DEAREST

A Sherlock fanfiction by Hrlyqin

It went by in a flash. One moment Mycroft was there, slamming his body into Moriarty's and letting the momentum carry them both and then the next moment there was... nothing. Just a blank space against the purple sky that had a moment ago been occupied by two giants of the world.

It was empty now.

Sherlock did not say anything, he did not cry out. He kept breathing, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, but surely that was only because of the biological imperative. He certainly didn't do it on purpose.

His first conscious movement was to set Jamie down on the ground next to him. He wasn't speaking either but Sherlock did not know and did not ask if he saw anything. Even if he had wished to talk, it didn't seem like he would be able to. His mouth felt like glue.

So here it was, the empty space, which he now cautiously approached. Jamie stayed sitting where he was on the packed dirt next to the guard rail so Sherlock was alone as he came forward. Alone was what he felt, down to the core of his being. Even if Jamie had come with him, even if John had been standing here by his side, he would have still felt nothing but solitude. This was like death, it was something he had to do alone.

A dozen scenarios went through his mind. Mycroft could have hit one of the many ledges, small embankments and sharp jagged juts of rocks that framed the falls. His body could be resting on one of them. He could have broken his neck. He could have smashed his head open. He could have hit the water far below and shattered every bone in his body. Sherlock told himself that by thinking of these things before he looked, in the seconds it took him to get to the edge, he would be prepared for what he found. He tried very hard to believe that.

And now, here he was.

Alone at the edge, he looked down.

Less than two meters below them, there was one of the spills of rocks entrenched in the soil of the cliff that Sherlock had pictured in his mind. But instead of the broken body of his elder brother, Mycroft was there and very much alive, clinging with both of his hands to the largest of the rocks as his feet dangled below him. Sherlock knelt down and Mycroft looked up to see him. Neither of them said a word.

Glancing back to make sure that Jamie was still at the guardrail, Sherlock knelt down on the ground as Mycroft managed to pull himself up to chest-level with the rock he was gripping only to slip back down again.

"Sherlock, I need help." said Mycroft, breaking the silence.

Sherlock was slow to reply. He watched the struggle for 78 seconds more. "He said you let him go."

"What?" Mycroft's voice was rough with physical strain. In contrast, Sherlock's was painfully calm.

"Moriarty said you let him go. He said you made a deal with him. Is that true?"

"Sher- I'm losing – help me up!"

"Is it true?"

Exasperated now by a rescuer who wasn't rescuing, Mycroft tried again to pull him up. He again got his chest up as high as the rock and tucked a knee in, trying to find leverage for the rest of his body. Sherlock shook his head and clicked his tongue as Mycroft failed again, this time letting one of his hands slip off the rock as well.

Now it was only four fingers keeping him from failing. The pale, thin fingers of his right hand. There was a tan line across his ring finger from a trinket he no longer wore. Sherlock knew that if he were to turn that hand over, he would see the faded circular scar of an old burn on the palm, just below his fingers . It had been an experiment, he remember. Sherlock had been eight, or nine perhaps, and wanted to make borax crystals. Sherlock had boiled the water in the kettle and filled the jar with the pipe cleaners and chemical inside, then wrapped a kitchen towel around the sides of the jar to carry it to his room. He tripped over the carpet in the hall and Mycroft had come from nowhere (most likely the study) and grabbed the hot top of the jar before it could fall and shatter. It had left a welt on his hand and he didn't speak to Sherlock for a month, even though Sherlock had visited him nightly and put butter on the burn.

Three fingers now.

"Sherlock, please, help me." Mycroft pleaded.

"Answer the question first. Was he lying to me, or were you?"

"Sherlock!...I – yes, I made a deal! But it was to protect everyone! Callie nearly died. Molly could have died. I don't expect you to understand but you at least have to believe that I didn't have a choice!"

"You always have a choice."

"No! No, I didn't. It was the only way. I promise."

Sherlock cocked his head to the side, deciding. Another finger went and he kicked and thrashed, managing to get his other hand on the rock again, but he would not last long.

"Sherlock..."

Sherlock stood up. took a step backwards.

Just then, Jamie, drawn by the sounds of not just one but two voices, got his feet under him and came up to join Sherlock. "Father!... .. ..hang on! We'll help you up!"

As if coming out of a trance, Sherlock visibly shook himself before kneeling down again and taking Jamie's verbal coachings to reach his arm out further and to lay down more until Mycroft could reach up with one hand and lock onto Sherlock. Both of Sherlock's hands went around Mycroft's arm and pulled until he was up over the rock, then at the edge of the cliff, then back on solid ground with them.

