"Read it again!"

"Sherlock, I've only read the last half of it tonight and it's taken nearly an hour. Mummy is going to be very cross if you are not asleep very soon. You can read it yourself tomorrow if you like. Now, are you going to be good and go to sleep?" Mycroft disentangled himself from his brother's grasp and walked towards the door, carefully placing the collection of stories by Edgar Allen Poe on the nightstand with Sherlock's other current books, 'Treasure Island,' 'The Widow Lerouge,' and 'Robinson Crusoe.' Such a funny little collection for such an odd little boy.

"Mycroft!"

"Yes, Sherlock?" This was a game Sherlock tried to play every night.

"Can I have a glass of water?"

"May I have a glass, and yes, I'll get you one."

"May I have a biscuit?"

"No, you may not. You've already brushed your teeth, and we've discussed the effects of sugar left on teeth." Mycroft turned to go once more, flicking out the overhead light as he went.

"Mycroft!"

"Yes, Sherlock?" He knew what was coming this time.

"Leave the door open a little. I don't like the dark."

"I know, Sherlock." Sherlock would never admit that he was afraid of the dark, just that he didn't like it, but it was part of the game they played.

"Mycroft?"

This was really going too far. "YES, Sherlock?" replied Mycroft with a slight huff of impatience. He had lessons to do and he had indulged his little brother far too long.

"Mycroft, are there really monsters? I know you said that things like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster don't exist, but Mummy was talking to her friend today on the phone and she said that there was a monster in London and he should be thtopped."

Mycroft turned back to his brother, "First, the word is stopped, not thtopped, ess, ssss. Be careful." He had nearly broken Sherlock of the lisp, but it slipped in when Sherlock was tired. He paused, wondering how much truth the seven year old could safely be told. Sherlock had a fairly wild imagination and a very morbid curiosity. "There are no supernatural monsters like the kind in story books, but there are sometimes very bad people who do very bad things, and there have been some murders in London and that's what Mummy was talking about."

"Just like in my story!" See, there was the problem. Sherlock was altogether too gleeful about things like murders.

"Yes, just like in the story, and the police detectives will catch the criminal, the monster, and he won't be able to hurt anyone again."

"I want to be a police detective when I grow up."

"Oh, Sherlock, you are far too clever to become a policeman. There is a great deal about their job that is very boring and you wouldn't like it. I thought you wanted to be a scientist."

"Can't I do both? And anyway, I could be an independent detective like Dupin."

"Goodnight, Sherlock."

By the time Mycroft had gone downstairs, gotten a juice glass, filled it with water and come back upstairs, Sherlock was asleep, curled up into himself, small thumb next to his mouth, but not in it. Between Mycroft and Mummy and Daddy, that bad habit had been broken. His ratty old stuffed giraffe was next to him. Mycroft quietly placed the glass of water on the nightstand behind the small row of toy soldiers that were presumably guarding Sherlock from the dark. For all his intelligence, Sherlock was still just a very little boy, in some ways socially younger than other boys his age, but people often forgot that because he was so clever. Mycroft knew what that felt like.

He sat down on the bed for a moment, listening to the tiny whistle of Sherlock's breath running through the space of a missing tooth and thought about what a chore it was to watch Sherlock (three Nanny's by the age of five), but also how hard it was to be Sherlock. He hoped that Sherlock would grow into it, to being more sociable, aware of the niceties of polite interaction, but while Mycroft had learned social skills when he'd started school, learned the value of passing for normal, Sherlock seemed worse after he'd begun school, finding himself either miserable and alone, or the subject of rather brutal bullying.

Seven years was a big difference in age. When Sherlock was born Mycroft had been very displeased with his parents. It seemed terrible that they had been up to those things that he'd seen in that book he'd gotten down from the high shelf and looked at when Auntie got pregnant and no one would tell him what that meant. What a horribly messy design it was. Surely Daddy and Mummy didn't enjoy doing THAT. But that was how babies were made, apparently, so obviously they had done it twice.

And then, there was the thing itself, the baby. Annoying and loud and time-consuming for everyone. Mycroft stared down at the tiny, red thing in its bassinette and said, "Stay out of my way, and we'll be fine."

But Sherlock hadn't stayed out of his way. As soon as Sherlock could walk and talk he was at Mycroft's heels. And that hadn't gone well.

