Imponebatur in Filius

[Imposed on the Son]

A/N: Thank you to johnsarmylady for beta reading this chapter!

As upsetting as Father's suicidal thoughts are, Mycroft feels duty-bound to keep reading. If Father really wanted his diaries to remain a secret, he'd have either burned them himself or left instructions for Reginald to burn them. Instead, he left the diaries whole and in a place where they'd be found and given to his elder son, who he knew would read them. (What is he trying to tell me?)

1 July 1997

Sherlock is in America. I've no idea why he went there, only that he left two days ago without saying goodbye. I couldn't have him back at the Manor, not after he dropped out. People would talk if he returned. Since he is not here, I can at least keep up the fiction of him being in university…

I suppose it is for the best that he's now on the other side of the ocean. My influence, such as it was, surely has not done the boy any good. He is undoubtedly better off away from me.

25 December 1998

Another Christmas without Sherlock. Mycroft and I do not speak of him. I can only assume that he's heard nothing from his brother. I miss Sherlock, more than I thought I would given how little we spoke when he was here. I have no one to be angry with, no one to be a reminder of Amelia or of all the ways in which I have failed. I hope he is happy; I am sure that he is, without me.

29 October 1999

Mycroft rang today to let me know that Sherlock is returning home. I am equal parts relieved, worried, and proud. Relieved that the boy is safe. Worried that he is within reach of my toxic influence once again. Proud because of the newspaper article Mycroft e-mailed me when he found where Sherlock has been for the last two years. My younger son helped solve three murders.

24 January 2000

Visited the doctor today and received bad news. Metastatic lung cancer. He says I've six months to a year with chemotherapy, three without. I told him no chemotherapy. There is no point to inflicting my trifling presence upon this Earth any longer than necessary. Amelia would understand, I'm sure.

I have things to explain to Sherlock; hopefully he will be released from rehab in time for me to do so. I dare not go to him now, as my visit would only be detrimental. I am, after all, one of the reasons he began using drugs.

Of my sons, I worry for Mycroft most; ever since he was small, everyone has said that he takes after me. I fear he does not understand how poor a role model I am. Mycroft has my deliberation of thought and my tendency towards inaction, and these are the qualities that made me an old man whose life has accounted for nil.

The last paragraph nearly causes the diplomat to choke on his brandy. He isn't surprised that Sigur worried more about him than Sherlock, but he always thought that was because Sigur preferred him to Sherlock. He goes to bed uneasy, still numb from his father's words.

When he awakens the next morning, Mycroft is furious. Sigur obviously suffered from a severe case of depression. He refused to seek treatment because he worried that people would talk and that he'd be thought of as less of a man. In refusing to get help, he essentially left his younger son an orphan and forced the elder to become a parent when he was still a child himself. Mycroft curses Sigur for his foolish pride. Then he curses himself for not having seen the signs; perhaps if he had visited more often, he could have done something. Perhaps some of their family's suffering could have been alleviated. Instead, Sigur was a failure as a parent and likely not much better as a husband.

(Of course, there's only one person who can rate him as a husband, and she is unavailable for comment.) He wonders about Mummy's role in this. She was the one who encouraged Sigur to keep a diary. Had she lived, would she have pushed him to seek treatment? Would she have given him an ultimatum? Would they have divorced? Mycroft will never know.

The one thing – and there may only be one thing – that Sigur did well was his work. He retired from the British Government three months ago, and Mycroft has recently been promoted into Sigur's former department. It seems that every day someone says, "You're Sigur Holmes' son? Well, then, we expect great things from you, Mycroft. Your father's service to Britain was unsurpassed in his generation."

(My career can be at least as successful as his. He taught me everything he knew, and at the end of his career I began to surpass him. I can excel. I can make him proud. I can show him that he needn't have worried about me.) It dawns on Mycroft that his teenage experience standing in for Father at parent-teacher conferences was invaluable in developing his diplomatic skills. Father was only trying to avoid Sherlock – an impulse Mycroft understands better than anyone – but in avoiding his younger son, he unwittingly gave the elder the tools to outshine him.

Mycroft turns his attention to the velvet box on Father's… no, his, nightstand. The wedding ring and the diaries are all Father left behind. The diaries shall go in the library, but what to do with the ring? Mycroft ponders Father's final message and feels the way Ebenezer Scrooge must have felt after seeing the Ghost of Christmas Future. He flips open the box and sighs. (Why on Earth did Father want me to have this? He knew I have no prospects for marriage. Perhaps he thought I'd give it to Sherlock, but while the savage bull may bear the yoke, Sherlock never will. Sherlock… God. Will he stop using drugs? Will he get off the streets? Will I ever see him again?)

The diplomat stares morosely. He pictures himself a married man. When he was younger, he saw the idealized version of marriage: a doting wife and adorable well-behaved children. Now he knows better: he'll be distant, he'll drive his wife away, and she'll leave with the children, who will be prats. They'll grow up resenting him. (No. I cannot allow myself to repeat Father's mistakes. I shall never marry.)

Sigur's chief mistake, Mycroft realizes, was not that he cared too little. It was that he cared too much. Caring hadn't saved Mummy or resurrected Sherrinford. Caring about what other people thought had prevented Sigur from seeking the treatment he needed and made his life and the lives of his sons infinitely worse. And caring about Sherlock Holmes… one need look no farther than Mycroft's life to understand why that is a bad idea.

People will always gossip about the reasons Mycroft is a bachelor. Let them. He was called a poofter often enough during school and it didn't bother him aside from the fact that it wasn't completely true. (Mummy never did understand why I hated it when Sherlock played "God Save the Queen.") Carrying on the family name means little to him; "Holmes" is common enough, and perhaps Sherlock will have a child – legitimate or not – some day. Remembering his Oxford days, Mycroft wonders if he has a few bastards of his own out there. (Their existence would make writing my will much more entertaining, but hopefully their mothers keep them away from me until they reach the age of majority.)

The diplomat gazes at the ring once more. Mycroft isn't like his brother, who deletes anything he doesn't find useful. The elder Holmes believes that everything is useful, especially misery, and he's certainly miserable now.

He picks up the ring. Father wore this every day for thirty-three years; even after Mummy died, he continued to wear it. If one possession defined Father, this would be it. If one thing serves as a reminder of everything Father was, and everything Mycroft hopes not to be, this is it. He tentatively slides it onto the ring finger of his right hand. The ring fits perfectly, as if it's always been there.

For the first time in weeks, the corners of Mycroft's mouth turn up. (The sins of the father will not be laid upon the son.)

A/N: I wrote this story because I made Father cartoonishly awful in my earlier stories and felt he deserved a chance to speak. He was a failure as a parent, to be sure, but he failed because he was a sick man, not because he was a cruel man.

Yes, Mark Gatiss has stated that Mycroft's ring isn't a wedding ring. I interpreted that to mean Mycroft himself has never married; that doesn't preclude the ring from being someone else's wedding ring repurposed. Gatiss has also stated that Mycroft & Sherlock's father had an affair and Sherlock was the one to expose it. I didn't know about that when I first began writing stories in this universe, and so it's not included. Consider it an AU. :)

Mycroft's thought at the end and the titles of the last two chapters are a twist on a line from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: "The sins of the father will be laid upon the children."