I'm on a roll
Title: Dreaming of Forgiveness
Pairing: Mycroft/John, past Sherlock/John
Rating:: R for dark themes
Warnings: Character Death (off camera), Drug Paraphilia, Coercion, False Imprisonment, and Mycroft at his creepiest and most vengeful.
Word Count: 3600
Summary: When Sherlock dies in an explosion, John blames himself and Mycroft blames John as well.
A/N: I so totally enjoy whumping John. It's wrong, and I'm a bad person.
When Mycroft came to visit, he wasn't smiling. John took in the serious look on his face and two files in his hand, then slumped in the metal chair and held his breath. He stared down at the interrogation table. He tried not to fiddle with the shackles on his legs or the cuffs on his hands.
Mycroft sat down on the chair opposite him and put both folders out in front of John, like a man laying out cards. John stared. They were identical on the outside. Same file number, same name: JOHN WATSON. He wasn't sure what to do. Was he supposed to pick one? Read both?
He really couldn't care about either folder. What he wanted to know was spelled out over Mycroft's face. He couldn't look up. He couldn't bear to look the man in the eye again.
"My team of medical examiners confirmed that the corpse belonged to Sherlock. Dental records and DNA match."
John shut his eyes tighter. "You blame me," he whispered.
"I warned him away. You were there. I warned him specifically away from this case. And you let him pursue it."
They both knew that there was nothing John could have said or done to stop Sherlock. They both knew it didn't matter. John felt guilty and Mycroft felt vengeful, and someone was going to pay.
"Open your eyes." Ordered. Barked. So unlike Mycroft's normal soft-spokenness that John flinched like he'd been struck. He opened his eyes and saw that Mycroft had opened both files. They each had his picture affixed to the inner cover. One had a letter describing him as the bomber who had destroyed the building with Sherlock. Under that was list of evidence that went on far longer than John could bear to read. The other described him as simply a bystander. Sherlock's flatmate. Innocent.
John looked up, confused, meeting Mycroft's eyes for the first time. The man had been crying, he saw. His eyes were red rimmed, his face puffy. "I don't understand," he finally said.
"Two options. One, you go to jail for a very long time. Your name is besmirched. And you become some inmate's wet dream. Or two. Or three."
John tightened his lips.
"Or. I let you walk out this door. You go back to your apartment and square away your belongings and make what calls are necessary. Then at 8 pm, you will check into Bart's complaining of suicidal thoughts. You will be processed overnight and in the morning you will be transferred to a psychiatric secure unit that I have certain … ties … with."
"How long."
"Until I've forgiven you," said Mycroft. "It will be much easier to arrange your release from the secure unit than from prison. You will be treated with the same regard as the others on your ward. If I were you, I'd choose the hospital."
That you directly control.
John was afraid of prison. He was terrified of Mycroft.
"Which do you choose."
John closed his eyes. Then reached out and picked the one that claimed his innocence. He hadn't set the bomb. But Sherlock was dead, and there was nothing left of the life he had anyway. Perhaps this was Mycroft's idea of mercy.
Confirmation was in the morning paper. John read the report and tried to drink, but found his stomach couldn't handle the whiskey. He spoke briefly to Mrs. Hudson and cried with her over tea. Lestrade called and they'd reminisced for an hour then John reluctantly said good-bye because he had other phone calls to make. Harry was difficult because she simply didn't believe that after Afghanistan a dead friend could provoke so huge a reaction. In the end he'd hung up on her. He'd run out of time.
Bart's had been primed. He hardly had to mumble an unconvincing story of the pills he planned on taking before they pushed the paperwork for commitment in front of him. John signed the bottom of the page without bothering to read.
As he laid down the pen, an orderly came and placed a paper cup in front of him. "I-" said John. "I don't think that will be necessary." He wasn't actually suicidal, just grieving.
"I'm afraid so," said the administrator. "All our clients have to take their meds."
John looked closer at the pill. Thorazine. He definitely wasn't psychotic. "This will knock me out. It's too big a dose."
"You will swallow your pill, or we will have to give you a shot."
John froze, understanding for the first time what Mycroft wanted. And maybe he deserved this. Reluctantly, hand shaking, he reached for the pill.