It had seemed like such a good idea. Nanny had asked Mycroft to watch the baby for just a few minutes while she went out for a smoke. Mummy didn't know that she smoked and Nanny bribed Mycroft to keep that a secret, so Mycroft had stared at the toddler, and the toddler had started to run around the room and Mycroft really didn't have the time for this. And somehow it turned out that wrapping the baby's arms in bubble wrap and using a bungee cord from Mycroft's bicycle to tether him to the crib was not a good idea. Or so everyone else seemed to think. Mycroft thought it a smashing idea. If the baby couldn't hurt himself or go very far, then no one would have to watch him and they could fire that annoying Nanny because Mycroft certainly didn't need a Nanny anymore, after all, they tethered Ella, their Pembroke Welsh Corgi when she was outside. But no, Mycroft was sent to his room and many discussions were held about how could he think that was a good idea at his age, and didn't he love his little brother, all of which seemed utterly irrelevant to the fact that Sherlock had seemed to enjoy it, giggling and zigzagging until the bungee would snap him back onto his little diapered bum, and it had kept him out of trouble and out of Mycroft's way for a whole fifteen minutes. At least that Nanny had been fired.

But somehow, between three and four, when Sherlock became a little person instead of a messy needy thing, Mycroft had grown rather fond of the little bugger, especially as everyone else seemed to like Sherlock or understand him less and less as he became verbal. And Mycroft remembered that, the way people seemed to stare at you more and more but avoid you as well when you told them when they were lying or being stupid or any of the other things which seemed so obvious to Mycroft.

So Mycroft didn't grumble when he was working at his desk and a little mop of unruly curls would appear over the edge of the desk, followed by blue/grey eyes as Sherlock stood on tiptoe to watch him.

"Wha'cha doin'?"

"I'm trying to decipher a code that my Russian pen-pal sent me." It was in the Cyrillic alphabet which was annoying but not impossible.

"Why?"

"Because it's fun."

"Can I help?"

"No, probably not…but you can look." So Mycroft lifted his little brother into his lap and showed him the letters and told him how in other parts of the world people spoke different languages and sometimes they used different alphabets until Sherlock grew fussy and got down.

"Mycroft? Can I help with codes when I get older?"

"I suppose so."

"Promith?"

Mycroft paused. He had resolved to never lie to his brother as people had lied to him and breaking a promise was as good as a lie. He worried that Sherlock would remember the promise as he got older.

"Yes. And the word is prahm-es. Ess, remember? Tongue in the bottom of the mouth, not the top."

"Ok," and he toddled away, dragging the silly stuffed giraffe (G'raff) that was nearly as tall as he was behind him.

Mycroft liked order. His room was precisely maintained with everything in its place, from his trainers when he came home from school to his books (alphabetized with non-fiction in one bookshelf and fiction in another and reference above his desk), and even to his pens and desk tools.

Sherlock tossed things into heaps. Books, crayons, clothes, toys—often broken and discarded. So when Mycroft got home from school and found his room ransacked, pens mussed about and several missing, a large corner ripped off of his blotter, and broken crackers on the rug he took only a moment before striding forcefully into Sherlock's room.

"SHERLOCK."

Sherlock lay on his stomach, bent legs kicking in the air as he drew on a piece of poster board with Mycroft's pens and highlighters. "Mmm?" he said, having just stuffed a handful of crackers into his mouth.

"You took my things and messed up my room! We've talked about this."

"Mm mmmed em."

"Chew slowly and then swallow."

"I NEEDED them."

"You don't get to take other people's things just because you need them. You ask politely."

"You weren't home and people say no."

"If they aren't home you wait, and if they say no, then you thank them anyway and GO AWAY."

"Boring and thtupid. I need them NOW."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Sherlock, grow up," Mycroft huffed and stalked out the door.

Mycroft loved history. He was good in all subjects, but it was history that made him happiest. He loved studying strategies and rises and falls of governments, from Churchill, to the Napoleonic Wars, to the Crusades. Everything that happened seemed explained by tracking history. He and his friends played Risk but after they had exhausted all possibilities of the standard game, they redrew the map to depict different times, just after World War II, for instance when India was still a British colony and the state of Israel hadn't been created, or before World War I, or even to the days when the United States was divided by the different empires. They made treaties and alliances and broke them.

