This was new. Different. Wrong.

Sherlock had been in the hospital before, of course. More than most people. He'd been there as a patient – a gunshot wound, more than one overdose. He'd been there on business, too; usually to the morgue. He'd dragged John from a meeting on more than one occasion when he was doing free-lance work when the murder business was slow and money got tight. But he'd never come during visiting hours. He'd never been here for him.

He was uncomfortable. They both were. Their roles were reversed, and they knew it. Sherlock was the junkie, the one who got in trouble and needed help, the one lying on starch white sheets in a gown. Mycroft was poised. He sat in the chair and consulted the nurses and read the charts when he didn't care to hear what they had to say.

Mycroft was the big brother. Sherlock was the little one. That was the basis of their relationship, the way they had always operated. There were unwritten rules that came with that, namely, Sherlock screwed up and Mycroft fixed it, because he was older and he knew what to do when the world was falling apart.

Today was all wrong. Sherlock was in Mycroft's chair. And it was damn uncomfortable.

Sherlock cleared his throat. "How are you doing?" He expected a glare, a scoff, an eye roll.

"I don't know."

He didn't expect that. Nor did he know how to react to that. Mycroft was the big brother.

"I don't, however, feel that I need to be lying in a paper gown without my trousers on a cheap mattress simply because my psychopathic sister played games with my mind."

That was better. Sherlock chuckled and got his glare.

"This is hardly amusing, Sherlock."

"When was the last time you were anywhere without your trousers on?"

Mycroft tried valiantly not to smile and almost succeeded. "I will not dignify that question with a response."

"I'm left to my imagination, then."

"Oh, that's comforting."

Sherlock sighed, the tension that had hung in the air since he'd walked in as thickly as the smell of anti-bacterial wipes suddenly dissipating. "How long will you be in here?"

Mycroft leaned back, unguarded in a way Sherlock had not seen him since they were children. "Until I decide to leave. I'm the British government, Sherlock. I can only be away so long."

He had artfully dodged the real question. They were good when they bickered, the Holmes brothers. It was what they had always done best – a battle of wits, insults and clever retorts that kept them both on their toes in a world where they were both so often bored. Real conversations, though, about themselves, they avoided those. The only occasion where they could be reliably expected to occur was…when one was in hospital. Damn it.

Sherlock drummed his fingers against Mycroft's chair. "Are you quite…capable…of being the British government right now?"

"No. That's why I'm in hospital."

"Okay... Good of you to recognize that."

Mycroft scoffed. "I'm not you, Sherlock. I know my limits."

His limit was her. Sherlock had wondered, all his life, what could shake his unflappable big brother. The answer, it seemed, was his little sister. How was he to know?

"I guess I look much better by comparison," Sherlock quipped.

Mycroft blinked. "Excuse me?"

"To Eurus." To Sherlock's astonishment, Mycroft winced. He winced at the sound of her name.

"Anyone is better than Eurus," Mycroft snapped.

It was not just the first time they'd been alone since Sherrinford; it was the first time they'd been alone since his discovery of Eurus. Exactly how did one confront the layers of betrayal that came with such a deception?

"How could you not tell me, Mycroft?" Sherlock asked simply.

Mycroft took a deep breath and folded his hands in front of him. "You were young. You were hurt. You made yourself forget, Sherlock. I saw no point in reopening those wounds. None of us did. Although you may not believe me, it was not done intentionally to deceive you."

"I'm an adult, Mycroft," Sherlock argued with no real vehemence. "Not a traumatized child anymore."

Mycroft smiled wryly to himself, some private joke or thought, no doubt, contradicting Sherlock's words. "Perhaps the wounds weren't all yours."

Sherlock considered that. "You have to tell them, you know," he said quietly.

Mycroft groaned, his head falling into his hands. "I can't."

"You have to. They deserve to know."

"It will kill them, to know what she is, what she's done." He paused. "And what I've done. They'll never trust me again."

One word, Sherlock, that's all I would have needed. "You don't know that."

"They still love her."

"And you don't?"

Mycroft looked steadily at Sherlock. "I never loved her, Sherlock."

