A/N: This was written in response to a prompt on the Sherlock livejournal kinkmeme. The request was made for a story wherein Moran kidnaps Mycroft and forces the latest "it" drug on him. Mycroft, now completely addicted and dependent on this drug, is then dumped on Sherlock's doorstep, with a note pinned to him that says, "For Jim."

This is a revised version of what was posted on livejournal.

6/13/12: I've noticed several formatting issues. The problems seem fixed in my doc manager but do not appear to be fixed online, so I'm guessing the fault lies with the website and not my brainlessness (hurrah). Just please keep in mind that any extra spacing between paragraphs will more than likely coincide with a change in POV, which I've tried to express via line-breaks, but with which the website insists on screwing. My apologies.

The Unspoken Things We Have Said

His brother's skin is covered in cold sweat. It is pale (always), and it is repellant to touch. But Sherlock's hand does not move from his brother's forehead. The chair is uncomfortable. He does not shift. His brother clutches at the sheets, eyes screwed shut, breathing through his nose, strangely placid and controlled while his body shudders and cramps.

Tuesday night. 1:22 am. John is asleep upstairs. A creature of habit and discipline, he will wake up at 5:30 am, which means Sherlock has four hours to figure out what to say to him.

A passing car's headlamps glide a yellow glow across the walls, across his face, across the ceiling, and disappear.

Sherlock sits in the dark and listens to London while his brother twitches, gasps, burns.

"You want to know how I did it, don't you? You want to know how I got past all your black suits and cameras, how I slipped in and snatched you away." His mouth warps into a grin. His eyes carry something furious. He grabs Mycroft's lapel with a strong, shaking fist (so tight the veins are all standing at attention, open, ready, full) and leans in and his teeth shine in the fluorescent light. "I have news for you, Mr. Holmes: you are mine. You will always be mine. I am going...I am going to make you burn."

"Why?" Mycroft asks, and even though he doesn't mean to – he knows how to negotiate, he isn't stupid, he has spent years refining this weapon of conversation – the word still lags a bit, gets drawled into something almost, almost smug. Habit. He winces, just a little.

Sebastian Moran slowly releases his coat, peeling his fingers from the fabric one by one, and takes two steps back. He appraises Mycroft with a steady eye. "I'm really doing this for your brother, you know." His air is refined and polite, miles away from the barely-restrained rage of a moment ago. Cool, not cold. The professor, explaining himself to a disappointing student. "Sherlock. The one who put a bullet through Jim's brain. But you're in it, too, and just as much to blame, so why not kill two vultures with one stone? I'm doing what you're best at, Mycroft Holmes."

"Oh?" Mycroft raises one eyebrow, blinks a few times. He is genuinely curious. He understands the danger he is in (plastic ties biting into his wrists and ankles, seated in the middle of an empty warehouse), but there is a bit of ice water that runs through the Holmes' veins, and it keeps him level, compels him to ask, acquire, know. Push for some control even when it seems it has been wrested entirely away. "And what is that?"

Moran sets his jaw. "Using people." He shakes his head. "I am going to use you. I am going to burn your brother to the ground, and you will be my match." He clasps his hands behind his back. He is still shaking his head. "It won't be enough to satisfy me - but it will be a start."

"Don't...don't let them see me."

Sherlock presses the cold, wet washcloth to his brother's face. "I won't. But you have to be quiet. John is upstairs."

"How..."

"Quiet."

His brother blows out a trembling breath. He is shaking from head to toe. "How long?"

Detoxing is a process they are both familiar with, in their own ways. This isn't cocaine (it is worse) but the progression is much the same. Sherlock purses his lips. "Days."

His brother quakes with a shiver. "Have...work to do."

Sherlock glances at the clock on his bedside table. 2:46.

"Stop talking," he says. "You'll wake John."

He is blindfolded. An oxygen mask is placed over his mouth (they are not giving him oxygen). He breathes, knowing that resistance is pointless. This is a battle he has already lost.

Something acidic curls into his nose.

