a voice from behind them. “You didn’t find me!" 

Mycroft spins around to see his sister skipping towards them through the trees, still clutching her aeroplane, and Mycroft’s never wanted to hug Eurus before (he’s not the hugging type anyway) but… she’s alone.

There’s still no Victor. 

“Where’s Redbeard?” says Sherlock. 

A funny look crosses Eurus’ face. Mycroft squints at her through the relief and residual panic that seems to almost cloud his vision, and when his sister becomes clear again, she’s smiling serenely. Somehow, it’s no less disarming. 

“We waited such a long time, Sherlock,” she says. “You never found us. And Victor got bored, so he decided to go home.” 

“But we were going to have a sleep-over,” says Sherlock, holding his wooden sword limply at his side. “We were going to go on a ghost hunt.” 

“We can draw together, instead, if you like,” says Eurus. 

“I don’t like the things you draw.”

Eurus stares. The serene smile drops form her face like the button off a coat, leaving it blank. Sherlock backs away slightly, then turns and runs into the house. 

“Daddy,” he calls through an open window. “We’re back!” 

Mycroft hears Father greeting his brother happily from the kitchen, and there are dinner aromas wafting pleasantly across the graveyard.

(Only, this still doesn’t quite sit right…) 

Feeling lightheaded, Mycroft moves to follow his brother into the house, but Eurus stays standing stock still by the tombstones. He’s hesitant to leave her alone again, after all that. 

“Come on, Eurus,” he says. “I think dinner’s ready.” 

Eurus won’t move. 

“He didn’t find me,” she says. 

“Well, neither of us could find you. I guess you’re just very good at hiding.” 

“I’m not hiding anymore.”

Mycroft doesn’t know what she means by that.

“Eurus.” He means to tell her to come inside again, but what comes out is a question. “Why did Victor go home by himself?” 

Eurus tosses her hair out of her eyes and begins to skip towards the house, taking his hand as she does so. Mycroft finds himself fighting the urge to shake it off (hadn’t he wanted to hug her only a minute ago?) and trots to keep up with her. 

“Eurus,” he presses. “Didn’t he say?” 

Eurus begins to hum, and doesn’t answer.

-

In the kitchen, Sherlock is already sat at the table, kicking his legs despondently beneath the chair as Father rattles about with dinner behind him. Eurus hops into the seat opposite Sherlock, and immediately plunges a spoon into the honey jar. 

“Ah-ah, we’re just about to eat,” Father tells her, carrying a tray of tomatoes to the table. “Did you have a good time with your brothers?” 

“It was wonderful,” says Eurus, digging her spoon into the jar for a second mouthful as soon as Father’s back is turned. “We played hide-and-seek.” 

“It wasn’t wonderful,” Sherlock mumbles into his lap. “You cheated.” 

“Didn’t. You just didn’t look hard enough.” 

Sherlock scowls.

“Oh, you’re back!” Mother walks in, carrying a vase of flowers for the kitchen table. “I was beginning to wonder where you’d – “ 

She stops, frowns, and Mycroft’s stomach lurches. Surely she’s going to ask…? 

And she does. After scanning the room with a pinched brow, Mother turns to Mycroft. 

“Where’s Victor?” she says, placing the vase to one side. “He was going to stay the night, wasn’t he?” 

“He’s gone home by himself,” Sherlock grumbles, digging his fork into the cork of his placemat. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” 

“Gone home by himself?” 

“That’s what Eurus said,” says Mycroft, steeling himself. “They ran off, and Victor took himself home, apparently. They said they were just going to play hide-and-seek, but then – “ 

“We were playing hide-and-seek!”

“Sherlock, quiet a moment,” says Mother. “Mycroft, what do you mean he took himself home? He’s only six! It’s a forty-minute walk from there to the village, what if he got lost?” 

“Like I said, they ran off, and I was looking for them – “ 

“How did you lose them in the first place? I thought I told you to keep an eye?”

“I was, I just – “

“Now, before we start panicking,” says Father, “Why don’t we call the Trevors and see that he got home? I’m sure nothing has happened, but rather than all of us getting worked up…” He pulls off his oven gloves and hands them to Mother. “Maddy, would you serve this up whilst I get the address book?” 

Mother piles food onto Mycroft’s plate distractedly, and Mycroft immediately begins eating, if only to quell the rising panic in his stomach. 

Eurus is singing, and it sounds like another one of her made up songs. The words are strange, like a riddle. 

“Hello, Helena,” says Father into the phone. “It’s Siger. We just wanted to check Victor got home alright, it sounds like he ran off this afternoon…” 

Across the table, Sherlock is listening intently to the words of Eurus’ song. Mycroft blanks them out, focuses instead on Father’s phone call – 

“He’s not?” says Father. Mother’s head snaps up. “That’s… hm. Mycroft, how long ago was it that they – hang on, when did you last see Victor?” 

“And under we go,” Eurus sings. 

Sherlock scrambles out of his chair and disappears.

-

The police arrive the same evening, and Mycroft talks to them for nearly an hour whilst torchlights bounce across the grounds outside. 

When did he last see Victor? He doesn’t know, he wasn’t wearing a watch. Two o’clock, maybe, he remembers some distant clock chimes. Did they see anyone else? No, no-one else. And what were Victor’s exact words as he ran off? None, he was just laughing. Is he sure they didn’t see anyone else? Yes, he’s sure. 

They’ve already questioned his brother, but they didn’t get much out of him. Sherlock doesn’t seem to know any more than Mycroft does, and keeps insisting he needs to be out looking with Father. 

Eurus keeps singing, and won’t say anything at all. 

“Perhaps it’s too much for her just now,” says the detective inspector. “She seems confused.” 

But Mycroft thinks Eurus might be the least confused of all of them, somehow. 

-

“But why would he tell Eurus he was going home, and not me?” says Sherlock. “He tells me everything.”

“It’ll be alright,” says Mother. “These things happen sometimes, and then it turns out there was a very simple explanation all along.” 

“Like what?”

“Well, we’ll have to wait and see.” 

Only Eurus sleeps that first night. Father is out searching with the villagers, and Mother, Mycroft and Sherlock sit in the living room, waiting for news. 

“Why don’t the two of you go to bed, and I’ll tell you what we hear in the morning?” says Mother. 

Neither Mycroft nor Sherlock dignify this with an answer, and she doesn’t try again. 

They hear nothing. 

Father returns home at four in the morning, and finally, everyone goes to bed. It feels like a presumptuous thing to do, when Victor Trevor could be out there in the cold, waiting to be found. But it seems he won’t be found tonight. 

Mycroft lies in bed, listening to his brother’s sobs from down the hallway, and sleep doesn’t even occur to him. 

-

The next morning, they can’t find Sherlock. Mother and Father tear up and down the house searching for him, but Sherlock isn’t in the house. He’s outside in the grounds, digging frantically into the dirt beneath an old tree, with one of the spades Father uses for gardening. 

“We were worried sick,” says Mother, pulling him off the ground. Sherlock tugs free and throws himself back into digging. “Sherlock, what on earth are you doing?”

“It’s a beech tree,” says Sherlock. “She said he’s here.” 

“Who did?” 

“Eurus. She said he’s beneath the old beech tree.” 

Mother and Father glance at each other in bewilderment. They haven’t been listening to Eurus’ song, but Mycroft has been picking up bits and pieces this morning, and a beech tree certainly features. But what are they supposed to make of that? 

“Oh, Sherlock, how could he be?” says Mother, trying again to pick his brother up off the ground, but Sherlock pulls away from her violently.

“She said! She knows. It’s in the song!” 

“Sherlock,” says Father, taking the handle of the spade before Sherlock can swing it at them, or something. He’s used to holding a toy sword, after all. “Sherlock, she’s just being – “ 

“She said the song is the answer!” 

