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What a mess. What a fucking, ugly mess. Pure shite, it was.
Greg was in charge of getting the crazy bitch back to Sherrinford. Pick the people. Pick the tools to deal with her. Come up with a fast and dirty protocol based as much on lunatic comic book assumptions as practical prisoner management. I mean, what do you do with a woman whose very speech is so powerful it can corrupt saints? Thank God for Lady Smallwood and Sir Edwin and Anthea... He couldn't have done it on his own. He was a better field agent than he was admin. Always had been. Always would be.
Through it all he was on the phone, trying to work out where Mycroft was. It took awhile. Sherrinford was chaos in the aftermath of Eurus' little games. Dead people all around, guards who couldn't be trusted, emergency security locks in place.
He didn't want to admit he was afraid for Mycroft. From the very brief summary Sherlock had provided, Eurus' final problem had been intended for two, with Mycroft expected to be dead at the end of the penultimate round. When Sherlock broke the game, there had been no reason to keep Mycroft alive.
Greg didn't want Mycroft dead.
He really didn't want Mycroft dead. There was so much still there, waiting to share with the other man. So much they had not even started to say.
The drive to Musgrave from the helicopter pad at the Glasgow airport seemed to take forever. Greg took it in at a glance, and began giving orders--officers to collect the captive Eurus and secure her, freeing Sherlock from the need to keep her contained and controlled; more officers to find the well, where John clung to the rope that had dropped down from above--feet still chained, but chin securely above water thanks to that vital lifeline that let him haul his upper body above the waterline. Then time to talk to his transport team, time to check with Lady Smallwood and her crew back in London, making one last evaluation of security.
In the middle of the discussion someone patched in a call from Sherrinford. Mycroft had been found, and was checking in. He gave a brief summary to Lady Smallwood and Sir Edwin, then faltered, and said, "Who's in charge of collecting her and evacuating her to a secure location?"
"Your favorite field agent," Anthea quipped from the back of the room...
Hearing Mycroft's voice was like a hit of Sherlock's damned beloved cocaine-morphine speedballs. For a second he staggered, gripping the nearest headstone in the weird cemetery.
"Mike? That...is that you?"
Mycroft's voice was shaken and subdued, but still recognizably his own. "I'm afraid so--though if I must feel this way, I wish I were someone else."
"Are you all right?"
"I..." Mycroft's voice wavered, then said, uncertainly, "I'm not sure. I'm not wounded." The phrasing somehow made it clear that he distinguished between wounds, and mere emotional devastation--and had no idea what to do when devastation proved to be a gaping, bleeding wound. But of course he didn't, Greg thought. Poor, dear, Eeyorish Mycroft Holmes...
He still didn't know what to call him. They were not partners in the sense usually meant by law-enforcement personnel...nor by lovers. They weren't friends in the normal sense, either--Mycroft had no notion how to be mates, chums, buddies, or anything of the sort. Their ranks were such that it was an open question who outranked whom. In the official sense it was probably Mycroft, by a bit. In the field, though, it was Greg, without question or hesitation.
It was what it was.
Not that this was the time to ask more. "Good. Good," he said, brusque and professional. "Look, I'm here at Musgrave. We're working on a system to keep her guards safe--no one exposed for more than ten minutes max, and never unsupervised. They're all wired. So's the transport, and the helicopter for after. Got earphones on the secondaries producing white noise--it may not help, but it ought to make it easier to avoid problems if she tries anything. Not that she's talking now, but..."
"No," Mycroft said, voice firmer as he dealt with pragmatic issues. "This is not the time to indulge in optimism. Assume she's manipulating us, and continue with the worst-case protocol." He hesitated, then said, "Thank you. You're doing your usual splendid job of mop-up. I...appreciate it. I'm sorry I left a mess."
"You can't be everywhere. You can't see everything."
Mycroft didn't answer--he only said, with the intensity that so often was brought out by his brother, "Tell Sherlock. Let him know I'm fine. He's likely to worry."
Greg grunted. In his experience Sherlock didn't worry about Mycroft, but rather the reverse. But he wasn't going to fight that fight. It wasn't a good hill to die on.
"Sure," he said. "I'll let him know."
