Retrogression, Metamorphosis

Retrogression. Waiting for Mummy to forgive him, as if he were a child again. How odd. He hadn't permitted himself the conscious awareness that it was an outcome he had been holding his breath for.

Mummy's pardon wasn't complete. It had waxed gradually, less turgidly, these past weeks. It wasn't fully there, but it was close. Mycroft could hear it in the warmth of her tired voice over the phone now, as she said: "Thank you for everything, love. You really have done the best you could, Myc. When your father recovers from the flu – in the next two weeks, I hope – we'll go with you and Sherlock. I'm glad that you boys could see your sister today, even if we couldn't."

Now was not the moment to demand that Mummy use his name unabbreviated. He was unsure if such a moment would ever come again. At present, he would accept any affection she could offer in the form of his attenuated pet name or otherwise. So he only said softly: "Eurus looked most thoughtful and didn't pick up her violin for at least a minute when Sherlock said you both weren't there today because Daddy was unwell. I do believe she is responding better to speech now."

"That's good, Myc. Thank you again for all you've done. Is Sherlock still with you?"

"Yes, Mummy," Mycroft answered without glancing at the figure seated beside him – they'd stepped off the helicopter at Whitehall and been met by Mycroft's driver. "We're in the car. I'm dropping him off at Baker Street before I go home."

"Give him my love too," she said, before ending the call.

Passing on the message was unnecessary. In Mycroft's soundproofed-to-the-hilt Jaguar, Mummy's voice had been clear enough even sans speakerphone for Sherlock to have heard every word. Although he was giving no sign of paying a blind bit of notice, staring out the window from the moment he'd settled into the back seat, he wouldn't have missed a syllable. It was just one of the endless things Mycroft had simply internalised about his brother over the years, without giving it a thought.

So much time spent knowing, watching, learning. Building on the substantial body of unspoken knowledge sprung near-fully formed through instinct and shared blood and formative years under the same roof. Seemingly worlds apart in age, character, habits, and environments beyond the family home. But never unknown. Never. What little might not have been imprinted in Mycroft from the start of Sherlock's life, he had learnt through watching, always watching.

He'd spent so much of his life watching Sherlock that he couldn't look away now, not even if he'd wanted to.

He couldn't take his eyes off him.

But, oh, how badly he had failed him.

Once upon a time, like John Ford's Giovanni, he had thought himself a man who could brazenly declare "I hold fate clasp'd in my fist" even when his acts were questionable. But as it had been with the doomed Giovanni, it hadn't been true for Mycroft Holmes, had it?

He had gambled with his brother's safety because he had believed he could control the world. Mycroft had thought he could safeguard queen and country, protect the ignorant general public from untold acts of terror, and hold criminal masterminds at bay single-handed. He'd thought he was clever enough, powerful enough, to occasionally dangle Sherlock like bait over the turbulent oceans in which Moriarties, Magnussens and East Winds glided like demon sharks. It had seemed a calculated risk worth taking. He'd been convinced that he had the power to keep his brother unharmed while tidily extracting valuable information, expertise and cooperation from those slippery demons in the deep.

Hubris.

He'd almost got Sherlock killed. Actually killed. Not make-believe. More than once, at that.

Retrogression. Not just because he was waiting for Mummy's wholehearted forgiveness for carrying on Uncle Rudy's scheme to hide Eurus from her. But also because he was slipping back into the past, when as a chubby boy he'd always had his arms full of Sherlock, the little brother who adored him. So unlike Eurus who had stood apart, stared disdainfully at him, cut right through her eldest brother's adolescent nonsense with her all-seeing eyes, her all-knowing brain and her infantile lack of compassion – a deadly mixture of the worst elements. Sherlock, so different, had loved him, loved Mummy and Daddy, loved Eurus in his naive way, loved Victor Trevor. Always seeking Mycroft's arms, Mycroft's wisdom, Mycroft's protection, Mycroft's genius… until Mycroft had failed repeatedly – however hard he'd racked his tremendous brain – to solve Eurus' infernal riddle.