When Father manages to tackle the spade off him, Sherlock starts digging with his hands. Mycroft stands in horror as his parents struggle to tear his brother from the ground, and carry him howling into the house.

From an upstairs window, Eurus watches, too. When she sees Mycroft looking up at her, she disappears behind the curtain. 

She knows something, he thinks. What does she know? 

(Something in her eyes, said Uncle Rudy, all those weeks ago.)

-

Sherlock sleeps. He hadn’t slept at all last night, hasn’t slept since the previous morning, and his six-year-old body can’t take it anymore. He lies prostrate on the sofa in the living room, having collapsed there in something like a faint. He’s still covered in soil from all his digging, but their parents don’t move him. Mother pulls Sherlock’s boots off his feet as gently as she can, taking care not to wake him, and Mycroft watches, numb.

Mother has hardly looked at him all morning, and neither has Father. Mycroft supposes he’s grateful, because he’s sure whatever questions they’d ask have already run through his own mind a hundred times over. 

What was he thinking?

How did he let this happen?

But in the end, it doesn’t matter what the answers are, because Victor Trevor is still missing. 

Mycroft leans his head in his hands and tries to get some sleep himself. 

Then Eurus comes stomping down the stairs, and the ruckus wakes Sherlock up from what has so far been half an hour’s rest. He pushes himself up from the cushions, bleary-eyed, and glances about the room in confusion. Eurus is singing again, loudly, but her voice has an edge to it now – something like anger. 

“Your brother is sleeping,” says Mother, taking Eurus by the shoulder to steer her out again.

“He’s not, look.” 

“That’s only because you woke him up,” snaps Mycroft. He’d been near half-asleep himself. 

“I don’t need your input, Mycroft,” says Mother testily, trying to nudge Eurus out of the room. “Eurus, leave your brother be!” 

Eurus has wandered over to Sherlock. Her face is a storm, her hands in fists at her sides. 

“Deep down below – “ 

“Stop it, stop it,” Sherlock moans, his hands splayed across his face. 

“The old beech tree – “ 

“Get away from him!” Mother pulls at her but Eurus is digging her heels into the floor, her voice rising to fever pitch. 

Mycroft knows he should intervene or do something, just make her be quiet, but he can’t move or speak. His sister is frightening him. 

What does she know? 

(What has she done?) 

Father marches in then, and without ceremony, lifts Eurus off the floor and carries her to her room. The house goes abruptly silent. 

She might easily come down again. There’s nothing keeping her in there – they’d removed her bedroom door, after all. But she doesn’t.

-

Sherlock doesn’t go back to sleep. He cries, and Mother rocks him back and forth in her arms, making hushing sounds. But her eyes are frantic, searching about the room and seeing nothing. 

Mycroft wants to cry, too, but he can’t. It’s too much.

He stares into space and remembers the police are coming after lunch.

-

Eurus doesn’t leave her room for the rest of the day. It’s just like old times, thinks Mycroft, wryly. Only this time, everyone seems quietly glad.

-

Mycroft manages some sleep that night, if only from sheer exhaustion. He collapses into bed shortly after the police leave (they’d stayed much of the day) and sleep hits him like a freight train. He doesn’t dream. 

But when he first wakes, he thinks he must be in the throes of some nightmare, because for a second, he thinks he hears screaming. He blinks a few times, testing his consciousness. Silence again. 

Mycroft doesn’t move for a long moment. His sleep-addled mind won’t focus, doesn’t want to. He’s not altogether convinced he didn’t imagine the screaming to begin with. But then it resumes, higher pitched now, and he hears his parents’ door slamming open – he’s awake, and something is happening. 

And belatedly, he realises the screaming is his brother’s. 

He hurries to Sherlock’s room imagining every worst-case scenario, but when he arrives, Mycroft finds he’s hardly surprised at all: at the back of his mind, this is exactly what he was expecting. 

She’s been waiting all day, after all. Until Sherlock was alone. 

Sherlock is twisted in the blankets, shrieking and howling with his hands over his eyes. And there, of course, is Eurus, perched over him like Fuseli’s Nightmare, singing to him in a whisper. Smiling. 

She doesn’t seem to notice them all standing there in the doorway, and if Sherlock does, it doesn’t stop him screaming.

-

The next morning, Mother and Father decide to move Sherlock to a guest room upstairs – one with a lock on the inside. In any other circumstances, Mycroft knows his brother would’ve kicked up a fuss; he loves his bedroom, has had it since he was born. But Sherlock agrees to the move without protest, and carries a box of his prized possessions up there himself. Then he locks himself inside. Mycroft hopes he’s sleeping, finally – Sherlock had howled even after their parents managed to pull Eurus off him, only stopping once he’d lost his voice altogether. 

After lunch (or the time they would have had lunch, if anyone could stomach it) Mother and Father sit Eurus at the end of the kitchen table, and she perches there with her hands folded in front of her. 

“We were playing a game,” she says. “It’s a puzzle.”

“He screamed all night,” says Father. 

“He was laughing.” 

“No, he was screaming.” 

“What was the game?” asks Mycroft. He knows he isn’t supposed to interrupt this interrogation of theirs, isn’t even supposed to be listening, but he doesn’t care. “Or puzzle, whatever.” 

“It’s none of your business,” says Eurus. 

“Mycroft,” says Mother, “This isn’t for you to – “ 

Mycroft ignores her. He presses on. 

“Does it concern Victor Trevor?” 

“It’s none of your business,” Eurus says again. 

“You know where he is,” says Mycroft. All at once, he’s certain of it. Eurus stares back at him steadily. “Eurus. Tell us where he is.” 

“Mycroft – “ 

“She does. Sherlock’s right, she knows where he is! Or at least she – she knows more than she’s telling us. She knows something.” 

I sound like Uncle Rudy, Mycroft thinks to himself. I sound mad. 

But Mother and Father don’t say anything. 

And neither does Eurus. 

Say something, he thinks desperately. Tell me I’m wrong. I don’t want to be right, this time.  

Eurus doesn’t say anything at all. 

She doesn’t look like his sister anymore. All her features have become unfamiliar, foreign, beyond his understanding.

-

Eurus goes silent. Won’t say or sing a word. Nothing. 

Perhaps she knows they’re searching her every word for clues. Then again, perhaps she’s just lost interest. 

-

No-one has told Uncle Rudy the news, but presumably he’s worked it out for himself when he calls later that week; he must have drawn the dots between the fleeting anonymous mentions their family receives in the papers, because, of course, Victor’s disappearance is making headlines. 

“Trevor, of Rye, East Sussex, disappeared on Sunday afternoon whilst playing in nearby woodlands with three other local children: siblings aged five, six and 13”, reads The Times. 

That alone certainly narrows it down, Mycroft imagines, alongside whatever else Uncle Rudy has read. 

It’s Mother who answers the phone, and it’s a minor miracle she doesn’t immediately slam it down again, given the terms on which the two of them had parted at Easter. 

But then again, it seems Uncle Rudy was right. They’d known it then and they certainly know it now. 

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do,” whispers Mother, holding the phone to her ear with both hands. “We just… Mycroft, would you take your brother elsewhere whilst I talk to your uncle?” 

Mycroft, sitting on the window-seat behind her, had hoped she’d forgotten his presence so that he could follow the conversation. But she could hardly forget Sherlock, burrowed into her side as he is (he’s hardly ever more than a foot away from one of their parents, now). 

“I’ll make you some lunch, Sherlock,” says Mycroft. Sherlock peels away from Mother and follows him into the kitchen, where Mycroft hopes he’ll still be able to hear snatches of the conversation. 

“Well, what on earth would we tell them?” Mother is whispering behind them. “‘She knows something, haven’t a clue what, get it out of her however you see fit’? I’m not going to just hand my daughter in!” 

Mycroft rummages through the cupboards, looking for something that hasn’t expired; their parents have hardly found time for shopping amid all this. 