Mycroft was disappointed after his friends moved on to Dungeons and Dragons, but then he discovered that being Dungeon Master offered him a chance to create simple languages and codes for each player and to wildly increase the excitement and difficulty of the games. When his friends moved on from that, Mycroft didn't follow. He enjoyed his own company and his books far too much. Friends were merely a means to an end.

He tried desperately to show Sherlock the importance of history but Sherlock was simply not interested. He could see no point in discovering what had happened in the past (which seemed to include anything from last Thursday to the dawn of time) despite Mycroft's insistence that studying history explained the present.

"But Mycroft, if we can't thee Napoleon then we don't really know if it was just stomach pains that caused him to try and conquer Europe."

"No, but we can extrapolate from all of the available evidence."

"But that's just geth- guessing!"

Sherlock believed in empirical evidence, preferably what he had gathered for himself.

They were lying under the big oak in the yard, Mycroft reclining against the trunk reading a fascinating biography of Mansfield Smith-Cumming. Sherlock was sitting cross-legged, shoes and socks discarded (the boy really liked to be bare-foot), digging in the dirt with a stick.

"Mycroft, if I ate a bug, would I get sick?"

"It depends on the bug," said Mycroft distractedly, still deep in the history of 'C.' In some cultures eating bugs- Sherlock! Have you eaten a bug?"

"No, just wond'rin'. We eat other odd things, why not bugs?"

"There are many things we do not eat, such as grass or tree bark."

"Yeah, grass is gross and hard to chew."

"You've. Eaten. Grass?"

"Last week."

"Sherlock, promise me that you will never eat anything again that isn't on a plate."

"What if I put the bug on a plate?"

"NO! Only eat things that an adult or I have put on a plate for you."

"Biscuits and chips aren't on plates."

"Sherlock, try to use your very clever brain and stop being so annoying!"

Sherlock smirked. Sometimes Mycroft wondered if his brother liked to wind him up because he knew he was the only one who could.

Then there was the death of Ella. She was old. Mycroft had grown up with her by his side. It wasn't a surprise, but everything is a surprise to a child.

So they stood, Mummy, Nanny, Mycroft and Sherlock, by the small grave that the gardener had dug with the box inside it and the gardener waiting to fill it back in.

Mummy talked about what a good dog she'd been and how they'd all miss her and then turned to Sherlock to see if he wanted to say anything.

And dry-eyed, Sherlock asked, "Why do we put her in a box in the ground? We could put her in the attic and then I could go up and see her."

Seeing where this was going, Mycroft jumped in, "Sherlock, many cultures bury their dead as a way to honor them. It gives us a permanent place to go and think of them. Some cultures burn the bodies."

"Oh," then as the clever little brain worked through things it had observed, "oh, does that mean she gets all runny like the squirrel we—" at which point Mycroft grabbed his little brother up in his arms and ran with him to the tree house, shoved him up the ladder and clambered up behind him. He'd seen the growing horror on both Mummy's and Nanny's face, which was a pity as this one was rather nice, and had decided that discussing putrefaction with his little brother at Ella's gravesite was not going to be counted as normal and would rather reinforce the opinion that Sherlock might need to go to a special school, that he was a freak or a monster who didn't feel things like other children.

They didn't know that Sherlock had come running to him that morning yelling that Ella wasn't moving and wouldn't wake up and Mummy had said that she was dead and that meant broken, so Mycroft had to fix her because Mycroft fixed everything.

And when Mycroft had caught the little flailing fists and knelt down and said that dead things, things that had once been living, couldn't be fixed, not like that, Sherlock had fallen into his arms sobbing.

"But doctor's fixed you when you broke your arm?" Sherlock finally snuffled.

"Yes, but I wasn't badly broken. When living things get old or really hurt they run out of energy to power themselves and nothing can fix that."

"But whyyyy?"

"Nobody really knows, but smart people have been working on it for, well, for all of man's history."

"I'm going to fix it when I grow up!"

"I hope you do, little brother, I really do." And then Mycroft had cried for awhile, because Ella had been his dog, and that had all been fine and normal but that was between them, and didn't involve other people.

Once in the tree house Mycroft said, "Yes, bodies decompose, de-com-pose, and turn slimy when oxygen and blood aren't moving in them."

