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“I see,” Mycroft says.
Except, at this particular moment, he doesn’t see anything at all. He is, he realises, terrified. Literally blinded by terror. It’s a condition he would never have expected to experience himself though he’s observed it in others often enough. Debilitating, humiliating and – ultimately – distasteful. Now he’s categorised his state he can file it in the appropriate place. There’s a certain ledger…
Not that he’ll have use for it much longer…
All in all perhaps five seconds have passed before he blinks, once, and focuses on the figure seated on the other side of the desk again.
The man coughs behind his hand, uneasily, his eyes slanting to avoid meeting Mycroft’s. He rotates in his chair to stare at the screen of his computer. “There are,” he begins, “several therapies we could—”
“Please,” Mycroft interrupts. “I abhor waste as much as I admire frankness. Your exposé has made it perfectly clear there’s nothing you can do for me.”
The doctor’s hands reach for the nearest object – a rather flashy fountain pen gifted, Mycroft has deduced, by proud parents upon finishing medical school – and start fumbling with it. Meanwhile he carefully redirects his gaze to a point three inches above the top of Mycroft’s head. “True, but we might, well… slow the process, buy you some extra time.”
“At a considerable cost,” infers Mycroft.
“Yes.” The man gulps. Mycroft pushes himself out of his chair, thankful he decided to hold onto the sturdy Malacca cane of his umbrella throughout the interview, for he can now use it for the leverage he’s desperately in need of.
“Thank you, doctor.” Mycroft extends his hand. The doctor’s palm, he discovers, is sweatier than his own.
***
The clock on the mantelpiece strikes three. The loud noise temporarily drowns the sound of the nib of the King’s pen scratching on the handmade paper of the documents he’s signing.
“That was the last one, Your Majesty,” Mycroft says as the King lifts the tip of his pen.
“Thank God.” The King affects to shake a cramp out of his hand. “What a load. You almost have me worried England is about to fall.”
“Heaven forbid, Sire,” murmurs Mycroft, sweeping up the documents and stashing them into their assigned folders.
“Over your dead body, eh, Mr Holmes,” the King laughs, cheekily. “You don’t trust heaven to protect our interests, I think. I know I don’t.”
“Your Majesty.” Mycroft lowers his eyelids and inclines his head. The King laughs again. He laughs a lot, but then he always has and Mycroft has become immune to the bouts of merriment.
“Judging by that stack it’s no use asking you to you join me for tea.” The King throws himself out of his chair with all the impunity and arrogance of health and youth and makes for the door to open it for Mycroft. “Please do me the kindness to allow for some extra time in your agenda Friday next. I want to tell you all about my interview with that sodding b…” The gander Mycroft shoots the King restrains him from completing the sentence.
“Strongly voiced opinions don’t win arguments, Sire.”
“Yes, yes,” the King sighs. “You’re right, of course. Anyway, thank you again for warning me in advance.”
Mycroft inclines his head. “I am, as ever, happy to serve Your Majesty. It’s but my duty.”
The King purses his lips. “Perhaps. Grandmamma once told me to trust no one except for you. At the time it seemed an exaggeration…” He trails off, sensing there’s no proper ending to this sentence either, but the hand he proffers is resolute.
“Until next week, Mr Holmes. Goodbye.”
***
Mycroft collapses shortly after feeding the last dossier into the fire. One minute he’s staring into the flames, allowing himself a few seconds of distracted reverie, the next he’s on his side, as helpless as a newborn infant and seething with impotent rage.
At least he’s fallen sideways and not against the burner. The notion he should be thankful for such a mercy has Mycroft grit his teeth. Right then he hates his traitorous body, even more than he’s ever hated his perfidious mind.
Briefly, Mycroft closes his eyes to concentrate and prepare for launching himself to his feet again. With what feels like superhuman effort he rolls onto his front, away from the burner and manages some time later to raise himself to all fours. He’s panting like a dog.
No, Mycroft chides himself, not here, not now. You can’t do that to the poor girl. Not after she served you so well for so long.
Besides, he still has to clear the top-shelf of the bookcase in his bedroom.
