Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes. That happy pleasure resides with Arthur Conan Doyle, and the 2010 version belongs to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

A/N:

Trigger warning. I cannot write much about it without giving away the end, but I thought I should put a warning. Read cautiously.

Fraternal Discordance: Or a Study of Mycroft Holmes

Chapter 7: All Lives End…Caring Is Not an Advantage, Sherlock.

…

Nearly three decades past, what should be Mycroft Holmes's final semester, a concrete fifteen weeks to write his graduate university's compulsory dissertation. His chest ached with the emptying of his stomach, fingers working desperately to shroud his peers' rebukes, the begrudging acceptance—if only because his envious grade point average. He promised himself in that very first luncheon that very first day of graduate classes, he would never find himself in this position again, giving absolution in the form of purging.

His throat burned as he wrenched acid bile from his oesophagus and he felt dreadful—all shaky and headachy, and he cannot possibly write a hundred words, let along the hundreds of pages he is expected to deliver the next morning. Fifteen weeks: fifteen weeks promising he would start the paper tomorrow, after his last-ever binge and purge, the last time he crossed the campus green to the undergraduate dining halls and stuffed his face with cheap processed deliciousness, the finale to his troubled youth and poor coping mechanisms of adolescence.

The answering machine in the sitting room, adjacent to the lavatory where he currently knelt in desperation, clicked on and his advisor's nasally tenor reminded him of his responsibility, his assurance to deliver the final paper by eight o'clock in the morning.

He had not even started. Not once had pencil scratched across paper in preliminary research; not once had he clicked away on his computer, a graduation gift from mummy and father, inputting a final analysis on his dissertation. Twelve hours; one hundred plus pages. The math was not on his side. He pulled himself from the toilet and disoriented, stumbled to the phone, fingers tapping out a set code of digits by heart.

"I need your help," Mycroft acquiesced when seventeen year old heroin addled Sherlock answered the phone.

…

Awakening was akin to the blade slicing into unmarred flesh—a piercing awareness as consciousness hummed around his nerve endings. Mycroft bit back a groan as Sherlock's and John's dimly lit living room swam into focus. Shite, his mind supplied. Buggered didn't start to cover the expanse of the anomalous flicker of light glinting in Sherlock's eyes or the deep set knowledgeable frown hardening John's features.

Before he had detached himself from the haphazard sprawled tumble upon the couch where he intuited he must have passed out, Mycroft readied an excuse, albeit insubstantial, a desperate attempt to maneuverer the only foreseeable outcome of this… With dual heated expressions aimed at him, he offered a deplorable primitive excuse, the best he could muster, harkening from years of segregation in his primary schooling, long before he tampered with his eating habits:

"I'm fi—" the words dribbled from his mouth, a repetitive assurance. Graduate school: long nights spent with his head over a toilet whilst he should have laboured away on his dissertation; frigid days declining to make eye contact with his peers, with his haute monde, too burdened organising the next reprieve from life. University, college, secondary school: the years trickled backwards in a monotonous years long blur as he recollected every occurrence, a dialogue terminated, halted, by those two words.

"Fine?" Sherlock interrupted. His face twisted, and Mycroft knew he remembered the past three decades, the public persona hoisted upon lies, of affirming platitudes. I'm fine; I'm always fine. Everything is fine, because Mycroft cannot cope with the possibility of his persona unravelling in those same fine rivulets as his mask splintered to ruins, but everything must be fine.

John's voice sliced through Mycroft's thought process, a welcome distraction until the good doctor's words cycled the conversation full circle, "It isn't an official diagnosis, but I think," he hesitated to press his lips together in a severe line, "you even admitted it."

Mycroft's chest burned in remembrance. Yes, back in December he had looked from his tumbler of homey-amber liquid courage, heart aflutter with hope. As the Christmas celebrations died away, Mycroft's heart sank and any optimism he felt withered away and fell in clumps, forgotten, with decaying evergreen trees on suburban back porches.

"Don't bother, John." Sherlock wrenched his face from Mycroft's view and flung himself into his chair. Shoe-clad feet propped at the edge of the cushion as he lifted his hands skyward as if in prayer. He threaded his fingers together and vehemently glowered at John, whom sat across from him. "He's just dieting." Sherlock emphasized the gregarious understatement of Mycroft's eating disorder.

