It was entirely too late to still be working and he eventually threw down the pen and slumped back in his chair, rubbing fruitlessly at eyelids that stuck together. Blinking until his now-blurred vision came clear, Mycroft wondered for the umpteenth time about his recent visit to the optician.

"You really do need some support for your eyes, Mr Holmes." After all the usual tests, the woman had sat back on her little wheelie-stool, hands folded in her lap. "It must be patently clear even to yourself that the quality of your sight is not what it once was," she threw him a rueful look. "Middle-age gets the best of us all," she added earnestly. "And there are any number of frames that would suit you," she smiled at that, as if it were simply vanity that held him back from wearing glasses.

The optician had handed him a couple of pamphlets about contact lenses and laser-surgery and recommended he take the few necessary steps to improve his sight. Mycroft handed these sensible pieces of advisory text to his driver, remarking that his regular drivers needed to maintain good vision. The glance sent his way in the rear view mirror was more amused than grateful. Mycroft stared out the nearest side window and thought dark thoughts all the way back to the subterranean depths of his Whitehall office.

It wasn't vanity in the least, he mused, resting his head and letting his eyes wander, unfocused, around the low ceiling of his private office. There was nothing but velvet shadows beyond the glow of his desk lamp, but looking into good old-fashioned darkness felt better than squinting at the bright, artificially lit screen of his laptop. No, it wasn't vanity; he pursed his mouth in thought. Though it might well be pride, he acknowledged. Or a more realistic fear of displaying weakness, or even the leading edge of senescence blowing in from the sea of advancing years.

It was all a question of age, you see. The halcyon days of yesteryear when he was fresh from Oxford, when he had energy and more to spare, when everything was pristine and all rather wondrous, were long past. He had grown into the power of the job gradually, but Mycroft realised they had been heady days, where his mind was unendingly brilliant and his thoughts leaped like wildfire from front to firefront without cessation. There was nothing beyond his reach back then, nothing that proved itself impossible or even excessively difficult.

But now, of course, the story was very much different. Things were far more complicated than they'd been thirty years ago. Not only because of the vast changes wrought by technology, but the minds of people had themselves changed. There never had been much honour among either thieves or spies, but at least there'd be the notion of such a thing. These days, problems were always much more extensive and everything was quite bloody and internecine. The idea of having to deal with a simple spot of treason was almost quaint in its antiquity.

Rubbing his eyes out of habit, he swivelled his chair until he found himself once again looking up at the copy of Annigoni's Elizabeth II portrait. Even after all these years, after the uncounted number of times he'd studied the painting, it still had the power to move him. The bright young monarch, just a year out from her coronation, her eyes staring off towards the unseen future, wrapped as she was in the heavy mantle of State and Church. Mycroft had always admired this particular portrait over the more modern ones. Certainly, Annigoni had captured the remoteness of monarchy and power, but the Italian had also managed to catch the faint expression of restrained humour in Elizabeth's eyes, humour that, even today, had neither altered nor diminished. Back then, the robe of State had seemed almost too big for her to wear, the sheer heaviness of the double-lined regal cape; the looseness of the collar and the length of the thing, hiding most of her beneath its dark velvet trappings. Nor was there much of Elizabeth herself to see beneath all the pomp and circumstance that was her new role since her father's untimely death. Yet, despite all the glittering royal honours adorning her slight figure in the portrait, Her Majesty had chosen to wear only the simplest of personal jewellery; a set of pearl earrings the only mark of the private personality he'd come to know over the years. He'd always had a thing for a woman with pearl earrings.

Mycroft smiled as he gazed afresh on the young Elizabeth. She wore the Order of the Garter, a traditional honour stretching all the way back to her direct twelfth-century ancestor, Edward III. The white wool tabard and heavy midnight-blue velvet robe had always seemed too large for her slender frame. He'd asked her once, over tea, why she'd worn something so bulky as to hide her almost entirely from sight. Apparently, it had all been to do with the artist's idea of monarchy overriding the actual monarch. She'd laughed then, as if the whole thing had been a huge joke.

"Of course, the only way we could actually find a robe of suitable size and length was for me to borrow Philip's." Elizabeth had given him a mischievous grin at that and sworn him to secrecy.

Yes, of course the portrait was a thing of fantasy but that, in part, was what made it such a marvellous painting. The cold, clear sky over the marching fields of a Yorkshire dale. The overly-slender trunks and limbs of pale Eucalypts from the Antipodes. The suggestion of a river wending its way off into the hazy distance of a British summer. Constable himself might have envied such a clear sense of an eternal England.

And the star of the order, resting against Elizabeth's ... well, it was supposed to be her breast, but given that she was wearing her husband's robes, and he a good eight-inches taller, it was hardly surprising the glittering medallion was tucked almost beneath her arm. Honi soit qui mal y pense. The gold lettering advising that shame be on he who thought evil of it ... to whatever value of 'it' was under discussion. A wise notion, even if it was becoming harder to follow such precepts these days.

Mycroft sighed and closed his eyes again; pressing at the soft curve of his eyelids and swivelling the chair back to its official position. Glancing down to his laptop he exhaled in irritation as the glowing screen shimmied regardless of his attempts to focus. With a moue of irritation, he pulled open the wide drawer at the top of the desk, hunting around for ... ah.

Unfolding and setting the narrow-framed spectacles in their proper place, Mycroft blinked once or twice and wrinkled his nose at the odd sensation of weight, slight though it was. Peering through the glasses into the corners of his office, he took a few seconds to familiarise himself with the sudden and unexpected clarity of things. The faint layer of dust across the top of his desk lamp; the unseen spot of ink on his finger. He turned and looked again at Elizabeth, her cool expression almost at odds with the real woman he'd come to know so well over the years. He could even make out the tiny gold lettering of the star emblazoned across the front of her dark robe.

Honi soit qui mal y pense. He smiled faintly. If it was good enough for Her, it would do for him. Returning to the computer screen, Mycroft Holmes began to see things in a much clearer light.