He musters all his strength and, with the aid of the nearest chair and the wall, hauls himself up. Dizzy with the exertion he totters on his feet for a while, but he stays upright and after a few more minutes he dares to start on the trek out of the tiny side room into his office. He doesn’t look back to the sofa bed where he’s spent many a night after he sat working late and couldn’t spare the time to go home.
His office looks as spruce and well-kept as ever. He’s always been an enemy of clutter with its persistent tendency to invade the territories where it is least wanted.
One day his previous PA – a legacy from his so-called predecessor – had planted a small fern on the right corner of his desk in a ridiculous attempt to prettify the chamber. He had sacked her on the spot, forcing her to take the green outrage with her. He likes the forbidding atmosphere, with every object secure in its designated space.
It is different with his Whitehall office, of course. That is the place where he held court, so he had it designed with the object to overwhelm and impress. It is, he concedes, a very handsome room and he can’t really find fault with the huge palms protruding from the corners beside the window. Their brazen pretentiousness has never bothered him, for the actual work isn’t done there.
Wasn’t done, he corrects himself.
Mycroft falls down into his chair and aligns it with the desk before clasping his hands on top of it. The skin feels, to his great relief, perfectly normal. Dry and not too warm. The hands are a little bony, perhaps. But then, lots of people have bony hands. Take Sherlock’s for instance. All spidery long fingers with hardly any flesh to them.
A sharp stab smites him behind his right eye like a bolt from the heavens and leaves him gasping. The pain is as excruciating as it was two days ago, on his way back from visiting the King. Mycroft gropes blindly for the switch of his desk lamp. The dark, he has found, relieves the pain somewhat and he waits patiently for it to retreat, like it did last time.
How quiet it is. This, Mycroft realises, is why he covets this office so much. Here, secreted behind The Diogenes’ wine cellars, lies the domain that suits him best, the one where no sound interferes with the whirring of his formidable brain.
He doesn´t need the light to see the room´s contours and to swivel his chair so he can gaze up at the portrait of his Queen. He´s kept it there, not out of disloyalty to his new monarch, but because he works better with her at his back.
In the second drawer on his left lies a thick envelope with directions for it to be placed directly in the King’s hands. Mycroft has assembled the contents in the past few weeks with an attention to detail surpassing even his past meticulousness, and now there’s nothing left for him but to hope the man will duly appreciate the gift. The boy is clever enough, he assures himself, even if he is a little prone to guffawing.
The topmost drawer on his right contains his will and his last instructions to his PA. She’ll cry while reading them, but in her case Mycroft is convinced she will follow them to the letter.
***
Mycroft had planned to travel to Baker Street with the aid of the public transport system but the attack in his office has shaken him badly and in the end he asks Anthony to drive him over and drop him off at the corner.
“Two hours,” he tells the man once he’s made it out of the backseat. Anthony has served him for years and knows better than to offer a helping hand.
Instead Anthony reaches into the car to retrieve the tool that has become indispensable to Mycroft in a manner he wouldn’t have fathomed a few months ago. “Your umbrella, sir.”
“Ah, yes.”
Mycroft lingers until Anthony drives off before pivoting to walk up the street. His progress is slow and laborious and he’s leaning a little heavier on the wood of the handle. His strength is fleeing increasingly fast. Tomorrow evening he will board the train, though.
Yellowish warm light spills from the windows over Speedy’s awning, unencumbered by curtains – or wooden boards, billowing expanses of plastic or some other material which has, during the era of Sherlock’s tenancy, at some time or other been draped across 221B’s windows.
After taking up his usual position in the shadows – the wall he leans into squashes savagely against his shoulder blades, despite the extra padding of the additional undershirt he’s wearing – Mycroft lifts his eyes to the façade of his brother’s residence. Someone must have laid the fire for he discerns the flickering of the flames in the effervescent pattern of shadows dancing around the room.
Mycroft stands awaiting. The cold from the pavement seeps up through the leather of his soles and the merino wool of his socks, deep into the marrow of his bones. A remote part of Mycroft’s brain makes due note of the discomfort, but it’s a minor inconvenience compared to the aches he’s endured lately. And he would gladly suffer all the agonies of hell for a last glimpse of his brother’s face. Or even the back of his head. One petulant curl.
Please.