The next month was a blur. He remembered nothing at all of Barts, nor of being transferred to the new hospital. He came to in a bed in a private room, his mind as empty as an infants. It seemed he sat for days on a chair in a sky blue painted dayroom, rocking, rocking, rocking. Someone put a paintbrush in his hand and he smeared green poster paint over a canvas, over his thigh, over the floor. His meds were given on a rigorous schedule and they checked his mouth to make sure they were swallowed. If he put up any resistance, they held him down and pressed a needle into his arm.
He had no visitors. He really wasn't expecting to have any. He made no friends. Anyone who spent too long with him was ushered away. He didn't care either way. He could hardly hold two thoughts together.
Day bled into night into day. Sometimes John forgot to eat his food and a large orderly helped by spooning it into his mouth. Sometimes he forgot to find a bathroom and an orderly cleaned him up. Someone had given him a block of clay and he could think of nothing to do with it but grip it in his fists and squeeze over and over again until it turned into mud and crumbs. And then the clay was taken away and orderly came and cleaned him up once more.
Then Mycroft finally came to visit. John shied away, stumbling into the corner of his room. The man seemed to be about 8 feet tall.
But he was smiling this time. "You are looking good," he said in his most solicitous manner. John was so overmedicated he could barely stand. He took refuge on the bed, curled up into a ball. Moving, moving, moving.
Mycroft sat down on his bed next to him and stilled his rocking with a large arm over his shoulder. "Can you speak?"
John hadn't said a word in weeks. "Haaaaa," he tried. "Forgiv'n?"
"Have I forgiven you yet?" Mycroft stroked his hair tenderly. "Not in the slightest."
They reduced his meds slowly after that. Time stopped collapsing and started lengthening. Each day grew longer and longer until it was absurd how long each minute took. John had enough mental power to realize that he was in hell.
He no longer wet himself, but he could remember the embarrassment and in some ways that was worse. He rarely rocked, only for a little after each dose. He ate his own food, but he never had a choice in the menu. Even the portions were carefully picked out. One day he saw himself in one of the round mirrors affixed to the corridor intersections and realized he'd lost weight.
Mycroft came to visit sometime in that period. They talked for half an hour about Sherlock. It was difficult to remember all the details Mycroft wanted to know. He asked John to tell the story of one case or another, and John tried his best, but it was like his brain had been emptied and the space in his skull stuffed with cotton wadding.
"Weren't you watching?" he asked. "Don't you have tape of this?"
"Of course, but it's not the same as when you talk about it," said Mycroft sadly. "You were right there. I wish I had been. I miss him terribly, John."
"Me, too." He waited a moment, then because this seemed like the most likely chance he asked: "Have you-"
"No." The word was like a door slamming shut in his face. "I'm afraid, not yet." Mycroft's expression grew stony. Without another word he stood up and left.
A second later an orderly came in with his medication.
Mycroft began showing up every week. John faced the man with longing and dread. Seeing him meant an interruption to the otherwise dull day and the hope that John could say something, do something that would assuage his anger and let him get released. The visits varied from ten minutes to an hour, depending on John's attitude.
A pattern swiftly emerged. When John was polite and friendly and eagerly answered any and all of Mycroft's questions, his medication was reduced. He then had a week where he felt his mind gradually coming back. But if he was surly, or angry, if he tried to hold some nugget of his memory of Sherlock to himself, his meds were upped until he was back to where he'd been at the start.
After a few visits Mycroft started giving him the meds himself, holding the paper cup in his hand while they talked. When he deemed the conversation to be over, he'd watch John take the pills with a look of great satisfaction on his face -- always careful to check his mouth afterward to make sure they were swallowed.
Eventually the conversations moved from the cases to details of John's and Sherlock's domestic life. After a month or two of that, they finally came to the more intimate moments.
"What did you feel when he kissed you the first time," Mycroft asked. "What did his lips feel like." His eyes were closed as if he were trying to imagine the encounter.
John felt sick. "No." He shook his head and moved away, turning his back. "Not this."
"Tell me," Mycroft's voice was sharper. "You have to tell me, John. I've lost him. I will never feel his lips again. I will never kiss his brow or hold his hand again."
"It's private," John insisted. "Can't I keep something as mine?"
"Of course." The words were deceptively soft and gentle. "If that is your wish."
John heard a crumpling sound and saw that Mycroft's hand closed into a fist around his paper cup of meds. They both stared down at his hand for a minute. Then Mycroft got up and left the room.
