Change

Later that night after seeing Eurus off, John and Sherlock are in a cab, heading home. Sherlock's swiping up and down on his phone, and John looks over and sees a list of hotels on his screen.

"What are you looking at?" John asks.

"Hotels," says Sherlock.

"I can see that, but why?"

Sherlock looks up at him with an eyebrow raised. "Remember the bomb, John? My flat's not exactly habitable at the moment."

"Of course I remember," says John, making a face. "If it weren't for that truck of sawdust parked by the bins, we would've broken our necks."

"Lucky that," says Sherlock, tapping and swiping.

"You don't think she planned it?"

"Of course she did. That and the bomb being weaker than Mycroft said. It should've blown the floor out, not just the chairs and windows. I think she just wanted to pique our interest."

"Oh? Wasn't enough shooting me in the face?"

"With a tranquilizer," says Sherlock. "Ah. This should do."

"Sorry, yeah. Sherlock, are you daft?" says John.

Sherlock looks up from his phone. "What?"

"You're not staying at a bloody hotel."

"I'm not?"

John gives him a look. "There's plenty of space in my flat."

Sherlock processes what John has said then turns off his screen. "Oh. Thank you, John."

"No problem."

"That alternative did not occur to me."

"Of course not, you idiot."

Sherlock smirks. "Well, it was either a hotel or staying with Mycroft."

The men chuckle.

Sherlock's phone rings. He swipes the screen to answer and puts it to his ear. "Lestrade?" As he listens, Sherlock's face falls. "What? Why?" He leans forward and shouts to the cabbie, "Guy's Hospital, please."

John sits up and looks questioningly at him.

"…Alright. Thank you," says Sherlock then drops his phone on the seat and leans back, tugging his collar.

"Sherlock, what—"

"Mycroft's collapsed. They've airlifted him. Said, maybe, heart attack."

"Oh. Jesus."

Sherlock grabs the cab door and jerks his head back, his mouth open wide sucking at the air.

John scoots over and grabs his arm. "Alright. Don't panic."

Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut and attempts to inhale. "I ca…"

John pats his spasming chest. "Breathe. Breathe."

"Feel sick."

John grabs the back of his neck and forces his head between his knees. "Breathe in."

Sherlock sucks in a breath.

"Slowly. Out."

Sherlock exhales.

"Good. Just like that. Again."

When Sherlock's breathing has calmed, John lets him sit up. "Better?" he asks.

Sherlock nods. "Thank you." He leans his head against the window, grimacing. "That was weird."

"It's normal," says John.

"Not for me," says Sherlock.

"You've just spent the last hour being psychologically tortured. I think you're entitled to a two-minute breakdown."

Sherlock glances over at John appreciatively. "It's just that everything… Whatever trouble happens, it's always been some sort of puzzle I can solve. Something I can fix." Sherlock looks down at his hands, repeatedly opening and closing them.

John takes one and gives it a squeeze.

At the hospital they're told Mycroft is in surgery.

"Surgery for a heart attack? Is that normal?" Sherlock asks John, a thousand possibilities running through his head.

"Depends on the cause and severity."

Sherlock takes out his phone.

"No. Don't start looking things up. You'll just freak yourself out."

"Do I look not freaked out already to you, John? Knowing nothing is worse. I need information, or I'll go mad."

They sit in the waiting room for an hour, John trying to nap, Sherlock scouring medical websites. Then John gets up and stretches. "I'm gonna try to get an update." John goes to the desk. "Sorry to keep bugging you, but is there anything more specific you can tell us about Mycroft Holmes?"

"Not a heart attack. Abdominal injuries. Internal bleeding," he tells Sherlock when he gets back.

"That doesn't make sense," Sherlock says, wide-eyed. "Why would he be bleeding internally? Lestrade said he was fine."

"I don't know. That's all they were able to tell me."

"I'm calling him."

"Sherlock, it's late, and I'm sure he knows less than we do or he'd've told you. Let's, try to stay calm. Alright?"

"Can't stay calm if I'm not calm, John."

"Why don't you try to take a nap? I'll keep an ear out."

Sherlock opts to continue his research until his phone runs out of charge, at which point, he borrows John's.