The seconds tick by. Mycroft is counting them in his head. His gaze remains steadfastly locked on the building on the other side of the road, one eye for each window. He’s reached five thousand nine hundred and forty eight when the light in the room is dispersed by a tall figure that leaps into view. It hurries towards the window on the right to close the curtains in a flurry of limbs and impatience.
Mycroft keeps counting. Maybe his breath hitches when the outline of his brother’s form materialises in the window on the left. It must have for suddenly Mycroft’s chest is wracked by coughs and his eyes water. He blinks rapidly to sluice away the moisture that maddeningly blurs his vision. His hands have flown up to stop the raw hacking sounds from ricocheting of the opposite buildings.
Sherlock’s arms freeze in mid-air, his hands already on the curtains. The long haunting line of his throat stands out sharply against the light as he angles his head to peer outside. Mycroft shrinks into the shadows, fists his knuckles into his mouth.
It’s… He shouldn’t have come after all.
But how could he have stayed away? Never. His mind almost adds an exclamation mark to the word as his eyes greedily drink in the sight of Sherlock’s silhouette. The waist – still slender, the wild mop of hair eddying in a halo around his head. The glow of the nearest street lamp bounces off the teeth that are worrying his lower lip. Then, with a motion so sudden it startles Mycroft, Sherlock pulls the curtains closed.
Six thousand two hundred and eighty three.
***
Remarkable how Eros has never truly died within him. Based on his observations of others he had expected it would. Sometimes, when his craving maddened him, he even longed for the god to wither and pass and leave him in peace.
His parents, the blazing epitome of a happy marriage, had, in later life, treated each other with a tender affection and true regard, but without a shred of the passion that must have led to his and Sherlock’s conception.
Perhaps, if left unconsummated, Eros’ hold on his victims only increases, Mycroft sometimes had mused. Then, horrified at the idea of acting upon his inclination, he’d punish himself with two hours on the despised treadmill. Without the consolation of music.
Still, it is bitter. The hair on his scalp has thinned and, despite the vigorous exercise he subjected his body to, his joints creak – these years there is an annoying crick in his left knee when he ascends the stairs – and now his brain is literally rotting away but the flames of his desire burn inside him as brightly as ever.
***
In his will he’s asked the King for a special dispensation to have his ashes scattered in Regent’s Park. Perhaps, one day when Sherlock takes a turn there, as he’s wont to do whenever he’s bored and restless, a rogue gust of wind will raise a tiny speck that once upon a time was a part of Mycroft’s forefinger and deposit it on one of his brother’s cheekbones.
It will be brushed off almost immediately of course, with a huff and an irritable swipe of those long fingers.
***
Unlike the rest of the house Mycroft’s bedroom is very small. It is smaller than both the adjoining bathroom and his dressing room but those contain the paraphernalia of his official persona while in this tiny cell he can be himself.
The single bed is pushed against the whitewashed wall beneath the window, which is always left open. He likes to feel the night breeze on his forehead. Stacked against the opposite wall is a bookcase containing a motley collection of his favourite books, none of them in mint condition. The copies he cherished as a child come complete with requisite jam stains. They stand out against the books he acquired later in life and treated slightly better, with only the occasional crumb of cake flattened between the pages.
The top-shelf bears witness to the fact Mycroft Holmes is, at heart, a family man. Whenever he looks at it he congratulates himself on a fair bit of dissembling. Preferably Mycroft would have forbidden his housekeeper from entering the room, but he’d read Sherlock the story of Bluebeard often enough to know this would but tempt her to try and gain access. Thus he’s contrived this affective collection of family snapshots, with a few well-chosen pictures of the sole subject of his interest slotted in between.
After he’s changed into his pyjamas Mycroft lifts the studio portrait of Sherlock as a young man, taken shortly after his twenty-first birthday and presses his lips to the glass, over his brother’s mouth, as he has done every evening before laying himself to rest in this room.
“Good night, my heart,” he says and after wiping the glass with his sleeve puts the portrait back in its place behind a blurry shot of their mother with her arms around her sons, smiling for all she was worth against the odds of a three-week holiday in Cromer.
He’ll have to destroy the photographs. But not yet.
Tomorrow.
