Noah and Mycroft know caring is (notanadvantage) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-02-28 14:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: sherlock, mycroft holmes |
Who: Mycroft Holmes
What: Narrative
Where: London (Sherlock Door)
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: None
There was the small matter of his brother.
Mycroft entered this new version of London with the expectation that things would be different. Not terribly different, no, but different enough. His brother was alive in Las Vegas; this much he knew. And it stood to reason that alive there was alive here, or so he’d believed before stepping foot through the door that resembled his beloved Buckingham Palace.
In retrospect, it was faulty logic to apply the physics of the real world to a place without any scientific definition or guidelines. He rarely made such mistakes, and he could only blame his recent difficulties concentrating on the lapse in judgement.
Buckingham was, thankfully, the same. The Empire was precisely as it should be, running on wheels he’d diligently greased for years, while forsaking all else for the realm. The Diogenes Club, where he found himself now, was also precisely as it ought to be. But that was the rub, you see. If everything was the same, as it was, then his great failure remained precisely that - a great failure.
The news had died down in the press, as news did. No longer did the men in the club didn’t look at him askance as he sat with his glass and attempted to read the post in silence. Normally, the quiet was a consolation to him, but not today. He’d miscalculated, and he was left uncertain. He considered vengeance, because he had the power for it, but what would it change? Everyone worth blaming, beyond himself, was dead. Irene Adler. James Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes. Dead. Quite.
He’d sent two cars for John Watson that morning. He’d sent them in the usual way, and he’d expected the usual response. The first time his brother’s friend neglected to come as summoned, Mycroft assumed there had been a misunderstanding. The second time, he knew it was intentional. Again, a miscalculation. He’d assumed the man would come, regardless of anger, given recent events. Mycroft might, after all, have answers; he generally did. There might be news of Sherlock, which there was (in a roundabout way). But John did not oblige him, and the great respect he held for the other man wavered. He’d always numbered loyalty among John Watson’s best traits; apparently he’d been mistaken.
Grief, it seemed, was not for guilty siblings.
But what to do now. His sources informed him there was no one in 221B Baker Street beyond John Watson. There had been no sighting of his brother, and life was meant to go on. He’d spent quite a lot of time lately trying to school the child whose mind he now inhabited. Perhaps it was best to concentrate on that endeavor - at least for the time being.
But then, yes, there was the Empire to worry over. He pursed his lips in thought, and he set the newspaper aside. He pressed the sides of his fingers to his lips as he thought, the silence somehow oppressive rather than helpful. There were stages to this nonsense, he knew logically. Perhaps guilt meant it would last longer, the stages. It was fitting. He still carried the grief over mother, which Sherlock would have been thrilled to learn. He shouldered the country; he could shoulder this as well.
There were advantages to not caring, after all.