This the first part of the "The Adventures of Captain Basil" series that I will (hopefully) write soon (or at some point, i promise)

When The Wind Blows You Too Far (And My Feet Are Made Of Lead)

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"He's not coming back, John."

"Six months. He said you estimated six months. He said you're never wrong."

"And I never am. I said his engagement with MI6 would last six months, I never said he was to come home then."

John can't help thinking it's an odd word choice for Mycroft. 'Home' implies sentimental attachment to a place, Mycroft is repulsed by sentiment, therefore the fact that he's so freely speaking of it means he is under extraordinary circumstances that are modifying his outlook on life and God, I'm becoming one of them, aren't I?

Being so long away from Sherlock does this to him, makes John start thinking like him, noticing stupid little things he probably (most likely) isn't even deducing the right way, but God help him, he just has to deduce stuff or he'll go crazy. He wonders if this is how Sherlock feels on a daily basis.

"Then where is he going? Hm? If he is not with MI6 anymore and he's not coming home, where is Sherlock going?"

"I can't tell you that."

John stops, takes a breath, counts to ten because he doesn't want to shout at him, not with the way he looks right now. Mycroft's usual sneer is gone for the moment, something almost like sadness written across the wrinkles in his face. He has aged a lot in only six months, his face gaunt with skin hanging in weird places from the weight he's lost. Eight pounds, John's brain tells him in Sherlock's voice. His mind Sherlock (because that's the closest John will ever be to having a mind palace) refrains from making jokes about dietary habits.

"Ok, then. I don't need to know where he is, just tell me when he's coming back."

"John, please." And his face falls into his hands, a gesture that six month's ago would denote exasperation, but now speaks of unbearable tiredness. John tries to squash his pity for the man, but it gets harder by the minute. "He can't come home. You know this."

Had it been said with any trace of condescension John might have asked why. Just to be petulant. Just to make Mycroft's day a little miserable.

Mycroft doesn't look like he needs help with that today.

"Will I ever see him again?"

"No."

"Will you?"

"No."

And it's probably really cruel, but John finds a bit of solace in this.

"Is there really nothing you can tell me about him? Anything, anything at all, just... I don't like not knowing."

Mycroft chuckles half-heartedly and raises his head to look at John. "You're beginning to sound like him."

"Sidetracking me from this topic is impossible, Mycroft. You're smarter than this."

"See? Perhaps I won't even miss him seeing as you've decided to assume his identity."

Mycroft doesn't flinch from this confession, doesn't seem to realize what he's just said. This is strike number two for John that there's something capitally wrong.

"Mycroft, please."

Mycroft sighs and squares his shoulders, as if preparing for battle.

"I have successfully smuggled him to America. Got him a new name, new identity. It cost a not inconsiderable amount of money in bribes, but you know how it is. No expenses spared when it comes to family."

Home. Missing. Family.

One doesn't need to be a genius to know what's wrong with Mycroft Holmes today.

"He's dead, isn't he?"

It's not even a question. John's not stupid, he's heard all this bullshit before, right here at Speedy's, on a rainy afternoon like this one. Mycroft looks at him, long and hard, his eyes calculating. This is all the confirmation John needs.

"What makes you say that?"

"Because this, this information you're giving me, it's recycled. God, you could at least have come up with something new! This is exactly what you asked me to tell Sherlock when Irene Adler died, to tell him she was in America. I'm not stupid, Mycroft. America is code for Dead."

Mycroft smirks, now bit more like his usual self. "Well, they are pretty much the same thing."

"No, you don't get to joke about this, you don't. Tell me, is he dead or not?"

"Does it matter what I tell you? If I tell you he isn't, you will insist he is and that I'm lying to you. If I tell you he is, you'll say 'He's done this before' and insist I tell you how he did it this time."

John represses a nervous giggle. He can't really argue with that.

"So that's what you're leaving me with? He's in America? What will you say next, that he's there with Irene Adler? That they are married with a baby and a dog in a white fenced house living the American dream?" He's shouting now, the other patrons at Speedy's are staring at them, but he is totally allowed to do this now that Mycroft is back to being an insufferable git.

"What if they were?"

"Then he'd have to be dead. For real, this time."

"What if he isn't?"

"Stop this. Just stop this. Irene Adler is dead, you saying that he's with her means that he's dead too."

"Do you really think me the kind of man who believes in Heaven, John?"

As of the last five minutes, almost. "I don't. No, you're too heartless for that."

Mycroft's face remains as stoic as it ever was, but the little glint of amusement in his eye dies. "Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by that question Sherlock always asked himself. Why can't people just think?" He says coldly. "If you know me to be a man of logic, and you hear me say Sherlock is with Irene Adler right now, then the obvious deduction for you to make is..."

"That Sherlock is dead."

Mycroft rolls his eyes at the interruption. "That Irene Adler is alive."

"But you said she was dead! You said you were thorough and you're never wrong."

"I said it would take Sherlock Holmes to fool me. He did."

John sits there, in front of him, in complete silence, for what feels like a lifetime, trying to decide whether he wants to laugh at Mycroft or punch him.