John wondered for the space of twenty seconds if this meant he got to skip a dose. But then the door opened again. This time it was an orderly with a shot and Mycroft following close behind. John shook his head and pleaded, attempting to hold his arms tight to his chest. But between them they had him pinned. Mycroft pushed the plunger on the needle all the way down.
When Mycroft returned the following week he asked no questions at all. He simply held John's rocking body close and ran his hand through John's hair. He ended the visit by taking John's pills and placing them one by one in John's mouth.
Two weeks later, Mycroft asked about the kiss again and John told him. And then he told him about the feel of Sherlock's skin, the smell of his hair. What John thought when he saw Sherlock walk in the door. Their sex life, what little of that they had, was laid out for Mycroft: Every impression, every word, every touch that John could recall. John was in tears by the end - the first tears he'd shed in front of Mycroft.
Mycroft seemed to regard him for a while. Then gently held his face and leaned down and kissed both his cheeks in the tenderest way possible. He then held him and John thought he felt a little tremble.
"I think we are finally getting somewhere, John," he said.
That visit had opened the dams for John. He spent nearly the entire week remembering his former life, the excitement, the joy of working with Sherlock. The love, the promise of something more. He hadn't had time to really grieve before Mycroft had smothered his mind with medication. Now that his meds had been reduced to a token amount, it all came back. He wandered the halls missing Sherlock and shamelessly weeping, ignoring all attempts to distract him.
His constant crying alarmed the nurses, and earned him three visits to a doctor in an attempt to determine if he had become actually suicidal. To be truthful John had toyed with the idea, it seemed a fitting way to end all this, but the ward was very much set up to make that difficult. There were no blades to cut himself with, no privacy to improvise a noose. Inmates who showed any tendency toward violence were sedated and put into four point restraints. The terror of being strapped down was enough to deter him from trying.
John tried explaining the situation to the doctor, how he was being held prisoner and kept drugged by Mycroft as vengeance for his brother's death. The doctor simply smiled at him. John shut up. The doctor knew the truth, but it sounded so much like paranoid delusion that John began to doubt himself.
In the end, the doctor added an antidepressant to his paper cup.
Once John was stable again, Mycroft's visits increased. He came every other day, looking happy each time he came. John's meds were low enough now that he felt almost normal and he looked forward to the visits. He really had no one else to talk to. The other inmates had long since learned to avoid him.
They talked about things other than Sherlock now, speaking for hours on politics and history, John's childhood, Mycroft's college years. It was very chummy.
Mycroft had a way of making John feel at ease, even though John knew the other man was still a potential mine field. He stopped asking about being released or forgiven, because either of those subjects seemed to close Mycroft down. The man wouldn't be pushed and John paid for the presumption of trying.
And then there was the thing with the pills. Like a little ritual, Mycroft fed them to him, placing them one by one in his mouth in a moment of perverse intimacy. Each time Mycroft's smile grew positively blissful, as if it satisfied some intense craving of his. It didn't matter what the pills were, vitamins, antacids and stool softeners to counteract his constant constipation were apparently as much a pleasure to Mycroft as thorazine, valium, and welbutrin.
Finally, after eight months in the hospital, Mycroft said, "I'm having you released."
John let out the deep breath he'd been holding since that visit in the detention center. "Thank you," he said.
He thought about what he'd do, where he'd go, job hunting. His life stretched out in front of him, strangely empty of everything that had defined it before.
"You will, of course, come and live with me, while you readjust. It's the least I can do for you." The words sounded reasonable, but John understood the implication.
He held his breath again. Mycroft wasn't done with him yet.
John's bedroom was large and beautifully appointed. It had it's own bath, and a view of a well-tended garden. The medicine cabinet above the sink was empty.
The one in Mycroft's suite, however, was full. It contained every medication John had ever been put on and more, oxycodone, injectable morphine, methamphetamine, THC pills, a small sachet of what looked like cocaine. Mornings and evenings Mycroft summoned him to his bedroom and ran his hand down the shelves looking for which pills he thought John needed most. No stomach upset was too minor, no headache unworthy of note.
Their hospital ritual continued. John took the pills, but Mycroft was the addict.