Jamie was like a puppy, jumping all over Mycroft. Where he did not speak at all before, now he wouldn't stay quiet. "Are you okay Papa? Do you need a doctor? Are you hurt? Do your hands hurt? Does your head hurt? Do your legs hurt?"

"Jamie...shhhhh." Mycroft patted him on the back in a gesture that was both soothing and shushing. "My everything hurts. Are you okay?"

The boy nodded. "Yep. I was brave."

Later, both the men knew, they would need to talk to the child about what had happened. Not only what had occurred on this spot, but before. He seemed normal. He was quiet when Sherlock was quiet, trying to follow his example always out of fear of disappointing him and catching the sharp side of his tongue. He was worried about Mycroft and chattering like a parakeet now. It was the same Jamie. But underneath all of that, there may be things. Dark things. Who knows what Moriarty could have said to him when they were alone? So they would talk, later.

Mycroft and Sherlock, on the other hand, would most likely do all they could to avoid speaking for as long as they could stand it. Even now they didn't meet each other's eyes as they got to their feet. They didn't make small talk, or joke, or insult each other as they made their way back up to the top of the falls where they found one frazzled tour guide trying to get the rest of her group of Danes into their little stairway car. When they called Molly to say that everyone was alright and they would be back soon, Jamie used Sherlock's phone and told her that Mycroft had pushed 'the bad man' over the side of a mountain, Molly insisted on talking to Mycroft. When they said their goodbyes, Mycroft handed the now silent phone back to Jamie and let Jamie hand it back to Sherlock. When the local authorities were interviewing them, they were of course split up but then Sherlock seemed to sit back and let Mycroft handle explaining the situation, organizing a search of the water and area for Moriarty, arranging for a BOLO on the brother, all the incidentals. Sherlock did not comment, not even to interject an important fact everyone had missed or to point out someone's spectacular idiocy. He mostly stayed with Jamie and made sure he ate and was warm and didn't want to tell him anything.

It was eerie, and something only two people as unique as the Holmes brothers could accomplish with such expertise.

They were forced to stay in Meringen until the police could confirm most of their story. Mycroft made several calls that no doubt helped that process along. Then they were asked to stay until some kind of conclusion could be reached about the fate of Moriarty. Even sharing a hotel quite, the brothers managed to avoid looking at each other as much as possible. It wasn't until the fifth night that they were forced to interact and only then, because of Jamie.

He had actually been trying to catch them together all night and finally had to take matters into his own hands. From the main room of the suite, he switched off the telly and marched into Sherlock's room, where Sherlock was laying across his bed texting irritating things to Scotland Yard about crimes he had read about online.

"Uncle Sherlock." Jamie tugged at his sleeve. Sherlock stopped texting to look at him. "You have to come out and sit on the sofa."

"I...have to?"

"Please?" Jamie asked.

So Sherlock got up and went out to sit on the couch. Jamie told him to stay and Sherlock made a woofing noise in reply and got his phone out again. Jamie then went across to the other bedroom where he was staying with Mycroft and where currently Mycroft was sitting with his laptop, trying to figure out current patterns for the water around the falls and failing somewhat abysmally.

"Father," Jamie said in an extremely straight-forward way, "I need you to come out to the sofa with me."

Mycroft agreed and allowed himself to be herded. He let Jamie sit him next to Sherlock and then watched as Jamie sat down in front of both of them, using the coffee table as a chair and folding his legs underneath him before speaking.

"I want to know how Dad is doing." he said, surprising them both. "I tried asking you, Uncle Sherlock, and you told me to ask Mum. Mum starts crying whenever I ask. I tried to ask you too Father but you said Uncle Sherlock probably knows and then he just tells me to ask Mum. I know that the man hurt Dad really badly. Now no one is telling me anything. Is he going to be okay?"

Mycroft coughed and looked at Sherlock as a parent's reflex. The look asked what they should say. Sherlock took the lead. "John is going to be alright, but he is very sick right now. Your mother is very upset about this and therefore cannot be relied upon to answer questions in any logical or calm way."

"What's wrong with him? He got shot. But you've gotten shot, and so have you, and both of you were okay right away afterwards."

"John has an infection called Osteomyelitis. Bacteria got inside his bones because of the poor conditions at the hospital where he was first treated, before Mycroft..." Sherlock bit down on his own tongue at saying the name, "brought him home."

"I didn't know that. How are they treating it?" Mycroft asked, speaking directly to Sherlock.

"Not well?" Sherlock said back.