***
Mycroft’s mind palace is far less grandiose than he imagines Sherlock’s to be. It’s bigger than his bedroom, for even if Mycroft crammed every cubic inch of space the room wouldn’t hold all the information he wants quick access to. Still it’s not any larger than the house where they were born and grew up, not exactly an imposing castle. The outside even retains some aspects of the cottage but the walk up front is much shorter, only three steps, and the door swings open at the mere touch of Mycroft’s fingertips.
The light switch is on his right-hand side. He flips it to reveal an interior depleted of any internal walls. The huge chamber is stacked with neat rows of ordinary dark-grey vertical filing cabinets. A chair and a table bearing a thick ledger stand in the middle. Mycroft only has to resort to the ledger occasionally, when he has to learn Serbian at short notice for instance, but its presence, somewhat to the left, is a perpetual comfort.
Mostly Mycroft knows exactly which cabinet to turn to and which drawer to slide open. His fingers march along the file folder tabs, in time to the melody he’s humming under his breath. After flicking through the dossier he carefully stashes it back in its proper place and makes straight for the door again.
Occasionally though, Mycroft dawdles, and, after a brief and violent internal battle he invariably loses, his feet start dragging him to the farthest corner of the chamber. The curtain half hidden behind a cabinet is a deep-purple silk that’s warm to the touch. Behind it lies an opening so low Mycroft has to drop on his hands and knees to crawl through it.
The sheer brightness of the light dazzles him every time.
Mycroft still has to discover of what material the tower consists. The walls and the steps of the circular stairs are smoother and more transparent than the finest glass. One time he tried to break off a piece of one of the steps, only to find the wafer-thin substance might be cut out of a diamond for its toughness. Despite their translucency he can’t look through the walls, nor, though the stairs are near invisible, detect the small wooden trapdoor situated at the top of the tower.
The quality of the light reminds him of an early morning, one summer a long time ago, when he’d risen early for a swim. The sun, harbinger of a gloriously long and warm day, was already coaxing the moisture deposited by a starry night out of the sand. The evaporating steam mingled with the salty spray of the waves into a fine golden mist, raised to shield the tender embrace of the land and the sea against inquisitive eyes.
Sometimes the stairs are very short – just seventeen steps, the number never varies – but at other times his ascent up the steps takes hours, as they continue to rise and rise, multiplying with each slap of his sole against the next one.
And yet he never can tell in advance what he will find on the other side of the trapdoor. Invariably, he’ll heave a small sigh of relief when Sherlock looks up from the book he’s reading, or from where he´s seated at the small lab bench Mycroft helped him construct in his bedroom and his eyes, pale as they are, light up.
“Mycroft!”
Then Mycroft will eagerly clamber through the door to sit down beside him. If the Sherlock he’s found is but a small boy Mycroft will read him the book. In the instances where Sherlock is a teenager, they’ll discuss Sherlock ideas concerning the book’s contents. The lab scenario is equally delightful each time it unrolls, in spite of the occasional explosion.
Those are the times Mycroft doesn’t resent his mind for its illegal bout of transport.
***
However, every so often, upon opening the trapdoor will reveal a five-year-old Sherlock rigged out in his pirate costume, the red handkerchief pulled down rakishly over one eye socket.
“Get thee away, thou bilge rat,” he squeals, slashing his wooden sword. More than anything Mycroft wants to slam the door shut into his own face and flee down those cursed steps. Instead he leaps through it with uncommon agility. Already Sherlock has hurled himself down a slide, which has sprung up conveniently from the ground and is now running through the garden as fast as his short legs will carry him, away from Mycroft.
Sherlock is the better athlete. Always was, which would put Mycroft at a disadvantage, even if Sherlock wasn’t growing while he ran, until, just as he soars over the fence that separates their garden from the neighbouring woodland with the grace of a thoroughbred yearling, he has become a man.
Mycroft takes the hurdle in admirable stride, only to find himself lost immediately after. He crashes through the dense undergrowth, fighting off the supple boughs of the brambles that snatch at his trouser legs. Blood pounds in his ears, drowning the sound of absolute silence that hangs like a shroud between the great beeches.