An ugly sneer curved Sherlock's lips upwards, a parody of distress, an expression intimately familiar to Mycroft. Before Sherlock had an opportunity to bite out a scathing remark (likely concerning Mycroft's weight and/or eating habits), John intervened with a loud sigh. He pressed a palm to his face; a stance that conveyed his weariness in regards to the fraternal discordance. John tilted his head and slanted his eyes in Mycroft's, then Sherlock's direction in incredulousness, a silent: really?

Mycroft stiffened at John's retort, more so at the question that followed. "We already know it's more than a diet," John said evenly, shrugging with both his arms outspread as he glanced at Sherlock meaningfully. That same penetrating look caught Mycroft's gaze, and John asked, "What's wrong?"

Nothing is wrong. Everything is fi—. Even Mycroft's internal monologue shorted out at the pithy reasoning. His breath hitched, and he scowled at his reaction to the gentleness in John's voice, at the concern woven in the brief question. A part of him yearned to reach out, to divulge everything:

A political career built on the shambles of plagiarism; a degree earned through bribery of a heroin addict kid brother: ultimately his position, his most influential covert ruling of the British government, and the CIA on a freelance basis, was guaranteed to crumble on the remnants of its foundation. His dear friend, Benjamin Whitley and his proposition of government control, even as he perceived Mycroft's darkest secret, apparent at the corners of his eyes or the slight bulging of his cheeks.

The gilded nature of a government career—the golden prestige sought after by laymen and the corroded underbelly of inner workings, lose-lose, forced companions one later regretted, the constant, unrelenting hiding—necessitated Mycroft's façade. If he was not fully one hundred percent, then he better damn well make his guise appear genuine.

As if he had admitted to Mycroft's current thoughts, John's next query struck him at his core. "Are you having trouble at work?" The question bubbled out in an awkward jumble and more formal than John usually spoke.

A pleasant, practiced smile. "Of course not."

At this, Sherlock leaned forward. He smiled widely, a malicious smile of a seventeen year old boy granted the largest bribing chip from his older sibling. He did not need to utter a word; Mycroft deduced the scathing remark behind his upturned smirk, and he scowled with a furrowing of his lips.

John started. His eyebrows shot into his hairline and he looked at Mycroft like a small child expecting an answer.

"It's…It wouldn't be work if it was all fun," Mycroft replied after a minute, a doleful circumvention, which Sherlock instantly saw through.

He snorted. "Thought you enjoyed pulling the strings of your politician dolls."

"Really Sherlock," Mycroft stated with ease as they slipped into familiar dialogue. "I occupy a minor position in the government."

"That's not what I asked." John halted the thread of conversation before the two siblings degenerated to petty squabbling. He faced Mycroft with a seriousness that rivalled Sherlock entrenched in a serial murder detective case. "Is that what's causing this?"

Mycroft fought against the intrusive memories warring to the forefront of his thoughts. Locked in his office a few weeks after the New Year, coaxing down luxury hazelnut chocolates, one after another, to silence the world for a few more minutes. Accustomed to overeating and purging as coping mechanisms for so long, he did not know how to deal with extraneous stressors without it. And when it became too much, against his better conscious, his fingers burrowed deeply in his mouth, and everything paused…

The weariness of everyday tasks, from rousing to an alarm set on his blackberry, to swallowing the last dredges of proper black tea (without the offence of milk in the privacy of his home), to carefully deciding which of his voluminous suits he ought to cloak himself within: in particular, his morning routine, exhausted him. Mycroft considered a time he had derived pleasure from politics: high tea with his colleagues in the early afternoon hours and social customs as a farce for conversation, the weighty decisions, some enough to shift the nation's stability as if tipped precariously on needle point. The flurry of excitement in his gut, excitement over the newest undetected machination, even just a few scant months prior; when had it transformed into frayed nerves splintering as he forced weary eyes open with multiple cups of tea and the promise of nipping to the grocer's to restock his binge food?