“I don’t want lunch,” says Sherlock. He’s hardly eaten in days.

“Well, just try and eat something.” 

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Doesn’t matter.” 

He finds some crackers at the back of a cupboard, and there’s probably some cheese somewhere in the fridge… He’ll make something for Eurus, too, and leave it outside her door, like they used to. She’s gone back to keeping to her room again, and aside from a few cursory checks, Mother and Father allow it. 

(Mycroft seems to remember that that is exactly how all this started, but Eurus is more uncomfortable as a presence than as an absence, so he says nothing.) 

“She hasn’t told us anything,” he hears Mother say. “It’s just a feeling.” She pauses. “And how on earth am I supposed to remain objective, Rudy?” 

“I don’t want cheese,” says Sherlock. “I said I’m not hungry.” 

“Be quiet a minute, I’m trying to listen.” 

“You’re eavesdropping.” 

“That’s right.” 

“Mummy said you shouldn’t listen to – “

“Sherlock, be quiet.” 

Sherlock normally might have made a point to argue, but he doesn’t seem to have the energy these days. He takes a seat at the table and sits with his head in his hands. 

“What do you mean?” Mother is saying. “What sort of place?” 

Place?  

“For children? You’re mad if you think we’d ever send her to such a – no, what’s more, there’s no proof of anything anyway. So why on earth would we – hang on.” 

Mycroft hears Mother walk across the living room to close the door, and the conversation becomes indistinguishable. But, of course, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Uncle Rudy had just proposed. 

A place. For Eurus. He doesn’t know how that makes him feel. 

Does he want his sister gone? Is that how bad things are? Uncle Rudy seems to think so. 

But it doesn’t matter, because Mother’s right: there’s no evidence that Eurus knows anything. Just a strange song that made less and less sense each time she sang it. 

Eurus is dangling them in suspense over a chasm they know they’ll fall into, eventually – but from what height? 

This could go on forever. They could live like this forever.

-

Every day, Mycroft pictures that afternoon by the stepping stones, and imagines telling his siblings that no, they can’t play hide-and-seek, and he doesn’t care how boring that makes him. And then Victor comes back to Musgrave for tea, and he and Sherlock spend all the evening trying to think of a way to get back at Mycroft for being so mean. And Eurus keeps drawing happy families, and Mother and Father keep pretending, pretending, pretending. And then everything’s… not fine, exactly, but it’s not this. 

Then again, perhaps this was all waiting to happen.

Perhaps it will happen again. 

It’s been two weeks now. They still don’t know what’s happened to Victor Trevor.

-

And then finally, three weeks on, maybe they have an idea. When Eurus deigns to speak again, her first words are ‘Drowned Redbeard.’ She sings them. 

It’s enough. It’s something. And it confirms everyone’s worst fears at once. 

Mother and Father go to the police, and the investigation turns to the sea.

-

From his bedroom window, Mycroft can see the stretch of sand his family likes to visit in the summer. The one they like to think only they know about.

That isn’t the case anymore. 

All day, he watches as boats push off from the beach in search of Victor’s body. That’s what they’re searching for, now: not a boy, a body. And they know they’re not going to find it.

-

The police try talking to Eurus again that evening. 

“What do you have to tell us?” the detective inspector asks. 

“Nothing at all,” says Eurus. 

They try for hours, but Eurus doesn’t change her story. She simply doesn’t have one. 

“We’ll come again in the morning,” says the detective inspector. And they’ll keep coming, Mycroft presumes, until they have an answer – if they ever get one, that is. 

But at least they’re asking him different questions now. 

What’s your sister like, usually?  

Was she behaving strangely that day? 

It wasn’t his fault, after all. It was worse than that.

-

Mycroft has been lying awake for perhaps an hour when he hears his bedroom door creak open. A small, solitary figure steps through and approaches him with careful footing. 

It’s her, he thinks. 

“Mycroft.”

A small hand touches his shoulder, and he doesn’t move, pretends to be asleep. 

“Mycroft.” 

What does she – what is she going to – 

“C-Can I sleep with you?” 

Oh. 

It’s not Eurus, it’s Sherlock. A wave of relief rushes through him, and he tries to ignore the panic that had preceded it.

Afraid of my own sister. 

But why wouldn’t I be?

“Mycroft?”

“I – yes, of course.” He moves over to make room for his brother. “Sorry, I thought you… never mind.”

Sherlock crawls beneath the quilt and settles against his side. He’s shaking a little.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Mycroft asks, tentatively rearranging the blankets.

“No. I couldn’t sleep.”

Of course he couldn’t. Their collective waking nightmare is enough as it is.

“Neither could I.” 

For a long moment, it feels like one of them is going to say something. But in the end, perhaps there’s just too much to say.

Sherlock’s trembling starts to subside a little, and Mycroft finally finds himself drifting off, his thoughts becoming hazier, his eyelids heavier.

In the hallway, he hears a door open and shut, but he falls asleep before he can make anything of it.

- 

Mycroft will never know what it was that woke him that night, what it was that saved them. Only that it wasn’t a fire alarm. She’d disabled all of those.

What they do know, as they stand beside the ruins of Musgrave Hall the next morning, is that the blaze started on the top floor, just outside one of the guest rooms. The one with the lock. 

Sherlock’s room, that is.

There’s a place, says Uncle Rudy, for children like Eurus.

Chapter Text

“He was supposed to be upstairs,” says Eurus when they find her on the front lawn. Behind them, Father is still desperately searching for her in the blazing bones of their home. 

She’s clutching a little box of matches, as if to eliminate any doubts then and there.

“He wasn’t supposed to get out.”

-

“Do I take a turn here, then?”

Mycroft starts, knocking his head on the car window as he does. He’d returned to Musgrave Hall for a moment, as he has countless times since the day they’d left it forever, watching as Eurus’ fire ate their home alive.

“Mycroft?”

But that was long ago. Seven years ago. Seven years later, he’s in a car on the way to Oxford (or should be, anyway, if Father hasn’t managed to take a wrong turning somewhere) for his second year at university.

“Wake up, you great arse.”

And sprawled across the backseat is his delightful little brother, off to school for the first time.

“You’ll be in dreadful trouble if the teachers hear you using language like that, Sherlock,” says Father, casting Sherlock a pursed look that Mycroft assumes is supposed to be ‘stern’. 

“Aren’t you going to tell him off for calling me an arse?” asks Mycroft, “Or is this just the practice run?”

“And don’t call your brother an arse, either, Sherlock. Anyway, Myc, which way does the map say?”

Mycroft thinks he’d probably prefer ‘arse’ to ‘Myc’ any day.

“Ooh, do tell us, Mycie, which way is it?”

Well, he’d certainly prefer it to that.

“It’s a left as soon as we’ve tossed Sherlock onto the side of the road,” he says.

“Thought so. And we’re keeping your brother for now, I’m afraid.”

“You said that when he was born, and he’s still here.”

“You’re so terribly funny,” Sherlock drawls, delivering a sharp kick to the back of Mycroft’s seat. “Do you ever bore yourself, Mycroft?”

Sherlock is sounding a lot like her today. He’s been sounding more like her with every passing year, actually, which is remarkable considering he doesn’t even seem to remember her at the best of times.

“No witty comeback, then?” says Sherlock.

“It’s difficult to think of one when you’ve set the standard so high.”

“Shame, you’re not much good for anything else.”

Mycroft considers allowing Sherlock the last word. Then again, he won’t be seeing his brother for another few months, so…  

“I understand you’re feeling nervous about school, but if you could stop taking it out on me, it wouldn’t go unappreciated.”

“I’m not nervous,” sputters Sherlock, and that’s really all the confirmation Mycroft needs. It was a low blow, perhaps, but his brother was becoming a little tiresome. “Mycroft! I’m not.”

Mycroft doesn’t respond, because he happens to know when silence is the greatest comeback of all. Sherlock hasn’t quite sussed that himself.