"So, just to be clear, what you're saying is... That Sherlock faked Irene Adler's death?"

"He orchestrated it, yes, rather masterfully if I must admit." The pride in his voice is not half as reluctant as he would have wished, and John still thinks there is something very, very wrong here. "I would never have found out had he not told me himself. Goes completely against the goal, but that's Sherlock for you. Never could resist showing off."

"Served him as practice for faking his own later, I guess."

Mycroft promptly laughs at that. "How else did you think he got the idea? He'd never admit it, but he learned a lot from The Woman. And yet, look at the way this business with Magnussen ended. You'd think he'd know better than to let sentiment be his downfall."

Irene. Magnussen. Downfall.

"Mycroft, I will only ask one more time and I want- no, I need you to tell me the truth, ok? I don't care what he's asked you to tell me, I don't care what his stupid plan to make his absence easier on me is, I don't want any of that, I want the truth." John stops here, to make sure Mycroft is paying attention (he always is), to make sure Mycroft understands the gravity of this. Mycroft stares at him calmly, almost bored but there's the unrelenting sadness there, and John knows the answer to his question, regardless of whatever Mycroft says out lout.

"Is he dead?" And John wants to punch a wall and scream and tear his insides out, because he can see in Mycroft's eyes the truth.

"He is in America."

John nods, clenches his fist to avoid slamming it on the table. "And he's with Irene Adler?"

"Yes."

"Is she expecting? Will they have a little boy and name him Hamish? Did they get a dog? What silly pirate name is it called this time? Tell me, Mycroft, how fucking stupid do you think I am?" He doesn't bother shouting. Mycroft stopped listening to him a lifetime ago.

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Mycroft pulls out of his breast pocket a little slip of paper. "You may contact him through this e-mail address, though please refrain from using his name, we wouldn't want anyone possibly spying on you to know he's alive. Last I spoke with him, he said my dear sister-in-law, Aida -that's what Miss Adler goes by these days- was entering her second trimester but they didn't yet know the sex. Perhaps by now they do. As for the dog, well, this one has black fur, therefore my brother has eloquently named him Blackbeard instead."

John stares, incredulous, at the paper in front of him. I don't underst-, he starts to think but then visualizes the words written in bold black letters across a T-shirt, and he feels the contents of his stomach rise up his throat.

"I swear by my daughter's life, Mycroft, if this is all a joke..."

"Do you really believe me to be a man of jokes, John?"

"I don't know. I don't know what to think of you -or your brother, for that matter- anymore. I just don't. You both have bloody tricked me so many, many times..."

"All the proof you need is here," he pushes the paper closer to John, urging him to take it. "Anything you wish to know, he will tell you. I'm begging you, John, write to him, he's been pestering me about this for months."

"Wait, if his engagement with MI6 just ended, how come Ir- Aida, is already pregnant, hm?"

Mycroft sighs as if the answer is obvious. "His assignment had him work undercover in the same city she was living in. They... rekindled their flame, you could say. When he was discharged, he specifically asked to be reunited with her."

"And they're fucking going to have a baby. Yeah, right."

"It is quite the unlikely outcome, is it not? I would scarcely believe it myself had I not heard it from Sherlock himself."

"Hm, yeah, and what does he do for a living now? Did he get a nine to five job in an office?"

Mycroft's whole face scrunches up in distaste, "Sherlock in an office?" He says Sherlock and office the way a priest would say the devil and church. John stifles another giggle. This is not the time for jokes. "No, he is... living out one of his childhood dreams, in a way."

"What, so he's a pirate now?"

"Not as much of a pirate as he would've wanted to, but then again piracy is very much illegal."

"Look, Mycroft, I'm tired of half-truths. Just tell me what he's doing."

"He got himself a research job in some small town in the west coast, he studies all kinds of marine life-forms there -and I do mean all kinds, you know how easily he gets bored with one fixed object of study. So he is not a pirate, no, but he does have his own boat. Luckily for him, he still has the imagination of a seven year old." He finishes with a small, wistful smile, and his eyes remain somewhat unfocused for a couple of minutes, overall looking like he's lost in some fond childhood memory of him and Sherlock fighting with wooden swords, and John's chest feels crowded with nostalgia even though he doesn't have the memory himself.

"So what does Sher-" John stops before he chokes on the name, emotions suddenly volatile, "What is the name of his ship?" And John has to look out the window because he can't believe he is having this conversation.

Mycroft smiles, so genuinely fond for the briefest of moments, but John misses it entirely. "He is the Captain of The Northumberland."

John snaps his eyes closed. For all that Sherlock ever sneered at sentiment, he is (was? God, John doesn't know what to think anymore) bloody good at sentimentalities. Bloody good at making John want to cry, too.

"Please tell me he doesn't go by John, too." He intends it as a joke but it comes out all shaky, punctuated by a loud sniff at the end. God, he feels wrecked already and he hasn't even begun to cry properly.