"Like stagnant water is more gross than running water?"

"Exactly like."

"Why?"

"Because bodies are made up of chemicals and chemical reactions. We've talked about this before. "

"Like baking soda and vinegar?" pause, then eyes wide, "is Ella going to explode?"

"No, no, no! Different kind of chemical reaction, more like…when we soaked that egg in vinegar for a day and the shell dissolved. Things break down. Ok?"

"Ok."

"And Sherlock, don't dig Ella up to see, ok? It isn't nice to see something or someone you cared about like that. Remember her as she was when she was running across the lawn and happy."

"Ok."

But sometimes Sherlock would surprise Mycroft with his experiments, by where his mind seemed to go, leaning towards a fanciful streak that seemed otherwise out of character. Like the broken mirror.

Mycroft had been studying and then there had been the crash of broken glass, and a plaintive and confused little voice calling, "Mycroft?"

So Mycroft rushed into the bathroom to see his little brother standing amidst a destroyed mirror looking with fascination at the triangle of glass that was sticking out of his left palm.

Mycroft's brilliant mind went into high speed:

Cut in skin appearing to be 3 centimeters in length, which could cause major damage, but based on other angles (50 degrees and 20 degrees) the angle of that corner very wide, say 110 degrees, so not very deep, not penetrating all the way through hand—good, unless corner is jagged, not actual triangle, but fingers still wiggling so likely no actual muscle or tendon damage, small miracle, possible chipped bone, will have to be x-rayed to know for sure, Sherlock not yet feeling pain, body blocking pain to protect, will dissipate in probably 30 seconds, maybe less, yank glass straight out or leave in, probably more damage if it tears out by itself, so pull straight out, perpendicular.

He yanked the glass out of Sherlock's palm and thrust his brother's hand under the faucet, flicking it on. And at that moment Sherlock began to scream in one giant solid tone like some all clear signal. Screaming was good; in actual severe trauma the body generally couldn't muster the focus for a scream, whimpering or moaning instead. Mycroft wrapped Sherlock's bleeding hand and grabbed his brother around the waist, hoisting him up on his hip. Sherlock instinctively wrapped his good arm around his brother's neck but the screaming went on unabated, directly in Mycroft's ear.

Mycroft dashed down the stairs, struggling to hold onto the railing-wouldn't do to go tumbling down with both of them—yelling "Mummy" at the top of his lungs, as if she couldn't hear her youngest son screaming, pausing only to drag another lungful of air and then resuming at the same insane pitch.

Sherlock continued screaming during the twenty minute ride to A&E, refusing to let go of Mycroft, and continued to do so while they were seen and the Doctor had to spray saline over the now crusty towel to get it off, finally stopping and letting go of Mycroft only after the local had been injected and the Doctor began the stitches, by which point Mycroft thought that he might never get the ringing out of his ear. But Sherlock became quite entranced with the stitching process and when offered a sucker at the end asked if he could have the needle and some thread instead.

"He wants to be a doctor," Mycroft explained lamely as he pocketed the sucker.

"Oh," said the Doctor," well maybe Mummy will let you play with her needle and thread on your stuffed animals, hm?"

Sherlock didn't play with any stuffed animals except G'raff and Mummy didn't believe in sexist stereotypes, so Mycroft felt both of them bristling and wondered if he would ever have some peace in his life with Sherlock in it.

At home Sherlock immediately wanted to take the dressing off to examine the wound in detail, but was deterred by everyone in succession.

"Sherlock, how did you break the mirror?"

"Threw a baseball at it."

"What for?"

"See if it went through."

"See if it went…? Oh, right. No more fantasy stories for you. Is that why I found you asleep in the closet last week?"

"Yes. It didn't seem physically possible…and it's not."

"No, it isn't. I'm sorry."

"'S'all right. Mycroft, if there really was a Narnia, I'd take you with me.

"I know, Sherlock. I'd take you with me to."

When Mycroft was reading to him that night, a very sleepy Sherlock on painkillers still kept working at the bandages.

"Sherlock, stop that, or I shall have to bind you to the bed."

"Mummy said you did that once before and you got in trouble. Why did you do it?"

"For the same reason that I would do it now, because you are a willful, annoying and disobedient boy."

"That thounds nice," mumbled Sherlock as he slid down on his pillow.