“It’s alright to be nervous, sweetheart,” says Father, obliviously delivering the final blow. Mycroft struggles to suppress a smirk at Sherlock’s veritable twitch in the rear-view mirror. “I was when I first arrived,” Father continues serenely, “But your Mother and I will write to you every day if you want us to.”

“I definitely don’t want you to,” snaps Sherlock, “So don’t you dare.”

Sherlock pushes a pair of headphones over his ears and scowls out the window. It’s going to be a quieter car journey now, at least.

Mycroft tries not to revel too much in his brother’s humiliation, because despite Sherlock’s protests, he is nervous - desperately so.

There was a time when Mycroft might have thought his little brother would love school: more boys his own age to show off to and play with, teachers (instead of Mycroft) to play tricks on. Sports – that was the one thing Mycroft had been veritably atrocious at during his time at school, but he might easily have imagined Sherlock excelling at them, since they could never keep him still.

And Sherlock has always been smart. Not as smart as Mycroft, of course, but smart in a charismatic way that Mycroft had never been. Sociable.

Only, Sherlock isn’t like that anymore. He hasn’t been like that since the day Victor Trevor disappeared. When Mycroft had first left for school himself, he’d left behind a brother who was still and silent, and found him much the same when he’d returned for the holidays.

That’s when they’d tried it. Uncle Rudy’s idea. And things had been better since then, in some sense of the word. But Sherlock isn’t the boy he’d been before, who’d drawn people in rather than pushing them away. He’s not a boy who would love school, he’s not a boy who would be loved at school. He’s irritable, irascible, irreverent, and downright arrogant.

(Sherlock didn’t forget her, thinks Mycroft. He became her. He forgot himself.)

“I’m not nervous,” says Sherlock again, and all his conviction has fallen away. 

“Of course not,” says Mycroft. He doesn’t bother with the biting sarcasm this time, but the response seems all the more insulting for it.

Eurus would be starting school next year. Mycroft wonders if Mother and Father have told that girls’ school they had her down for that she won’t be coming next autumn, after all. It’s little things like this that occur to him now and then.

-

“This place is ridiculous,” Sherlock declares outside the Radcliffe Camera.

Mycroft silently agrees – it is a bit, but he rather likes it. Countless writers and poets have waxed lyrical about Oxford’s dusty old halls, and whilst Mycroft isn’t one given to such romantic notions, he can’t help finding himself agreeing with them now and then. And even Sherlock, he sees, is a little bit more impressed by it than he’d like to be, craning his neck backwards to gaze at the turret-lined terraces.

Unfortunately for Sherlock, he still has five years to go. And such long years they are. Mycroft hasn’t told him as much, because Mother and Father don’t want his brother to be discouraged before he even arrives at school, but he does wonder now if Sherlock isn’t owed the warning. I know I always called you stupid, but there’s a whole world out there, stupider than you could ever imagine. Hm. Perhaps not, what with Father in earshot.

Father carries the heaviest of Mycroft’s belongings to his room in Brasenose College (top floor again, just his luck); Sherlock carries a bag of toiletries, when told he’s not to leave the car without taking something.

“Mycroft’s not going to help me with my belongings,” he shrugs when Father gives him an admirable attempt at a disapproving look (though it more closely resembles ‘grudgingly fond’).

“I won’t be there to help,” says Mycroft, struggling to push his way through a heavy door with his arms full of bed linen. Sherlock watches on with amusement, and Mycroft knows better than to ask for his assistance. He glares at him anyway for good measure.

“Exactly,” says Sherlock, with a lazy grin.

Mycroft gives his new room a brief assessment, and finds it a little dark and cramped but none the worse for it. At least it’s all his – the five years of shared dorms at school were a nightmare. The mess…

“Well, we’d better be off, then, hadn’t we Sherlock?” says Father, fumbling for his car keys.

“What? But we’ve only just got here,” says Sherlock from the windowsill, where he’d been observing the view with feigned disinterest. “I thought we were going to… have lunch here, or something.”

He really is anxious about school, then, thinks Mycroft. In fact, he must be dreading it, if he’s offering to spend even a minute longer in Mycroft’s company to avoid it.

But Father apparently doesn’t think there’s anything incongruous about this at all. 

“We have to check-in with your housemaster for midday, I’m afraid, I don’t want to leave it too tight for time.” Father checks his watch. “Besides, it’s a bit early for lunch.”

“You could call ahead and say you’re running late,” suggests Mycroft, a little amused by the grudging gratitude that crosses his brother’s face at his input. “There are plenty of good, uh, brunch places nearby.”

“Well, as nice as that sounds, I don’t want Sherlock arriving late for his first day. Doesn’t set a good impression with his peers, you know.” Mycroft can’t help but think that if Sherlock’s peers form an ill first impression of him, it probably won’t be because of the time he arrived at the place. “So we’d better get a move on, hadn’t we? Actually, where are the loos, first of all…”

“The end of the corridor on your right,” says Mycroft, wondering with distaste how many other undergraduates he’ll have to share a bathroom with this year. But then, at least it’s not another year spent sharing a bathroom with the boys from school, who liked to flood the toilets for no readily apparent reason. Usually with another boy’s belongings.

Perhaps, thinks Mycroft, this would be the time warn Sherlock, now that Father’s left them alone momentarily. About school, what it’s like. What to look out for. But the room oozes silence, because they don’t talk like that. In recent years, Sherlock has communicated almost exclusively in barbed witticisms – the rest of the time he keeps to his room. So they spar, they don’t talk.

(He remembers when they had, the last time they had, Sherlock’s voice croaky from months of disuse.

“The song’s in my head all the time, Mycroft. Please, make it stop.”)

Sherlock has never been one to heed warnings, anyway.

“You’ll tell Mother and Father if you don’t like it, won’t you, Sherlock?” he says instead. After all, if Sherlock’s nervousness is any indicator, he already has an idea of what to expect. But naturally – since it came from Mycroft – the suggestion meets with a hostile reception.

“And then what? Come home again?” says Sherlock. His voice is still a child’s voice, but hard and cutting. Like hers. “Go back to Mummy’s home-schooling?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying you mustn’t cut yourself off.”

“I can look after myself, Mycroft. So give it a rest with the big brother talk, you’ve never been good at it.”

Well, Mycroft’s willing to accept that. He’s certainly never felt very good at this whole big brother lark. His thirteen-year-old self (the same age as Sherlock is now, come to think of it) is always running circles in his mind, calling for the siblings he’d stupidly let out of his sight.

And for Victor Trevor, who had never entered it again.

Mycroft tries to imagine a thirteen-year-old Victor, with the same red hair, the same grin on his face as when he’d disappeared into the woods.

He tries to imagine a twelve-year-old Eurus, who he hasn’t laid eyes on since the day they took her away seven years ago. (No, he hasn’t seen her, but her voice – he knows that’s much the same…) Still, somehow it’s harder to picture the girl he’d grown up with for five years than it is the dead boy he’d known for one.

They don’t keep photos of either, of course. When Sherlock had decided to bury his memories, they’d handed him the spade.

“Do you remember the East Wind, Sherlock?” he asks.

Sherlock scowls, and Mycroft watches as his eyes flicker a moment: in the early days, he would watch Sherlock make a conscious decision to disown the truth. Nowadays, there is only a hazy glimmer of knowing, a vague recollection abruptly stamped out.

“’Takes us all in the end’,” says Sherlock. “Are you trying to frighten me before I’ve even got to school, Mycroft?”

That’s still intact, then. Sherlock thinks – or has decided, rather – that the East Wind is just a story. A nasty nursery rhyme that Mycroft would sing to him to give him nightmares. It’s not far off the truth, in its own way, but of course, Mycroft had been confused when Sherlock had first ‘recalled’ it, perhaps even a little affronted at first that Sherlock had attributed it to him.

