Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Notes: Title inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear The Mask." Some liberties have been taken with the duties of those who work at the Yard. Feedback is, of course, always welcome. I've been behind in cross-posting from my other accounts, so my apologies for that.

Warnings: Character death, mention of past child abuse.

Originally written and posted: October 2011.

John wasn't sure exactly what it was that woke him that morning. He was asleep one moment and staring at his ceiling the next, though it was some time yet before his alarm was set to go off and he hadn't had a nightmare. His ears strained, listening for something that sounded out of place, but nothing came. Still, there was a knot in his stomach for reasons yet unknown, and the silence in the flat had a strained quality to it, as though something had happened that its occupants were now reeling from in quiet shock.

He propped himself up on his elbows, listening still, and then - that was the problem. It was quiet. Five in the morning was decent by Sherlock's standards, and John had taught himself long ago to fall asleep to the detective's violin and his sometimes chaotic experiments. Silence was strange; silence was Very Not Good.

The stairs were cold on his bare feet but he descended anyway, tugging a jumper on over his pajamas. The living room was dark; the violin, abandoned on a table by the sofa. This was unusual - Sherlock was never so careless with his beloved instrument.

He turned just as the figure in question came barreling out of the kitchen, staring at his phone, and almost crashed into him.

"Oh - John - good, you're already awake," Sherlock said briskly, blinking at him for a moment before turning around and going back into the kitchen.

"What's going on?" John asked, now more than a little worried at his flatmate's absentmindedness.

"My brother has been murdered. We're needed at the Yard."

"He what?"

"Murdered, John." Sherlock texted with one hand and typed on his laptop with the other; Lord only knew what he was doing at a time like this. "Go get dressed - I want to be there by six. Earlier if we can manage it."

The ride to the Yard was the same as any other. They talked little and Sherlock remained glued to his phone, seemingly unaffected by the whole situation. They might as well be going in for one of Lestrade's cases, for all the same the detective looked.

"Please stop staring at me, John," Sherlock said without looking up from the screen. "It's unnerving."

"Sorry," John said quickly. "I just -"

"Oh, just get it out," Sherlock said irritably. "You're very sorry, and you want to know if there's anything you can do for me."

"Well - is there?"

"Don't treat this as though it's something different," Sherlock said, glancing at him for the barest of moments before returning to his phone.

"But - it is different, Sherlock."

"Perhaps, but I see no reason to treat it as such. People die, John."

"But – it was your brother."

"Yes, thank you, I'm quite aware of that fact," Sherlock snapped. "However, we have bigger problems to deal with."

He pocketed his phone at last and stared out the window, tapping a finger restlessly on his knee.

"Oh?"

"Yes," Sherlock said darkly. "I believe they've assigned Lestrade to the case."

"That's - a bad thing?" John had gotten the impression, over the years, that underneath it all Sherlock actually rather liked the DI.

"Yes. As you're so fond of saying, it's a bit Not Good."

xxxx

Sherlock breezed through the building once they reached the Yard, bypassing Lestrade's office entirely - which John saw was empty, anyway - and taking them directly to that of the Superintendent's. The door was closed, and he could hear quiet murmurings coming from the other side.

"Sherlock, you can't -" he said, but Sherlock had already grasped the door handle and pushed his way inside. John hesitated a moment and then, as always, followed him.

Lestrade was on his feet, talking to a severe-looking woman seated behind the desk. She looked up and Lestrade whirled around at the detective's abrupt entrance. John smiled apologetically at the pair as he slipped inside after Sherlock, and made a helpless gesture with his hands. The Superintendent went quickly from surprised to annoyed and Lestrade - well, Lestrade just looked tired.

"Sherlock," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Trying to keep you from doing something moronic, but it seems I'm a bit too late," Sherlock snapped at him before rounding on the Superintendent. "What's he doing on this case?"

She looked startled. "I don't know what -"

"Oh, this is idiotic, even by your standards," Sherlock interrupted furiously.

"Now, Mr. Holmes, I know you've just suffered a terrible loss -"

"Sherlock," the detective snapped. "It's 'Sherlock.' It's been 'Sherlock' for seven bloody years. How often must I remind you? Is your tiny brain really that incapable of retaining information?"

"Sherlock -" John tried, putting a hand on his shoulder, but he was shoved away.

"'Mr. Holmes,'" Sherlock hissed, leaning over her desk, "was my father. 'Mr. Holmes' was the man who gave me this." He gestured to the scar beneath his lip. "Don't ever call me that again. Now, answer me this: is there a particular reason why you have Lestrade on the case?"