His heart begins to race.

Day one, he thinks.

His brother's fever has worsened. Sherlock frowns at the digital readout and then looks down at his brother, who is staring up at him, glassy-eyed, waiting.

"103.4. Not good. Mycroft...maybe-"

"Not to worry," his brother rasps. "You once peaked at 106 in hospital. It will pass."

Sherlock fights to keep the fear out of his voice, and his mouth nearly tremors with the effort. "I was much younger, then. Perhaps it would be wise-"

"No. No hospitals. No doctors." His voice is firm despite the sheen of sweat covering his face, despite the breathlessness. "I have your word on that, remember?"

"Yes," Sherlock replies. He sets down the thermometer and holds out another ice chip. His brother takes it with a cupped hand, not able to trust his fingers (careful, deft, accomplished) to do the job properly. He sighs when the ice hits his tongue.

"We've been through this before," he says, eyes closed, tone reassuring while his voice drifts, fades. "We know how to handle these things."

The euphoria is like nothing else he's ever experienced. He was never one for cheap thrills. Adrenaline was always a messy complication to be avoided, not a destination to be desperate for. He and Sherlock are so different that way.

Now it doesn't matter. Whether he wanted it or not, the earthquake is rolling through, and he is powerless to stop it.

His limbs are too weak to keep his body upright. Sherlock holds Mycroft up while his brother vomits into the toilet. The retching noise echoes against the tile. His brother's body shakes, and shakes, and shakes. He stammers and mumbles, and it almost sounds like a sob.

"Quiet," Sherlock snaps, tightening his hold. "I'm not going anywhere."

He sees gleaming eyes, glittering smiles. He sees a gray sky. He tries not to hunch over in his seat, but the room is so cold, and the shivering curls his body into itself. He needs something to do. He is kinetic, crackling with energy. His blood cells are rabid dogs, and they are running wild, in every direction, up and down and up and down and bursting right just almost out of his skin.

The walls are too close. He will bounce off them, and break. He will shatter into a million pieces.

He wants to.

He is dying to break.

John tromps lazily down the stairs in his dressing gown and greets him with a frown. "You look terrible," he says on his way to the kitchen.

"Didn't sleep," Sherlock answers. John pauses just inside the kitchen. Looks back. His frown relaxes into something more neutral, and Sherlock can read it so perfectly, the shifting awareness, the realization.

"You never sleep." Sherlock looks away. Tightens his hands into fists. "Sherlock..."

"Something happened last night," he says. He takes a deep breath, blows it out. "Mycroft..."

John takes a step toward him. "What happened - is everything alright?"

Sherlock has to wait for his throat to loosen before he can answer. "No."

The last five hours were a blur until this point, a dream, much like everything that happens when you are awake and when other people are asleep. But now everyone is awake, everyone that matters. The time for dreams is over. The day has begun. John is in the kitchen doorway with his dressing gown loosely belted and his socks half-on, and now -

Now it is real. Sherlock glances about the room and suddenly feels as if he is coming out of his skin.

It is a very clever plan, Mycroft thinks. Very effective. He tells Moran this once some unknown measure of time after the kidnapping (he doesn't even know when it's day or night, has no way to keep track of the hours), tells him with a congenial smile and adds a small, heartfelt Bravo. Moran had only stared. Mycroft thinks with no little pride that he perhaps unnerved his captor with that genuine admiration. Thinks maybe he cracked Moran's confidence a bit, showed him how hard it is to make a Holmes bleed.

The bleeding will come later, he knows. But Moran will not be around to see it, and that's what counts when it comes to things like this.

Enough time has passed for his brother to compose himself – to bathe, to put on clean clothes, to lie in Sherlock's bed with the blankets just so, presenting a picture of convalescence suitable for a man of his breeding – so that when Sherlock finally lets John into his bedroom, his brother can put up a tired smile and say politely, "Dr. Watson. Pleased to see you, as always, though the circumstances are a bit...unusual."