After several hours, and two dead phones, Mycroft comes out of surgery. One of his surgeons comes out to the waiting room to speak to Sherlock and John.

"Family for Mycroft Holmes?"

They get up to meet her, stretching kinks out of various joints. Sherlock notes she's holding a piece of gauze.

"Mr. Holmes?"

"Yes. I'm his brother," Sherlock says. His eyes are dark and drooping with exhaustion. "How is he?"

"He's in recovery. Vitals are stable, but critical. There was some organ damage, mostly intestinal perforations, but his liver—"

"Wait. Explain that. What damage?"

She hands the gauze to Sherlock. "We pulled over a hundred of these out of him."

Sherlock opens the gauze and sees a nail. Two inches long and very thin. Almost no head. Finishing nail. 16…18 gauge.

"Jesus Christ," says John.

Sherlock zones out the rest of the conversation. His vision tunnels around the gauze and the nail and the faint smudges of blood. He falls into his mind and lands in a scene of Mycroft strapped to a table while Eurus, standing over him, impales him with railroad spikes. He looks away and the scene becomes Mycroft standing unbound with a spike at his feet, Eurus holding a gun to his head. Mycroft looks up and catches his eye. Then everything happens in slow motion.

Eurus follows Mycroft's gaze to Sherlock.

Mycroft lunges for the spike.

Eurus aims the gun at Sherlock and squeezes the trigger.

Mycroft presses the spike to his chest and slowly drives it in.

Sherlock screams.

The gun goes off with a deafening bang. A bullet flies from the muzzle toward Sherlock and slips into his forehead like a stone into a pool. He ripples. He sinks. He is in darkness, submerged.

Below him, something tugs.

I that am lost…

Redbeard?

Pulls him under.

find me…find me…find me…

Redbeard!

He claws at the surface. But there is no surface. Only below. Only descent.

When Sherlock comes out of his mind, his body is cold and trembling. There's an arm around his shoulder, grounding him. John's. He leans into his friend's warmth, too exhausted to care about betraying sentiment.

"Are you back?" asks John.

Sherlock nods. "Mycroft."

"He's alright. I don't know how much you heard. The surgery was a bit complicated. There was some organ damage, and he needed a transfusion, but he made it through. He should recover fully."

"That's good," he says wearily.

"Come on," says John, rubbing his arm. "He's still unconscious, but they'll let you see him for a bit." John gets up then helps Sherlock to stand.

"How many?" asks Sherlock, pressing his thumb against the tip of the nail still clutched in his hand.

John looks grimly at him. "A hundred and forty-two."

Sherlock can only look in on Mycroft for a few minutes before he has to leave, but it's long enough to determine that his brother really is alive and likely will remain so until he returns. John says something about resting and coming back later, but Sherlock doubts he'll be getting any rest with the mental image of Mycroft hooked up to all sorts of tubes and cords, his face as pale as his sheet.

In the morning, when they return, Mycroft is awake, a little less pale than he was earlier, but still looking disconcertingly frail. Some of the cords and tubes have been removed. After a quick nod of greeting, John leaves to give him and Sherlock privacy. The brothers stare at each other for a long while, each trying to deduce the other's thoughts. Then Mycroft breaks the silence.

"Well, now you know," he says.

"Yeah," says Sherlock.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock."

"Me too."

Two months later, Mycroft has recovered and the Holmes parents have been informed of Eurus's survival. Sherlock has returned to the repaired 221B, and in a surprising turn of events, John and Rosie have joined him. Now, life has settled down, for the most part, into domestic tranquility, their time split between solving cases and changing nappies.

It's near midnight. Rosie is asleep in her downstairs cot. John is passed out on the couch. Sherlock is sitting up watching them both. Marvelling.

He's supposed to be working on a case, but he can't focus. He has a headache. Dehydration, John had said, but it feels more like something twinging in the back of his mind trying to work itself out. Probably a breakthrough in the case. He'd just been ignoring it all day, but now it's so annoying, he's switched to limiting his mental expenditure to give it freedom to process.

Bored.

He glances at his violin, but resists the urge to play. For Rosie's sake, not John's. Looking at the violin gets him thinking of Eurus. The last time he played for her, she actually turned to watch. Perhaps she wasn't totally beyond their view. He may never be able to bring her home, but he might be able to bring some of home to her.

