Written for a BBC Sherlock kinkmeme post asking for Sherlock and John being turned irreversibly into children.

Rating: PG-13 for dark themes (currently)

I own, quite sadly, nothing.

Summary: It was almost as if he had died, to look into the eyes of a three year old Sherlock and know that they no longer shared a past, that the memories lived on only in himself. But what if this time could be better? What if this time he could protect him? A Sherlock Holmes who grew up safe and loved? A John Watson who never heard the snap-click of a beer can?

Mycroft had increased the manpower of the watch on his younger brother the moment he laid eyes, however removed, on John Watson. He received reports of a flat mate, of a flurry of activity on Baker street, but the words were only basic observations, unwilling to write hypothesis, unable to comprehend the greater picture. Good help was so hard to find when your own standards appear to be to the rest of the world- super human. Of course he had a back check done on the Doctor, knew everything about the man, everything he had ever done and a fair idea of what he would do before he ever saw the first images from Baker Street, the first images of his baby brother in the presence of this man.

The news of the imminent flat mate came as something of a shock, if shock was an emotion Mycroft had ever truly experienced. Sherlock could, if he compromised his own standard for what he defined as a worth while case, easily make the rent. A handful of pieced together moments sending out the post with simple conclusions to cases could have afforded him more decadent rooms than he had chosen. And Mycroft had, although he knew the matter of pride would never allow it, offered more than once to pay for Sherlock's lodging. Money after all is nothing more than a pedestrian coil, it would be a simple matter to free his brother of such paltry thoughts.

When the first images of the duo came into his possession Mycroft did something he had in the course of his life rarely done. He second guessed himself. The facts were laid out before his eyes, tangible and real but it was so incredibly improbable that despite the evidence he found himself doubting the truth. He needed more proof to confirm.

It was a short video clip, the audio was so poor as to be inconsequential and long enough into the duos relationship that Mycroft knew he had, despite the miniature world crisis he had avoided in the mean time, let his priorities slip. A failure he would not tolerate in himself again.

An orange shock blanket hung loosely on his brothers shoulders, relenting to the need of those around him to protect while simultaneously displaying how unnecessary their insistence was. He was thinking aloud, his mind whirring. Mycroft could see the shock in his brother, the way it had slowed his mind, the way he had allowed the adrenalin to cloud his perceptions to be nearly comparable to the great unwitting masses. And then his eyes shifted and focused, he stopped talking, and for a moment he let the impenetrable mask he had worn all of their lives slip.

It felt like a horrible betrayal to witness it, like a voyeur watching the most intimate moment of a lifetime. Like unwittingly watching the act of your own conception.

Mycroft felt a blush rise on his own checks, feeling the moment as keenly as if it were his own, as if the thought in Sherlock's mind were being whispered directly into his own ear.

He witnessed the moment Sherlock was changed irreparably.

The moment he laid his eyes on John Watson standing across the street and knew not only what he had done, and what he was capable of, but what they would be together.

His face filled with something so incredibly human that Mycroft wondered if there had ever been a moment of such exquisite humanity written on his brother's cold features since the day their father had died.

The orange blanket, his succession to humanity, was pulled and held tight around his shoulders by purposefully shaking hands. He muttered a few lost words to the police inspector but his eyes were trained on the figure just coming into the background of the screen. His mind already there with him.

The two figures spoke for a moment, intense and calm and real. Like both had been just slightly uncomfortable while apart and had found something in each other which made a comfort of existing.

And then Sherlock did something Mycroft had not seen since they were very, very, young and the memories had all but faded from even his great mind.

He smiled.

He smiled as if he were actually happy.