He had never felt as stupid as when he had found himself impossibly, unbelievably, unable to crack her puzzle. He had never felt he'd let Sherlock down as much as when he had run up against the brick wall of her conundrum and failed to save Victor's life. Because Mycroft had come up short against his little sister – for pity's sake, he was eight years older than Eurus! – his brother had lost his beloved best friend. The blow had altered Sherlock irreparably. Even when he had written Victor and Eurus entirely out of his memory, he had never readily sought Mycroft out again for affection, wisdom or love, and had forever after accepted his help only under duress.

He had been perfectly right to stop looking to his elder brother as a source of unpoisoned aid. Because Mycroft had failed him again with Moriarty and Magnussen. And again, when trapped in Eurus' game at Sherrinford. He'd been about as much use as an umbrella stand to Sherlock and John Watson. He hadn't been able to stomach the notion of shooting the governor, whereas John had at least tried. Mycroft had openly quailed, then minutes later, hadn't been able to convince Sherlock, either, to shoot him instead of John, and had faced those seconds of utter horror when Sherlock had almost shot himself instead.

As he was on the theme of utter terror, he might as well dwell, too, on how thoroughly Sherlock had proven that he knew, inside and out, all of Mycroft's failings and weaknesses, when he had pushed every single one of his childhood terror buttons by breaking into his house and scaring him half to death with his smoke-and-mirrors ghosts, shadows, clowns, bleeding ancestral portraits, weapons that wouldn't work, and doors that wouldn't open…

"Oh for God's sake, Mycroft, shut up," Sherlock abruptly broke in on his spiralling descent into self-pity with what sounded like a startlingly loud and vicious hiss. "Just shut up."

He took a moment to register what Sherlock was furious about. Then, with as composed a demeanour as he could summon in front of the one family member who best knew all his tells, Mycroft pointed out calmly and reasonably: "I've been silent since Mummy ended her phone call."

The car was turning into Baker Street, drawing close to 221B. Sherlock unclasped his seat belt and scooped up his violin case with exaggerated movements, all elbows and huffiness. Mycroft knew his brother was perfectly capable – more than perfectly capable – of doing everything with velvet smoothness, but it seemed that in the presence of people he implicitly trusted most (particularly John, Mrs Hudson and, of course, Mycroft), Sherlock enjoyed being flouncy and dramatic.

He was now pointing the index finger of his free hand at his own head of curls, glaring at Mycroft and saying irritably, in a biting staccato of arrhythmic emphases: "I could hear you thinking, Mycroft. Thinking so bloody loudly, I couldn't hear myself think. Such a superbly horrifying cascade of illogical thoughts piling one on top of the other that I couldn't separate one from the next, and so loud and jumbled – you were assaulting my peripheral vision with all that endless minuscule fidgeting."

"I was not fidgeting," Mycroft said, less icily than he'd intended.

"Everything on you was fidgeting – fingers, ears, facial muscles, fabric, even your toes encased in your ridiculously expensive Lobbs – all flinching, shuddering. Loud."

Mycroft didn't reply.

The car stopped in front of 221B, and Sherlock shoved open the door on his side, not bothering to wait for the driver to get out. So unlike Mycroft; he never waited. He swung his long, lean body out onto the pavement in another tetchy, all-elbows move, and bent to peer through the rear door, saying: "Mummy will come around. Eventually. She knows that no one could have done better than you. I know that no one could have done better. Ta, Mycroft. Thanks for the lift."

He closed the car door – not too hard, he didn't slam it, just shut it firmly before he turned his back to the car, the driver and Mycroft, and disappeared into 221B.

Metamorphosis. A boy turned dog in Sherlock's world. He had wielded the godlike powers of imposing cynanthropy upon another. But what he had done to Victor Trevor, Henry Knight had also done to his father's killer. Not so godlike, then. Rather, a weakness, a strategy for surviving the horror of irreversible loss.

What was godlike, wrathfully so, was the boy turned to bone, steeped in a cursed well no one could find for decades, lost, transformed, sacrificed to the rage of an insatiable little deity with pigtails and delicate feet of clay.

The wrathful god: a girl turned into the East Wind. Organic matter transmuted into inorganic moving matter sweeping all manner of particles with it. The East Wind, transformed into a woman forever damned with the genius of a goddess and the emotional and ethical development of a five-year-old child. An impossibility. Wind made flesh, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, howling out to him her plaintive song born of strings and bow, borne by the air to his eardrums. What are little girls made of? Murder, and spice, and hearts of ice.