He still doesn't know how to feel about Eurus. Sometimes he hates her. Other times, he pities her. Even loves her. She is his sister. His family. He wants her to be well. But he knows it is dangerous to hope she could ever be. That's what started all the trouble in the first place.

Apparently, Eurus had been running Sherrinford since childhood. They'd had to replace every single worker just to be safe. And her relationship with Moriarty had run deeper than anyone had suspected. Examination of her psych eval tapes revealed that Sherlock wasn't the only master of disguise. It seemed Jim had so liked Eurus that he'd later sought her out on his own. Then over the next two years, he'd given her half of his network, a half that Sherlock would likely never be able to identify or destroy. Fortunately, it seemed Eurus had no will to put it to use again, but he would always have this shadow of fear.

Sometimes Sherlock wonders if he himself has been compromised by Eurus. He knows she'd gotten to him from the start. Otherwise, he'd never have ignored John's warning. And maybe he would've seen what Mycroft had seen, that it was a game and they should not play. But he had fallen right in.

Mycroft. His mood falls at the thought of his brother.

Mycroft never spoke about his ordeal, but Sherlock surmised the details. A bargain, most likely, with Eurus to keep the Redbeard secret. It was stubborn and stupid, and ultimately futile. He shakes his head. He will never understand Mycroft's priorities.

He'd had to watch Mycroft get verbally flayed by their parents a few days after being discharged. Once upon a time, he might've enjoyed it, but after all they'd been through it had been painful to witness. Mycroft had grinned and born it, but their words had obviously stung him. Especially their mother's cutting "should have done better." Sherlock had tried to cheer him up afterward, but Mycroft had brushed him off. That was the last time they spoke face to face.

Since then, he's been feeling a strange ache for his brother. He's used to Mycroft interfering and nosing in his life. This prolonged silence worries him.

He unlocks his phone and looks through his history. Last text from Mycroft was a month ago. Last call was weeks before that. His thumb hovers over the call button, but as usual, the lack of a legitimate reason keeps him from pressing it.

His head throbs with sudden vigor. He puts down the phone and squeezes his temples between his palms, then finally gives in to his inner John and gets up to get a glass of water.

He doesn't bother with the kitchen light, as the light coming in from the living room serves his purpose.

He opens the cabinet and takes out a glass. As his hand wraps around it, the cool glass turns to cold metal against his palm, ice under his chin. He shakes the feeling away.

Then images come.

Mycroft straightening his tie.

John in the way.

Sherlock counting.

Eurus shouting. …game…ruined…more to play.

You don't know about Redbeard yet!

A scream from Rosie jolts John awake. He rushes to her cot and picks her up. Bouncing and hushing, he carries her to the kitchen to warm a bottle. He flips on the light and sees Sherlock on the floor picking up broken glass with his bare hands.

"Sherlock, stop! Leave it!"

His shout has the desired effect. Sherlock drops the glass shards and stands up.

John hurries back to the living room and apologetically puts the crying Rosie back in her cot, laments being a single parent to two kids, misses Mary, then returns to the kitchen to check on his big kid. Sherlock is where he left him, just standing there staring at the floor. His fingers are bleeding. John drags him by the wrist to the sink and shoves his hand under the faucet.

Sherlock flinches when the water hits his cuts. The sting brings him out of his daze. John is gently rubbing his fingers, checking for glass shards. Sherlock hisses at his prodding, but lets him work without complaint.

John wads some kitchen roll and presses it to the cuts while holding Sherlock's hand at eye-level. "Keep that up here. I'll clean this up." He gets a brush and scoop from under the sink, then sweeps up the broken glass and dumps it into the bin. Hazard cleared, he turns back to Sherlock, arms folded. "Now, what was that about?"

Sherlock imitates a suffocating fish then eventually says, "Mycroft lied to me."

John quirks an eyebrow. "Did he? Nothing new about that." He waits a moment, but Sherlock doesn't say anything else. "What did he lie about?"

"Redbeard," says Sherlock, now starting to pace.

John blinks in confusion. "I thought we knew that already."

"I mean the nails. It wasn't because of Redbeard. It couldn't've been. I just assumed it was, and he let me."

