Richard Book is Innocent (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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tweedandtinsel2011-05-26 02:41 pm
oxfordtweed) wrote in tweedandtinsel2011-05-26 02:41 pm
Unless You Teach Him
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/s: Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, Mummy
Word Count: 3900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Mycroft gets a bit more than he bargained for in a little brother.
Notes/Warnings: Done for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sherlock_remix. I just realised that I never actually posted it. Unintentional attempted infanticide, corporal punishment of children, a few not-very-nice names, references to drug use, character death in the real and fabricated sense.
Unless You Teach Him
Somehow, even at six years old, Mycroft knew that something was wrong. Mummy was always sleeping and there were more people in the house than usual. A lot more people. Doctors, mostly.
Mycroft wasn’t allowed in to see Mummy; he’d be too loud, Miss Annabelle said. He’d be too much trouble.
But he wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t. He just wanted to see Mummy. He wanted to be able to sit with her on the bed and let her pet his hair the way she did before all those other people started coming round to the house.
He heard people talking about the baby. What baby? There was no baby in the house. He tried asking what baby, but no one would tell him. Just that he’d understand when he was older.
Miss Annabelle was not the best nanny on the planet. Even Mycroft knew that. He’d had other nannies against which to compare her, and she was the worst of the lot. For a six-year-old, this translated to the best of the lot. She was always wandering off, leaving him alone for far too long; leaving him to wander through the house on his own.
After asking for the twelfth time where this supposed baby was, and getting the same, ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’ line, Mycroft snuck up to Father’s study on the first floor. Father kept books on everything in his study, and one of them was bound to be about babies. Mycroft couldn’t read very well, but he knew enough to pull down every book with a word that started with B in the title. Most of them were quite long, so it had taken him ages of flipping through them to determine that they were useless. Finally, he came to one that seemed to be about everything. It had maps of places he had never heard of, photographs of great aeroplanes and boats, and diagrams of the inside of the body.
The diagrams, as it happened, were exactly what he was looking for.
Oh. So that’s where the baby was. No wonder Mummy wasn’t feeling well, if she had some squirming, crying baby inside her. Mycroft didn’t imagine he’d feel very well either in the same circumstances.
Mummy disappeared a week before Mycroft’s seventh birthday, just after saying something about it being too early. Mycroft wasn’t sure how it could have possibly been too early for everything, as it was just before dusk. Too early for bedtime, perhaps. But before he could ask, Mummy was taken away.
He didn’t see her again for almost a fortnight. The house was quiet in that time, mostly just Mycroft and Miss Annabelle, with Father making an occasional appearance. And then Miss Annabelle disappeared and there was a new nanny, Miss Cynthia. The day after that, Mummy came home with a tiny baby in her arms.
“Did it hurt when they took the baby out?” asked Mycroft as he followed after Mummy, keen to get a look at the baby that was once inside her.
Mummy turned slightly to look at him, a strange expression on her face. “No, darling,” she said. “It didn’t hurt at all.”
Mycroft nodded, accepting this answer. He had no way of knowing that with the new baby would also come a never-ending stream of lies. “Good.”
For the first few months, the baby (Sherlock, Mummy had called it) was mostly quiet, and spent all of its (“Sherlock is a boy. ‘He,’ not ‘it,’ Mycroft”) time sleeping. Everyone bustled around the baby (Sherlock) constantly, fussing over it (him) nonstop.
It wasn’t so bad, Mycroft had to admit. Better by far than what started happening when Sherlock was about three months old, and Mycroft had accepted him as a tiny person. A tiny person who seemed to want to make everyone go completely mental.
He would not stop crying. He cried constantly. He cried even more when he was being fussed over, and would let off a terrible screech whenever anyone tried to hold him.
“When does he stop?” Mycroft asked Mummy, his hands held tightly over his ears.
“Babies cry, darling,” Mummy said. “He’ll stop soon enough.”
“No he won’t. He’ll never stop,” Mycroft insisted.
Sherlock didn’t stop. If anything, he got worse. He seemed to hate everything. He hated his blankets, he hated being touched, he hated being left alone, he hated the things Miss Cynthia put above him to look at, he hated not having anything placed above him to look at.
Nothing would make him happy.
Sherlock was seven months old, and had cried for what could have been accurately calculated as a full three and a half months of that time, taking breaks only when he would very occasionally sleep. Maybe he was tired, Mycroft realised. Maybe he was scared to sleep without a bear. Fighting the urge to cry as well, Mycroft slid out of his bed with his own bear in tow and ventured into the room next to his.
Mycroft pulled a chair up next to Sherlock’s bassinet and put his bear in next to the wailing terror.
“Sherlock, be quiet!” Mycroft pleaded. Sherlock ignored him. “Sherlock, be quiet and take the bear!” He moved the bear onto Sherlock’s chest, hoping that he might grab hold of the toy and fall asleep. He didn’t, so Mycroft pushed the bear against him. Maybe he was just too busy crying to notice the bear at all.
“Mycroft!” Miss Cynthia shouted as the lights came on.
She rushed toward the boys, pushing Mycroft off the chair as she reached into the bassinet to check on Sherlock.