But he’d quickly found the use in that. His brother has subconsciously provided him with the cover he needs to creep around the sleeping beasts of his memories, to see them up close without waking any of them by accident.

“I’m only suggesting that you keep your head down and your wits about you,” says Mycroft. “Don’t pick arguments and don’t make enemies. And the winds will pass over you.”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” says Sherlock, rolling his eyes. “Do you even hear yourself?” 

Father walks in then, glancing between the two of them questioningly. 

“Feels a little tense in here. Have you two been arguing again?”

“Mycroft’s being ridiculous,” says Sherlock, plucking his coat off the windowsill. “Can we leave, now?”

“You were wanting to stay for lunch only a minute ago.” 

“Yes, and now I want to leave,” snaps Sherlock, going a little pink. “Like you said, I shouldn’t be late, right?” 

“Well, the two of you should make up over whatever you’ve been arguing about,” says Father. “It’s bad luck to part on poor terms.” 

Sherlock rolls his eyes again, and Mycroft privately wonders what sort of luck that would leave them with given the terms on which they parted with Eurus. 

“It’s fine,” he says, eventually. “I was being ridiculous. Have a wonderful time at school, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock frowns, looking uncomfortable when he can’t detect an undercurrent of sarcasm. 

“Thank you,” he mumbles, avoiding eye contact in favour of a blank wall to his left. “Good luck with… whatever it is you do here.” 

“PPE,” says Mycroft. 

“Well, whatever that stands for.”

“Use your logic, Sherlock.”

“I don’t care what – “

“And I think we’ll be off now, then,” says Father, interjecting quickly, “Before you two start arguing over something else.”

-

Mycroft watches from his window as his father and brother stride across the quad, Sherlock taking to the lawn perhaps purely because he’s noticed the signs warning visitors off it. Then they disappear under an archway, and Mycroft turns away to consider his timetable for the rest of the day. He’ll unpack, of course, and pay a trip to the library to pick up the books he’d requested over the summer. And perhaps he’ll brush up on his Cantonese this evening. 

But what he has to do first… he glances at his watch. It’s five past eleven on a Friday morning. In ten minutes, at the same time as he has done every Friday morning for nearly a year now - he’ll call Clydesdayle. He’ll speak to Eurus.

-

The phone rings five times before a member of staff picks up. Mycroft answers the usual security questions before someone is sent to fetch his sister, and he tries to look inconspicuous as other students pass him in the corridor, carrying boxes of their belongings to their rooms. They don’t spare him any interest, of course, but Mycroft can think of plenty of other people he’d be happier to talk to surrounded by potential eavesdroppers. 

“Hello, Mycroft,” comes Eurus’ voice, finally. “You’re back in Oxford.” 

“I’m sure you’d be happy to tell me the hundred clever ways you’d deduced that, but today’s date would be something of a giveaway regardless.” 

Oh, he’s babbling already, isn’t he? He can almost hear her smirk.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s just my defence mechanism. That’s what Eileen says. I do it ‘to throw the spotlight on others, instead of me’. Apparently.” Eurus sighs dramatically. “Can you believe people are paid to come out with this sort of thing? And we thought you were stupid.” She laughs, and Mycroft doesn’t say anything, knows she isn’t expecting him to. Even when Eurus has plenty to say, she isn’t exactly conversational. “I don’t know why you’re at university, Mycroft, you could get a pretty wage doing anything without a brain cell to show for it. Really, you should see some of the professionals here.” 

Mycroft shuffles closer to the wall as a girl edges around him with a cello. She casts him a vaguely inquisitive glance as she does, and Mycroft supposes he must be grimacing. He angles himself towards the wall. 

“You know, Mycroft, I used to think you were an idiot, but I suppose they all think you’re something of a genius out there. I bet you love that, don’t you?”

“Will you see Mother and Father soon?” asks Mycroft. He’s asked this every week, and the answer has always been a variation of the same. “They’re worried, Eurus. They want to see you.” 

“Well, I don’t want to see them,” says Eurus. “They come here and blubber for an hour or two, and then time is up and off they go again. I’m saving them time, really.” 

That’s not exactly true. Mother and Father still go to Clydesdayle once a week and wait to see her. But Eurus has lost whatever little interest she had in their visits in the first place, and stopped receiving them almost two years ago. 

“It would make them happy,” he says. 

“No, it wouldn’t. I told you, they just cry. I haven’t been led to believe that that’s happiness.”

It’s difficult to argue with that, and Mycroft doesn’t really want to, anyway. He’d only begun making these calls to Eurus upon their parents’ request. Perhaps she’ll speak to you, if she won’t speak to us. Well, Eurus does speak to him. But that doesn’t mean she listens to a word he says. 

“If they brought him with them,” says Eurus, “I’d reconsider.” 

Indeed, if Eurus really listened to him, thinks Mycroft, she wouldn’t ask him this every week. 

“They won’t,” he says. He used to make up reasons why not, but Eurus would always be smart enough to see through them. And she’ll keep asking, anyway, so he needn’t bother. 

“But we were in the middle of a game when I had to go.”

“They won’t bring him.”

“He still hasn’t brought me my hairband.” 

“He isn’t coming.” 

Eurus doesn’t know about Sherlock’s coping mechanism. That he’s decided to forget her. And Mother and Father won’t be reminding him; they hadn’t been thrilled, to say the least, when Mycroft had explained it to them, but if it brought their little boy back – in some form – then so be it. They won’t be bringing him to Clydesdayle. 

“Tell me about Sherlock,” says Eurus. This is how their conversations usually go. Some preamble, and then Sherlock. “Does he talk about me?”

“He’s going to school,” says Mycroft. “Father’s driving him there now.” 

“I asked you if he talks about me.” 

“Not since we last spoke, no.” 

She’d asked the same last week, of course, and Mycroft had given her the same answer then. There is silence from Eurus for what could be as long as a minute, and Mycroft knows better than to assume there’s anything wrong with the line. He waits until she’s ready to speak again. 

“By the way, Mycroft,” she says, eventually. And pauses again. 

“Yes? What?” 

“Uncle Rudy came by yesterday.” 

Mycroft blinks. Uncle Rudy. It’s like hearing the name of a long-forgotten childhood toy.

They haven’t heard anything from him in a long time. Years. After Eurus was put away, he’d vanished off the scene, and Mother and Father had gradually lost contact with him – Mycroft doesn’t doubt that this had been intentional on their parts. They’d all agreed that Eurus needed to be put away, but they’d never quite forgive Uncle Rudy for being the man who ultimately did it. 

Still, Mycroft had always suspected he was there, watching from the side-lines, just out of sight. Alongside whatever else it is he does these days. And now, according to Eurus, that would appear to be exactly the case. 

Yet, he’s almost embarrassed with himself when he can’t help but feel little bitter, nonetheless. Uncle Rudy had told him to keep in touch, and Mycroft had. He’d phoned his uncle’s office, and sent him letters when his calls weren’t put through, but Uncle Rudy had never responded. 

And now he’s paying visits to her instead? 

“I thought that would interest you,” sings Eurus. “He was only here a little while, making little notes, talking to all the adults to see if I was behaving.” 

“And are you?” 

“That’s not for me to decide, is it, brother mine?” 

Brother mine. He forgets that somewhere, there’s his little sister on the other end of the line. That she’s not just some strange, disembodied voice sneering into his ear. 

“How was he, then?” he asks. “Uncle Rudy, I mean.”

“I didn’t pay him much attention, I’m afraid. He didn’t bring me a present like he used to.” In the background, Mycroft hears a woman’s voice, sickly sweet, informing Eurus that they only have one more minute. Eurus sighs. “Anyway,” she says, “You liked him, didn’t you? I remember.” 

“I suppose,” says Mycroft. “I hear we don’t have much longer, so - ” 

“Because he liked you, isn’t that right? I bet not many people do.” 