Unlike Sherlock, Mycroft was a man of routines. He worked strict hours by preference, maintaining a schedule that allowed him all his favorite indulgences. Long meals, passive entertainments, leisurely strolls along the private grounds. John found himself obliged to follow along, like a well mannered dog, often slipping into the background when they were joined by a client or an ambassador or some other person important to Mycroft's business.
It wasn't a surprise when Mycroft stopped leaving John at the house and began taking him to work with him. John's first job was to monitor the damn CCTV systems that Mycroft so loved. He'd be set to watch a man or a woman as they moved through their day and make notes of place and time. This he'd hand over to Mycroft, who would scan his hours of work in a second or two, then cue back a key moment and rewatch.
"Very good work," Mycroft would say. He'd then tell John in intricate detail everything about the person, much the way Sherlock used to.
John remembered how his early days with Sherlock had been.
Where Sherlock loved to run around London, poking in alleyways and peering in garbage cans, Mycroft loved to sit behind a desk and stare at his banks of monitors and write cryptic notes. Where Sherlock questioned people himself, Mycroft used a seemingly infinite number of lackeys, who he spoke to through his Bluetooth, switching from one to the next, giving orders and listening to their reports with a mild but satisfied smile on his lips.
John's second job was to be one of those lackeys. He followed people, rang bells, conducted interviews, and delivered briefcases, all while Mycroft's soft voice coached and commanded him through an earpiece.
John found himself loving this job. It was similar to what Sherlock had him doing. Sometimes John would turn around and half expect to see Sherlock sweeping along in his Belstaff coat. Then he'd look up to the nearest corner, see a camera pointing towards him, and remember that things had changed.
It was inevitable that eventually his path crossed Lestrade's. They met by chance on the street after John had finished delivering yet another anonymous looking package to an anonymous looking address. The DI shouted his name, embraced him with vigor, then pulled John into a coffee shop.
"How have the cases been?" John asked.
"Harder without Sherlock. For a while his brother was occasionally throwing us a bone, but I think he's grown tired of it. Crime just isn't his interest the way it was Sherlock's." Lestrade leaned back in the wooden chair and gazed fondly at John. "And how about you, John. Last I heard you'd checked yourself in for a hospital stay. Then nothing."
"I've been working for Mycroft," said John.
Lestrade's smile faded. "I see." He stared for a minute, noticing the earpiece for the first time. His eyes drifted out the window and froze. John knew exactly on what. "Well, I'm sure he pays well."
John nodded. He'd never seen a paycheck but the debit card Mycroft had given him always worked.
By mutual unspoken agreement they quickly changed subjects.
After dinner that night, Mycroft spoke of Sherlock again. "While you were in the hospital, I sorted through that Baker Street flat, looking for things of Sherlock's to remember him by. There was so little, John. So very little that Sherlock truly valued: that skull that he liked to decorate the mantelpiece with; a few pieces of clothing; his magnifying glass. Everything else was rubbish."
John nodded.
"And then there was you. He loved you in a way that he hadn't loved anything in a long time. You made his last months … very happy, John. I want to thank you for that."
John gave a sad smile. "I did my best."
"In a way, you are really all that's left of Sherlock. I cherish you for that, John. The time you've given me has brought back my brother in ways I didn't expect."
Have you forgiven me, then? John wanted to ask, but didn't. He knew better.
"You are quiet," Mycroft tilted his head. "You know, you can talk to me. I like to hear what you have to say. What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking that I would have given my life, happily, for him," John said. "I think about that night a lot, and what I could have done differently. He ordered me to go around the back, but I wish I'd trailed after him. Perhaps I would have seen the bomb. I could have warned him, instead of being caught outside trying to scale a stupid fence when the damn thing went off. If only it had been me that had gone in the front door, and him around the back."
Mycroft grabbed his hand. "Shhh. The world would not have been a better place without you in it."
After that they went up to Mycroft's bedroom for their nightly pill ritual. When Mycroft opened the medicine cabinet, John saw a new row of bright red vials that hadn't been there that morning. Isobutal Nitrate. Poppers. And in Mycroft's hand was a distinctive diamond shaped blue pill. Viagra.
John nodded. He'd been expecting this. Expected it to have come a lot earlier, actually. It was the last thing that Sherlock had of John that Mycroft hadn't taken. The one thing he had of Sherlock that Mycroft hadn't supplanted with himself.
He opened his mouth and let Mycroft place the pill on his tongue. Then he let out his breath again.