He was still crying. Miss Cynthia seemed to think this was a good thing, the way she kept thanking God.
“What on Earth were you thinking?” she scolded after a few moments.
Mycroft looked up at her from where he had been pushed to the floor. “I was trying to give him the bear so he’d stop crying,” he said, rubbing the sore spot on his bottom. “I’m tired of it. He won’t stop!”
“Your father’s hearing about this,” Miss Cynthia said. “Do not move from that spot.”
He didn’t move, nor did he cry when Father struck him with his belt.
It was just before Mycroft’s eighth birthday when Mummy found him in the garden, watching a colony of ants systematically tear apart a slice of apple. After the bear incident, Mycroft had taken it upon himself to distance himself from his little brother, spending most of his time outside, or when the weather didn’t permit outdoor activities, barricaded in his bedroom.
Mummy sat down on the damp ground next to him, spending a long while in silence to watch the ants with him.
“Why don’t you come inside, darling?” she asked eventually.
“It’s too loud. I can’t think,” Mycroft said.
“He’ll stop,” Mummy told him. “That’s just what babies do sometimes. Everything’s new and it scares him.”
“It’s not new, though,” Mycroft pointed out. “The only thing that’s new is him. Nothing else has changed.”
“He doesn’t know that,” Mummy said. “He’s too young to understand.” She petted his hair, coaxing him into leaning against her side. They hadn’t done this since before Sherlock was born, and he'd missed it dearly.
“Promise me something, darling,” she said after a moment. “Promise me you’ll take care of him. You’re his older brother, and he’ll need you. I won’t always be here to watch after him.”
Mycroft looked up at her. “What about me?” he asked.
“And he’ll take care of you,” Mummy said. “But he won’t know how unless you teach him.”
Mummy was right. Sherlock did eventually stop crying, and the house settled back into a peaceful silence again. Once Sherlock was old enough to wander a bit, always under the watchful eye of Miss Helena, he seemed much more content. He never spoke, though, or made any sound other than that of extreme discomfort whenever someone would try to hold him.
Mycroft liked him like this. He would watch his little brother for hours as he carefully stacked his blocks, only to throw them across the room when he was finished, and then start the whole process over.
He wasn’t sure if Sherlock was creating order from the chaos, or bringing chaos to the order, but it kept him quiet. That was the important part. As long as Sherlock was quiet, Mycroft found that having a little brother wasn’t so bad after all.
Mummy began to worry again as Sherlock’s fourth birthday approached, and he still hadn’t said a single proper word (squealing gibberish didn’t count). It was clear that he understood what was being said to him, and he would even sometimes do as he was told, if it suited him. But he would not talk.
Sometimes, Mycroft would read to him; the two of them huddled together in a corner. Sherlock didn’t seem to mind when Mycroft touched or held him, and didn’t seem to care what Mycroft read to him. He’d sit against Mycroft’s chest and focus on every word that came from the book. Mycroft wasn’t sure if Sherlock understood the point of it, but Mycroft would follow along with his finger to the words anyway, brushing underneath each one as he read it.
It was their time, and Mycroft didn’t care that Sherlock had nothing to say. It just meant that he didn’t get interrupted all the time.
Meals with all four of them around the table together were rare. Father was a busy man and was frequently away, or held up at the office, or taking care of something that wasn’t actually his job to take care of. Mycroft was starting to find himself quite busy with his schooling, and while he wasn’t boarding, he was often gone for several days on end.
On paper, Sherlock had a private tutor, though the man had no idea how to handle a child who didn’t speak, and would often just let Sherlock occupy himself.
Sherlock ignored his meal, instead watching as Father tried to divide his attention between his plate and Mummy. Several times, Mycroft had leaned over the table to try to interest Sherlock in his own plate, but no amount of coaxing worked.
“Come on, little one,” Mycroft said. “We like Peter’s cooking, remember?”
Sherlock looked over at Mycroft for just a moment before returning his attention to Father.
“I think the nanny is stealing from us,” Father told Mummy, apropos of nothing. “I’m fairly certain I saw her wearing that necklace I gave you.”
Sherlock blinked and tilted his head slightly. “It’s not stealing if you gave it to her,” he said quietly.
The entire room fell silent as everyone turned to look at Sherlock, who had meanwhile taken a sudden interest in his supper.
“Sherlock?” Mummy asked hesitantly. “What did you say?”
Sherlock ignored her. She turned her attention to Father.
“Why would he say that you gave it to him?” she asked.
Father just grunted. “The boy doesn’t understand what he’s saying,” he said. “It’s just a step up from that rubbish he usually speaks.”
“Yes he does,” Sherlock said, still focused on his plate. “I saw you. After she put her clothes back on.”
“Creighton, why would he say that?” Mummy asked coldly.
Father didn’t answer her. Instead, he got up and reached for Sherlock. “Little spying bastard,” he growled. “Get up. Now.”
He pulled Sherlock to his feet and dragged him out of the room. Mycroft tried not to listen to the sounds Sherlock made in response to the violent handling, and resolved to find a way to make sure he never had to make those sounds again.