“Eurus,” he says, wary. He knows what she’s trying to do. “We should – “ 

“That’s okay, though, Mycroft. Not many people like me, either.”

“I’m not like you.” 

Immediately, he regrets giving her even that much. Eurus hums gleefully. 

“Maybe not,” she says, “But you tried so hard, didn’t you, Mycroft? Always did as you were told. You still do. And Mummy and Daddy still liked him better than both of us, didn’t they? You couldn’t get it right, could you? You were always too – ” 

“Stop it.”

The cello girl is striding down the corridor again, her eyes fixed on the floor as she pretends not to listen in. Thankfully, the average person is an idiot (even in a prestigious place like this), but Mycroft wonders what he’d be able to gather from his own face, if he were to see himself from her perspective. 

“Ah,” says Eurus. “Did I upset you?”

“I have some unpacking to do,” says Mycroft (there’s no point in lying and saying ‘no’, he’s never got a lie past her in his life). “I’m afraid I’ll have to go. Goodbye, Eurus.” 

“Mycroft.” 

Mycroft pauses a moment, with half a mind to hang up. He’s had rather enough of antagonistic siblings for one day. But grudgingly, he replaces the receiver to his ear. 

“What?” 

He presumes she’s hoping to dig her nails in one last time before he puts the phone down, and his fingers are almost bruising around the receiver as she makes him wait for it. 

“Eurus. What?” 

“Mycroft,” she says again, and her voice is a near whisper. “When am I coming home?” 

Oh. 

Eurus truly has her ways of catching one unawares, but with all the time in the world, Mycroft wouldn’t have an answer to this. 

“I don’t know,” he says. 

“Well, tell me when you do,” says Eurus. “Next week, then, Mycroft?”

-

“Will you have more wine, Holmes?” asks Lord Webber, refilling Mycroft’s glass before he can assent. It is a very good wine, though, so he can hardly complain. Lord Webber’s dinners are well known for fine food and drink, and that’s half the reason Mycroft had accepted the invitation – college meals do become a little repetitive after a few weeks. 

“Thank you,” he says, “I wouldn’t mind at all.” 

“The vintner is a good friend, he’s providing for my daughter’s wedding this Christmas coming.” 

“How marvellous.” Mycroft sincerely hopes this doesn’t segue into a detailed description of said daughter’s wedding; he notices that his fellow diners are thinking along the same lines, keeping their eyes on their plates to avoid encouraging Lord Webber. Alas, to no avail. 

“Geraldine and I are thrilled, of course. Artie Springfield is his name, a very respectable young fellow. I knew his father myself. And Lydia’s besotted, you know, he’s all she talks about.” 

Mycroft isn’t sure how many times he can say ‘How marvellous’ before Lord Webber begins to notice something of a trend, and so opts for nodding politely. He only hopes he doesn’t nod himself to sleep – the candlelight isn’t helping. 

Professor Pullman had suggested Mycroft to Lord Webber for the fellows’ dinner this evening, advising him to impress the man, and there could be a job in it for him. It seems, however, that it takes little to impress Lord Webber besides simply nodding along to his endless monologues. And from these, Mycroft can gather that there is little to recommend Lord Webber himself besides his title. 

“So, Holmes,” says Lord Webber, waving his fork in Mycroft’s direction. “I hear you’ve made something of a name for yourself here at Oxford in the last year.” 

Mycroft freezes around the mouthful of beef wellington he’d taken in what had seemed like an opportune moment. He’s thankful when Professor Pullman jumps in before he can attempt to swallow it whole.

“Holmes is something of a marvel,” he says. Mycroft attempts a modest smile around the beef wellington. “He came top of his year last term, the best results we’ve seen since… well, the best, as far as I’m aware.” 

“Couldn’t get you on the rowing team, though, could we, Holmes?” says Oscar Whitley, the boat club captain who had been invited along to the dinner as well, after Wednesday’s victory against Balliol. Whitley had scouted Mycroft for the team last year, based on little more than a matter of height, and Mycroft may have refused a little too strongly. 

“I can thoroughly relate,” says Lord Webber, nodding sagely. “I’ve always been more of a spectator myself.” Mycroft doesn’t bother to add that he’s certainly not a spectator, either. “Now, tell me, Holmes, what are your thoughts on life after Oxford? Have you thought about a career?”

That was quick, thinks Mycroft. He’d expected a little more preamble.

“In no great depth, I’m afraid,” he says. “I’ve been keeping my options open.” 

“As well you should,” says Lord Webber, “But, just to give you something to mull over, have you thought about working for the Treasury? You’re just the type of young man they’re after, and I can certainly carve you a path in.” 

“I’ll absolutely consider it, thank you, Lord Webber.”

“I’m sure we’d find you a comfortable wage to start on, besides.” 

“These are excellent snap peas,” says Whitley – reminding Lord Webber of his presence quite transparently, in case a second offer might be forthcoming. 

“So, what do your parents do, Holmes?” continues Lord Webber, heedless of Whitley. “Might I have heard of them?” 

“I don’t expect so, Lord Webber. They both retired some time ago to, uh… raise a family.” 

“Ah. Siblings, then, have you?” 

Mycroft pauses. 

“Just the one,” he says. “A younger brother. Sherlock.” 

“Splendid. Smart boy, too, is he?” 

“Yes, Lord Webber.” 

“Splendid, splendid.”

-

Mycroft lies in bed staring at the dim glow seeping beneath his door from the lights of the hallway. His mind trails to the night he’d woken to see the shuddering shadows of a fire, whilst his brother slept soundly beside him. 

If Mycroft were superstitious, perhaps he’d find comfort in the idea that some greater force had prodded him awake that night. But he isn’t, and so is merely haunted by an alternate version of events, in which he sleeps on until it’s too late. Or a version in which Sherlock hadn’t been beside him, but fast asleep in his own room with a lock on the door.

He was supposed to be upstairs. 

Mycroft wishes he could forget too, sometimes.

-

“Post, was it, Holmes? We’ve got a couple for you, wait there a moment.” 

Mycroft waits, watching the porter rifle through a morning’s worth of mail for the entire college. He checks his watch discretely – he has twenty minutes, and a lecture the other side of town. Perhaps he should have left this for when he got back. 

“I might come back in an hour, if that’s alright,” he says, “Only I should really be – “

“Not to worry, here they are.” The porter pushes two envelopes across the counter, and Mycroft recognises the handwriting on the top one as his mother’s. It’s the first time she’s written to him since he returned for his second year; he’d informed her back in September that he doubted he’d have the time to respond to her letters this year, and had rather hoped that would be an end to them. She’s usually hoping for details about Eurus, he knows, and every letter Mycroft writes back can only be a disappointment. 

“Is that all you’ll be needing, then?” asks the porter. 

“Yes. Thank you.” 

Mycroft exits onto Radcliffe Square, sliding the letters between the pages of his notebook as he checks his watch again. Seventeen minutes. He briefly wonders if he ought to invest in a bicycle for lectures, if only to save himself another close shave with the prospect of running to class. 

It’s only as he is taking his seat in the lecture theatre that Mycroft remembers he’d never glanced at the second letter to see who it was from. He knows who he wants it to be from, but the possibility of disappointment is enough for him to maintain the suspense a little longer. 

Doctor Henderson is some five minutes into his lecture on 18^th century liberalism before Mycroft deigns to pull the letter out for scrutiny. 

His address is penned in a perfunctory scrawl, the biro it was written with near out of ink. Of course, he recognises the hand immediately from a number of sarcastic birthday cards he’d received as a child. He regards the envelope with a juvenile pleasure he’d almost forgotten. 

Uncle Rudy is back in touch. 

Amongst the sparsely populated audience, he probably wouldn’t get away with opening it without drawing attention to himself, but Mycroft’s hands are almost moving to do so of their own accord. He stuffs the letter back behind the inside leaf of his notebook, and suddenly finds that there has never been anything so boring as Doctor Henderson’s lecture. It can’t end fast enough.

