Glass is all that separates us.

I play for her; she does not look at me.

I come again; this time, she turns, almost imperceptibly. I can tell she is listening.

I remember it all now, how she always found me when we tried to play hide-and-seek, even though I could never find her. The way she could predict even Mycroft's strategies any time we tried boardgames. The way she looked when we told her she couldn't be a pirate.

It hurt her to hurt me. She didn't know she was doing it, and when she found out, she locked herself up in her room. I put a note under her door. I told her it was all right, that a pinprick in my finger wouldn't hurt for long, that she would learn the difference between laughing and screaming the way she learned everything else.

We flew kites when she came out. Mycroft held her on his lap, his big hands around her small ones so the string wouldn't escape. But Redbeard came, and she got angry. So much anger inside a tiny body. I was afraid. Not of what she would do to me, but of what was happening to her. I asked Mycroft why she wasn't like us. He said he didn't know. He never admitted that about anything else.

After that, Redbeard disappeared, and my sister went away, but she'd been gone for ages before the doctors put her in their white van. She'd gone inside herself, where nobody could reach her.

I felt lonelier than I'd ever felt in my life. My parents walked around in a daze, and Mycroft took care of me, raised me the rest of the way. I suppose that's why he was so angry the day he found me high for the first time. It was because he'd tried so hard.

I blocked her out, until my brain consumed my memories, blotting her out of my life, forgetfulness engulfing us like a distance that can never be bridged.

But she came to me anyway. She was in every child I saved, every person who came to me hurt and confused by their family's rejection. I could not turn away the ones who reminded me of Eurus, even though I did not know why.

I walked toward her before I even remembered she existed. The people I helped, I helped for her sake.

She knows that, now, the way she understands everything about me except the most important thing—she still doesn't understand the difference between laughing and screaming. She played a horrible game with me and laughed on the outside, but inside she was screaming all along.

Once upon a time, an army doctor taught me that we don't grow strong by being alone, that we can only find out who we truly are by spending ourselves for somebody else. He spent himself to be my friend, and in return I spent myself to be a brother.

I held her.

You might think that we are further apart now, that the closest we could ever be was locked into each other's embrace. But that was only the beginning. For my sister and me, closeness is not found in touch or words or even proximity. It's found in the mind.

Twice more, three times, a fourth visit and a fifth. Finally, she picks up her violin.

I play for her; she plays for me. We play together. All she ever wanted was to play together.

Glass is all that separates us now, and we are closer than we've ever been.