Sixth form was when everything changed. Mycroft was being sent off to board to finish off his last bit of schooling before university, and leaving Sherlock behind. Sherlock didn’t cry, and didn’t make the squalling noises he used to, but he made his feelings on the matter very clear.
“You’re going to kill me,” Sherlock said, having picked up a flair for melodrama after he started speaking regularly. “I’ll be bored to death, and it will be your fault for leaving. The only person who can stop it is you, and you don’t care enough to try.”
He lay sprawled out on Mycroft’s bed, watching as Mycroft carefully packed for the next morning, when he would leave and ensure Sherlock’s certain death.
“Stop it,” Mycroft said. “Or I’ll tell Mummy about the frog in your desk.”
Sherlock managed to sink even further into the bed. “I’ll tell her about the chocolate in yours.”
Mycroft left, just as planned. To his own complete annoyance, Sherlock did not actually die of boredom. He did try to find a way to fling himself from the roof, but after two hours of figuring out how to get up there, and looking at the rather hard ground below, he rather lost his nerve and had to wait for someone to find a ladder large enough to help him down.
A week later, Mummy took Sherlock to the school to see Mycroft. Sherlock knew that he was only being allowed to go along, and that she was really going to have a talk with one of Mycroft’s instructors, but Sherlock took the opportunity all the same.
The school was fairly large, and Sherlock found himself wandering almost immediately. He carved a meandering path through the school’s vast corridors before he was stopped by a boy about Mycroft’s age.
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
Sherlock just stared at him, finding no reason at all to answer his questions. He recognised him as the son of someone Father would occasionally have round the house, though he never actually spoke to him. Of course he wouldn’t have recognised Sherlock. He’d been given no reason to.
“What, don’t you talk?” the boy asked. “You hear me, deafaid?”
Sherlock continued to stare at the boy, watching as he grew slightly annoyed at not having complete control of the situation. He took the boy’s verbal abuse until Mycroft wandered by, possibly by chance, though it was hard to tell, and stepped between the two of them.
“Leave him be,” Mycroft said. “He’s just a kid.”
“Oh, is this your brother?” the boy asked. “The spastic?”
Mycroft’s face turned dark red, but before he could say anything, Sherlock decided that he wanted to talk after all.
“He’s not your father,” he said. “I don’t think he knows, either.”
Mycroft made a sound that was somewhere between abject horror and quite amused indeed. “Sherlock!” he scolded. He turned his attention to the other boy. “Have you met my brother?” he asked. “He’s a genius.”
Before any punches could be thrown, Mycroft quickly led Sherlock away, taking him up to his dorm. “Where did you get that?” he asked as he shut them in.
“His family came round in June,” Sherlock said as he invaded Mycroft’s bed. “I saw it then. His ears are different. Why do you surround yourself with idiots?”
Mycroft sat down at the small desk along the far wall. “You’ve been wandering around here all day. What did you see?”
Mycroft never answered Sherlock’s questions, no matter what they were about. He insisted on making Sherlock work out the answer on his own. He was the only person who did this, rather than giving him some banal half-answer. Sherlock loved this, and had learned to take his questions to Mycroft whenever possible.
“Take your time,” Mycroft said softly. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Work it out.”
Sherlock went over everything he’d seen as he wandered the school, finding patterns and similarities he hadn’t noticed at the time.
“Their parents are powerful,” he deduced. “And soon, they’ll come into that power. You want them to be on good terms with you so you can take advantage of that power.”
Mycroft smiled. “'Take advantage' is such a strong turn of phrase,” he said.
“They don’t like you,” Sherlock continued. “They’re afraid of you, and they don’t respect you. They’re hoping that if they keep you happy with them, you’ll let them in on some of your own power.”
“Where do you get that?” asked Mycroft.
Sherlock smiled. “You have a roommate, but everything in here is yours. He comes in here only to sleep, but he doesn’t want to spend time with you. He’d rather let you have your own space to keep you happy.”
“Well done, little one,” Mycroft said. “I think there may be hope for you yet.”
Mycroft wasn’t at all surprised to find six feet of lanky younger brother on his bed when he walked into his room. Sherlock lay with his hands under his head, staring blankly up at the ceiling. He didn’t move to look at Mycroft as he walked into the room, setting his small case on the floor near the wardrobe, or make any indication that he had noticed Mycroft’s arrival at all.
“You’re handling this better than I’d anticipated,” Mycroft said softly.
Sherlock said nothing and shrugs almost imperceptibly.
“People were asking after you,” Mycroft continued, unabated as he changed out of his suit and into his pyjamas. “I told the family that you didn’t attend because you’re having trouble understanding everything. It’s a very confusing time for all of us right now, after all.”
“I understand perfectly,” Sherlock argued calmly. “I didn’t attend because I saw no reason to.”
Mycroft paused just long enough to give Sherlock a questioning glance. “He was our father, even if we rarely saw him, Sherlock. That’s all the reason in the world to attend his funeral.”
“And he was the most transparently boring idiot in history. I’m not even convinced we share his genes at all, actually,” Sherlock said simply.
“Sherlock! Not good,” Mycroft scolded.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and moved over onto his side, ignoring the positively venomous glare coming at him from Mycroft’s direction. After a few moments, Mycroft sighed and stepped over to the bed.