Pairing: Mycroft/John, past Sherlock/John
Rating:: R for dark themes
Warnings: Character Death (off camera), Drug Paraphilia, Coercion, False Imprisonment, and Mycroft at his creepiest and most vengeful.
Word Count: 3600
Summary: When Sherlock dies in an explosion, John blames himself and Mycroft blames John as well.
A/N: I so totally enjoy whumping John. It's wrong, and I'm a bad person.
When Mycroft came to visit, he wasn't smiling. John took in the serious look on his face and two files in his hand, then slumped in the metal chair and held his breath. He stared down at the interrogation table. He tried not to fiddle with the shackles on his legs or the cuffs on his hands.
Mycroft sat down on the chair opposite him and put both folders out in front of John, like a man laying out cards. John stared. They were identical on the outside. Same file number, same name: JOHN WATSON. He wasn't sure what to do. Was he supposed to pick one? Read both?
He really couldn't care about either folder. What he wanted to know was spelled out over Mycroft's face. He couldn't look up. He couldn't bear to look the man in the eye again.
"My team of medical examiners confirmed that the corpse belonged to Sherlock. Dental records and DNA match."
John shut his eyes tighter. "You blame me," he whispered.
"I warned him away. You were there. I warned him specifically away from this case. And you let him pursue it."
They both knew that there was nothing John could have said or done to stop Sherlock. They both knew it didn't matter. John felt guilty and Mycroft felt vengeful, and someone was going to pay.
"Open your eyes." Ordered. Barked. So unlike Mycroft's normal soft-spokenness that John flinched like he'd been struck. He opened his eyes and saw that Mycroft had opened both files. They each had his picture affixed to the inner cover. One had a letter describing him as the bomber who had destroyed the building with Sherlock. Under that was list of evidence that went on far longer than John could bear to read. The other described him as simply a bystander. Sherlock's flatmate. Innocent.
John looked up, confused, meeting Mycroft's eyes for the first time. The man had been crying, he saw. His eyes were red rimmed, his face puffy. "I don't understand," he finally said.
"Two options. One, you go to jail for a very long time. Your name is besmirched. And you become some inmate's wet dream. Or two. Or three."
John tightened his lips.
"Or. I let you walk out this door. You go back to your apartment and square away your belongings and make what calls are necessary. Then at 8 pm, you will check into Bart's complaining of suicidal thoughts. You will be processed overnight and in the morning you will be transferred to a psychiatric secure unit that I have certain … ties … with."
"How long."
"Until I've forgiven you," said Mycroft. "It will be much easier to arrange your release from the secure unit than from prison. You will be treated with the same regard as the others on your ward. If I were you, I'd choose the hospital."
That you directly control.
John was afraid of prison. He was terrified of Mycroft.
"Which do you choose."
John closed his eyes. Then reached out and picked the one that claimed his innocence. He hadn't set the bomb. But Sherlock was dead, and there was nothing left of the life he had anyway. Perhaps this was Mycroft's idea of mercy.
Confirmation was in the morning paper. John read the report and tried to drink, but found his stomach couldn't handle the whiskey. He spoke briefly to Mrs. Hudson and cried with her over tea. Lestrade called and they'd reminisced for an hour then John reluctantly said good-bye because he had other phone calls to make. Harry was difficult because she simply didn't believe that after Afghanistan a dead friend could provoke so huge a reaction. In the end he'd hung up on her. He'd run out of time.
Bart's had been primed. He hardly had to mumble an unconvincing story of the pills he planned on taking before they pushed the paperwork for commitment in front of him. John signed the bottom of the page without bothering to read.
As he laid down the pen, an orderly came and placed a paper cup in front of him. "I-" said John. "I don't think that will be necessary." He wasn't actually suicidal, just grieving.
"I'm afraid so," said the administrator. "All our clients have to take their meds."
John looked closer at the pill. Thorazine. He definitely wasn't psychotic. "This will knock me out. It's too big a dose."
"You will swallow your pill, or we will have to give you a shot."
John froze, understanding for the first time what Mycroft wanted. And maybe he deserved this. Reluctantly, hand shaking, he reached for the pill.