John watches Sherlock pace, his confusion becoming concern as Sherlock grows agitated.

"He had to know she'd tell me anyway," says Sherlock. "That was her whole point. She wanted me to remember. He had to know that. So, why would he stab himself with a hundred nails to try to avoid something he knew was inevitable?"

John shrugs. "You know the lengths he'd gone through to keep that secret. Maybe he just wanted to delay its revelation as long as possible."

"Delay…" Sherlock's eyes catch John's and grow wide as saucers, seeming to peer beyond them for several seconds. "Oh yes." He blinks and tears his gaze away then pats John on the shoulder. "You should check on Rosie."

John suddenly remembers he'd left her crying in her crib. With a mild oath, he runs back to check on her. She's fast asleep again.

A bit later, John is sitting down drinking tea and staring at Rosie in her cot like she'll evaporate if he takes his eyes off her. Then Sherlock comes out of his room dressed for going out, and starts putting on outerwear by the door. "Where are you off to?"

"To see Mycroft."

"At this hour? Is everything alright?"

Sherlock nods distractedly while putting on his scarf, his movements slightly hindered by the bandages on his right index and middle fingers.

"Hold on." John starts to get up. "Do you need me to come? I could ask Mrs. Hudson…"

"Not necessary."

"Are you sure? You seem…"

"It's fine. I'm fine. I just need to…talk to him."

John looks unsure but sits down again. "Alright."

Sherlock gives Rosie a parting glance then heads out.

Sherlock's cab pulls up near Mycroft's house and he walks the rest of the way. Instead of hacking the security system and breaking in like he usually does, he uses the spare key to let himself in, then follows his instinct to Mycroft's current location.

He finds his brother in his living room standing in front of the lit fireplace in a grey dressing gown, slightly hunched and hands tucked under his arms. The room is stifling, but Mycroft's posture and proximity to the fire indicate that he's cold. Sherlock concludes that he is ill, possibly feverish or anemic. That he's up this late could be insomnia, but that he's standing instead of sitting up in bed or in a chair suggests disturbance. Agitation. Avoidance of sleep.

"Nightmare?"

Mycroft darts around and fixes wide eyes on Sherlock before schooling his features. He drops his arms to his sides and straightens his posture. "Sherlock, what are you doing here?"

His voice is rough. Sore throat? A cold? Sherlock steps closer to him. His eyes are bloodshot. His face, flushed and shiny with sweat. "You didn't hear me come in?"

"That doesn't answer my question," says Mycroft.

"You didn't answer mine."

"There are worse things to fear than the bogeyman. Why should a bad dream have any effect on my sleep?"

"What was it about?"

Mycroft glares. "Indigestion."

Sherlock analyzes the timbre of Mycroft's voice. The gauntness of his face. The dressing gown hanging off his body making him look small. Whatever is wrong with him has been going on for a while. "You've lost weight."

Mycroft pats his stomach, smirking. "Yes. My new diet has finally—"

"Vomiting?"

Mycroft rolls his eyes. "I'm not bulimic, if that's what you're—"

Sherlock glances around the room and rattles off a list of incriminating observations. "Antacids. Ginger tea. A hint of mint either in the tea or mouthwash. Maybe both. Scratchy voice. Red eyes. Dark circles. Nervous tremor. Cold sweat. Damp spot on your right sleeve where you covered your mouth until you made it to the toilet. And creases on the bottom of your robes from kneeling."

"Ah." Mycroft smiles with only half his mouth then turns back to the fire. "I see you're making a career change to diagnostic medicine. Careful Sherlock, wouldn't want to make Dr. Watson obsolete. Although, judging by your right hand he still has his uses."

"Don't change the subject."

"That will be difficult, considering I have no idea what we're talking about. I don't believe you came all the way from Baker Street at this time of night to discuss my stomach virus."

"That's not what this is."

"And so what, Sherlock? It has nothing to do with you."

"Hasn't it?"

"As disagreeable as you often strain to be, brother mine, you've never managed to cause me stomach upset. Headaches, however…"

"I know what you did for me, Mycroft."

Mycroft turns around again and gives Sherlock his most earnest 'you're an idiot' look. "I have done many things for you over the decades of our kinship, little brother. I can't be blamed for not keeping track."