“Out of here,” he said. “I’d like to get some sleep before tomorrow.”
Sherlock continued to ignore him. After a few moments of their silent standoff, Mycroft grabbed Sherlock by the arm and hauled him off of the bed, letting him drop to the floor. He stepped over his sulking brother as he climbed into bed and reached to turn off the bedside lamp.
A few moments later, Sherlock shifted just enough to take his weight off of his shoulder.
“The entire family think I’m an idiot because of you,” he said darkly. “Quit telling people I don’t understand. I understand perfectly fine.”
“If they think you don’t understand, they’ll be more lenient and accepting of your eccentricities,” Mycroft explained. “If I were to tell everyone that you apparently lack the capacity to care about your own father’s death, things would be very different for you.”
“Let them think what they want,” Sherlock said. “I don’t care about that, either.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Mycroft.
He knew that dropping out of university and disappearing for the better part of a year wasn’t likely to be well-received, which really only made him more glad he’d done it. What he hadn’t expected was for Mycroft to have him locked away in some clinic in Croydon and for Mummy to come round for a visit.
“Do you know what your brother is doing right now?” she asked him.
Sherlock shrugged as best he could with his back on the floor and his legs up on the bed. He had intended to get up from bed at some point earlier in the morning, but had forgotten the reason and let himself just fall out instead, not taking any moves to change the situation. It wasn’t terribly comfortable, but he knew that it was annoying his mother, so he decided to stay in that position until she finally left.
“Starting a civil war in Africa?” he guessed. “Or was that last week?”
Mummy sighed. “When Mycroft was your age, he was already holding a position in the government. What have you accomplished this year?”
Sherlock looked at his arms and the fading track marks that lined them.
“Not overdosing,” he declared. “Considering the quality of some of the stuff you can get out on the streets, that’s—”
“Are you proud of this, Sherlock?” Mummy demanded. “Do you think this is amusing, to poison yourself? I thought you were supposed to be clever. Mycroft would never do anything so stupid.”
Sherlock consciously kept from shifting his jaw and letting on just how deep Mummy’s words had cut.
“I don’t think I want to have any visitors today,” he said calmly.
He hadn’t expected Mummy to leave the room, but was annoyed all the same when she refused to move from her chair in the corner of the small room. He didn’t care what Mycroft was doing, and hated that he was expected to follow in his footsteps.
And that Mummy wouldn’t stop talking about him only made him hate his brother all the more.
Sherlock was always the sort to self-destruct, and Mycroft knew it. He had hoped that Dr Watson might have had an effect on Sherlock’s behaviour, though he was rather annoyed when this turned out to be the case. Dr Watson did affect Sherlock’s behaviour – not by making him more careful or subdued, but by making him seem to want to prove himself. Sherlock always had to be the best at what he did. Unfortunately, what Sherlock did was chase after very dangerous criminals with a penchant for bombing public buildings.
When they found him, he wasn’t breathing. Mycroft didn’t even go to the scene of the explosion; there were other matters to attend to. Other matters that required his presence far more than some destroyed pool. The moment he received news of Sherlock and what he had done, what he had done to himself, Mycroft set out to right something which he should have seen to long before.
He had assumed Dr Watson would keep Sherlock out of trouble on this one, and so he had kept his distance, not stepping in out of a twisted respect for Sherlock’s need to take care of matters on his own. He knew Moriarty didn’t care about the plans, and had hoped that Sherlock would have realised as much. The plans were exactly what they had seemed to be; a distraction. Something to keep Sherlock from falling in too deep with the man who could have very easily got the better of him.
He had managed to locate Moran by the time he received news that both Sherlock and Dr Watson were in hospital and stable. Moran could wait, Mycroft decided. Knowing Sherlock was alive put a whole new spin on the plan. Sherlock would want this. It wasn’t Mycroft’s fight, and he’d never forgive Mycroft for taking it from him.
Making peace with Sherlock was easy. It always had been, really; just a matter of knowing exactly what Sherlock needed to hear, and avoiding telling him what he wanted to hear.
Getting Sherlock to stop faffing about and actually finish this ridiculous game was all just a matter of one strategically placed IED attached to the chassis of a black Mercedes S-Class with trade plates (excessive perhaps, but necessary) and a much-needed secret holiday to Europe, where he could watch from afar as Sherlock, with the help of Dr Watson, systematically proved that there was at least one person about whom he did honestly care.
Character/s: Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, Mummy
Word Count: 3900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Mycroft gets a bit more than he bargained for in a little brother.
Notes/Warnings: Done for
sherlock_remix. I just realised that I never actually posted it. Unintentional attempted infanticide, corporal punishment of children, a few not-very-nice names, references to drug use, character death in the real and fabricated sense.Unless You Teach Him
Somehow, even at six years old, Mycroft knew that something was wrong. Mummy was always sleeping and there were more people in the house than usual. A lot more people. Doctors, mostly.
Mycroft wasn’t allowed in to see Mummy; he’d be too loud, Miss Annabelle said. He’d be too much trouble.