"We thought it best that he handle it," the Superintendent said smoothly. Sherlock looked enraged.

"You thought -"

"Sherlock," Lestrade interrupted quickly, as adept as John at recognizing when Sherlock was careening for a breakdown. He seized the detective by the elbow and hissed, "Let's take a walk. Come on."

And incredibly - astonishingly - Sherlock shut up immediately. He and Lestrade exchanged a glance that was unreadable to John but must have meant something to the detective, for his jaw loosened and he nodded - once, brisk.

"Excuse us," Lestrade said, and Sherlock followed him out of the room. John glanced from Sherlock's retreating back to the Superintendent and then hurried out of the room after his friends. He found them in deep conversation out in the hall, Lestrade with his arms crossed and Sherlock gesturing madly.

"How could you let this happen?" Sherlock was demanding.

"It wasn't my choice, Sherlock," Lestrade said, and in the harsh light of the corridor John thought he looked even more shattered than when in the Superintendent's office. Exhaustion wasn't unusual for the DI, admittedly, but John thought that the bags under his eyes were more pronounced today; his eyes themselves, a bit bloodshot. "She wants me to handle the case."

"And you know that you can't."

"Sherlock," John broke in. "You know Lestrade. He's a very capable man, despite what you like to say at crime scenes. I'm sure he'll catch whoever did this."

"That may well be, John," Sherlock said, his eyes fixed still on Lestrade's face. "But that's not where my concern lies."

"Sherlock," Lestrade said, warning in his tone. John glanced between the two of them.

"What?" he asked.

"Don't do this," Lestrade said quietly to Sherlock, and there was a quiet plea in his voice. "Please. I can handle this; I need to handle this."

"John," Sherlock said, ignoring Lestrade's look of alarm and finally looking at his flatmate, "the Detective Inspector has been seeing my brother for some time now. They were to be married, in fact. Now, do you think a man with that level of investment in a victim should be the one investigating his murder?"

"I - er - what?" John said stupidly. He glanced from Sherlock to Lestrade, who now simply looked...stricken. And terribly defeated. He pulled himself together quickly - questions later - and said, "No, no, I don't think that's a wise idea at all."

Sherlock jerked his head imperceptibly at the DI, and John added, in a softer voice, "I think you should hand this one over, Greg. They have no idea?"

Lestrade shook his head slowly. "Only three people ever knew. Well - two now."

"Three again. Soon to be four," Sherlock pointed out. "Now, shall I inform her, or will you?"

"You," John told him, deciding for the DI. "We're going to go back to Greg's office and get his things. Meet us there when you're done, and we'll take him home."

"Really, I'm fine," Lestrade protested finally, holding up his hands. "I don't need anything."

"Lestrade -"

"No, Sherlock, seriously. Just - leave it alone, all right? I'm fine."

Lestrade turned and walked away, shoulders slumped and hands in his pockets, his usual energy absent. John made to follow, but was restrained by a hand on his arm. He looked at his flatmate, who shook his head.

"Leave him."

xxxx

It was cold up on the roof. This wasn't particularly notable, as it was the middle of November, but Lestrade mused for a moment that this was the first thing he had felt all day. He'd been numb since the Superintendent had casually broke the news over the phone - Sherlock Holmes' brother was murdered last night, and we'd like you to take the case - and had been flying on autopilot ever since. He hadn't come back to himself until the Superintendent called him into her office, and he finally became aware of his surroundings - of his reality - as he was quietly going over the nature of the victim's - Mycroft's - injuries with her.

Gunshot wound at close range; would have resulted in instantaneous death...

"How did you hear?"

The voice startled him, more because it was low and gravelly rather than warm and golden. He wondered briefly where John had gone, and then felt a guilty flood of relief. He liked the good doctor, truly he did, but right now - right now he didn't want platitudes.

"Superintendent," Lestrade said. "Called me this morning and said she had a case a bit out of my purview, but it was connected to you and she preferred that I take it over. I have always had a knack for controlling you - her words, not mine." He took a draw on the cigarette held between his fingers - his first in over two years. He'd been doing so well, too. "Thought at first that you'd died; scared the shit out of me."

"And now you prefer that it had been me." It was said without malice or bitterness, and Lestrade felt a stab of pain in his gut. Sherlock didn't always say the things he did because he was looking for someone to contradict him - sometimes, he truly believed that this was how the world worked.

"No," Lestrade said harshly. "No, never. I'm grateful it wasn't you. I'm as grateful that it wasn't you as I am...sick that it was Mycroft. I can be both, you know."

His hands shook ever so slightly, and he curled his fingers tighter around the cigarette, sucking in a deep breath through his nose in order to calm himself.

