Anselm

When Sherlock was born, he was the first of twins. He was followed, barely minutes after his own birth, by his brother Anselm.

As boys, the two of them were inseparable, and doted upon by both their mother and elder brother. They were far and away more clever than the other little boys and girls in their class, but between them they managed to make friends and play the same simple games that all children play.

"look at us, mycroft, we're pirates!"

As they grew older, the differences between Sherlock and Anselm, and the other children their age became more noticeable. Or perhaps it was simply that the boys stopped caring so much that they were different. They had one another, what did they need anyone else for? And so they became ever more wrapped in one another's lives.

But their intellectual interests differed. Sherlock adored chemistry, watching the way things reacted to one another. He liked looking at old anatomy books and working out what made people tick. Anselm was enthralled by computers, unravelling everything into binary and altering something at the most basic level to make anywhere between a mundane and a profound difference.

Both of them loved watching other people, and the way they interacted with the world around them.

"look at her, sherlock, she's on her third – no, fourth – cup of coffee, and she's starting to regret it."

"and him, anselm, he's just bought a puppy, but it hasn't been housetrained yet."

They both finished school early, started University young. And it was there (perhaps) that their troubles began. Anselm and Sherlock were two halves of a perfectly functioning whole. When the other was there, they remembered how to behave 'normally', how to react to situations as 'ordinary' people would, they remembered how and why to have friends.

University was something of an eye opener. They drank alcohol for the first time, smoked cigarettes for the first time, they spent more time apart now that they were specialising in different areas and had different lectures to attend. Which led to another first, that was the first breach between them; they had sex for the first time.

"you were with trevor last night. you might have called, i was worried."

A romantic relationship was one of the few things that Anselm and Sherlock could not do together. When first Sherlock, then Anselm, started dating it brought a startling bought of self-realisation for both of them. For the first time in their lives they argued properly, real anger and jealousy causing them to be more hurtful to one another than they'd ever been before. They knew each other's deepest, darkest secrets, and without each other's support, neither of them had the moral compass needed not to use that information against each other.

It was the kind of row that, given enough time, they would have overcome. They would have returned to being closer than brothers, closer than best friends. Even in the darkest part of their arguments and doubts, they both still trusted each other with their lives, and they would have returned, one day, to finishing one another's thoughts without effort.

"do you..?"

"yes."

"fascinating."

But Mycroft knew how to manipulate people so well that they didn't even know they were being manipulated. He already had a (not so) minor position in government, and knew that MI6's Q-branch had their eyes on Anselm. But to join MI6, meant to leave all relationships behind – even familial ones – and start anew under a new name. Anselm would normally have never even considered leaving Sherlock behind. Just the mere thought of it would physically hurt him.

But Anselm and Sherlock were fighting. And for the first time ever, they doubted. And Mycroft reached to the deepest roots of that doubt and shredded his brothers' feelings apart. It would do them both good in the long run, he reasoned. It wasn't healthy to rely so totally on one human being.

Anselm took the job offer at MI6.

Sherlock was led to believe that his twin brother had died.

"anselm. anselm. i'm sorry. i never meant any... please don't be dead. please."

Anselm buried himself in his work, refusing to acknowledge the aching, Sherlock-sized hole in his life. Sherlock was alive, and happier now that he wasn't there, he told himself. He withdrew from company, building himself a wall of dry wit and condescension to hide behind. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming R and, eventually, Q.

Sherlock buried himself in drugs. Heroin and cocaine. Perhaps, if he had been looking, he might have been able to work out that his twin was still alive. But by the third overdose, and being dragged to rehab and finally, finally, able to think lucidly again, by the time Sherlock wanted to look for Anselm, whatever trails there might have been were long since dried up.

"you can't keep doing this to yourself sherlock!"

"why not? the only person who would have cared is dead. why can't i keep doing this?"

Sherlock built a career for himself, the only one like it in the world. A consulting detective. And finally, after over a decade of being alone (and loneliness, because the other half of him was missing) he found himself new friends. Though they called themselves that before he realised that's what they were. He found Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade, and John.

None of them would ever even compare to Anselm, of course, but between them they bridged the gap and made Sherlock feel a little more whole again. A little more like he could exist without what had been an integral part of him.

"as a conductor of light, john, you are unbeatable."

When Sherlock discovered John, or John discovered Sherlock, or they discovered each other, Anselm was happy for them. He had kept a close watch on his twin over the years. He had few friends (Eve, eventually. Bond, maybe) and obsessed a little over that which he had lost. Thrown away, part of him mocked. He knew that Sherlock blamed the CCTV cameras on Mycroft, and Mycroft and Anselm were both happy to let him continue believing that.

Anselm was not blind to his brother's struggles with relationships, with drugs, with cigarettes, with life in general. It had hurt him deeply when he realised just how much he had hurt Sherlock, but by then Anselm was in too deep to return. His job would not allow him to, and even if it did, he was coming to realise that he did not deserve a brother like Sherlock.

So when he saw the way that John managed to fit Sherlock's shattered edges to his own, how he smoothed over those parts that had grown dangerously sharp, and reignited feelings that Sherlock hadn't cared to feel for years... it blocked Anselm's throat, and made his eyes sore.

"are you alright, q?"

"not just at the minute."

Then Moriarty invaded their lives like shrapnel, splintering and spitting out in hundreds of almost impossible to calculate directions, and doing more damage to Sherlock and Anselm's life than anyone, or anything else had ever done (except perhaps Mycroft).

Things started to fall apart (again). Sherlock became obsessed with Moriarty, and the strange little circle of friends that he'd acquired started to breakdown. He never told anyone, but at the very beginning he thought, perhaps, maybe, impossibly, Moriarty might be Anselm back from the dead. He wasn't, of course, but if anything it made Sherlock's obsession worsen.

"i'll burn the heart out of you."

Anselm watched as Moriarty played his stupid game with Sherlock, and was entirely unable to do anything. He did not know who Moriarty was, he did not know what his next move might be. He couldn't even open an investigation into him, because MI5 was internal issues, and he was part of MI6. Taking an interest would immediately raise suspicions.

He was on the cusp of deciding to break the rules anyway and request an investigation, when Anselm got the news. Sherlock was dead.

"keep your eyes fixed on me."

Anselm thought he had been living without half of himself until that day. He had been wrong. Now he was living without half of himself. And if Sherlock felt even a tenth of what he was feeling, he wondered how Sherlock ever managed to control his drug addiction.

AN: Oh my god. Why do I keep letting myself in for these things? "Finish what I've started," I said. "Concentrate on my original fic," I said. Instead? Trope_Bingo emailed me and said my card was done. Instant need to write.
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xx
PS For some, possibly irrational reason, I feel as though I should apologise for this fic. So, uh, sorry.
PPS Also, the reason why Q's name is Anselm and not Quentin or whatever, is because Q is a JOB TITLE. His parents did not name him thinking that he would one day become Q. Although, with names like 'Sherlock' and 'Mycroft', 'Quentin' sounds positively ordinary.