Inevitably he ends up at the glade. Warm, sun-drenched, the stream coursing along its edge a dulcet murmur that fills the air. A carpet of bluebells stretches away from his feet, swaying gently under the caress of a light summer breeze. Draped wantonly in the middle is Sherlock, a come-hither look in his eyes.
His lips curl, as if in triumph, when Mycroft moves at last and approaches him with lowered eyelids. Their gazes lock, the embrace drawing Mycroft’s eyes away from Sherlock’s nakedness for an instant. It only last a split-second though. Mycroft’s breath falters when Sherlock’s hand surges up to clasp Mycroft’s fingers, and tug, lightly, as if this were no more than a game they’re playing. Perhaps – to him – it is.
“You want this, don’t you?” Sherlock says, and he lets his thighs fall open wide.
His skin down there is so soft, every single time.
***
When Mycroft opens his eyes the sky sparkles with the sun’s reflection on the billions of frozen crystals covering every horizontal surface in London.
For an instant, all Mycroft experiences is pure joy, as fresh and innocent as the snow that fell during the night. The next, terror seizes him. His train is supposed to depart at three fourteen that afternoon. Unfortunately, and much to his dismay, they may have made it into the third decade of the twenty-first century, but life on the Island still grinds to a halt when covered with half an inch of innocent snow.
Groaning, for these mornings his body treats him to such an extensive range of agony he’d gladly trade it in for every torture ever suffered in hell, he reaches for his phone. London, it appears, is chaos personified but train traffic to the Continent isn’t affected. He’ll just have to leave earlier than planned to arrive at St Pancras in time.
***
The red robin cocks its head to peer at Mycroft, its beady eyes demanding Mycroft provide it with food. Mycroft huffs but opens the window nevertheless to brush the leftovers from his breakfast plate onto the snow. The air outside proves to be arctic and with a bang he closes the window again.
Arctic or not, Mycroft considers the pristine white mass blanketing the garden a great boon. It’s such a departure from the meteorological conditions which usually prevail in London at this time of the year, a person with a fancy imagination – something Mycroft is definitely not – might believe the weather gods had arranged this especially to commemorate his departure. The notion is ridiculous, naturally, but pleasing nevertheless and Mycroft allows himself to enjoy it while his eyes rove over every aspect of the garden.
There is no need to store the Christmas postcard perfection in his memory but doing so is a habit of a lifetime, and those are hardest to shed. After a last long look he pivots and makes for the library.
Here he lays a fire. The chimney is well-swept and the wood very dry. In no time at all the flames start dancing around it eagerly and the heat forces him to shuffle back, mindful of the last time he sat in front of a fire. After a few minutes the fire settles down into a steady slow burn and Mycroft reaches for the first photograph of the stack on his right, an – once again blurry – depiction of a Christmas dinner. Their father truly was an atrocious photographer.
Mycroft waits until the fire has fully consumed each picture before offering the next one. The work is slow and laborious but he’s nothing left to do until Anthony rings the doorbell. His suitcase is already next to the front door in the hall, together with the umbrella and coat and scarf he’s chosen for his journey.
His whole arm shakes when he holds the first photograph with just Sherlock in it over the flames. It’s an early one, taken shortly before Sherlock’s first day in school. He’s proudly showing off his new school uniform and the enormous gap in his mouth where his front milk teeth have fallen out. A spark leaps up to lick at a corner of the picture, forcing Mycroft to let go, and he watches as the fire devours his brother’s small body.
Over the crackling of the fire his ears detect a half-stifled noise so full of mortal agony and sorrow it strikes Mycroft as barely human, until he understands his own throat must have produced the sound. The next photograph he raises to his face is an abstract of runny colours and brushes of a highly untalented apprentice. It doesn’t even remotely resemble a face.
Mycroft puts the picture aside and dabs at his eyes with his handkerchief. He sniffs and blows his nose.
The spasm of sentiment wanes as suddenly as it flared up and his hand is perfectly steady when he feeds the photo into the flames.
He saves his favourite picture for the last and sits staring at it for a long time. More than anything he’d like to kiss it in a final farewell but he’s already smashed up the frames and binned them. Somehow the idea of kissing Sherlock’s mouth directly – without the translucent shield of the photo frame’s glass – strikes Mycroft as indecent. After a last lingering look he bends forward and stretches his arm, straight into the fire.