"You all right?" he asked finally.

"I'm fine," Sherlock said shortly. "You went to the crime scene."

Lestrade nodded. "Got back just before you arrived. His body -" his voice fizzled out on him, and he had to start again, this time much softer, " - his body's at Bart's, now, if you want..."

He trailed off, waving a hand. Sherlock would know what he meant. He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to the detective. Sherlock appeared to consider it for a moment before he took one and lit it with the lighter lifted from Lestrade's jacket. Lestrade threw the stub of his on the ground, pressed it into the gravel with his heel, and started another. Mycroft would disapprove -

- Mycroft would have disapproved.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, but that served to only amplify the images that clawed to the surface of his memory; the images that, until now, he'd been able to push down and ignore. The man in the car had been nearly unrecognizable, his face covered in blood and half the side of his head missing. That had been the only thing keeping Lestrade together at the crime scene - it didn't look like Mycroft. He was able to know it was Mycroft while at the same time able to treat the body as just another unknown victim.

"It was wrong of them to give you the case," Sherlock said as the silence stretched on. Lestrade snorted.

"They couldn't have known, Sherlock. Under normal circumstances, it was absolutely the right move."

"It was still wrong," Sherlock said stubbornly, and Lestrade felt a bit of surprise surface amidst the slow burning of his grief.

"Sherlock Holmes, angry on my behalf," he mused aloud. "Today's full of firsts, I see."

Tonight will be the first time in four years he won't hear the sound of Mycroft's voice; the first time he'll go to bed without the promise of talking to the man the next day; the first time that thinking about him will bring pain rather than the usual joy.

"We weren't close," Sherlock said suddenly. "But there was always a sense of - obligation. Mutuality. He kept an eye on me, much as I loathed it, and I took his cases. He never needed looking after, at any rate."

"Past tense already, are we?" Lestrade said acidly, and the words startled him. He hadn't meant - God, he didn't know what he'd intended to say. Christ. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that."

"You did," Sherlock told him, and Lestrade couldn't think of a response, so he turned away and took another pull on the cigarette.

Sherlock wouldn't go to see the body, he knew. He was one of the few people - all right, probably the only person - that Lestrade almost believed when he said he was "fine" after the death of a loved one. Sherlock treated death clinically, the way he looked at the rest of his life and at the world. It was as natural an occurrence as breathing, even if the methods employed in bringing about death weren't always natural - or kind. But it was the way the world worked - people were born, and people died. And one usually had very little say in the latter event.

Plus, as he'd said, Sherlock had never been terribly close to his brother. It wasn't out of animosity or a hidden secret - the entire family was that way. It worked for them.

"Mycroft always said I was Mother's favorite," Sherlock said, breaking into Lestrade's thoughts and continuing on with his seemingly senseless musings. "And I was, for a while. Then she met you."

"Please stop, Sherlock; I can't take this right now," Lestrade whispered. He wondered if Sherlock did it because he felt this is what he was supposed to do in the presence of those grieving - and much as he appreciated that Sherlock was trying, he really couldn't handle it.

"I'm to take you back to Baker Street."

"I don't think I can take that right now, either," Lestrade admitted. Sherlock smirked.

"He'll coddle the both of us, you know."

Lestrade shook his head, trying desperately to return the small smile. It failed. "Yeah, I know, and that's what I mean. I can't -"

"Would you rather sit in your flat, waiting for the phone call that will never come?"

And, oh, those words hurt. He felt them as surely as if they had been a physical blow to his gut, and the pain must have showed in his face, for Sherlock's own instantly tightened.

"I only meant -"

"I know what you meant," Lestrade said over him. He felt dizzy for a moment, and gripped the nearby railing with both hands, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as the cold air whipped around him. Christ, but Sherlock was right. Mycroft calls him - called him - every night at seven, no matter where he was in the world or what he was doing. And Lestrade would answer, of course he would. It didn't matter if a crime scene served as a backdrop to their brief conversations, or the Yard, or Lestrade's small kitchen. It didn't matter where he was, so long as he was talking to Mycroft. The calls were never very long, but they sustained them during Mycroft's business travels and Lestrade's long working hours.

"You need me," Sherlock insisted, and Lestrade looked at him because suddenly, he wasn't talking to the Sherlock he knew. He was talking to the Sherlock of eight years prior, the arrogant and terrified young man who'd been nearly killed by his father; the Sherlock who had begged - begged - Lestrade to just let him go, to forget about him; the Sherlock he had taken to his own flat and sat with for days (or had it been weeks?) while the drugs left his system and his injuries slowly began to heal.