"I'll make a call in the morning. I know a specialist out of San Diego for this type of thing. He's treated a lot of my... .. friends for things like this."

"Oh. Um, thank you."

"Oh it's really no trouble. Maybe if you tried being nicer to people you'd have contacts too."

"Yes. Thank you Mycroft." Sherlock grimaced and Mycroft smiled tightly. For a moment, their old humor was recaptured.

"So Dad's going to be okay?" Jamie asked for clarification.

"Yes. Mycroft is going to swoop in and fix everything, apparently. Jamie, do you want to talk about..the man?"

"Oh. Yeah, I figured you guys would want to talk to me about it."

"When you were taken, where did you go?" Mycroft asked him.

Jamie shifted nervously. "We just went here. We tried to stay in this house but we couldn't so we stayed in a hotel, but it wasn't as nice as this one. Who was he?"

"Who did he say he was?" Sherlock asked.

"He said I could call him Jim. I didn't like him. He was creepy."

"In what way?" Mycroft asked.

"He asked me lots of things. He asked if I had any pets. He asked if I had ever hurt any of my pets. He wanted to know if I wanted to hurt people. I told him about the time I pushed Fiona on the playground. He also asked me quiz stuff, like Uncle Sherlock does, but I don't think I did very well. He said.. .. he said that Dad let me go with him because Dad didn't want me. Since I wasn't his kid really."

"What did you tell him?"

"I think he thought I didn't know that because he got angry when I said that Dad didn't mind it before. Then he just sort of stopped talking to me at all, until we went to see the waterfall. He said we were going to put on a show and that you guys might come to see it, but first we would have to get the TV people to come and tape us."

Sherlock twitched. Mycroft clenched his hand into a fist. "Did he say how he was going to do that?"

"Nooooo..." Jamie answered carefully, "Just that I was going to be really important. But it worked, because then you guys did come, right?"

"Right. Jamie go brush your teeth, it's bedtime."

Jamie complied and went into the bathroom, shutting the door because like John he tended to be private about those things. Sherlock looked at Mycroft and Mycroft looked back before they both started whispering.

"Surely you don't think he planned..."

"I do think so. So do you. Jamie hasn't figured it out, at least."

"His own son?"

"My own brother." Sherlock replied, making a point.

"Sherlock, I know you're angry with me. It's fine. I didn't expect you to understand, that's why I didn't tell you."

"I don't understand. I don't think anyone would understand."

"Does... ...anyone need to?" Mycroft asked carefully.

"You want me to keep your secrets now?"

"You've always known that people like you and I are different from the Mollys and Johns of the world. We make decisions they cannot. We deal with things that would drive them mad, horrors from which they couldn't recover. John tasted it, in the army, and you saw what he was like after that. That is every day for us. We may never be the same. I know that. It cost me dearly. But if you tell them, I will be cut off for good. I'll never see Jamie again."

"So you're asking me for a favor? I want to be clear on this. You lied to me for years. You took something from me that was worth more than almost anything else. You threw it in my face that I let Moriarty go for long enough to get people I love hurt. John was shot. He could have died. My friend John, who is more of a brother to me than you have ever been, has infected bone marrow because of you. Jamie could have been thrown off the top of a waterfall, because of you. Callie is dead now because of you, Mycroft. Don't speak to me like this is not a big deal because as deals go, this is huge."

"I know that!" he yelled, then quickly lowered his voice. "I know. I have to live with that. Isn't that punishment enough? I must wake up every day and know that I failed. Don't..." Mycroft changed his strategy. "If you won't do it for me, do it for Jamie. Do you want him to lose me?"

It was like a spectacularly well played chess move. Sherlock had to admire it's deftness. He was caught. "For Jamie." he agreed.

So they had a truce, of sorts. Like John had worked around his problems with Molly in front of Jamie, Sherlock and Mycroft presented a united front. Two days later, a body was recovered from the shoreline. The face was intact enough that they could be sure it was Moriarty. As much as Sherlock needed to be sure, he was sure. The man was dead. Within twelve hours of positive identification, he was sitting in John's hospital room telling him that fact: the man was dead.

John breathed out slowly. "Dammit." he said. "I was still hoping I would get to do it myself."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Well, speaking of disappointment," John struggled to sit up and Sherlock rose from his chair to assist, getting the pillows into a more comfortable configuration. "They're going to let me out of here next week."

"Why is that disappointing?"

"Molly and I, we're going to go to sea for awhile. It's not too far to travel but far enough away that we can work on some things. Mycroft agreed to keep Jamie while we're gone."

"So when you say work on things..."