-

Mycroft,  

Apologies for not having been in touch. I think it’s time for a catch-up, if you’re game.  

Next Friday good?  

R.V.

Mycroft reads the letter (more of a note, really) five times in quick succession. It’s short, but with the kind of brevity that implies the full story is one too long to be contained on paper. Time for a catch up. Uncle Rudy wants to meet. 

Mycroft consults his diary, knowing already that he’d shift anything just short of an exam to find the time for this. He’s annoyed by his own enthusiasm – he’d attempted to contact Uncle Rudy himself so many times to no avail, and now with just a couple of lines of messy handwriting, Uncle Rudy has Mycroft scrambling for his stationary to write a reply. Well, that’s not good enough. 

Out of sheer pettiness, Mycroft replies with exactly one word fewer.  

Next Friday is fine.  

Call me with times and locations, I seem to remember you saying that letters are ‘Victorian’.  

Mycroft

-

Mycroft spends the rest of the evening wondering what news Uncle Rudy will bring – there must be news, otherwise he would have suggested a catch-up before now. No, this isn’t about Mycroft, and it’s not about Uncle Rudy. It’s about Eurus. 

But if it’s about Eurus, why does he want to see Mycroft? Uncle Rudy may not be on the best terms with Mother and Father, but they wouldn’t deny him a meeting if it were to do with their daughter. Uncle Rudy is going to tell him something he isn’t going to tell Mother and Father, then, and Mycroft suddenly isn’t sure he wants to know.

It’s then, as he’s preparing to head to hall for dinner, that Mycroft remembers he has a second letter to read, from Mother. Carrying it downstairs with him, Mycroft takes the quieter end of a dining table and slits the envelope open over a beef stew. It’s a substantial letter indeed, crammed with all sorts of details Mycroft would never ask for: how Father’s vegetables are growing, what cousin Juliet has named her new born son, and, of course, the weather. 

Mycroft knows to skim to the end, where Mother usually writes all the things she really means to ask him about. And, as usual, these things concern Sherlock and Eurus.

Do let us know how Eurus is doing, Eileen tells us the two of you have long chats. Your father and I would love to know what she has to say, it’s so important that she –  

Mycroft skims forward to the Sherlock paragraph. 

And would you mind calling Stowe when you have the time, I know you’re awfully busy but Sherlock won’t write and shuts up like a clam on the phone. We visited once during the half-term, but he was in a dreadfully sour mood the whole day. I was worried they were bullying him there, you know what boys can be like, and I’ve asked him if he doesn’t want to come home for a little while, but he got ever so aggressive at that.  

No sign he’s remembered anything. I’m worried what will happen when he does, Mycroft – I wonder if we’ve let it go a bit too far.  

Far enough that they can’t turn back, though, thinks Mycroft.

The house-master tells us he still has trouble sleeping, wakes the other boys up with shouting. I hope they aren’t holding it against him.  

Mycroft dimly remembers Harry Leonards, who had cried for his mother on the first night of term – the boy hadn’t been allowed to forget it for the years that followed, and Mycroft can recall that it was Leonards’ belongings that often found their way into the school toilets. 

Anyway, we must visit you soon, and you can tell us how everything is going. We were thinking of coming by on your father’s birthday, so let us know if suits.  

It wouldn’t really matter if it suits or not; Mother has picked his Father’s birthday because she knows it leaves no room for negotiation. So that will be another day of wandering around Oxford with his parents declaring how different things are from their day (which things pointedly aren’t, since the place hasn’t changed much across centuries). 

Hope you’re well, with love as always.  

Well, then. He’d better call Sherlock, hadn’t he?

-

“Please hold, Mr Holmes, I’ll just go and find him for you.”

“Thank you.” 

Mycroft hasn’t attempted calling Sherlock before, and he’s half-expecting his brother to outright refuse to speak to him. But Sherlock must be in a good mood, because he does eventually pick up the phone. 

“What do you want, Mycroft?”

“Only to speak with you. How are you finding school?”

“Mummy and Daddy put you up to this, didn’t they?”

Mycroft considers this. 

“Yes,” he says. “So what am I telling them?”

Sherlock scoffs. His voice hasn’t quite broken yet, and he still sounds a lot like her. 

“Why don’t you tell them I’m having a wonderful time, and I’ve made plenty of friends already. That will make them happy, won’t it?”

Yes, he really does sound a lot like her.

“I don’t know,” says Mycroft. “Is it true?” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“They don’t mind that you wake up screaming all the time, then?” 

Sherlock draws a sharp breath and slams the phone down. Mycroft is left to appreciate that he might not have taken the best approach.

After all, for all his pretences, Sherlock isn’t like Eurus, or Mycroft for that matter, because he’s always worn his heart on his sleeve. That’s what they prey on, the other boys. That’s why they went for Leonards and not Mycroft. 

Mycroft had known how to keep to himself. He’d made it an art form. His classmates had been mildly dubious of him on some animal level, like they could sense he’d emerged from something strange, but Mycroft would only warn them off with a bland smile. He knows his little brother, though, knows he’ll bite when they bait him. He wonders if Sherlock had had a black eye when they’d spoken, because he can remember Leonards often had two.

-

That night, Mycroft thinks of the bees. He hasn’t thought of them in a while, but when he does, it is with a pang of loss. Father’s beehives were amongst the only things to survive the fire at Musgrave Hall, but there’d been nothing else to pack when they’d moved, and so they’d simply left them there. 

He remembers being stung for the first time aged five whilst trying to pick flowers for Mother. And then boycotting honey for all of a month, until he’d grown tired of jam.

And he remembers how Sherlock had screamed the first time he was stung, as a wayward toddler. And how he’d screamed the whole while Mother was removing the sting. And then screamed even louder when she wouldn’t let him keep it.

And Eurus, at a picnic in the grounds some time ago – a bee landing on her hand, and Eurus not screaming or squirming or panicking at all, just watching it with interest until it flew away again. 

Victor was with them that day. It was shortly before Eurus gave up on them all and began keeping to her room entirely; even then, she was sat at some distance from the main group, whilst everyone else watched Sherlock and Victor enact a play of their own devising on the lawn. Victor had bowed so deeply at the end that he fell over, and they’d all laughed. 

Mother and Father had adored Victor, and Mr and Mrs Trevor had adored Sherlock in turn. Their families had been close. But Mr and Mrs Trevor must hate their family now.

Maybe they wish, sometimes, that it had been Sherlock that had disappeared instead of their son. 

Mycroft switches off his desk lamp and puts his books away. He’s not going to get anything else done tonight.

Outside, he can hear students from the neighbouring bedrooms preparing to leave for a night out. 

“Should we at least invite him? It seems kind of rude not to.” 

“If he wants to keep to himself, let him. I think he likes his own company, you know?”

-

Uncle Rudy is late. He always was, and Mycroft well remembers finding himself in charge of his baby brother for hours on end, aged eight, until the ‘responsible adult’ finally showed up. However, he still can’t help feeling anxious that his uncle isn’t going to appear – it’s been nearly an hour, and the waitress clearly thinks he’s been stood up for a lunch date. 

“Would you like another drink, sir?” 

“No, thank you.” 

Mycroft tries very hard not to correct her as she gives him a pitying look, and settles instead for another glance at his watch. It has now officially been an hour, and this is getting embarrassing.

“Actually,” he calls after the waitress, “Could I ask for the bill – “ 

“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving before I’d even got here.” 

And there he is. Mycroft turns around to see an older, greyer version of the man he remembers, the caustic grin more deeply lined. 

“You’re late,” Mycroft says. 

“We said half one,” says Uncle Rudy, slouching into the chair opposite. 

“We said half twelve. I made a note of it.”