Myths were Mycroft's area, not Sherlock's. Not at all. Nursery rhymes too, come to think of it. His full-to-bursting head hadn't retained the useless classical tales and not-so-classical doggerels he might have learnt years ago. Until now, in the unsettling new age of AE – After Eurus – when he found himself refreshing his hole-ridden memory by thumbing through Ovid's Metamorphoses (Mycroft's copy, of course, stolen from his stuffy library) and Homer's Odyssey and Iliad (ditto), as well as a book of traditional rhymes someone or other had given Rosie. Or more accurately, given to John so he could read them to Rosie.

Sugar, and spice, and all things nice.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow at the sleeping child draped over his sternum while he lay on the sofa. Well, maybe not all things nice. Rosie was covered in an assortment of more-or-less edible matter – if he scraped off a sample and examined it, he would most likely find the matter composed of formula milk, pureed pumpkin, an ill-advised sweet Mrs Hudson hadn't been able to resist offering the child, a burped-up mixture of half-digested midday feed and fresh drool, smudges of baking flour and powdered cinnamon John had transferred to his daughter's smock after helping Mrs Hudson hoist a tray of something Sherlock had no interest in from the counter to the oven, snot and tears (originating from the child, not the tray, thank goodness), and probably more molecules of pee than he particularly liked to think might be outside a baby's diaper.

"Sorry, so sorry," John was murmuring now, hurrying in quietly to gently scoop Rosie off Sherlock's supine frame.

Sherlock shook his head to signify that it was no trouble at all.

"She needs a bath, but I'll wait for her to wake up a bit more first," John said softly, pressing a barely-there kiss to his daughter's edible-matter-covered hair. "Thanks for keeping an eye on her while I made that run to the clinic."

"Emergency sorted?"

"Yes, thanks. The locum was attending to another emergency, and Sarah was making an urgent house call, so it was down to me. Fishbone down the throat. Mr Hakim."

"Ah – the 75-year-old with the cat fetish. Please tell me he hasn't progressed to eating his pets' lunches," Sherlock remarked dryly.

"I was rather hoping you would be able to deduce enough from the minute traces of seafood, catnip, fifty shades of cat hair or whatnot on my clothing to reassure me of that," John shot back, equally wryly.

"Uh…" Sherlock began, crunching into a half-sitting posture to peer closely at John's oatmeal sweater. "No."

"No? No what?" John asked curiously, shifting Rosie to his shoulder as she began to fuss.

"No, John, I'm not that omniscient," Sherlock snapped softly, petulantly collapsing back onto the sofa cushions. "You'd do better asking Mr Hakim directly if he's been nicking his moggies' meals. Unless it becomes a matter of national importance, of course, in which case I shall pick his locks, invade his territory, abduct the fifty felines and secure the perimeter with mousetraps."

Rosie was fussing more aggressively now. John, soothing her with murmurs and pats, started moving towards the bathroom to wash her up, but stopped to enquire: "Didn't have time earlier to ask properly while I was rushing out the door, but I hope you found your sister well?"

"Very well, thanks for asking."

"Still not talking, though?"

"No."

"Father recovering from the flu?"

"Yup."

"Mother not caught it from him yet?"

"Nope."

"Mycroft still wallowing in whatever mud-substitute he likes languishing in?"

"Oh, yes. Very much so."

"Normal service for now in the Holmes universe, then?"

"Quite so."

John shook his head slightly with a quirk to the corners of his lips that mirrored Sherlock's ironic half-smile, before vanishing into the bathroom to give Rosie her much-needed bath.

To wash away the sugar (C12H22O11) and spice (C9H8O) and all things not too nice (the H2NCONH2, among other stuff).

If Sherlock could confer blessings, he would shower blessings of normality upon Rosie (aside from the fact, of course, that she might very well grow up to become a bloody fantastic sharpshooter like both her mummy and daddy). Spare this little girl the hellishly divine transmutation into a thing of terror. Nothing wrathfully godlike, please. If godlike she must be, please God she be benign. Rosie. Rose. Rosy… rosy fingertips… the horizon-spanning appendages of Eos, goddess of the dawn – "When Dawn spread out her finger tips of rose"… Homer, The Odyssey. Eos – harmless enough? Oh dear, no – look what she did to Tithonus, poor sod. Even rosy-fingered Dawn wouldn't be safe to metamorphose into. Just grow as nature would under normal circumstances intend you to, into a brilliant woman who will always make your father proud, please.