The flames roar up, dancing madly around their offering. The photograph’s beautifully moulded lips curve in that terrible smile that has Mycroft go weak at the knees and succumb, each time his mind whips up the image.
Then, having ravaged its sacrifice, the fire splutters and dies.
***
Mycroft shivers when the huge maw of the Chunnel swallows the train. Now it’s definite – he won’t die on English soil.
It’s what he decided almost straightaway, even while he was still digesting his death sentence in the consulting room. Yet, though his reason – recoiling at the idea of the church filled with insincere mourners all mightily relieved to have him pushing up daisies instead of pulling at strings – dictated this journey, his heart refuses to acquiesce that gracefully. As this particular organ hasn’t advised him very well in the past, Mycroft has chosen to disregard its fiery whisperings. The thought of his housekeeper finding his body in the morning, his assistant and Anthony and perhaps even the King himself staring down at his corpse, managed to smother any lingering sentiment easily.
Until he is actually leaving England.
There is no comparison for the intensity of his grief except perhaps for those seconds after Sherlock pulled the curtains shut and Mycroft came to realise he would never see his brother again in the flesh. His fingers pluck at the meticulous creases pressed in his trouser legs.
Thank goodness the first class carriage is almost empty of passengers at this time of day so there is no one to observe the sheen of moisture misting his eyes. Mycroft blinks rapidly several times to have it evaporate.
***
The chauffeur he’s asked the clinic to provide him with stands waiting for him on the platform. Mycroft is happy to relinquish the handle of his travelling case to the man. All he’s done after changing trains at Paris is sit in his seat and stare at the darkening landscape hurtling past the window, but he’s knackered all the same.
At the clinic the quiet atmosphere he remembers from his first visit greets him. A nurse accompanies him to his room and explains the workings of the bathroom amenities with brisk efficiency. After Mycroft has repudiated the offer of a sleeping pill she bids him good night and withdraws.
The room is almost bare of furniture, just as he has requested. After readying himself for bed Mycroft decides against laying out his clothes for the interview tomorrow morning. They won’t come until ten, which leaves him with plenty of time to prepare himself. He has already written his affidavit and looked it over several times. He won’t change another word. All he will have to do is sign the statement.
***
The doctor waits until the door has fallen firmly closed behind the last witness before she turns to Mycroft. “The nurse will bring you the antiemetic drug in half an hour. Will that be all right?”
“Yes.”
“I will, of course, be there when you take the pentobarbital and remain with you.” This is the only part of the procedure Mycroft is unhappy with, he’d have preferred to die alone.
However, Mycroft is the first to comprehend the legal niceties which make the doctor’s presence a condition for the service the clinic renders, so he endeavours to put some real warmth into his answering smile. “Yes.”
After swallowing the antiemetic drug Mycroft has a whole hour left to spend by himself. He changes into his pyjamas and dressing gown, both bought especially for the occasion. Dying in a three-piece suit had struck him as rather ridiculous when he sat pondering this particular problem, quite apart from the extra inconvenience to the undertaker. Pyjamas are much more sensible.
Mycroft smokes his last cigarette while standing in front of the open window, gazing at the lake and the frozen mountains in the far distance. The packet informs him the cigarette will kill him but he’s certain he’ll be dead long before the poison of this one can do him in.
The room is stone-cold by the time he finishes the cigarette. Mycroft shivers when he lies down on the bed. In the end he crawls under the covers, cursing those damned anti-smoking laws under his breath.
Fortunately the duvet is very comfy and in no time it’s warmed Mycroft up sufficiently for him to walk up to the cottage. He enters the building and, ignoring the filing cupboards, makes straight for the corner and settles to wait.
***
“Thank you.” Mycroft lowers the glass and holds out his hand for someone to take it from him. He lifts the purple curtain and ducks through the opening.
The light in the tower is more radiant than it’s ever been before. Mycroft sails up the stairs effortlessly, all the pains that have been slowing him down these last few weeks forgotten. There’s just seventeen steps.
At the trapdoor he pauses, his fingertips hesitating against the wood. Then, with a flourish, he throws it wide open.