The next month was a blur. He remembered nothing at all of Barts, nor of being transferred to the new hospital. He came to in a bed in a private room, his mind as empty as an infants. It seemed he sat for days on a chair in a sky blue painted dayroom, rocking, rocking, rocking. Someone put a paintbrush in his hand and he smeared green poster paint over a canvas, over his thigh, over the floor. His meds were given on a rigorous schedule and they checked his mouth to make sure they were swallowed. If he put up any resistance, they held him down and pressed a needle into his arm.
He had no visitors. He really wasn't expecting to have any. He made no friends. Anyone who spent too long with him was ushered away. He didn't care either way. He could hardly hold two thoughts together.
Day bled into night into day. Sometimes John forgot to eat his food and a large orderly helped by spooning it into his mouth. Sometimes he forgot to find a bathroom and an orderly cleaned him up. Someone had given him a block of clay and he could think of nothing to do with it but grip it in his fists and squeeze over and over again until it turned into mud and crumbs. And then the clay was taken away and orderly came and cleaned him up once more.
Then Mycroft finally came to visit. John shied away, stumbling into the corner of his room. The man seemed to be about 8 feet tall.
But he was smiling this time. "You are looking good," he said in his most solicitous manner. John was so overmedicated he could barely stand. He took refuge on the bed, curled up into a ball. Moving, moving, moving.
Mycroft sat down on his bed next to him and stilled his rocking with a large arm over his shoulder. "Can you speak?"
John hadn't said a word in weeks. "Haaaaa," he tried. "Forgiv'n?"
"Have I forgiven you yet?" Mycroft stroked his hair tenderly. "Not in the slightest."
They reduced his meds slowly after that. Time stopped collapsing and started lengthening. Each day grew longer and longer until it was absurd how long each minute took. John had enough mental power to realize that he was in hell.
He no longer wet himself, but he could remember the embarrassment and in some ways that was worse. He rarely rocked, only for a little after each dose. He ate his own food, but he never had a choice in the menu. Even the portions were carefully picked out. One day he saw himself in one of the round mirrors affixed to the corridor intersections and realized he'd lost weight.
Mycroft came to visit sometime in that period. They talked for half an hour about Sherlock. It was difficult to remember all the details Mycroft wanted to know. He asked John to tell the story of one case or another, and John tried his best, but it was like his brain had been emptied and the space in his skull stuffed with cotton wadding.
"Weren't you watching?" he asked. "Don't you have tape of this?"
"Of course, but it's not the same as when you talk about it," said Mycroft sadly. "You were right there. I wish I had been. I miss him terribly, John."
"Me, too." He waited a moment, then because this seemed like the most likely chance he asked: "Have you-"
"No." The word was like a door slamming shut in his face. "I'm afraid, not yet." Mycroft's expression grew stony. Without another word he stood up and left.
A second later an orderly came in with his medication.
Mycroft began showing up every week. John faced the man with longing and dread. Seeing him meant an interruption to the otherwise dull day and the hope that John could say something, do something that would assuage his anger and let him get released. The visits varied from ten minutes to an hour, depending on John's attitude.
A pattern swiftly emerged. When John was polite and friendly and eagerly answered any and all of Mycroft's questions, his medication was reduced. He then had a week where he felt his mind gradually coming back. But if he was surly, or angry, if he tried to hold some nugget of his memory of Sherlock to himself, his meds were upped until he was back to where he'd been at the start.
After a few visits Mycroft started giving him the meds himself, holding the paper cup in his hand while they talked. When he deemed the conversation to be over, he'd watch John take the pills with a look of great satisfaction on his face -- always careful to check his mouth afterward to make sure they were swallowed.
Eventually the conversations moved from the cases to details of John's and Sherlock's domestic life. After a month or two of that, they finally came to the more intimate moments.
"What did you feel when he kissed you the first time," Mycroft asked. "What did his lips feel like." His eyes were closed as if he were trying to imagine the encounter.
John felt sick. "No." He shook his head and moved away, turning his back. "Not this."
"Tell me," Mycroft's voice was sharper. "You have to tell me, John. I've lost him. I will never feel his lips again. I will never kiss his brow or hold his hand again."
"It's private," John insisted. "Can't I keep something as mine?"
"Of course." The words were deceptively soft and gentle. "If that is your wish."
John heard a crumpling sound and saw that Mycroft's hand closed into a fist around his paper cup of meds. They both stared down at his hand for a minute. Then Mycroft got up and left the room.