Fingertips of rose… something about that image… ugh, the holes in his memory. Rosy fingers were so because blood flowed under their skin. Rosie the child with her little pink fingers, yes, but somewhere back in time was the vise-like grip of bloodless fingers, the relaxing grip of red-again fingers as the blood rushed back in through the capillaries… "I won't let you go. I'll never let you go…"

Something was dancing at the frayed edges of his memory. A thread, the merest thread slipping through the fabric away from him. If he could just grasp it before it vanished into the wrong part of the weave…

Fingers, rosy little digits… whose? Eurus'? Rosie's? No, his own. His own small fingers seeking out and clutching… soft wool, soft flesh, strong, solid bones beneath the excess skin and the grabbable folds. Good Lord. Mycroft.

Looking for and to Mycroft all the time – that was him, as a child, wanting, demanding, loving, as he flung himself at the one who had always seemed a towering figure to him. Even more so than Daddy and Mummy. Because Mummy was a genius, and so was Daddy in his own way, but Mycroft was brilliant in a language Sherlock understood without having to learn it. His genius spoke to Sherlock's intellect in ways no one else's could. Victor was his sweet-natured playmate and Eurus was fey, but Sherlock's grubby little fingers were always reaching for Mycroft.

He had seemed massive, a Colossus in his abilities and strength. Yet now, Sherlock realised in a hard-factual way he never had before that Mycroft himself had been a child when Sherlock had adored him. Significantly older, to be sure, but still, he would only have been seven when Sherlock was born. He would only have been 13 when they'd lost Victor.

At first, he had cried in Mycroft's arms over and over again, cried bitterly, desperately. And Mycroft had held him and soothed him and cared for him. Then Sherlock had pulled away, devastated that even all the brilliance in Mycroft's brain couldn't bring Victor back.

And there was more… that fraying thread had a hell of a lot more to it, if he could just grasp it and trace it back to where it had slipped away from – fingers – it was down to seizing and pinning down that fleeting, barely-there image of those fingers holding him, words promising him he would never let him go… in a different time from when Eurus had lived with them… another time, another age, but still holding and being held… something fluttering there right at the edge of his mind – fingers, hands, arms, Mycroft, Mycroft… something to do with Mycroft… today, in the car, Mycroft's cascade of self-blaming thoughts, his guilt, leaping almost psychically from his head to Sherlock's, another echo of something he had forgotten from long ago…

Sherlock turned his face towards the back rest of the sofa and lay on his side with his eyes closed, thinking, trying hard to remember. He'd been lying on his side, Mycroft had been holding him, and all the thoughts were jumbled in their heads… he had erased something from his head because… not because it wasn't important, but because…

Ah.

The drugs. He had the slippery thread in clearer view and was following it better now that he could recognise its source. A fraying, iridescent thread of the countless recreational-substance-addled memories he had chosen to forget. Because each time he'd come back out of it had felt, first, like a plunge from the heavens into Hades, then a punishing spell in the underworld, then an even more painful, precarious climb back to the surface with no guarantee, like Orpheus, that he would make it back to level ground. And each time, he'd hoped to forget. But he had never really forgotten, had he?

He'd gone back again and again, remembering the bliss of the chemicals flooding his veins, opening up his imagination, closing down his heart, but choosing to bury all the other details – the pain, the indignity, the terror of descent and ascent, the grovelling, the hatred. And somehow, he had also buried along with all that the details of deeds by the one thing that had kept his head just above water and ground every time – Mycroft.

Why?

Why had he buried so much of Mycroft during those journeys to hell and back? Resentment? Shame? Surely not, when he had no trouble remembering all the other occasions when he had felt resentful of his brother or ashamed of his own behaviour towards his family and the people he cared about. What was so different about the drug-fuelled spells?