"For John," said Sherlock. "I know you helped me save him, but I haven't figured out how."

"Go home, Sherlock. As you've deduced, I'm ill. I don't have the strength to entertain."

"I need to understand."

"No."

"Mycroft."

"I said no."

"Why not?"

"Because there's no point. It's over."

Sherlock grabs Mycroft's arm and feels startling thinness. "If it were over, you wouldn't be having nightmares every night that make you too sick to eat or sleep, and you wouldn't look like a walking skeleton."

Mycroft rips his arm out of Sherlock's grasp. "My weight is none of your—"

"Enough with the bloody secrets, Mycroft!" Sherlock closes the gap between them and stares Mycroft in the eyes. "Are we family or not?"

Mycroft opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it again with a shake of his head. For a long moment, the room is quiet save the sound of the brothers breathing and the wood crackling in the fireplace. Then Mycroft coughs into a handkerchief and wipes his face with a sigh. "Fine. Have it your way."

Sherlock unconsciously braces himself for whatever Mycroft is about to say.

Mycroft turns his eyes back to the fire, then starts to speak in a detached monotone. "I awoke in Eurus's cell and saw the body of the guardsman, stripped naked and face up, chest speckled with silver dots, and in the right hand a hammer. Looking closer, I realized that the silver dots were the heads of nails embedded in the corpse. From that I inferred what Eurus wanted me to do, but not why. As I was contemplating the matter, a video appeared on the screen outside the cell, an overhead view of John Watson lying unconscious in a pool of water. By the shape and darkness, the bottom of a well.

"Over the video of Dr. Watson was a cartoon of a bucket filling with water. After a minute, the bucket tipped over, spilling the cartoon water, then actual water began to flow into the well. Dr. Watson remained unconscious despite the rising water level. The cartoon bucket began to fill again.

"I estimated the flow to be six inches per minute. That gave Dr. Watson about ten minutes of life remaining if I did nothing, assuming he regained consciousness and was able to stand. The nails in the corpse were two inches long. And so, at twenty second intervals, I extracted one from the corpse and drove it into the corresponding area of my own body. The water stopped flowing.

"After some number, Dr. Watson woke and started speaking. To you, I assume. As far as I could tell, the water level in the well remained constant as long as I continued to skewer myself.

"I ran out of nails. Water rushed into the well. At some point John lifted a human skull out of the water. Sometime after, your rescue party came and let me out. The rest is a blur. Perhaps I spoke to Lestrade. Then I woke up in hospital."

As Mycroft's wretched tale ends, Sherlock exhales a pent-up breath, his fists quivering at his sides. He heaves several more and staggers backward, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. He thinks about how long he'd been unconscious in the fake room, how long he'd taken to find John, and how many nails the surgeons had removed from Mycroft's flesh. A hundred and forty-two. Forty-seven minutes. More than half an hour of torturing himself so that John Watson might live. Nearly dying so that Sherlock might not lose another best friend.

His hands fall from his face and he looks up at his brother, eyes brimming with tears. "God, Mycroft."

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "There's no need to be dramatic."

"You saved John's life."

"No. You did that."

"But you bought me the time. If you hadn't—"

"She gave me an option to make it all stop," Mycroft says. "She said if I gouged my eyes out with the back of the hammer, she would end the game." He smiles ruefully at Sherlock and gestures to his face. "As you can see, I didn't."

Sherlock frowns. "You say that like you're guilty of something."

Mycroft laughs. "Don't be obtuse, Sherlock."

Sherlock narrows his eyes in an attempt to x-ray his brother's mind. "You can't actually think so."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Why should you? You didn't kill six people and chain John to the bottom of a well."

"I should've prevented it. It was my responsibility."

Sherlock scoffs. "Really, Mycroft? I know I often joke about all the power you have at your disposal, but you don't actually think you're omnipotent?"

"I made this happen!" shouts Mycroft, his voice cracking from the strain. "I swore to protect you, and because of my hubris, my stupidity, you were nearly killed! Of course it was my responsibility!"

Sherlock gapes at his brother. "You made a mistake. That's all. You couldn't have known this would happen."