John did what John does when Sherlock first explained: question and sputter and quietly rant, and now that it's out of his system he perches on the side of the bed and settles in to business. Once the examination is over, he blinks at the wall (composing himself, adjusting to this new reality that Sherlock has brought him into) and says to Mycroft, "You've not gone through the worst of it, unfortunately" - letting it be stated but unsaid that he knows what must have gone on during the night, knows and understands and is putting it to rest - "but...physically, you should recover just fine, and – for the rest of it...well, you've got resources. I'm sure your...people will know what to do."

"Thank you, John," Sherlock says quietly, in just such a tone, and with just such a look, that John sits silent for a moment, and then smiles tightly at Mycroft, and gives Sherlock just such a look of his own, and leaves the room.

"That was...not as distasteful as I had feared it would be," Mycroft says with a delicate grimace. He picks at the blanket for a moment and then lifts his eyes to Sherlock's. "He's right, you know. About this not being the worst of it."

Sherlock clenches his jaw and looks away and says nothing. There was no reprimand in his brother's words this time, no subtle reference to the chaos of their youth and the mess Sherlock kept making of it, no and we'd know all about that, wouldn't we – it's not there, no matter how much Sherlock tries to find it. "I suppose..." Mycroft adds, trailing off. Sherlock looks back at him. His brother is picking at the blanket again. "I suppose there is reason to be grateful that you are an expert on so many subjects, Sherlock." He lifts his chin, and then his gaze, dragging it up, turning reluctance into something refined and almost graceful. "Your help-"

"Don't, Mycroft."

His brother is silent. Any obedience he gives is normally just a shadow thrown by his condescension, but not now. Not now. He looks nearly chastened. Sherlock feels the silence wrap around them both. "We don't need those things said," he murmurs.

His brother nods slowly, once, twice.

"The next six months will be especially difficult," Sherlock continues, staring at the wall across from him, hands in the pockets of his dressing gown, speaking as if reciting a memorized list. "You will not be yourself. Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, tremors, spasms, respiratory infections, fatigue, perhaps even hallucinations. This will be compounded by your position in the world, the feeling that you have a reputation to uphold..."

"One can never prepare for something like this," his brother answers with a wistful air. "Yet I hope that in the coming months I will not reveal myself to be a weak man."

Sherlock feels something cold settle beneath his skin. He stiffens. "We are not weak men," he replies - certain. Defiant.

He has lost all track of time. It could have been weeks since he was brought to this place, maybe only days. Probably weeks. Mycroft understands Moran's game perfectly – addiction and withdrawal. He is no expert on illicit drugs despite having such a second-hand history with them - after all, Sherlock's episodes were always limited to cocaine and heroin, which does not even skim the surface of what the world has to offer – but he knows enough of Moran's aim to understand some basic facts: the drug must not be so unstable as to be lethal; it must be severely addictive; and it must have long-term physiologic and/or psychological effects. Simple. Throw a man into a tornado, and leave him to pick up the pieces of what was destroyed. Addiction. Withdrawal.

Mycroft finds it interesting (and just a bit cliché) that Moran has not chosen to kill him. But revenge does strange things to people. Makes them less stable, more stupid. Mycroft promises himself that he will not give in to his own faint desire for revenge. When this is over, he will not make Moran's mistake – he will not let emotions overtake his intellect.

He is already planning how precisely he will go about the business of destroying and dissecting Moran and his organization when the black gloves and the mask come again, and he breathes the fumes, and all thoughts turn to strangeness, and distort, and disappear.

His brother never texts. He prefers to talk – everyone knows this. Sherlock has been gnashing his teeth at the inconvenience of speaking with his brother for years, but Mycroft hasn't changed and neither has Sherlock – not really. Only he makes allowances now. Shifts, without thought. Mycroft calls, and Sherlock answers.

"You dream, don't you," he asks, after his brother has made his demands disguised as polite requests (yet another government official has lost something valuable, oh boo hoo, Sherlock thinks, dismissing the case while knowing at the same time that he'll take it because things have Changed).