But he wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t. He just wanted to see Mummy. He wanted to be able to sit with her on the bed and let her pet his hair the way she did before all those other people started coming round to the house.
He heard people talking about the baby. What baby? There was no baby in the house. He tried asking what baby, but no one would tell him. Just that he’d understand when he was older.
Miss Annabelle was not the best nanny on the planet. Even Mycroft knew that. He’d had other nannies against which to compare her, and she was the worst of the lot. For a six-year-old, this translated to the best of the lot. She was always wandering off, leaving him alone for far too long; leaving him to wander through the house on his own.
After asking for the twelfth time where this supposed baby was, and getting the same, ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’ line, Mycroft snuck up to Father’s study on the first floor. Father kept books on everything in his study, and one of them was bound to be about babies. Mycroft couldn’t read very well, but he knew enough to pull down every book with a word that started with B in the title. Most of them were quite long, so it had taken him ages of flipping through them to determine that they were useless. Finally, he came to one that seemed to be about everything. It had maps of places he had never heard of, photographs of great aeroplanes and boats, and diagrams of the inside of the body.
The diagrams, as it happened, were exactly what he was looking for.
Oh. So that’s where the baby was. No wonder Mummy wasn’t feeling well, if she had some squirming, crying baby inside her. Mycroft didn’t imagine he’d feel very well either in the same circumstances.
Mummy disappeared a week before Mycroft’s seventh birthday, just after saying something about it being too early. Mycroft wasn’t sure how it could have possibly been too early for everything, as it was just before dusk. Too early for bedtime, perhaps. But before he could ask, Mummy was taken away.
He didn’t see her again for almost a fortnight. The house was quiet in that time, mostly just Mycroft and Miss Annabelle, with Father making an occasional appearance. And then Miss Annabelle disappeared and there was a new nanny, Miss Cynthia. The day after that, Mummy came home with a tiny baby in her arms.
“Did it hurt when they took the baby out?” asked Mycroft as he followed after Mummy, keen to get a look at the baby that was once inside her.
Mummy turned slightly to look at him, a strange expression on her face. “No, darling,” she said. “It didn’t hurt at all.”
Mycroft nodded, accepting this answer. He had no way of knowing that with the new baby would also come a never-ending stream of lies. “Good.”
For the first few months, the baby (Sherlock, Mummy had called it) was mostly quiet, and spent all of its (“Sherlock is a boy. ‘He,’ not ‘it,’ Mycroft”) time sleeping. Everyone bustled around the baby (Sherlock) constantly, fussing over it (him) nonstop.
It wasn’t so bad, Mycroft had to admit. Better by far than what started happening when Sherlock was about three months old, and Mycroft had accepted him as a tiny person. A tiny person who seemed to want to make everyone go completely mental.
He would not stop crying. He cried constantly. He cried even more when he was being fussed over, and would let off a terrible screech whenever anyone tried to hold him.
“When does he stop?” Mycroft asked Mummy, his hands held tightly over his ears.
“Babies cry, darling,” Mummy said. “He’ll stop soon enough.”
“No he won’t. He’ll never stop,” Mycroft insisted.
Sherlock didn’t stop. If anything, he got worse. He seemed to hate everything. He hated his blankets, he hated being touched, he hated being left alone, he hated the things Miss Cynthia put above him to look at, he hated not having anything placed above him to look at.
Nothing would make him happy.
Sherlock was seven months old, and had cried for what could have been accurately calculated as a full three and a half months of that time, taking breaks only when he would very occasionally sleep. Maybe he was tired, Mycroft realised. Maybe he was scared to sleep without a bear. Fighting the urge to cry as well, Mycroft slid out of his bed with his own bear in tow and ventured into the room next to his.
Mycroft pulled a chair up next to Sherlock’s bassinet and put his bear in next to the wailing terror.
“Sherlock, be quiet!” Mycroft pleaded. Sherlock ignored him. “Sherlock, be quiet and take the bear!” He moved the bear onto Sherlock’s chest, hoping that he might grab hold of the toy and fall asleep. He didn’t, so Mycroft pushed the bear against him. Maybe he was just too busy crying to notice the bear at all.
“Mycroft!” Miss Cynthia shouted as the lights came on.
She rushed toward the boys, pushing Mycroft off the chair as she reached into the bassinet to check on Sherlock.
He was still crying. Miss Cynthia seemed to think this was a good thing, the way she kept thanking God.
“What on Earth were you thinking?” she scolded after a few moments.
Mycroft looked up at her from where he had been pushed to the floor. “I was trying to give him the bear so he’d stop crying,” he said, rubbing the sore spot on his bottom. “I’m tired of it. He won’t stop!”
“Your father’s hearing about this,” Miss Cynthia said. “Do not move from that spot.”
He didn’t move, nor did he cry when Father struck him with his belt.
It was just before Mycroft’s eighth birthday when Mummy found him in the garden, watching a colony of ants systematically tear apart a slice of apple. After the bear incident, Mycroft had taken it upon himself to distance himself from his little brother, spending most of his time outside, or when the weather didn’t permit outdoor activities, barricaded in his bedroom.