"Basil," Mycroft murmurs, far off into his childhood again. John doesn't know the sentiment behind that one, and he wants desperately to ask, he wants all of Sherlock's life he can get, every tiny detail to weave into his own identity, but the particular brand of sadness in Mycroft's face makes him back off, makes him want to respect whatever it is that's still purely Mycroft and Sherlock's, untainted by John's omnipresence in Sherlock's life.

Sometimes -really, really few times- John thinks maybe Mycroft might be jealous of him, for being so much ridiculously closer to Sherlock. Maybe it burns him, to try so hard only to be pushed away in favor of someone so ordinary. It seems ridiculous considering this is Mycroft 'Iceman' Holmes, but Magnu- that bastard did say Mycroft's pressure point was his little brother.

(He thinks briefly of Harry, eternally his senior by five years, and every single day of their childhood she spent mothering him. He thinks of how much he can't stand the thought of owing her anything in his life (but he owes her, he owes her so much, because if she didn't make him want to strangle her- if he could stand to live with her he would've never had to get a flatmate and he'd never have met Sherlock and that is just unthinkable.))

But John cannot, at this point, after all he's been put through by that sodding (brilliant) man, bring himself to feel anything other than pure, unadulterated satisfaction in knowing he is the single most important person in the world to Sherlock. It's really, truly, stupidly satisfying. He's not going to let that be ruined by misplaced guilt and pity.

John is not a jealous person himself. He may be protective, but he considers himself selfless enough. It's been making him greedy, though, this newfound reassurance of Sherlock's devotion, it's like he can't wrap his head around the idea that Sherlock might want to share himself with others, can't conceive not being in Sherlock's every thought. What's worse, it hurts like hell, to think Sherlock ever stops thinking about him.

Irene's voice taunts him, Are you jealous?

It burns him too, that he doesn't know why the name Basil was special enough that Sherlock wanted to be called that. It burns him that Sherlock would ask to be reunited with her. It burns him to find out just now, after over four years, that Sherlock loved her enough to preserve her life. It burns him that he loves her enough to spend the rest of his (exiled) life with her.

It burns him that Mycroft's been talking to him but the bloody idiot won't contact John for himself.

And it all comes back to the simple fact that John himself cannot, for one moment of the day, forget about Sherlock.

It burns because John would move his family to America if it meant he could be near Sherlock. It burns because if Sherlock hadn't edged him to forgive Mary, John would have followed him to Eastern Europe and beyond. It burns because Sherlock still is, and will always be, the most important person in the world to him, even now that he has a daughter he adores, even now that he has a wife, it's still Sherlock, always, always Sherlock.

And John expects nothing less than the same in return.

As if sensing his thoughts (and the sodding bastard must be reading him so easily), Mycroft smiles and returns to the present. "Basil Baker," he announces, the way one would introduce a very important person, and John feels his eyes water again, this time from shame.

Captain Baker of The Northumberland.

The man will probably name his child 'Hamish' even if it's a girl. Just like John's little Violet's middle name is 'Sherlock'.

"Does he-" John cuts himself off. There are a thousand question, none of which Mycroft knows the answer to, none which answers he will believe from Mycroft. Does he miss me? Does he think of us? What was that he meant to say always? Are you really dead this time?

"Ask him yourself," are Mycroft's final words. He stands to leave, making it clear he will not hold this conversation any longer and that he doesn't give a damn what John chooses to think.

"Will he really reply?" His voice comes out so small, and he half hopes Mycroft didn't hear him after all.

"He will," Mycroft answers with such resolution as if the task depended on him. With no hand shake nor any other form of goodbye, he walks out of the café, and this little act of rudeness speaks volumes to John. Something is terribly, catastrophically wrong.

As for the e-mail address, John stares at it, willing it to tell him the truth without having to actually send a message to it. Why hasn't Sherlock e-mailed him first, if -according to Mycroft- he's been so impatient to talk to him? You'd think after all they've been through, Sherlock would be over this stupid habit of only reaching out once he's been reached out to.

Mary walks in about an hour after Mycroft has left, pushing the stroller where little Violet is sound asleep. She needs only one look to know what is wrong.

"Oh, John."

She snatches the paper from the table and stashes it inside Violet's diaper bag without looking at it twice. Then she pulls him up and starts to drag him outside.

"Wait, the bill..."

She points to a roll of cash in the table, right beside where Mycroft's empty cup still sits.

"Ok, then."

That night, she takes his laptop and opens a new message on his e-mail server. She corners him into the bedroom and forces him to dictate. She enters Sherlock's e-mail and hits send before John can even check what she wrote.

John doesn't know if he'll get a reply. Doesn't know if he wants to get a reply. Doesn't want to hope for a reply.

He tells Mary all this. She gives him her trademark 'Stop Being An Idiot' look, and tells him he does want a reply and is already very much hoping for it. Then she tells him to shut up and go to sleep. (God, he loves her.)

That night he dreams of Irene Adler, leaning on the rail of a fishing boat, heavily pregnant, and his apprehension that she'll loose her balance and topple over is as real as the salty air and the floorboards beneath his feet.