He could see it, almost. Almost. The vision was right there: Fingers, hands, arms, Mycroft holding him through the shaking, the vomiting, the rage, his brother's knuckles and fingertips bloodless and white as he held him firmly, refusing to let him run, crawl, fight his way out of his reach. Those same joints and fingers, raw with redness as the blood flowed back under the skin in the intervals of sanity, when Sherlock was calm(er), less violent, less sick. "I won't let you go. I'll never let you go…"

Nothing very unexpected there. Not that Sherlock had remembered that much, all these years, of Mycroft doing so much to keep him clean, keep him safe, keep him alive. He was only just now recalling these bits, fitting the images into place, plugging the holes in his memory. Yes, sort of new, all that information – how much Mycroft had physically been there for him – but nothing too unusual, nothing he could classify as totally unexpected.

What had he forgotten, then? What had he lost? Why?

Fingers, hands, arms, arms around him, holding him. Hands now gripping his wrists but not holding him down… gripping his wrists? But not to hold him down? For what purpose, then? Hands pushing him away. Mycroft pushing him away… why?

The lost past poured its returning images thick and fast into Sherlock's mind, until, with shocking abruptness, the memory slammed into him of the most awful moment, the lowest point when he'd lost every last shred of dignity he had. ("Sherlock, what in hell do you think you're doing?")

Coming down hard from a dodgy dose of heroin he'd told himself was just so he could think better now the summer academic term was over, then discovering that all he was thinking about was how to ease the crawling, nauseating, muscle-torturing discomfort with another hit. (He'd scored that neat little pack in return for some clever deductions and basic legwork, accurately giving the dealer details about which men his girlfriend was cheating on him with. But there wasn't much else he could offer any dealer at that point in time to score more, and at 17, with all his pocket money spent, his options were somewhat limited.) Desperation. He needed to make it all feel better. But then Mycroft was there all of a sudden (How had he known? Had Sherlock rung his number?), looking at the list Sherlock had written, probably surprised to find it ever so short.

Mycroft had hauled him out of that abandoned house, bundling him into the back seat of a sensible steel-grey Volvo sedan (his brother would only have been about 24 at the time, nowhere near as powerful or successful as he was to become in just a few years), and driving him to that small flat he used to rent in Camden. It was a warm summer night; Sherlock shivered uncontrollably. Mycroft double-parked on the street – the hour was late, all the spaces were filled. He'd then dragged Sherlock, fussing, shaking and heaving, up to the flat, and locked him in the bedroom. He'd disappeared for a while – to park the car elsewhere, or leave his number behind the windshield so the owners of the vehicles he was blocking could call him if they needed to. But he'd soon returned with water, electrolyte tablets, towels, plastic bags, pyjamas and blankets. He'd nursed him, soothed him, held him, dragged the mattress to the floor so Sherlock could rest on it without risking a tumble off the bed frame. He'd stayed with him.

Somewhere in the dead of night, struggling against the miserable sensations of sickness and rattling bones and crawling need and want, but halfway clear-headed enough to think he was being oh-so fucking clever, Sherlock had done it. He'd done the thing he had buried all these years, deep in a grave alongside his early memories of Redbeard and the East Wind.

"I could ease off it a hell of a lot better with smaller successive doses," he'd mumbled as his teeth chattered and his insides crawled, and Mycroft held him tight from behind, wet towels and just-in-case-he-pukes-again plastic bags within easy reach.

"Your last dose before I found you was small enough. You'll get through this," Mycroft had told him. Even then, in the drug-tinted haze, Sherlock had detected the fatigue in his brother's voice.

"You should've just deposited me at a hospital – they'd have weaned me off it."

"Sherlock, you're 17. They would have called Mummy and Daddy, the school, and the police, even as they were treating you. I don't want you to go through that."

"Then just get me a small dose. You do know how to, don't you? You should. You know everything, don't you, Mycroft? For fuck's sake – it hurts, it's miserable, it just hurts."

"Well, it must be astonishingly bad if you're starting to pointlessly repeat yourself," Mycroft had remarked dryly, tightening his grip as another round of agony shook Sherlock to the marrow of his bones.

Bloodless knuckles, holding so tight. Then, by the light of the lamp, blood running under the skin again, as at last, the muscle spasms eased. And Mycroft's grip had eased too. Oh, an idea. Perhaps he could…

"Mycroft," he'd murmured, turning around in his brother's arms, to whisper his name (in retrospect, his breath must have been disgustingly tinged with the odour of vomit, and his nose would have been running – not a pretty picture, undoubtedly). "My-croft."

"Now what?"