Mummy sat down on the damp ground next to him, spending a long while in silence to watch the ants with him.
“Why don’t you come inside, darling?” she asked eventually.
“It’s too loud. I can’t think,” Mycroft said.
“He’ll stop,” Mummy told him. “That’s just what babies do sometimes. Everything’s new and it scares him.”
“It’s not new, though,” Mycroft pointed out. “The only thing that’s new is him. Nothing else has changed.”
“He doesn’t know that,” Mummy said. “He’s too young to understand.” She petted his hair, coaxing him into leaning against her side. They hadn’t done this since before Sherlock was born, and he'd missed it dearly.
“Promise me something, darling,” she said after a moment. “Promise me you’ll take care of him. You’re his older brother, and he’ll need you. I won’t always be here to watch after him.”
Mycroft looked up at her. “What about me?” he asked.
“And he’ll take care of you,” Mummy said. “But he won’t know how unless you teach him.”
Mummy was right. Sherlock did eventually stop crying, and the house settled back into a peaceful silence again. Once Sherlock was old enough to wander a bit, always under the watchful eye of Miss Helena, he seemed much more content. He never spoke, though, or made any sound other than that of extreme discomfort whenever someone would try to hold him.
Mycroft liked him like this. He would watch his little brother for hours as he carefully stacked his blocks, only to throw them across the room when he was finished, and then start the whole process over.
He wasn’t sure if Sherlock was creating order from the chaos, or bringing chaos to the order, but it kept him quiet. That was the important part. As long as Sherlock was quiet, Mycroft found that having a little brother wasn’t so bad after all.
Mummy began to worry again as Sherlock’s fourth birthday approached, and he still hadn’t said a single proper word (squealing gibberish didn’t count). It was clear that he understood what was being said to him, and he would even sometimes do as he was told, if it suited him. But he would not talk.
Sometimes, Mycroft would read to him; the two of them huddled together in a corner. Sherlock didn’t seem to mind when Mycroft touched or held him, and didn’t seem to care what Mycroft read to him. He’d sit against Mycroft’s chest and focus on every word that came from the book. Mycroft wasn’t sure if Sherlock understood the point of it, but Mycroft would follow along with his finger to the words anyway, brushing underneath each one as he read it.
It was their time, and Mycroft didn’t care that Sherlock had nothing to say. It just meant that he didn’t get interrupted all the time.
Meals with all four of them around the table together were rare. Father was a busy man and was frequently away, or held up at the office, or taking care of something that wasn’t actually his job to take care of. Mycroft was starting to find himself quite busy with his schooling, and while he wasn’t boarding, he was often gone for several days on end.
On paper, Sherlock had a private tutor, though the man had no idea how to handle a child who didn’t speak, and would often just let Sherlock occupy himself.
Sherlock ignored his meal, instead watching as Father tried to divide his attention between his plate and Mummy. Several times, Mycroft had leaned over the table to try to interest Sherlock in his own plate, but no amount of coaxing worked.
“Come on, little one,” Mycroft said. “We like Peter’s cooking, remember?”
Sherlock looked over at Mycroft for just a moment before returning his attention to Father.
“I think the nanny is stealing from us,” Father told Mummy, apropos of nothing. “I’m fairly certain I saw her wearing that necklace I gave you.”
Sherlock blinked and tilted his head slightly. “It’s not stealing if you gave it to her,” he said quietly.
The entire room fell silent as everyone turned to look at Sherlock, who had meanwhile taken a sudden interest in his supper.
“Sherlock?” Mummy asked hesitantly. “What did you say?”
Sherlock ignored her. She turned her attention to Father.
“Why would he say that you gave it to him?” she asked.
Father just grunted. “The boy doesn’t understand what he’s saying,” he said. “It’s just a step up from that rubbish he usually speaks.”
“Yes he does,” Sherlock said, still focused on his plate. “I saw you. After she put her clothes back on.”
“Creighton, why would he say that?” Mummy asked coldly.
Father didn’t answer her. Instead, he got up and reached for Sherlock. “Little spying bastard,” he growled. “Get up. Now.”
He pulled Sherlock to his feet and dragged him out of the room. Mycroft tried not to listen to the sounds Sherlock made in response to the violent handling, and resolved to find a way to make sure he never had to make those sounds again.
Sixth form was when everything changed. Mycroft was being sent off to board to finish off his last bit of schooling before university, and leaving Sherlock behind. Sherlock didn’t cry, and didn’t make the squalling noises he used to, but he made his feelings on the matter very clear.
“You’re going to kill me,” Sherlock said, having picked up a flair for melodrama after he started speaking regularly. “I’ll be bored to death, and it will be your fault for leaving. The only person who can stop it is you, and you don’t care enough to try.”
He lay sprawled out on Mycroft’s bed, watching as Mycroft carefully packed for the next morning, when he would leave and ensure Sherlock’s certain death.
“Stop it,” Mycroft said. “Or I’ll tell Mummy about the frog in your desk.”
Sherlock managed to sink even further into the bed. “I’ll tell her about the chocolate in yours.”