"That's not why I called, Sherlock," Mycroft answers carefully.

"I should call them nightmares, actually. They probably won't go away for another few months."

There is silence on the other end of the line. And then: "And how did you cope?"

"I didn't sleep."

"Ah. And the point of this bit of advice would be..."

"I don't...I don't really have any advice. I'm...informing you."

"I see."

Sherlock huffs a frustrated sigh, and then snarls at the phone (at himself) when he realizes that his brother must have heard it. "Forewarned is forearmed," Mycroft says soothingly (yes, he heard it). "I am in the business of both. I therefore understand the value of reliable information." He pauses. Sherlock thinks he is about to end the call, when he hears, "I do appreciate the effort, brother. It makes it...easier, knowing that you've gone before me in this."

"I did it by choice," Sherlock blurts before he can stop himself. The anger he has been keeping leashed snaps out, bites. "You had this done to you. If I had found Moran in time-"

He cuts himself off. It isn't logical to blame himself. Moran had just as much reason to attack Mycroft as he did Sherlock. He has told himself this many times because it is the truth, plain and indisputable, but sometimes it isn't enough. Sometimes it doesn't answer all the questions. Sometimes he knows, a plain and indisputable truth, that it is his fault.

But what a stupid thing to say aloud. Sentiment. False reasoning.

"I wouldn't dare ask for a better brother than you," Mycroft says.

He is neither being wry nor facetious. The words come out calmly and precisely. Not mumbled, not hurried, as if he is embarrassed. Serious. Honest. "Now you will take that case, won't you? You may involve John, since you will insist on it anyway. I'll call tomorrow evening to get an update. Goodnight, Sherlock."

The line goes dead. Sherlock puts away his phone and is distantly aware that his breathing has turned shallow, and his eyes are burning.

The worst part is the degradation of it all. The physical symptoms are tortuous, yes, but not being in control of himself, of his own mind, is nearly more than he can bear. He dreads what will come next. He knows these smells, knows these sounds – even with his brain knocking like a bad engine, he can deduct exactly where Moran's men have taken him.

He must be sure of one thing, he thinks as he is dumped on the floor outside Sherlock's door: he must be sure to show as little weakness as possible. Not for his own sake, of course. For his brother's.

Sherlock has always been the more human one. Mycroft reminds himself that it is a gift, and readies himself for the opening of the door.

"The tremor seems to have turned intermittent. My doctor holds hope that it may disappear altogether one day."

"John's did."

"John is an extraordinary man."

With anybody else, this would be the perfect opening. So are you, someone else would say. And the response would be a tsk, and a No, well...I just do what I can.

Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes are not "anybody." Mycroft is not looking for confirmation; he is only stating a relevant fact. Sherlock does not see an opportunity to reassure; he is looking over his shoulder at his flatmate (standing in the kitchen, the kettle's about to boil), and silently agreeing with said fact.

"And everything else?" he asks, not bothered by the asking of a such a question, and what it implies. He got fed up with feeling awkward about caring for his brother some months ago. It was tedious keeping up those old habits. This is much more efficient.

"Much the same, I'm afraid," Mycroft answers, as if they are talking of the weather and not the dwindling symptoms of amphetamine withdrawal. "Some days are better than others. No pattern to it that I can figure out."

Sherlock makes a noise of agreement. His brother then asks about a file that has gone missing, and Sherlock busies himself with lying about not knowing a thing about it. The same games they always play, round and around. Mycroft lets him go with a warning that, "important documents do not go missing for long," Sherlock gives a snotty reply about being completely unconcerned with the matter, and they hang up with one more revolution of their orbits completed.

"How is he, then?" John asks as he hands over a cup of tea.

"Slight improvement. These things take time."

"Right. And...and you?"

Sherlock pauses with the cup just near his lips. Steam curls over his skin. In his mind's eye, he sees a shivering body curled up against the front door, a picture (a heart, engulfed in flames) and a note: For Jim.

"We've been through this before," he replies, voice distant but sure. "We know how to handle these things."