"Just give me the money, I'll get it myself."

"Stop talking like the idiot we used to think you were, and that I'm beginning to think you are again," his brother had hissed.

"I could get a good gram for 70 quid. Just 70 quid. I'd ration it, in successively smaller doses–"

"You're not getting a penny of my money for drugs."

"I'd give you something you want in return. And I'm charging only £70 for it, quite a bargain, I'd say, for me."

"There's nothing you could give me that I could possibly want–"

Mycroft's words had cut off abruptly when Sherlock had slipped one leg between his brother's thighs and rubbed his hip against the bulge of flesh behind that fine wool fly. Mycroft's eyes had flown wide in an instant, and as Sherlock reached down in an attempt to literally take the matter in hand, he'd reacted violently, snatching both of Sherlock's wrists up in his iron grip, separating their bodies at once, and holding Sherlock away from him.

"Sherlock, what in hell do you think you're doing?" had been Mycroft's furious, disbelieving cry.

"What I'd wager a gram of heroin on that you've wanted for some time now," Sherlock had smiled arrogantly through the snot and the film of sweat over his skin, a crazed attempt at a smile halfway between frigid and winning. "You're getting some – I can tell you are – quite regularly too, but not from the one you really want it from, aren't I right, brother dear?"

"You've lost your mind!" Mycroft had thundered at him, shaking his entire upper body by the wrists, shoving him further away from him without letting him go – even in his distress, he'd been careful not to give Sherlock the opportunity to run for it. His voice had been awful, so angry and bitter and loud that Sherlock thought his eardrums would burst.

"Have I really? Am I really wrong about what you want, My-croft?" he'd sung disdainfully.

Then the nausea had hit him again, and he'd twisted around, wrists still held tightly until his brother realised he was genuinely in need of the plastic bag they'd stretched over a small wastepaper basket to hold it open for easy access. Mycroft had released his wrists and let him throw up whatever his stomach wanted rid of. His face was halfway down the bag in the basket, and he was practically crying from the gagging and the vomit, as pathetic as he could be. Mycroft was rubbing his back, pressing a cool towel to the nape of his neck, soothing him, holding him, holding him carefully, a little away from him. Damn, that smarted.

After what felt like all his insides coming out of him, he'd slumped into the softness of the mattress on the floor, completely drained, wiped out and, rather humiliatingly, wiped up by Mycroft as if he were a baby.

"Have a sip of water," Mycroft's voice, more gentle than he deserved, had come softly in his ear, and his steady arms had propped Sherlock up a little so he could drink. "Another. Just one more. That's good."

Mycroft had lowered him carefully to the mattress again, and drawn a blanket over him. He must have assessed that Sherlock was in no condition to bolt right then, and had gone about cleaning up a little. He'd tied up the plastic bag before replacing it with a fresh one, gathered up the towels he had used to wipe Sherlock's face and mouth, and rinsed out what he could in the bathroom before stepping out of the flat to discard the bag.

He'd thought, for a few endless minutes, that Mycroft would never come back. That he would call in someone else – their parents, or staff from a detox clinic, just anyone who could be trusted – to see him through this, and preferably remove him from the premises to a safe location where he would never have to set eyes on him again.

The time alone had seemed like hours. Looking back now, it couldn't have been more than three minutes – Mycroft wouldn't have risked leaving him for longer than that until the worst had passed. But he'd felt as if it was hours, and he would never see his brother again. He'd been wrong, of course. Mycroft had returned, sat on the floor with his back against one leg of the bare bed frame, elbows supported by his knees, his face buried in the palms of his hands.

Sherlock watched him in silence, the picture of despair, with a waterfall of jumbled thoughts he could practically hear running through Mycroft's head. Then the spasms had come on again, and Mycroft had raised his head to look at him, his eyes momentarily blank, as if he hadn't known what he ought to do, or if he ought to do anything. Until Sherlock had gasped: "Mycroft, please."