Mycroft left, just as planned. To his own complete annoyance, Sherlock did not actually die of boredom. He did try to find a way to fling himself from the roof, but after two hours of figuring out how to get up there, and looking at the rather hard ground below, he rather lost his nerve and had to wait for someone to find a ladder large enough to help him down.
A week later, Mummy took Sherlock to the school to see Mycroft. Sherlock knew that he was only being allowed to go along, and that she was really going to have a talk with one of Mycroft’s instructors, but Sherlock took the opportunity all the same.
The school was fairly large, and Sherlock found himself wandering almost immediately. He carved a meandering path through the school’s vast corridors before he was stopped by a boy about Mycroft’s age.
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
Sherlock just stared at him, finding no reason at all to answer his questions. He recognised him as the son of someone Father would occasionally have round the house, though he never actually spoke to him. Of course he wouldn’t have recognised Sherlock. He’d been given no reason to.
“What, don’t you talk?” the boy asked. “You hear me, deafaid?”
Sherlock continued to stare at the boy, watching as he grew slightly annoyed at not having complete control of the situation. He took the boy’s verbal abuse until Mycroft wandered by, possibly by chance, though it was hard to tell, and stepped between the two of them.
“Leave him be,” Mycroft said. “He’s just a kid.”
“Oh, is this your brother?” the boy asked. “The spastic?”
Mycroft’s face turned dark red, but before he could say anything, Sherlock decided that he wanted to talk after all.
“He’s not your father,” he said. “I don’t think he knows, either.”
Mycroft made a sound that was somewhere between abject horror and quite amused indeed. “Sherlock!” he scolded. He turned his attention to the other boy. “Have you met my brother?” he asked. “He’s a genius.”
Before any punches could be thrown, Mycroft quickly led Sherlock away, taking him up to his dorm. “Where did you get that?” he asked as he shut them in.
“His family came round in June,” Sherlock said as he invaded Mycroft’s bed. “I saw it then. His ears are different. Why do you surround yourself with idiots?”
Mycroft sat down at the small desk along the far wall. “You’ve been wandering around here all day. What did you see?”
Mycroft never answered Sherlock’s questions, no matter what they were about. He insisted on making Sherlock work out the answer on his own. He was the only person who did this, rather than giving him some banal half-answer. Sherlock loved this, and had learned to take his questions to Mycroft whenever possible.
“Take your time,” Mycroft said softly. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Work it out.”
Sherlock went over everything he’d seen as he wandered the school, finding patterns and similarities he hadn’t noticed at the time.
“Their parents are powerful,” he deduced. “And soon, they’ll come into that power. You want them to be on good terms with you so you can take advantage of that power.”
Mycroft smiled. “'Take advantage' is such a strong turn of phrase,” he said.
“They don’t like you,” Sherlock continued. “They’re afraid of you, and they don’t respect you. They’re hoping that if they keep you happy with them, you’ll let them in on some of your own power.”
“Where do you get that?” asked Mycroft.
Sherlock smiled. “You have a roommate, but everything in here is yours. He comes in here only to sleep, but he doesn’t want to spend time with you. He’d rather let you have your own space to keep you happy.”
“Well done, little one,” Mycroft said. “I think there may be hope for you yet.”
Mycroft wasn’t at all surprised to find six feet of lanky younger brother on his bed when he walked into his room. Sherlock lay with his hands under his head, staring blankly up at the ceiling. He didn’t move to look at Mycroft as he walked into the room, setting his small case on the floor near the wardrobe, or make any indication that he had noticed Mycroft’s arrival at all.
“You’re handling this better than I’d anticipated,” Mycroft said softly.
Sherlock said nothing and shrugs almost imperceptibly.
“People were asking after you,” Mycroft continued, unabated as he changed out of his suit and into his pyjamas. “I told the family that you didn’t attend because you’re having trouble understanding everything. It’s a very confusing time for all of us right now, after all.”
“I understand perfectly,” Sherlock argued calmly. “I didn’t attend because I saw no reason to.”
Mycroft paused just long enough to give Sherlock a questioning glance. “He was our father, even if we rarely saw him, Sherlock. That’s all the reason in the world to attend his funeral.”
“And he was the most transparently boring idiot in history. I’m not even convinced we share his genes at all, actually,” Sherlock said simply.
“Sherlock! Not good,” Mycroft scolded.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and moved over onto his side, ignoring the positively venomous glare coming at him from Mycroft’s direction. After a few moments, Mycroft sighed and stepped over to the bed.
“Out of here,” he said. “I’d like to get some sleep before tomorrow.”
Sherlock continued to ignore him. After a few moments of their silent standoff, Mycroft grabbed Sherlock by the arm and hauled him off of the bed, letting him drop to the floor. He stepped over his sulking brother as he climbed into bed and reached to turn off the bedside lamp.
A few moments later, Sherlock shifted just enough to take his weight off of his shoulder.
“The entire family think I’m an idiot because of you,” he said darkly. “Quit telling people I don’t understand. I understand perfectly fine.”
“If they think you don’t understand, they’ll be more lenient and accepting of your eccentricities,” Mycroft explained. “If I were to tell everyone that you apparently lack the capacity to care about your own father’s death, things would be very different for you.”