Mycroft sneers at a wall, but Sherlock knows the wall isn't what he is seeing. He recognizes this look his brother used to make sometimes when they were children. A seizure of epiphany, he'd call it. Then he'd mock Sherlock and tell him not to hurt himself trying to understand. Now with recent revelations, Sherlock sees the look for what it is. Pain.

He watches Mycroft's face twist with sentiments he would never admit to feeling and feels a pang in his own chest. "You're too hard on yourself, Mycroft. Brother." He reaches out and puts a hand on Mycroft's shoulder.

"I found Redbeard," says Mycroft, barely above a whisper.

"What?" Sherlock feels a flood of emotions clog his deductive functions, as happens now every time he recalls his lost friend.

"I found him," repeats Mycroft. "I found the well."

The hand slips off Mycroft's shoulder. "You…and you didn't…"

"He was already dead. It was about a week after Eurus started saying drowned Redbeard."

Sherlock cringes.

"I was jogging," says Mycroft. His mouth twists wryly. "I didn't want anyone to know, so I went far from the house. The path went up a hill. The ground was wet from recent rains, and I lost my footing, slipped down the side. It was too steep to climb back up, so I walked alongside it toward the lower elevation. The grass was tall all around. But for the smell, I would've passed right by it. I saw the opening and I looked inside. I saw Redbeard at the bottom. Dead. Bloated and…."

Mycroft's face tints green and he closes his eyes. Sherlock thinks he will be sick, but after taking a deep breath, he resumes speaking.

"I went back to the house. I didn't tell anyone, but Eurus realized that I had seen. She said I might be clever if I weren't so slow. That I should play a game with her, and she would make me better. I was afraid to respond, so I said nothing. Then she said that Redbeard had become a balloon and she would make him pop. And she would take you to see. I said I'd play one game as long as she didn't."

Sherlock's neck hairs stand on end.

"You," Mycroft continues, "had become unstable. Either quiet for hours or screaming. You couldn't eat or sleep. That night our parents gave you sleep medication, and you slept soundly for the first time in days. That same night, Eurus set the house on fire." Mycroft looks grimly at Sherlock. "The fire started in your bedroom."

Sherlock feels a vice grip his throat. He rubs his neck and tries coughing, but the pressure won't ease. "So, she tried to…" His larynx spasms around the words. "Then how am I not dead?"

A drop of sweat slides down Mycroft's temple and beads under his chin. He wipes his face and sighs into his hands. "I went to check on you. Your room smelled like spent matches and there were scorch marks on your blanket. I informed our parents, but they…" His eyes darken, and his hands clench into fists. "I didn't wait to be proven right. When our parents went to sleep and Eurus pretended to, I took you from your bed and put you in mine. Later, when the house was in flames and I brought you out unscathed, Eurus looked," his mouth twitched, "very slightly miffed. It was the first and last game of hers I ever won."

Tears stream down Sherlock's face. He tries to speak, but no words come.

"She was taken away that night," says Mycroft. He laughs. "Not for trying to kill you, but for starting the fire. I didn't bother trying to convince anyone; it was good enough for me that she was gone. And when you woke you didn't remember she had ever existed. It seemed you had repressed the memories, but as you know, it was more complicated than that. We did try once or twice to tell you the truth, but it never stuck, so we left it at that. Doubtless, that was where we erred."

"How could it not stick?" asks Sherlock.

Mycroft presses his lips together. "When I reminded you of Father's dog allergy, you struck me."

Sherlock sees a flash of memory. A teary blur of wide eyes and a bloody nose.

"You'd never been violent before," says Mycroft, his voice wavering slightly. "We should've gotten you counseling. I should've insisted. But Mother's main concern was rehabilitating Eurus. Both of them were so preoccupied with that lost cause, they didn't see what was happening to you. They barely had time for either of us until Uncle Rudy staged Eurus's death." He shakes his head. "By then the damage was done. It was as though Eurus had infected your mind even though you couldn't remember her. I was never one for sentiment, but you…" He glances at Sherlock then away again. "You had always been warm. You locked that all away." An indecipherable look crosses his face. "It was easier to let you. I didn't know what else to do. I thought you would be alright if I just monitored the situation, but I couldn't control what happened in your mind. And then I left home and I couldn't watch you anymore. And you started getting high, and I—"

"Mycroft, stop," says Sherlock gently. "You keep saying I like everything was your responsibility. You were 13. It wasn't your job to take care of me."