John wondered for the space of twenty seconds if this meant he got to skip a dose. But then the door opened again. This time it was an orderly with a shot and Mycroft following close behind. John shook his head and pleaded, attempting to hold his arms tight to his chest. But between them they had him pinned. Mycroft pushed the plunger on the needle all the way down.
When Mycroft returned the following week he asked no questions at all. He simply held John's rocking body close and ran his hand through John's hair. He ended the visit by taking John's pills and placing them one by one in John's mouth.
Two weeks later, Mycroft asked about the kiss again and John told him. And then he told him about the feel of Sherlock's skin, the smell of his hair. What John thought when he saw Sherlock walk in the door. Their sex life, what little of that they had, was laid out for Mycroft: Every impression, every word, every touch that John could recall. John was in tears by the end - the first tears he'd shed in front of Mycroft.
Mycroft seemed to regard him for a while. Then gently held his face and leaned down and kissed both his cheeks in the tenderest way possible. He then held him and John thought he felt a little tremble.
"I think we are finally getting somewhere, John," he said.
That visit had opened the dams for John. He spent nearly the entire week remembering his former life, the excitement, the joy of working with Sherlock. The love, the promise of something more. He hadn't had time to really grieve before Mycroft had smothered his mind with medication. Now that his meds had been reduced to a token amount, it all came back. He wandered the halls missing Sherlock and shamelessly weeping, ignoring all attempts to distract him.
His constant crying alarmed the nurses, and earned him three visits to a doctor in an attempt to determine if he had become actually suicidal. To be truthful John had toyed with the idea, it seemed a fitting way to end all this, but the ward was very much set up to make that difficult. There were no blades to cut himself with, no privacy to improvise a noose. Inmates who showed any tendency toward violence were sedated and put into four point restraints. The terror of being strapped down was enough to deter him from trying.
John tried explaining the situation to the doctor, how he was being held prisoner and kept drugged by Mycroft as vengeance for his brother's death. The doctor simply smiled at him. John shut up. The doctor knew the truth, but it sounded so much like paranoid delusion that John began to doubt himself.
In the end, the doctor added an antidepressant to his paper cup.
Once John was stable again, Mycroft's visits increased. He came every other day, looking happy each time he came. John's meds were low enough now that he felt almost normal and he looked forward to the visits. He really had no one else to talk to. The other inmates had long since learned to avoid him.
They talked about things other than Sherlock now, speaking for hours on politics and history, John's childhood, Mycroft's college years. It was very chummy.
Mycroft had a way of making John feel at ease, even though John knew the other man was still a potential mine field. He stopped asking about being released or forgiven, because either of those subjects seemed to close Mycroft down. The man wouldn't be pushed and John paid for the presumption of trying.
And then there was the thing with the pills. Like a little ritual, Mycroft fed them to him, placing them one by one in his mouth in a moment of perverse intimacy. Each time Mycroft's smile grew positively blissful, as if it satisfied some intense craving of his. It didn't matter what the pills were, vitamins, antacids and stool softeners to counteract his constant constipation were apparently as much a pleasure to Mycroft as thorazine, valium, and welbutrin.
Finally, after eight months in the hospital, Mycroft said, "I'm having you released."
John let out the deep breath he'd been holding since that visit in the detention center. "Thank you," he said.
He thought about what he'd do, where he'd go, job hunting. His life stretched out in front of him, strangely empty of everything that had defined it before.
"You will, of course, come and live with me, while you readjust. It's the least I can do for you." The words sounded reasonable, but John understood the implication.
He held his breath again. Mycroft wasn't done with him yet.
John's bedroom was large and beautifully appointed. It had it's own bath, and a view of a well-tended garden. The medicine cabinet above the sink was empty.
The one in Mycroft's suite, however, was full. It contained every medication John had ever been put on and more, oxycodone, injectable morphine, methamphetamine, THC pills, a small sachet of what looked like cocaine. Mornings and evenings Mycroft summoned him to his bedroom and ran his hand down the shelves looking for which pills he thought John needed most. No stomach upset was too minor, no headache unworthy of note.
Their hospital ritual continued. John took the pills, but Mycroft was the addict.