He turned and finalized his orders to one crew, and headed back for the transport truck. On the way he spotted Sherlock and John. Together. Of course. The danger they'd gone through, the rush of survival--it had only intensified the feeling of "best friends" they radiated. A closed unit, with no real room for anyone else. Only Mary Watson had somehow managed it...and Greg doubted anyone else ever would again, until Rose Watson was old enough to try. Even then it would take one hell of a young woman to force her way into that often silent, wordless friendship.
Greg detoured, quickly updating Sherlock on Mycroft.
"She locked him in her own cell," he said, thinking of Mycroft alone, with no idea what had happened to his brother, and far too much time alone with his own mind. He'd have slain himself with guilt a million times over, and painted deaths so horrible only Eurus Holmes could have come up with worse.
John scoffed softly, and said in the dismissive, resentful voice of a man who didn't much like Mycroft, "What goes around comes around."
It was the tone that set Greg off. He knew why John--and Sherlock--found it easy to blame Mycroft. What he had trouble with was how hard both men found it to ever step outside their own perspective and ask themselves what it would have been like to experience it from Mycroft's side of the catastrophe.
It wasn't worth arguing. It never was...and there was work to be done. He focused on the transport truck, and stalked away, saying "Gimme a moment, boys." He'd deal with them later--when John wasn't soaking wet and still running on adrenaline, when Sherlock's entire mind wasn't on his friend's well-being. When he himself didn't want to deck them.
Then Sherlock spoke. "Um...Mycroft. Make sure he's looked after? He's not as strong as he thinks he is."
It was a miracle...like angel choirs. "Yeah. I'll take care of it." He kept moving, feeling the wonder bloom...but already planning what had to be done for Mycroft.
"Thanks, Greg."
Yeah. A miracle. Transformation.
A good man.
A man who was, finally, someone who could let himself care.
He said as much to the junior officer at the transport truck...and he spent the helicopter ride out to Sherrinford thinking it, between bouts of worrying about Mycroft.
"Are you going back with me," he asked, late in the morning, after he'd seen Sherrinford contained, and the new staff put in place, and made sure everyone was coordinating with Lady Smallwood, and reviewed the protocols, and kicked out one smart-arse team chief for the Eurus guard force who thought this was all some sort of joke, with the upper-levels swooning onto the fainting couch over "a deadly little girl." The way he'd rolled his eyes while looking far too appreciatively at the images of Eurus in her prison scrubs nearly got him discharged from the service entirely. Instead he got a killer reprimand from Greg, with a note sent to Lady S. to deal out disciplinary action and review him for future placements. A joker like that was no damned help. Only then did he find time to track down Mycroft, who sat at the desk chair of the former Governor's office, hands over his face, and suit much the worse for wear.
He looked up. "Going back?"
"To London. Chopper's got room for another."
Mycroft blinked and frowned. "I..."
"You have to go back, you know." It was like telling a kid who'd been through something horrible and embarrassing and terribly personal that he had to go back to a school full of people who knew just what had happened.
Mycroft's eyes flickered. He lowered his head. "Yes. I suppose--I hadn't got that far."
"You can stay if you like. Talk to Eurus. Evaluate her."
"I don't think I'd trust my judgment right now."
He didn't sound like he'd trust his judgment ever again. Some people didn't. Some things were too traumatic.
If that was how it was, they'd cross that bridge. But now it was time for Mycroft to go home...or to such home as he had.
"I'll drive you home once we get to London. The flat on Pall Mall--or the estate?"
"Pall Mall. I don't know if I will be able to stay on the estate ever again. When do we leave?"
"Pretty much now, before someone comes up with more work for me. Been up since..." He scowled. "I don't know how long, now. I can't remember when you called me in on this."
"I put you on alert immediately after Sherlock and John broke into the estate," Mycroft said. "Have you slept since?"
"No."
Mycroft's wide mouth grimaced. "Makes two of us."
"Then come along. I'll get a couple flasks of tea and some grub to take with us. You can get something inside, then sleep on the flight back."
It was a strange trip--the roar of the helicopter making in-flight conversation a waste of time. They drank tea from metal cups and passed a packet of stale digestives back and forth. After awhile Mycroft didn't so much fall asleep as into a stupor, bludgeoned into submission by too long a day, and too wild a storm of emotions. When they got to the other end Lestrade walked him in from MI6's helipad on the roof of Babylon-on-Thames, and arranged for a taxi to take them to Lestrade's car, parked over at the MET car park. At last he had the other man settled.
