Title: The Most Frightening Man In The Room

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: Mycroft was a man accustomed to being in control. John had a habit of challenging that. A Reichenbach scene/character study.

Notes: I had notes for three other ideas written down and yet this is what came to life. I woke up thinking about the scene in "Reichenbach" where John waits for Mycroft at his Diogenes Club office and confronts him about telling Moriarty Sherlock's life story. There are some powerful character dynamics going on there, particularly with Mycroft. I don't think we ever see him as uncertain, guilt-ridden, and subdued as we do in that scene. He is very much a man in control of every situation, yet in that moment, John is completely in charge: furious yet restrained, interrupting and interrogating Mycroft as he puts it all together. And Mycroft allows it. Apparently, I needed to explore that scene further, despite our lack of knowledge regarding Mycroft's level of involvement in Sherlock's plan. This was the result. Dialogue quoted from the episodes does not belong to me. As always, I truly hope I did the characters justice. A new medication combination has left me with less than no energy lately, so please excuse my lack of review and PM replies and know that I cherish each one. Just writing this short piece was a victory. Thank you for reading.

Mycroft Holmes was a man accustomed to being in control. Impeccable clothing, cultured diction, superior intellect, and an intelligence gathering network that gave him the mantle of omniscience, made him the most powerful man in the room. When that foundation was augmented by cool, detached calm, highly calculated gestures, and the deeply ingrained, haughty gaze of a scientist manipulating a lesser species, it also made him the most frightening.

Mycroft was very, very good at what he did. And for what he did - who he was - there were many names. Sherlock, with rolled eyes and childish sarcasm, called him "the British Government." He wasn't wrong. Nor was Sherlock exaggerating when he told John that the "archenemy" John had met on his way back from Brixton was "the most dangerous man you've ever met." Even James Moriarty, by Mycroft's own admission "the most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever seen," had a name for the eldest Holmes brother: "the Iceman."

Unlike the consulting criminal's nickname for Sherlock, it wasn't a taunt. Moriarty may have been as clever as he was insane, as much of a personal threat with his Sherlock obsession as he was a threat worldwide, but he knew the real reason why the British government's most highly trained killers called Mycroft "sir."

And yet, in the end, it was Moriarty who brought Mycroft to the unsettling unfamiliarity of lost control. Because it was with him that Mycroft made a deal: information for information. The reason for that exchange, the greater plan, no longer mattered.

All that mattered was that it brought John Watson's righteous anger to his doorstep.

Mycroft may have been the Iceman, but John was the eye of the storm. There were minute signs of the surrounding maelstrom – the heaving chest that was quickly reined in, the brief stutter as he put together Mycroft's calculated placement of The Sun at their previous meeting, the purposeful questioning and repeated interruptions – but it was dampened by a deceptive, expertly regulated calm. Far from Mycroft's detached, omniscient iciness, John was all tightly controlled emotion; a man whose deepest battles manifested in psychosomatic limps, clenched fists, and precise military body language. He was a protector scorned, a healer kept from information needed to safeguard the well-being of his most critical patient, a best friend on the offense, and every emotion associated with those identities crackled in the air of Mycroft's silent safe haven. There were no violent gestures, no public displays, no threats. He never raised his voice; he didn't have to.

John Watson was in control.

In Mycroft's office at Mycroft's club, discussing Mycroft's interrogation of a world-threatening criminal and how it affected Mycroft's own brother, it was John who was in complete, unchallenged control.

Mycroft, the man who gave some of the highest orders in the country, who always asked the questions, planned every word of every sentence, and exuded cool, threatening power, sat quietly in his office under the hard gaze of John Watson. He allowed John to interrupt him multiple times, responded to John's persistent line of questioning without trying to redirect the flow of conversation, stumbled over a reply and left not one, but two thoughts unfinished, and never once considered forcibly reestablishing control of the situation.

John had challenged Mycroft's threatening omniscience, on some level, since their very first meeting. But while Sherlock never hesitated to get into someone's personal space to provoke or answer a response, John was a man who, when truly angry, clenched his fists, reverted to the familiarity of military tension, and increased his distance from the source. Not to retreat, but to control.

But not today. Today, to make his final point, John leaned forward. And with that action Mycroft was subjected - in all its soft-spoken restraint - to John's cold fury regarding betrayal; the betrayal of the man to whom John Watson was deeply, irrevocably loyal.

John's voice was as level and controlled as his movement, simmering rage even more powerful in its restraint as he moved closer to Mycroft's space, all hard eyes and tight, humorless smile: "Moriarty wanted Sherlock destroyed, right? And you have given him the perfect ammunition."

With that accusatory fact, Mycroft fully transitioned from an already uncomfortable lack of control to emotions he rarely ever felt: guilt and a need to make amends. He uttered three seldom used syllables with an even rarer honesty - "I'm sorry" – and despite John's response - a disbelieving, dismissive mockery of laughter – still requested that the subdued apology be passed on to Sherlock.

John turned his back with an incredulous shake of his head and left, the open door framing the military set of his shoulders, the purposeful stride as he channeled his anger into distance and the focus needed to protect his best friend, not only from an obsessive criminal mastermind, but now from his own brother as well.

Silence resumed its control over the Diogenes Club. Rather than soothing and familiar, however, Mycroft now found it chastising; a taunt at his own loss of control. The open door exposed his equally open emotions to the full view of passing government officials that held him in the highest of esteem, yet he didn't rise to close it. He sat instead, unmoving, staring at the space John Watson had occupied, his mind a seemingly impossible mix of blank shock and deeply emotional thought.

It was time to regain control. John had gone and Mycroft had work to do. But somehow, the control that had come naturally all his life was now escaping him. Mycroft Holmes, the man who knew terrorists on a first name basis, who sat with world powers as the fates of billions were decided, was alone in a room and neither the most powerful nor the most frightening man there. He sat in heavy, funereal silence, absently twisting his umbrella like a security blanket: a weary, weighed-down adult drowning in unfamiliar waters; a chastised child left to consider what he'd done.

It took thirty minutes before he was ready to walk out of his office; before he was once again Mycroft Holmes, "the British Government," "the Iceman." But he was no longer "the most dangerous man you've ever met." Because John Watson had sat quietly in his office and without genius-level strategic plays, without a single threat or a single shout, ripped away Mycroft's definitive control, leaving him fumbling to piece it back together in the aftermath of the calmest part of the storm.

And Mycroft did, of course. When he finally strode through the Diogenes on his way out to the waiting car, it was with an intellectually superior and omniscient air that commanded respect; a man in the utmost control. The most powerful man in the room.

But not the most frightening.

Tonight, that title belonged to a man who had long since left the building.

Because John Watson had brought raw guilt to Mycroft's face and an honest apology to his lips; had broken Mycroft's unwavering control where genocidal psychopaths and consulting criminals had failed. And that was more than frightening.

It was, until today, considered absolutely impossible.