“Well, why not just try to just be pleased to see me?” Uncle Rudy heaves his briefcase into his lap. “Anyway, you’ve grown.” 

“About a foot, yes,” says Mycroft, with more bitterness than he had intended. “You haven’t been in touch for seven years.”

Uncle Rudy isn’t even looking at him – he’s rifling through the briefcase, his brow furrowed. 

“So, Oxford, isn’t it?” he says. “I know it was your mum’s old playground, but I’ve always thought it a stuffy old place. Say what you like about London, but at least it’s the real world.”

“Is that where you’ve been, then? The real world? Whilst I’ve been living in a fairy tale, obviously.”

“I’ve been here and there. A long while in China, actually.” Mycroft doesn’t bother to ask for what. “So, how’s little Sherlock these days? You did as I suggested, didn’t you?”

“He did most of it himself. Mother and Father thought it was all my idea, of course, and I can tell you they weren’t very happy.” 

Uncle Rudy still won’t look at him, keeps frowning into his briefcase. 

“Really must improve my filing system,” he says. “Anyway, don’t worry about those two, I won’t believe they had any better ideas. How are classes, by the way, are we on track for a first?”

Well. Mycroft’s rather lost his patience now. 

“We’re not here to talk about me, are we?” he says, lowering his voice and leaning forwards. “We’re here to talk about Eurus. She told me you went to see her. So what is it?”

And now Uncle Rudy looks at him, and he’s not playing around anymore. 

“I heard you two were in contact,” he says. “Here we are. Found it.” 

Uncle Rudy slaps a file on the table, and pushes it towards Mycroft. Mycroft stares at it. On the front is printed HOLMES, EURUS, and clipped to the top, a photograph of a girl, about twelve, with long dark hair and sharp blue eyes. For the first time in seven years, Mycroft is looking at his sister.

“Open it, then,” says Uncle Rudy.

Mycroft ignores him, because this moment has nothing to do with him. He scans Eurus’ face, looking for some evidence of their shared history, of the girl he just occasionally remembers with a confused fondness. Her hair is curlier now, like Sherlock’s, and she’s smiling slightly – though Mycroft imagines that no-one else in whatever room this photograph was taken in was smiling with her. 

“Open it,” says Uncle Rudy again, and this time Mycroft does. Inside is an assortment of dense text, in which Eurus’ name is frequently occurring. 

On 16.08.89, Eurus was found to have obtained five sharp instruments (below), discovered beneath her bed, that she claimed to have received from Witness #6. Witness #6 admitted to providing them. Witness #6 claimed that Eurus had “asked for them repeatedly, until [he] couldn’t say no anymore” (see recording). Witness #6 has since been removed from the Clydesdayle Facility’s staffing (18.08.89) and is under further investigation as of 02.09.89.

(“Do you do everything I tell you to do?” she’d asked his brother, propped up on the sofa with a sprained ankle. 

“Don’t be demented,” Mother had said when he’d told her.) 

Mycroft glances across the rest of the document, and then closes the file. 

“Do my parents know about this?” he asks. 

“No,” says Uncle Rudy. “I’ve ensured that.”

“Why.” 

“Because they lack the ability to approach this objectively. And this requires objectivity.” 

“She’s my sister. What makes you think I’m capable of being objective?” 

“You’ve got more sense.” 

Mycroft eyes his Uncle warily. 

“So Eurus is still dangerous,” he says. “I think we’d already been working under that assumption to a greater or lesser degree. What does this change?” 

Uncle Rudy nods, apparently pleased that Mycroft is keeping pace.

“What this changes,” he says, “Is that I don’t believe Eurus can stay in Clydesdayle much longer. And there is no other children’s institution that I’ve found to meet her… needs.”

The waitress meanders towards their table and has barely opened her mouth to ask for orders before Uncle Rudy has waved her away. 

“Meaning?” asks Mycroft, knowing full well what it means. 

“There is no other children’s institution,” says Uncle Rudy. “I can’t say when the move will happen. But it will have to happen.” 

“And you think my parents can’t know this because…”

“Because it has to happen. And I haven’t decided how, yet.” 

Mycroft is silent for a moment, and tries to remind himself that his sister (his little sister) is and has always been dangerous.

But she’s still, still his sister. And though he tries hard not to picture it, even in abstract Uncle Rudy’s idea repulses him. 

Objective, objective. 

“I’d be right in thinking that whatever you’re proposing wouldn’t be legal, in the case of a child my sister’s age,” he says, levelly. 

“I’ve come to learn how flexible ‘legal’ is when you know the right people.” 

That sits in the air a moment, and Mycroft tries not to imagine the ways this might have served his uncle in the past – what his work, that they can know nothing about, really involves. 

He’s never really known this man at all, has he? Just one of his many fronts. And this front is decidedly colder than even the one Mycroft remembers from that awful Easter Sunday. This is the one that wouldn’t answer his calls, that only got in contact because… 

Why?

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, and there’s a desperate edge to his voice now that he doesn’t like at all. “Why do I need to know?” 

“You don’t need to know. I thought you ought to. You’re smart, I always said, didn’t I? Smarter than me, quite possibly.” Uncle Rudy sits back in his seat and studies Mycroft with a judicious eye. Mycroft sits up to meet it, and stares back. “What it is I do,” says Uncle Rudy, “I said to you, do you remember? It might be something you’d be good at.” 

Mycroft blinks. He remembers. 

“Well, Mycroft – have you been thinking about a career at all, lately?”

-

“You’re supposed to call at quarter-past eleven,” says Eurus.

“I’m sorry. Something came up.” 

Mycroft nods politely at the boy from the room next door as he wanders past with an armful of textbooks. The boy nods back, avoiding eye contact, and disappears into the stairway. 

“Hm,” says Eurus. “Uncle Rudy came to see you, didn’t he?” 

Mycroft doesn’t bother to deny it, because, as always with Eurus, it’s a pointless exercise. 

“I’m sure you had a nice long chat,” says Eurus, sing-song. “He didn’t want to talk to me when he came here. Nobody likes talking to me much.”

This doesn’t surprise Mycroft, given what he’s read. 

“Why’s that, then?” he asks, for lack of anything else to say. 

“Because they don’t like me talking to them, I suppose.” Eurus hums to herself – a tune that Mycroft has come to hate since she’d first sung it, that day Victor vanished. “When is Sherlock coming to see me?” she asks. 

“He isn’t.”

“Maybe if I talk to Mummy and Daddy for a little while, they’ll bring him along. What do you think?” 

Mycroft hadn’t thought of that. 

She plants a seed and nurtures it, Uncle Rudy had told him. Then she leaves them to do the rest themselves.

“No,” says Mycroft. 

“No?” 

“I won’t let you see him.” 

Eurus doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and neither does Mycroft. Their silences spar, daring the other to speak first. 

“He’s bringing me my hairband,” says Eurus finally, her voice flat. “I told him to. He does as he’s told.” 

“He’s forgotten you,” says Mycroft, and he knows he shouldn’t say this, but he wants to hurt her like she wants to hurt Sherlock. Like she’s already hurt him. Hurt all of them. “He doesn’t remember you. He thinks you’re just a nasty story.” 

Eurus is silent, but Mycroft can hear her breathing stutter, and that only encourages him. 

“He doesn’t talk about you. He doesn’t ask about you. He doesn’t know you exist.”

“We were playing a game,” says Eurus, eventually, and she doesn’t sound so sure of herself anymore. Good, thinks Mycroft. “He’s going to find me.” 

“Sherlock is never going to be anywhere near you again,” says Mycroft, and in that moment, he’s decided. That’s the one thing he’ll always make sure of. And if they have to put her away… 

Eurus is dangerous. If they have to put her away, then that’s what they’ll do. 

“Goodbye, Eurus,” he says. “Next week, then.” 

“I that am lost, oh, who will find me…”

Mycroft hangs up.