"Work things out, figure out how we work, try to make it work, work on us."

Sherlock groaned.

"She's pregnant again." John confessed.

Sherlock groaned deeper.

"I knew you'd react this way."

"No, having a child is the perfect solution when you need to save a marriage. Works every time. I'm living proof."

"That was low." John said, but he was smiling a little. As grim as Sherlock's tone was, he knew that his friend didn't mean what he said. He was simply being himself. "And here we were thinking of naming it after you. Then again, Arrogant Pompous Ass is a bit awkward on a birth certificate."

Sherlock smiled back. "And...Mycroft?"

"Yes, It's actually a lot easier to like him now that I know he didn't sleep with my wife. We're thinking of starting a book club."

"So you're running away to the sea and leaving me alone with Mycroft?"

"Not alone. I talked to Mrs. Hudson, she said the new tenant has taken a shine to you."

That elicited another, more morose groan from Sherlock. "She wants to make me dinner."

"It might not be so bad."

"As I've told you before, girls, women, not my department in the least."

"But maybe, as a friend? You know, a back-up one for when I'm out of town or have to work."

"She does have an interesting collection of South Seas artifacts..."

"Poison darts?"

"Shrunken heads."

"Sounds like a perfect match."

John laughed at his own remark and Sherlock laughed as well until John tried to move his legs and the laugh became a sharp cry of pain, forcing him back against his pillow squeezing his eyes shut.

"Are you alright?" Sherlock sprang up again. "Nurse!"

"No...no, I'm fine. Just moved it the wrong way. Sherlock..." John grabbed his friend's hand and wrapped it up in his own, lacing his fingers tightly around the paler more slender ones. "I'm fine. I promise. I'm fine."

They separated themselves quickly after that, but John's reassurances didn't keep Sherlock from worrying. He snuck food into the hospital for John. He slept in the room, giving the nurses murderous glares if they tried to make him leave. He only went away when Molly came in. Sherlock got in as much time as possible with John before he was discharged. The amount of texts he would send him on his vacation would no doubt be unbearable.

He did promise, and kept the promise, to check in on Jamie every day. Jamie and Mycroft. John asked him to make sure Jamie was 'doing okay', no nightmares or anything, believing he would talk to Sherlock about things he may not to Mycroft. Molly asked him to make sure Jamie was 'doing okay' in the sense that she really wanted him to check on Mycroft.

Sherlock knew that with a single sentence, he could bring this all crashing down around his brother. But it was a sentence he didn't speak. He could see how heavily it weighed on his brother now. He had been so wrong, thinking it was drinking, loneliness, the looming prospect of failure. But it hadn't been any of those things. It had been guilt, and it was eating at him still.

That really was punishment enough.

After his daily visit, Jamie walked Sherlock out to the gate so he could catch a taxi from the main road. The walk would give him long enough to smoke and think about decay patterns in radiation poisoning victims.

"See you tomorrow?" Jamie asked him.

"Five o'clock sharp." he replied.

"And you're bringing Toby?"

"Disgusting-purple-cat-carrier-that-was-a-birthday-gift-from-your-mother and all. He's looking forward to it. Wants to tell you all about his shock and awe campaign against the rodents."

Jamie laughed even though he had no idea what Sherlock meant. Sherlock let himself out of the gate and got out his cigarettes, waving as he walked away and eventually out of sight. Jamie had shut the gate behind him but watched even after he was gone. He hoped when he grew up he could be like his Uncle Sherlock, or his Dad, or his father. Really any of them would do.

He was thinking about this, the choices he would have in life, as well as a boy his age could, when a man walked up to the gate. Jamie didn't know him and automatically took a step back.

"Hello Jamie." the man said.

When Jamie didn't answer, he kept talking. "You don't talk to strangers? Good. That's a good plan." The man pulled something out of his pocket and pressed it against the locked gate, which popped open a minute later. "The only thing is, I'm not really a stranger."

"You're not?" Jamie asked skeptically.

"No, not at all." The man squatted down so he was eye level with the child. "I'm your Uncle and my name is Jamie too. So see, we're not strangers anymore, right? Now tell me...where's your father?"

The End.

Author's Notes and Thanks: There it is. If you've read this far I hope you weren't disappointed. Please leave a review to let me know. Thanks and dedications to Roxanne-Michal for being my sounding board, to Victoria for loaning me her Sherlock series 1 bluray set and insisting I watch it, to Callie for finding me all the best Mycroft stuff on Tumblr and to all those who left reviews and feedback along the way to make the story a better experience for everyone. Thank you! -Hrlyqin