Mycroft did sleep--properly--on the drive to the flat. Better the flat than that estate, Greg thought. What did he call it?
Holmescroft.
Having seen Musgrave, Greg understood better why Mycroft needed the place. "My Home." Something that took him back to his own sweet childhood, before it all went to hell.
Seven years an only child.
Eight years before the little witch was born.
What--twelve years by the time Eurus went over the edge? And at least three or four years prior to that living with a developing psychopath, trying to determine what she was, and how to deal with it? Only to have the world go crazy, and a child die, and then his home go up in flames. And then what? Sister torn away from them all. And who--right, he remembered from the files. Mycroft's Uncle Rudy--Foreign Office long before Mycroft could have chosen service--had taken care of it. Made the arrangements to secure a deadly genius...and then the move to a new home.
And then being trusted with the news about his "dead" little sister--news not shared with Mummy or Father. Who the fuck puts that burden on a kid?
How old was Mycroft when he learned. Because it had to be before Eurus was much past the age when she'd gone in.
A kid.
A kid keeping secrets and guarding his baby brother, and testing, gingerly, carefully, watching all the time for fear he, too, will go mad.
Alone, with no one to trust but Uncle Rudy.
Mycroft slumped in the seat belt, leaning on the car door.
It didn't take that long to reach Pall Mall. Took longer to find a place in the car park to park the car. Then Greg walked Mycroft up to the lobby, and from the lobby through security to the flat.
"Thank you," Mycroft said, wearily, as they stepped into the dark flat. It smelled of bachelorhood, Greg thought--not of old socks or old beer bottles, but of loneliness and too many late-night movies watched alone.
"I'll be by later this week. I think tomorrow's booked, but I'm going to come by the next evening to check on you."
"No need."
"So what?" He glared at the other man, then grinned. "Try to stop me. By the time you can, I'll know you don't need me."
Mycroft shook his head, but it was more amusement than disapproval. "You're wasting your time, DCI Lestrade."
"Mine to waste as I see fit, Mr. Holmes."
He checked in with a bottle of whiskey two evenings later. They each drank a glass. Mycroft said little. Instead he asked if Greg liked old movies. Greg shrugged, said he hadn't watched many, and was bustled onto the sofa to watch "It Happened One Night."
They said nothing about Eurus, or what had passed. They said nothing for the next two nights, either.
The night after that was supposed to be Greg's own time, with Mycroft staying out with Mummy and Father to explain things, then spending the night. Instead Sherlock called. He didn't text--he called.
"Greg, come get Mike."
"What?"
"Come out to my parents' place and get Mike." His voice was tight. "Get him out now."
"I don't even know where they live." Which was a lie, because he and Mycroft had worked together a long time, and watched over Sherlock, and he knew many things he was not supposed to know. But no point giving away secrets....
Sherlock gave him the GPS coordinates, a quick thumbnail of the best way out to the little country house, and said again, "Now. Hurry."
"I'm going, I'm going," Greg said, already in his car and starting the engine. "What the fuck happened? Why can't you take him yourself?"
"Because I have to explain to them why I am not the grownup of the two of us." Sherlock's voice was grim.
"What the fuck?"
"Don't. It's Mummy. And Father. And parental delusions. And failure to see OR observe. Just come get him. He shouldn't have to spend the night with them tonight."
"Ok, good, fine. I have it. See you as soon as possible. Have him ready to make his escape."
"I will."
He found Mycroft sitting on his suitcase by the side of the road a half-mile east of his parent's home.
"Mike?" Greg pulled up and got out of the car.
Mycroft looked up, and for one brief moment his face went from exhausted to angry. "Mycroft. Not Mike, Mycroft." Then he drooped. "Sorry. Reflex. Mummy's been after me. Father, too." He sounded so lost...
"After you?"
"Yes. Well. This is all my fault. My choices. My decision to lie to them. My decision to have her incarcerated--and to keep her there. My decision that they didn't need to know and live with that."
Greg stalked over, and held out a hand to help Mycroft up. "Hell with that. How old were you, Mike...Mycroft. Sorry."
"Oh, never mind." Mycroft allowed himself to be hauled to standing position. "Honestly, it's not as annoying as when Mummy says it."
"Yeah. Good. How old were you?"
Mycroft gave him a dour glance. "Twelve."