And then, there was just the plain stupidity.

Mycroft came into the sitting room to find Sherlock splayed on the couch playing…with the Atari? Daddy had brought it home for Christmas saying that it was the newest thing and that the boys, well Sherlock, Mycroft might be too old, would love it, because everyone else's children loved it. The boys had stared at it and politely thanked their father and it had gone on the shelf beneath the telly and been forgotten. Until today, six months later.

"What on earth are you doing?" asked Mycroft staring at the black screen with its colored lines and explosive sounds.

"Defending my bases, I think. Mainly I'm just aiming at the dots and pressing the red button."

"But why."

"Daddy told Mummy that it was so disappointing that neither of us played with it like normal children."

"You heard him say this?"

"No, figured it out from the way they weren't talking at breakfast."

"How long have you been playing?"

"'Bout two hours, I think. Thumb's going numb."

"Well, stop playing. Is it any fun?"

"No, no challenge, just gets faster and faster until you can't move fast enough. But it makes a kind of blankness in my head that's sort of nice."

"Shove over. I want to sit on the couch."

"It'll break my streak."

"If you don't shove over I shall knock you over."

Sherlock didn't move and so Mycroft swung Sherlock's legs off the couch and gave Sherlock a push that knocked him over and Sherlock, still frantically trying to keep pushing the red button, kicked out and caught Mycroft squarely in the stomach causing him to fall back with an oof.

Mycroft lunged at Sherlock again and realized that the jumper that Sherlock was wearing was far too long and the sleeves were rolled up. "Is that my SWEATER?" he roared.

"Cold," replied Sherlock still trying to save the last of his bases.

"Right, that's it." Mycroft lunged again and then Sherlock was shoving at his face to get him off and somewhere in there the sweater let go at the shoulder seam and Mycroft screamed in frustration, "You little monster!"

As soon as he said it he regretted it, but you can't call back a word once said. He saw the betrayal in Sherlock's eyes, that Mycroft would say such a cruel word, one that had been thrown at him so many times by others, but never Mycroft.

After that, several things happened in quick succession. One, Sherlock whacked Mycroft in the head with the joystick, not hard enough to do real damage, but certainly enough to leave a bump. Then someone's (neither boy admitted to being sure whose when questioned later) leg swung out and caught the wooden bowl filled with apples that was sitting on the coffee table. The bowl wobbled lazily and tipped over, dumping apples onto the floor before bumping against the Atari console and knocking it into the floor which did two things at once: tore the wires from the Atari and ripped the joystick out of Sherlock's hands. The joystick clattered over the coffee table leaving a spider web crack across the glass.

Both boys froze, gazing at the carnage. They let each other go, got up and walked around the table to stare down at the broken toy. Sherlock poked at it with his toe.

"I could probably fix it," offered Mycroft, although he wasn't sure why, "if you wanted me to."

"Nah, it was naff. At least now they'll know that I played with it," replied Sherlock in a surprisingly calm voice. He picked up an apple and wondered off, pausing only to put the apple in his mouth to shuck Mycroft's ripped sweater and toss it onto the floor in the hall before heading off eating his apple.

Mycroft sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands. For the first time in years, probably since before he was Sherlock's age, he had an urge to scream in frustration, whether at Sherlock or at himself he didn't know. Well, better go get Mummy and get this over with.

Both boys were punished by being sent to their rooms, which was an empty penalty since both boys had lots of books and liked their rooms. Discussions were held in which it seemed to be believed that Mycroft had attacked Sherlock for wearing his jumper and Mycroft was chided for being so childish and Sherlock was punished for thinking he could hit his brother with a hard object no matter what the provocation.

Mycroft sat on his bed reading. He'd locked the door even though he wasn't supposed to (Sherlock's lock had been removed already). There was a tiny little knocking at the door followed by the door handle being tried and then silence.

A half an hour later a piece of paper slipped under the door. It read:

Sorry I hit you

Sorry about your sweater

Don't be mad at me, please

S

Mycroft stared at the note for a long time because he knew what depths of introspection it had cost his brother to write it. Finally he unlocked the door and walked to his brother's room. Sherlock sat on the bed reading.

They looked at each other for a moment. Everything, every outside hurt, every bit of cruelty and stupidity they had encountered at other's hands expressed in that look.

"Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?"