Mycroft smoothed the creases of his suit as his prepared to extricate himself from, first, the couch, then the apartment. "It's not really any concern of yours," at this, he cocked a glance at John. "I admit my eating has not been exactly—" he paused "—healthy, but…" The words died on his lips as an epiphany of sorts cracked upon his head and dribbled in cold shivers down his upper back. He knew what words to say to absolve himself of his own admittance, his own guilty plea of the diagnosis of bulimia nervosa, yet, as the vocabulary fluttered independently in his thoughts, he could not coerce his lips open, allowing the verbiage to bleed over.

If he finished the reclamation of his bulimia confession, he might well sever the ties to his brother, the final living tie to Mummy. And no Holmes' brother every desired to break their mother's heart. His chest ached as an icy resolution trickled down to his gut, and suddenly, the last few months, the last few decades, everything working towards the present, burned away the last tendrils of hope, and he spat out the damning words, lest he alter his convictions.

"I'll manage. I've long proved I am capable to look after myself." The implication bloomed outwards. Mycroft: the better Holmes, effigy of perfection, stroked with humbleness, the good one. "This isn't like one of your danger nights."

A moment lengthened into eternity. Sherlock's face tightened as John's jaw slackened. A deathly quiet, "Get out" uttered from his brother's lips, and Mycroft silently followed his younger brother's orders.

Mycroft allowed Mrs. Hudson to smother him with concerned platitudes ("Oh, these things happen all the time in a family!") as numbness descended upon his heart. He could scarcely breathe and his eyes burned. He forced back the constriction in his throat. He slid into the back seat of one of his many government cars and offered Anthea the barest of smiles as he directed the driver to his personal home. For today, at least, work was bared no significance in his thoughts.

Mycroft's mobile vibrated softly from his trouser pocket. He pressed a finger to the side of the phone, ending the interfering noise, and ignoring it, as he led himself into his expansive home, filled with the best décor money could afford. The stilted bareness of the impersonal decorations burrowed under his skin, mingling with the detachment icing over his heart as his feet padded near silent across the wooden floors to his bedroom.

…

John exhaled loudly. He slid his mobile shut with a jarring snap as his call bounced back for the third time in the past hour. He had lost count how many times he tried Mycroft's mobile in the past few days. He whirled round on Sherlock, whom sat stiffly in the same crouched position, fingers rigidly steeped under of chin, unmoved (aside for barest necessities) since Mycroft's departure. His eyes smouldered in a caricature of the gloomy shroud encroaching the apartment.

"Sherlock," John announced, a preliminary cautioning of what penalties would confront the detective should John's inquiries continue to remain unanswered. Sherlock deigned to respond minimally, scarcely blinking at John's reverberating voice, much like the preceding attempts in the days since.

"Sherlock." Sharper this time, and Sherlock blinked at the acknowledgment of his name vocalised from his friend.

"Yes, John," his voice drawled, as if lagging behind wherever his thoughts hovered.

"Mycroft," John stated and Sherlock's eyes hardened in resentment. "Will he be alright?"

"He'll be fine," Eyes widening on the word fine, Sherlock mocked. John brought the mobile to his ear again as he rang Mycroft's mobile, again reaching dead air.

…

"A pleasure to meet you," a mid-twenties, thirty-year younger Mycroft extended an eager arm forward on his first day of classes of his post graduate education. He offered one of his peers his undivided attention in the form of a practiced politician's smile. He did not flinch when his peer's eyes flickered to his own, and the young man's smooth politeness fractured into mordancy.

"Eating disorder." Of course, during Mycroft's graduate studies in the mid-1980s, males and eating disorders were not synonymous, and Mycroft only recalled the embarrassment of his classmate's comment, and decades later the rejoinder presented itself as two acerbic words, a reminder.

Their introductions crashed to a halt as Mycroft stammered an excuse, any excuse, to explain away the petechiae rimming his eyes. From the first day, he found himself labelled an effigy of a young man from affluence—complete with the first world stigma attached. And he loathed it, even as the shameful lusting for overindulgence crept into all areas of his life.

Mid-twenties Mycroft Holmes refused to find himself, over the fourth decade mark in the same damnable cycle. He vowed to never become that way, no matter what.