"That's about what I figured. So--you single-handedly sectioned your sister in Arkham Assylum where all the nuts go when they're really scary cracked, and you dreamed up a cover story that she was dead, body never recovered, and arranged all the paperwork to agree with that story. All by yourself. At twelve. I know you were an exceptional boy, but I'm pretty sure that was outside your abilities at twelve."
"Well--Uncle Rudy..."
"Mmm-hmmm. Get in the car. You need down-time. I'll take you back and you can show me another movie."
It wasn't a short drive. Still, they didn't talk much. They picked up food--real food--at a Tescos on the way back into the city, then Greg made hot tea and forced Mycroft to sit and drink it while he himself made a huge meal--salad, linguine with cream and gorgonza sauce ("Easiest way to show off for a date anyone ever came up with...), good bread, with store-bought fruit and cheese for afters. He made Mycroft eat, even when the man attempted to push the noodles around the plate as though that was going to hide that none disappeared. He poured them both port. He moved them both to the sitting room. He found a copy of an old Alec Guinness movie, "Captain's Paradise," and slipped it into the DVD player. He settled back to watch, already grinning as an armed platoon marched Alec Guinness to the place of execution.
"Stop." Mycroft's voice shook.
"What?"
"Stop!" The other man snatched the remote from Lestrade's hand, and halted the film. "I'm sorry. I can't... Another. Something else."
"Ok. Suggestions?"
Mycroft huddled in the corner of the sofa. "I...no. Nothing. Just--no guns."
Greg had read the review of the entire debacle. He looked at his friend--the misery in every inch of his body. A face like a century of rainy days.
"You did the right thing."
Mycroft stared at the far wall. "I couldn't do it. It was the logical thing. The necessary thing. But I couldn't."
"Neither could John."
"John doesn't even pretend to be rational."
"Wrong--he always pretends to be rational. He just usually isn't. The point is, none of you could. Not you, not Sherlock, not John."
"They didn't throw up."
"They think the morgue is their private club house, and love to get a chance at a crime site with at least one corpse."
"I was afraid, you know. To kill. To be killed."
"Congratulations. I think that's called 'sane.' It's why you're here and your sister's in Sherrinford, and your brother's in a quaint little half-way house on Baker Street."
Suddenly Mycroft was on fire, with pain and anger and grief. "No. The only thing I am any use for is making decisions--without passion, or sentiment. Doing what has to be done. I'm bad at people. I'm a terrible son. I'm..." he stopped, then gathered himself, saying with a terrifying finality. "It's what I am supposed to be there for--the sacrificial lamb, in the final reckoning, and the one saving the most lives until then. And I failed, and failed, and failed..." His voice began to rise, frightened, lost, and hopeless.
Greg was good at what he did. He led teams--his investigative team, yes--but also the teams he led out on field work, or to pick up crazy Holmes women, or to deal with terror cells. Sometimes you had to be hard. Sometimes you had to be soft. And sometimes you just had to be loud. He was good at loud.
"MISTER Holmes! Pull yourself together!" It was very close to a master-sergeant's shout--just muffled enough to be contained by Mycroft's very excellent sound-proofing, but quite enough to sweep Mycroft back against the sofa arm at such close range.
He froze--then gasped. Then gasped again...and the tears began.
Silent tears. Not a sound. They shook him--his entire body rattling with palsy. He wailed--silently, mouth open, no cry coming out.
"Oh." That, too, was silent. "Oh."
Yes, Greg thought, like a doctor seeing that a fever has finally broken. Yes. This is what he needs.
He wondered how many nights Mycroft had cried silently, afraid to make a sound, afraid to have a never-satisfied mother come in to interrogate him, shame him--and fish for answers he dared not let fall from his lips, because goddamned Uncle Rudy had made him the secret-keeper for a family with much too weighty a secret.
He gripped Mycroft's hand and tugged, just as he'd tugged him to his feet by the side of the road.
The man fell, as though Greg was a gravity well pulling him in. He let himself be enfolded, and continued crying with his face tight to Greg's chest.
He still made no sound.
The future was soon enough to worry about that, Greg thought, and held him close. And when the storm passed, he poured them both more port, and found another movie, and stayed the night on the sofa, half asleep beside Mycroft. And in the morning something had changed between them, and from that point on neither Mycroft or Greg was alone.