"But no one else was," Mycroft says with such conviction that Sherlock can't argue. Suddenly, all his annoyingly overbearing and intrusive behaviours start to make sense.

Mycroft pulls his robe tighter around himself, gritting his teeth. "I can't…stop seeing it," he says. His eyes become glossy and fix on a point ahead. "Every night in my dreams. I feel the chill of that day, and my lungs fill with that putrid smell." His hand crawls up the front of his robe and grips near his heart. "I'm on the edge, about to look down. I know what's there, but I do it anyway. I look." His head tilts forward and his eyes trace a path toward his feet. "But instead of Victor Trevor's dead eyes staring up at me, I see yours."

As Mycroft looks downward, his face contorts and his breathing devolves into jerky wheezing. He cries out and stumbles backward, straight toward the hearth. Sherlock lunges forward and grabs him before he falls in, and Mycroft breaks down sobbing.

Sherlock throws his arms around him. "It's not your fault, Mycroft."

"It is. It is," Mycroft cries. "I'm the smart one. I should've solved the bloody riddle. I should've saved Redbeard for you."

"You couldn't have. Neither of us could've. The riddle didn't point to Redbeard. Solving it couldn't've saved him."

"Still…"

"You've done enough, Mycroft."

"No."

"More than enough. You were just a boy. Just a clever boy. Not all-powerful. You weren't then and you aren't now."

"I…" Mycroft groans into Sherlock's shoulder, clinging to him like he might fall through the floor. "I tried. I tried…" He sobs until he starts to gag.

Sherlock crushes Mycroft to him, rubbing his back and murmuring comforts, channeling the young boy with soft cheeks and wild curls who used to laugh and run through fields waving toy swords. He thinks this is what he would do, though he's not sure if it helps.

Mycroft's legs start to give out. Sherlock gets him to a chair, and he curls up with his face in his arms, shaking and hissing rapid breaths.

Then Sherlock runs off to raid his liquor cabinet. He half-fills a mug with whiskey, and takes a gulp. Then he adds a huge dollop of honey and tops it off with hot water and squeeze of lemon.

When he gets back to Mycroft, he's about the same. He puts the mug in his hand and pushes it toward his mouth. Mycroft tries to chug and ends up coughing some, but manages to slowly drink the rest.

Sherlock kneels beside him watching him drink. Bit by bit, Mycroft starts to relax. When he starts to droop, Sherlock takes the mug then pulls him to his feet.

Sherlock gets Mycroft into bed, then checks the drawers of his bedside table for painkillers. Instead of a pill bottle, he finds a stack of photos, smudged and worn. Family photos. Some of their parents. Some of the siblings, all three together. But most of them are candid shots of Sherlock. Hanging upside down in a tree. Wading in a swimming pool, buoyed up by purple arm bands. In every picture there's a huge, contagious-looking smile on his face.

"Oh, Victor." Sherlock's stomach plunges at the sight of his young self dressed as a pirate squeezing the daylights out of his childhood friend. He hides the photo at the back of the stack and sinks to the floor breathing deeply. The next is him again. Younger. Hugging someone else. He chuckles. "I was a hugger. Who'd've thought?" Little Mycroft holding a baby. Him? Another of Mycroft holding him. Older, maybe two or three years. Piggybacking. Asleep together on a sofa, a book slipping out of Mycroft's hands. The Art of War. Sherlock grins. "Totally age appropriate bedtime reading." Holding hands in school uniform.

Sherlock suddenly sees flashes of a boy twice his size smiling down at him. A toy in his hands patched with tape and glue. A chubby hand reaching out and gently ruffling his hair. His own arms wrapped around a squishy waist and his face pressed to a soft belly shaking with laughter. "Oh…Oh." His chest swells with the flood of memories. The other side of what he'd lost. The good he'd buried to hide from the nightmare.