“Let them think what they want,” Sherlock said. “I don’t care about that, either.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Mycroft.
He knew that dropping out of university and disappearing for the better part of a year wasn’t likely to be well-received, which really only made him more glad he’d done it. What he hadn’t expected was for Mycroft to have him locked away in some clinic in Croydon and for Mummy to come round for a visit.
“Do you know what your brother is doing right now?” she asked him.
Sherlock shrugged as best he could with his back on the floor and his legs up on the bed. He had intended to get up from bed at some point earlier in the morning, but had forgotten the reason and let himself just fall out instead, not taking any moves to change the situation. It wasn’t terribly comfortable, but he knew that it was annoying his mother, so he decided to stay in that position until she finally left.
“Starting a civil war in Africa?” he guessed. “Or was that last week?”
Mummy sighed. “When Mycroft was your age, he was already holding a position in the government. What have you accomplished this year?”
Sherlock looked at his arms and the fading track marks that lined them.
“Not overdosing,” he declared. “Considering the quality of some of the stuff you can get out on the streets, that’s—”
“Are you proud of this, Sherlock?” Mummy demanded. “Do you think this is amusing, to poison yourself? I thought you were supposed to be clever. Mycroft would never do anything so stupid.”
Sherlock consciously kept from shifting his jaw and letting on just how deep Mummy’s words had cut.
“I don’t think I want to have any visitors today,” he said calmly.
He hadn’t expected Mummy to leave the room, but was annoyed all the same when she refused to move from her chair in the corner of the small room. He didn’t care what Mycroft was doing, and hated that he was expected to follow in his footsteps.
And that Mummy wouldn’t stop talking about him only made him hate his brother all the more.
Sherlock was always the sort to self-destruct, and Mycroft knew it. He had hoped that Dr Watson might have had an effect on Sherlock’s behaviour, though he was rather annoyed when this turned out to be the case. Dr Watson did affect Sherlock’s behaviour – not by making him more careful or subdued, but by making him seem to want to prove himself. Sherlock always had to be the best at what he did. Unfortunately, what Sherlock did was chase after very dangerous criminals with a penchant for bombing public buildings.
When they found him, he wasn’t breathing. Mycroft didn’t even go to the scene of the explosion; there were other matters to attend to. Other matters that required his presence far more than some destroyed pool. The moment he received news of Sherlock and what he had done, what he had done to himself, Mycroft set out to right something which he should have seen to long before.
He had assumed Dr Watson would keep Sherlock out of trouble on this one, and so he had kept his distance, not stepping in out of a twisted respect for Sherlock’s need to take care of matters on his own. He knew Moriarty didn’t care about the plans, and had hoped that Sherlock would have realised as much. The plans were exactly what they had seemed to be; a distraction. Something to keep Sherlock from falling in too deep with the man who could have very easily got the better of him.
He had managed to locate Moran by the time he received news that both Sherlock and Dr Watson were in hospital and stable. Moran could wait, Mycroft decided. Knowing Sherlock was alive put a whole new spin on the plan. Sherlock would want this. It wasn’t Mycroft’s fight, and he’d never forgive Mycroft for taking it from him.
Making peace with Sherlock was easy. It always had been, really; just a matter of knowing exactly what Sherlock needed to hear, and avoiding telling him what he wanted to hear.
Getting Sherlock to stop faffing about and actually finish this ridiculous game was all just a matter of one strategically placed IED attached to the chassis of a black Mercedes S-Class with trade plates (excessive perhaps, but necessary) and a much-needed secret holiday to Europe, where he could watch from afar as Sherlock, with the help of Dr Watson, systematically proved that there was at least one person about whom he did honestly care.
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Very well done
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That was a bit odd with the shock_blanket mod, no? I'm not sure this piece qualifies for warning about abuse or self harm, especially not violence and gore. I mean, are we in Sherlock fandom or My Little Pony? yeesh.
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But that is one of my favourite things about these two; how they're so much the same, but still very, very different. They both take in everything around them, but unlike Sherlock, Mycroft understands everything as well. Sherlock's so damaged, but I love him for it.
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Regarding Mycroft and Sherlock: I was just pondering this the other day on the rant meme, because they are similar in a lot of ways, but to me Sherlock is much more interesting (at least on the surface) because yeah, he is pretty damaged. Or, if not damaged, he is a fuck up in a lot of ways, who doesn't cope well with the humdrum details of reality. That makes him so much easier to work with in terms of just making the type of idiotic life choices that propel a story. Mycroft is capable of the same sort of thing, but he's so much better organized that it's difficult to trip him up. If you want to write Mycroft fucking up, you'd better be ready to commit, is all I'm saying.
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One of these days, I will write Mycroft fucking up. Because boy howdy, his fuck ups must be epic. Like, "oh dear, I could have sworn we didn't have 50 nuclear warheads pointed at us yesterday" epic.
When Sherlock fucks up, he just winds up in jail or rehab. Or both, if it's really bad. But he does that about once a weekend, so there is some balance to it.
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I had a friend in high school who swore up and down that her first complete sentence was "Get me out of this playpen." But Sherlock's first sentence blows that one right out of the water! :D