Unlike Sherlock, Mycroft was a man of routines. He worked strict hours by preference, maintaining a schedule that allowed him all his favorite indulgences. Long meals, passive entertainments, leisurely strolls along the private grounds. John found himself obliged to follow along, like a well mannered dog, often slipping into the background when they were joined by a client or an ambassador or some other person important to Mycroft's business.
It wasn't a surprise when Mycroft stopped leaving John at the house and began taking him to work with him. John's first job was to monitor the damn CCTV systems that Mycroft so loved. He'd be set to watch a man or a woman as they moved through their day and make notes of place and time. This he'd hand over to Mycroft, who would scan his hours of work in a second or two, then cue back a key moment and rewatch.
"Very good work," Mycroft would say. He'd then tell John in intricate detail everything about the person, much the way Sherlock used to.
John remembered how his early days with Sherlock had been.
Where Sherlock loved to run around London, poking in alleyways and peering in garbage cans, Mycroft loved to sit behind a desk and stare at his banks of monitors and write cryptic notes. Where Sherlock questioned people himself, Mycroft used a seemingly infinite number of lackeys, who he spoke to through his Bluetooth, switching from one to the next, giving orders and listening to their reports with a mild but satisfied smile on his lips.
John's second job was to be one of those lackeys. He followed people, rang bells, conducted interviews, and delivered briefcases, all while Mycroft's soft voice coached and commanded him through an earpiece.
John found himself loving this job. It was similar to what Sherlock had him doing. Sometimes John would turn around and half expect to see Sherlock sweeping along in his Belstaff coat. Then he'd look up to the nearest corner, see a camera pointing towards him, and remember that things had changed.
It was inevitable that eventually his path crossed Lestrade's. They met by chance on the street after John had finished delivering yet another anonymous looking package to an anonymous looking address. The DI shouted his name, embraced him with vigor, then pulled John into a coffee shop.
"How have the cases been?" John asked.
"Harder without Sherlock. For a while his brother was occasionally throwing us a bone, but I think he's grown tired of it. Crime just isn't his interest the way it was Sherlock's." Lestrade leaned back in the wooden chair and gazed fondly at John. "And how about you, John. Last I heard you'd checked yourself in for a hospital stay. Then nothing."
"I've been working for Mycroft," said John.
Lestrade's smile faded. "I see." He stared for a minute, noticing the earpiece for the first time. His eyes drifted out the window and froze. John knew exactly on what. "Well, I'm sure he pays well."
John nodded. He'd never seen a paycheck but the debit card Mycroft had given him always worked.
By mutual unspoken agreement they quickly changed subjects.
After dinner that night, Mycroft spoke of Sherlock again. "While you were in the hospital, I sorted through that Baker Street flat, looking for things of Sherlock's to remember him by. There was so little, John. So very little that Sherlock truly valued: that skull that he liked to decorate the mantelpiece with; a few pieces of clothing; his magnifying glass. Everything else was rubbish."
John nodded.
"And then there was you. He loved you in a way that he hadn't loved anything in a long time. You made his last months … very happy, John. I want to thank you for that."
John gave a sad smile. "I did my best."
"In a way, you are really all that's left of Sherlock. I cherish you for that, John. The time you've given me has brought back my brother in ways I didn't expect."
Have you forgiven me, then? John wanted to ask, but didn't. He knew better.
"You are quiet," Mycroft tilted his head. "You know, you can talk to me. I like to hear what you have to say. What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking that I would have given my life, happily, for him," John said. "I think about that night a lot, and what I could have done differently. He ordered me to go around the back, but I wish I'd trailed after him. Perhaps I would have seen the bomb. I could have warned him, instead of being caught outside trying to scale a stupid fence when the damn thing went off. If only it had been me that had gone in the front door, and him around the back."
Mycroft grabbed his hand. "Shhh. The world would not have been a better place without you in it."
After that they went up to Mycroft's bedroom for their nightly pill ritual. When Mycroft opened the medicine cabinet, John saw a new row of bright red vials that hadn't been there that morning. Isobutal Nitrate. Poppers. And in Mycroft's hand was a distinctive diamond shaped blue pill. Viagra.
John nodded. He'd been expecting this. Expected it to have come a lot earlier, actually. It was the last thing that Sherlock had of John that Mycroft hadn't taken. The one thing he had of Sherlock that Mycroft hadn't supplanted with himself.
He opened his mouth and let Mycroft place the pill on his tongue. Then he let out his breath again.