And he'd caved, scooting over to hold Sherlock again, hold him tight, reassure him. Sherlock had buried his face in Mycroft's neck, shaking, spasming, gasping against his skin, then struggling, fighting, trying to break free to do something, anything, to end the unending discomfort. Anything. Bang his head against the floorboards, brain himself against the bed frame – it looked solid enough. Eventually, calm(er), they'd settled back into the easiest position to manage the situation, Sherlock spooned against Mycroft, his brother wrapping his arms around him, pinning his arms down, his hands over the backs of his own, knuckles and fingers and joints white or red, tightening or loosening, as the circumstances demanded. Thank the heavens that Mycroft at 24 had still been significantly physically stronger than Sherlock at 17, or the shades in Hades alone would have known how it might all have played out.

"You can't honestly deny that you want me," Sherlock had whispered at one point.

Perhaps earlier on, it might have been enough to provoke Mycroft into shoving him away again. But right there and then, Sherlock had been at his weakest, his least provocative, and his voice had – there was no getting around it – sounded downright pathetic. More importantly, Mycroft would have been damned hard put to deny that the part of his anatomy that Sherlock was currently pressing his bottom against was stiffening in a way he couldn't hide.

"So why don't you just go for it?" Sherlock had pressed on. "In the state I'm in, you won't even have to pay me for it. And I wouldn't object. Really."

Sherlock would have guessed that if he'd been able to see Mycroft's face then, he would have seen another lightning bolt of pure anguish cross his brother's face. He didn't have to see his face, though. He could sense every chaotic, unhappy thought racing through Mycroft's head, hear every miserable note of his voice dipping lower than a cello, but in spirit more plaintive than a flute, as Mycroft had said gravely: "You'd hate me if I did. Worse, you'd hate yourself if you did. I'd never allow that to happen."

"Allow me to hate myself? Or allow us to happen?"

"Whatever makes most sense to your drug-blasted brain right now. Take your pick."

"So you do want this, deep down?" Sherlock had mumbled, getting sleepy.

"It's a moot point. You don't know what you're doing, or saying, and you will forget all this once you're out of this fog. It's not going to happen."

"But if you do want this, and after all this, if I'm clean, will you, Mycroft?" Sherlock had been almost rambling by then, getting sleepier.

"You're not clean, and you won't be for a while, and everything you do will be compromised for a long time. There's no point in talking about it. Go to sleep."

"But why don't you just… it would be so easy… might even take the place of all these crazy solutions I use with all their crazy percentages…"

"Because I love you too much to let you, or me, do that."

"I used to say that, didn't I?" Sherlock had mumbled, recalling something. "I used to say 'I love you, Mycie' all the time, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did. You forgot, and you will forget again, just like you will forget all this. You'll lock it away and never look at it."

"I love you, Mycie."

"Go to sleep."

"Can't you just give in?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because you mean the world to me, Sherlock. Sleep now, and forget all this."

Sherlock's eyes flew open to the close-up view of the sofa back in Baker Street, the crumbs of scones, fragments of rosin, and light-as-air feathery-edged slivers of paper fallen from whatever sheets of meaningless nonsense he'd felt the need to rip up in a temper in the sitting room.

By heaven and hell and everything blessed and cursed, he had gone to sleep that night when he was 17 and forgotten everything. Endymion, endlessly asleep in the fields, lying there unconscious of the world shifting around him, forever blind and deaf to how desperately he was loved by the immortal beings who had fallen under the spell of his beauty. No, no, he was worse than Endymion, who had been put into that state by the gods. He had done it to himself, overdosing on a lifetime of brain tricks and Sherlockian mind chemicals that had deceived only his own psyche. Nothing was beautiful about him – he was merely mortal and terribly flawed, receiving love undeserved and never knowing or remembering or caring.

So. The earth revolved around the sun; Britain had once had a prime minister named Margaret Thatcher; Victor Trevor was Redbeard; he had a sister named Eurus; Sherlock had shamelessly propositioned Mycroft, trying to bargain for money for drugs in return; and Mycroft had said no, because Sherlock meant the world to him.

Metamorphosis. Transmutation. Chemistry. Or alchemy? An element he hadn't known was in the mix had made its presence known, and the compound was bursting out of the laboratory, evolving into a beast whose DNA he couldn't identify.

Notes: The title of this fic is taken from Andrew Marvell's poem, "The Definition of Love". The opening lines of the poem read: "My Love is of a birth as rare/As 'tis for object strange and high:/It was begotten by despair/Upon Impossibility."

And subscripts don't work here, so I've had to use italics (against bold font for visual contrast) to represent them in the chemical formulas.