The Sherlock with the strange relative who showed up some months later to thank Lestrade for saving the young man's life. The relative who had dropped into his life as unexpectedly as Sherlock, and the one he had come to love just as fiercely.

God help me.

He needed Sherlock, of course he did, but more importantly, the detective needed him. They were the only two in the world who had an inkling of what the other had lost.

"Yes, I do," he said in a soft voice. He reached out to rub a hand along Sherlock's shoulders and then tugged him close for a loose, one-armed hug. "Yeah, of course I'll come back with you. I'm so - I'm so sorry, Sherlock, about this. About all of this. I was so looking forw - I was just getting used to the idea of becoming family. Is that mad?"

"Why can't you be?" Sherlock asked instead, fixing him with an earnest stare that locked him into place. "I would have died if not for you, eight years ago. I fail to see how paperwork legitimizes what you have been to me ever since - and what you were to Mycroft."

An inhuman sound escaped Lestrade's throat before he could stop it, half a whimper and half a cry of anguish. He swallowed it back quickly and turned away, pressing the back of one hand firmly to his lips while he struggled madly to bring himself under control. He held his breath - one, two - and fought the slow burn building behind his eyes; the tingling around his nose that had nothing to do with the cold.

"Lestrade -"

But he held up a hand and, for once, Sherlock listened. The detective fell silent as Lestrade drew in several, bitterly cold breaths through his nose. And then he looked up, squaring his shoulders, because in his own way, Sherlock had asked for him - because Sherlock needed him.

He could be strong, this one night. He could hold back the waves of grief threatening to tug him under; he could hold off the rage. All that would - could - come later, when he was back at his place and could let loose behind closed doors. Mycroft certainly wasn't going anywhere; he had the rest of his life to grieve for the man. Sherlock's request sharpened his mind and dulled his senses; gave him some semblance of purpose. And, Lord, did he need purpose now.

And maybe that had been Sherlock's goal all along. He had always claimed that Lestrade needed to save people - maybe this was his way of focusing the DI; of bringing him some sort of control over the rapid spiral that was now his life.

"Did he ever tell you," Lestrade said suddenly as his voice returned to him, "how proud he was?"

A muscle twitched in Sherlock's cheek, tugging the corner of his mouth down, and he took another draw on the cigarette.

No, Sherlock was very much not all right.

"Hell, did I ever tell you that? 'Cause I am," Lestrade continued quietly. "Wish you could've seen his face, though, when he talked about you."

Sherlock went pale - translucent, almost, even with the biting wind that was causing a line of red to bloom along his cheeks - and looked away, flicking the remains of his cigarette onto the ground. Lestrade was ready with another for him and they smoked in silence while leaning over the railing, watching the traffic pass by on the street below. At some point Lestrade put his free hand on Sherlock's shoulder; the detective gave no indication that the gesture was unwelcome.

It helped, focusing on Sherlock.

It would only make it worse, later on.

But what did he care? Mycroft wasn't coming back. What did any of it matter anymore?

There was a pair of socks at the end of his bed, he thought suddenly. Black, sharp, not his. There were suits in his closet and - oh, God - a toothbrush in his bathroom and coffee from Jamaica in his cupboards that he'd have never been able to afford on his own. That he never would have thought to buy, even, but it had been Mycroft's favorite.

Ah, there it was. Past tense. Had been.

He'd only spoken to the man twelve hours ago.

And now they would never speak again.

How long would it be before he forgot the sound of his voice? How long would he be able to hold onto that small part of him? How long would he be able to hold onto any of it - his scent, his smile, his laugh -?

Oh, God.

"We should be going. Things to do," Lestrade said suddenly, forcing away the thoughts as best he could by focusing on something else; something mundane. He would need to stop off at his flat for a few things before heading to Baker Street. After that, there were arrangements to make; people to inform; forms to fill out. They would need breakfast, too – had he eaten at all today? He couldn't recall, and likely Sherlock hadn't bothered, so there was that to plan out as well. There were innumerable details to attend to, a myriad banalities, because the world didn't stop turning simply because Mycroft Holmes stopped existing.

Lestrade pondered for a moment why that was, and couldn't come up with any suitable answer.

"Come on. " He plucked the cigarette from Sherlock's fingers and stamped it out along with his own. Sherlock stuffed his hands in his pockets, now that he had nothing to occupy them, and hunched his shoulders against a sudden gust of wind. "Let's get out of here."

"John will probably tell us that it will be all right, eventually," Sherlock said suddenly.

Lestrade managed a shadow of a sad smile even though all he wanted to do was scream. "And John would be wrong, wouldn't he?"