character study: mycroft holmes
Mycroft has always liked having power.
He’s not ashamed to admit it. Mycroft likes the power because it gives him freedom - as much as Sherlock may want to deny it, he and his brother are almost scarily similar (personality-wise, at least); the key difference being that Sherlock never was one to give in to social niceties, while Mycroft sees them as a way to get what he wants. Mycroft uses power as a synonym for freedom, and uses said freedom to experiment, same as Sherlock, though on a larger scale: What would happen if the traffic lights on so-and-so intersection malfunctioned at 8 a.m. on a Monday, he’ll ask, or What will John do if I tell him this and not that, or How can I put a hundred corpses on a bombed plane with no one the wiser. The adrenaline rush makes Sherlock’s serial-murder high look like that of John with too much jam: impressive, but short-lived and ultimately meaningless.
And Sherlock thinks he just likes bossing people around.