"She's your sister."

Mycroft sat up as straight as he could when propped up against two pillows. "I never had any sense of familial dedication to Eurus, not one, from the moment she was born. It wasn't like with you." Sherlock raised an eyebrow, which finally earned him an eye roll. "Don't look so surprised. It was the one thing she and I had in common. Well, for a while."

"What was?"

"You," he replied bluntly. "She and I were…" He was oddly reticent to continue so Sherlock jumped in.

"The smart ones?"

Mycroft pressed his lips together. "You saw the world differently. I rationalized it. She scrutinized it. You felt it. It was…refreshing, I think, for both of us, to see the world through your eyes, if only for a moment, when you allowed us in."

Sherlock turned his gaze to the window. They were on the same side of the hospital as he had been when Culverton Smith had nearly strangled him, but several floors down.

Smith… The first time he'd met Eurus, really met Eurus, she'd used that name. He thought about what she'd said to him that night, about how he thought. Sweetly. Never a word he'd associated with himself before, but one that kept popping up in his mind lately. It still didn't feel right.

"You two must have had something more in common than a stupid brother."

Mycroft ran a hand across his eyes, looking suddenly tired. "I didn't say stupid."

"Not right now, you didn't." It was a word he'd heard often enough growing up. One Mycroft had thrown at him a few hours before, when he was trying to goad Sherlock into shooting him instead of John. Sacrificing himself, in a strange (sweet?) way.

"Eurus and I were alike, in some ways," he said, his voice low. "But very different in others."

"You never fantasized about killing me?" Sherlock smirked at him.

Mycroft didn't smile. "No."

Sherlock met his brother's eyes. Blue, like his own, but darker. Eurus had had eyes as bright as his. Hers were blank, that day in the cell. He hoped his eyes never looked like that.

"Was there nothing redeemable, Mycroft?" He didn't know why he so badly wanted there to be. He didn't know why it mattered. But it did.

"No."

"She could not always have been-"

"She was."

"She taught me to play the violin," Sherlock insisted, his voice taking on an unwanted edge of desperation. "That's what she said."

Mycroft frowned. "You shouldn't have spoken to her alone."

"But I did. Was she lying?"

He inhaled slowly. "No, she taught you. She played beautifully, and you liked to listen. She would put on shows for you, only you. She would kick everyone else from the room. One day she decided you were going to learn so you could play together. And when Eurus decided something, you didn't argue. No one did, not even then. You learned quickly, but you never did play together."

Sherlock wanted to remember that. He wanted Mycroft's words to bring on some memory of his childhood that he'd forgotten, as Eurus' had, as horrible as they had been. But his words were nothing more than stories, someone else's life that he was hearing about for the first time.

When he thought of his childhood, Sherlock thought of his house in the countryside, of fencing lessons and bedtime stories read by his father in front of the fire. He thought of digging for worms while his mother gardened and shoving them forward for Mycroft to see. He thought of their trips to the beach, of Mycroft burying him in the sand, and of staying far away from the actual water. There were pirates and Red- Victor, books and martial arts, and, more than anything, there was his brother, always somewhere in the background, egging him on, challenging him, teaching him, and, however much he disliked it, protecting him.

It would have been different, had he been alone.

"I'm going to Sherrinford," Sherlock announced.

Mycroft's response was visceral. "You most certainly are not."

"I'm an adult, Mycroft," Sherlock told him, pulling on his coat. He smirked. "You can't stop me."

Mycroft seethed, his increasingly redder face contrasting amusingly with his starch white bed and gown. "And what, pray tell, do you think you're going to do with your…sister?"

"We're going to play the violin together," Sherlock replied, making his way towards the door.

Mycroft's jaw actually dropped. "Why?"

"Because everyone should have a big brother."

Because I can't resist writing about the Holmes brothers. Sherlock and Mycroft really have one of the most interesting relationships, and Eurus complicates it, to say the least. I wish there had been a scene where they spoke to each other about what her presence (and lack thereof) meant for them, but darn John was there the whole time :P So I invented one. As always, I own nothing.