He takes pictures of some of the photos, then puts them back in the drawer and digs around some more, just to snoop. He finds a small black folder buried under some junk and takes it out. Inside is a stack of papers clipped together. "My handwriting," he mutters. "Point five grams of…" His jaw drops. He shuffles through the pages. They're filled with grams, milliliters, and percentages. The lists. His lists. Numbered and dated. The last page is eight torn pieces held together by strips of tape. The date: the day after Magnussen. Asterisk in the upper right corner. He flips through the stack again, counting. Seventeen pages. Four asterisks. ODs. Sherlock notes the quantities increasing from page to page. Chasing the high.

"No. Running away. I was always running."

He closes his eyes and leans his head against the edge of the bed, recalling several occasions of waking up in a hospital, Mycroft by his side looking like he hadn't slept in ages. He was never grateful. Always pushed him away. But Mycroft never left him alone.

I will always be there for you.

The words hit him with a force they never have before, and he is overcome by indescribable sorrow. He bows his head over his knees and weeps.

In the morning when Mycroft wakes, he's in his room in bed. Not screaming. Not fighting off nightmares. Just waking, naturally and calmly for the first time in ages, to the daylight slipping past his curtains and the warmth between his sheets. He doesn't remember coming back to his room. Sherlock must've brought him.

He groans into his pillows. He hadn't meant to say half the things he'd said last night, and he definitely hadn't meant to dissolve into a snivelling mess on Sherlock's shoulder. How loathsome. Having no control. Sentiment gushing out of him like a geyser. So painfully defective. He might be human after all, unfortunately.

Part of him regrets it, but another part is glad it happened. He hadn't been held like that since he was a child, and rarely even then. Sherlock's arms around him had taken him back to a time when he didn't need so much control. It felt good to be comforted.

It suddenly occurs to him that Sherlock will probably taunt him about it for the rest of his life. He sighs. Oh well, there's no helping it now. He'll just have to take it in stride with the fat jokes. He's just glad it was Sherlock and not Mrs. Hudson or something.

A text alert chimes somewhere in his bed. He feels blindly for his phone under the covers and brings it to his face.

Maybe I'm not the only one who changed. -SH

The sender doesn't surprise him, but the content takes him aback. It's not the taunt he was expecting. Of all the things Sherlock could've said after last night, this was nowhere in his calculations. He wonders what state he must be in if this is what he has to say first thing in the morning. It's obvious he hasn't fully recovered from all the recent revelations, and now Mycroft's added even more for him to process. I suck as a brother.

He ponders the message for a moment, then texts back.

Perhaps not. But whatever we've become can't be helped now. We are what we are. -MH

No matter how we wish it otherwise, he thinks. He drops the phone on the mattress and rubs his face with his hands, trying to get a grip. There's no sense wishing for things that can't happen.

His phone chimes again.

What if I don't want that? -SH

He sits up and leans against his pillows to think. He doesn't know what to say. They can't undo what has happened to them. They can't return to days of innocence.

He's about to text just that, then out of the corner of his eye, he sees a stack of papers on his bedside table and freezes. He mentally reconstructs the events that must have led to those papers being on rather than in and surmises that Sherlock has also seen his stash of photos and gathered from their worn state that he handles them often. Bugger. With a defeated sigh, he picks up the papers and starts to examine them. The sight of Sherlock's drug-warped handwriting disturbs him as always. The ink on the top sheet is blurred, several spots recently wet and dried. He flips through the other pages, looking for what, he's not sure, but he knows Sherlock had a reason for leaving them in plain sight. By page 16, he thinks he's mistaken, but then on 17 he sees it: a darkly scribbled hash where the page number should be, and beside it carefully printed, the words "The Last" plus the date and Sherlock's signature.

It takes him a while to comprehend, simply because he's terrified of taking it at face value. He reads it over and over, searching for a reason to conclude that it is a lie. There's just no way this is real.

He runs his fingers over the ink. It doesn't smudge. It doesn't warp. It doesn't disappear.

He finally lets the significance dawn on him, and a weight he's born for ages suddenly lifts. He tilts his head back and blinks moisture out of his eyes. Plain as day, he recalls the vow he made to that tiny pink bundle fresh from the hospital so many years ago. Maybe he can't protect him from everything, but at least there will be one less bogeyman to vanquish.

With a slow exhale, he lets the burden fade away, then picks up his phone and texts back.

Then it seems another change is in order. -MH