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Firelight danced over the mahogany panels of Mycroft's office walls, gifting the wood with bloody, vibrant hues. A single lamp illuminated the blotter inlaid in the desk and gleamed off the glass of the framed photograph in Mycroft's hand. He tilted it to see those familiar faces better, offering a thin, sad smile to the image of his parents.
John Watson had noticed; of that he was sure, and even a doctor in general practice understood the basics of dominant genetics. He would ask Sherlock, and Sherlock would answer. There was a shocking level of honesty between the two men: almost distasteful. He doubted his brother would weave any kind of fabrication. After all, there was nothing secret about what Mycroft had done. Anyone who knew where to look would discover the information. It was simply that most people never considered the possibility.
They saw the sum of his parts and decided he was human. They never questioned that initial assumption.
He sighed, setting aside the picture. His eyes ached: one of the difficulties of wearing contact lenses for every single hour of the day. Having his ears and tail surgically removed had been unpleasant, but essential. Unfortunately, he could only disguise the slitted nature of his pupils. His cosmetic surgery had not come at the cost of his physical health and, after a period of recovery and adaptation, he suffered no real limitations.
His eyes, though, they were another matter. The pitfalls were too great, and even he had his limits. He would not risk blindness when there were alternatives. It was where he drew the line. In his field of work, observation was key. He had considered it, of course, but time and again, he turned away from the option. The changes he had wrought upon himself were enough.
It was not hard to recall the first time he had felt discomforted by his own appearance. Being a Felisian was rather like wearing your heart on your sleeve. Every tell that humans had by nature seemed to be amplified on the Felisian form, and no one, not even Sherlock, could excise those instincts entirely. In Mycroft's view, it was an abhorrent vulnerability.
The moment he had realised how much of himself he unknowingly put on display was etched forever in his mind.
'Are you excited?'
His mother's smile was soft and warm, her face just starting to show the first lines of middle age. Dark hair fell in gentle curls down to her shoulders. Her belly was round: a baby on the way. He would be here soon: an immutable inevitability.
'Yes.'
Her ears twitched back, just once, her top lip lifting for a split-second to reveal a pointed canine on one side of her jaw. Her pupils narrowed before she smoothed her face out, her voice low with reproof.
'Don't lie, Mikey.'
'I wasn't!'
'Yes, you were. Your tail always twitches at the end when you fib. You will be a good older brother, and it won't be as bad as you think. I promise.'
He did not remember much more, only the thick wave of appalled embarrassment at the understanding of his body’s betrayal. Even then, he had loathed the idea that something so intimately his could be beyond his control: a traitor at any given moment. He had not wanted to upset Mummy, to let her see how much he dreaded the arrival of the baby. It was a white-lie, nothing more, and his body had exposed his small dishonesty.
From that day on, he felt a distinct detachment from the form which he occupied. Arms and legs, lips and chin were all well enough, but his ears? His tail? His eyes?
Revolting.
It became a compulsive kind of disgust, manifesting in strange ways. He took to plucking the fur from his tail, attacking it and revelling in the pain-cum-punishment. He attempted to control his ears, pinning them flat with hair grips, only to realise they were stronger than they looked. He glared into his own reflection, trying with the ignorance of a child to will his pupils to take on a different shape, even though he knew it was impossible.
His parents despaired, as did the behavioural therapists. They assumed he was being bullied or shunned, but his own worst enemy was himself. That spark of discomfort grew into a conflagration of revulsion. One that almost consumed him.
Oddly, it was Sherlock who made it easier to bear. Mycroft had not had much time for him when he was a kit: half-feral, even by Felisian standards. It was only when Sherlock was four or five, quiet but precocious, that Mycroft began to see himself in a new light; one that filtered through the lens of Sherlock's adoration.
The recollection made him smile, and he turned towards the drinks trolley, pouring himself a generous measure of brandy before settling in the armchair in front of the fire. It was not like him to indulge in nostalgia, but today's meeting with Sherlock had left him drowning in his own reminiscences. For once, he had the time to give them his attention, and he saw no harm in it. After all, how could a man move forward in life if he did not, now and then, look behind to see how far he had come?
'You're stiff.' Sherlock trotted over to Mycroft as he sat at his desk, doing some of his homework. Sturdy little fingers grabbed his rigid ear and yanked hard enough to force a snarl from Mycroft's throat.
'Get off.'
'What's wrong with you?' Sherlock's chubby hands encircled his tail, bending and flexing it as if he thought he could shake all Mycroft's hard-earned control out of him. 'It's meant to move.'
'It does move! When I want it to, not before.'
'No.'
Sherlock was like that. Even at such a young age, he had all the answers and saw no need to explain himself to anyone he believed was being deliberately obtuse. An older child might have gone on about reflex and instinct. Sherlock could have done the same, considering his advanced intelligence, but he did not waste his time. Instead, he watched Mycroft, his pupils little more than slits in the bright halo of the lamp. He gave him a penetrating stare as if reading all Mycroft's thoughts off of the inside of his head.
'It won't work.'
Mycroft sighed, casting a glance at his trigonometry assignment. It was insultingly simple and would not take him long. He could afford the interruption. 'What won't work, Sherlock?'
'What you're doing. You'll never be able to control it all. No one can.'
'And how do you know that's what I'm trying to do?'
'You're concentrating, and not on that.' His right ear flicked towards Mycroft's desk. At the same time, he indicated the maths homework with a wave of his hand. 'Your ears didn't shift when I came in, but they twitched before you could stifle them. Your tail is like a bottle brush: stiff and spiky because you won't let it move.' Sherlock pursed his lips and tilted his head. Behind him, Mycroft noted with some amusement, Sherlock's black whip of a tail had curved into an idle question mark: the perfect match for his curiosity.
'It makes you look angry all the time.' Those ears flattened closer to Sherlock's head, almost hidden among the exuberant nest of his curls. 'Are you? Angry?'
Mycroft put his pen down and turned in his chair, holding out his arms to the boy who had not yet learned to wield sentiment as a weapon, and whose little face showed nothing but honest distress. 'Not at you, Sherlock.' He scooped him up, offering him a brief, tight hug of reassurance. 'Not at you.'
The brandy warmed his throat as he took a healthy swallow, his heart twinging. He and Sherlock never hugged anymore. There was too much distance between them to bridge with anything so simple as an embrace. Yet sometimes he missed the way Sherlock had looked at him, as if Mycroft had hung the stars in the sky.
From that day on, he had relaxed his grip on his body, allowing his ears and tail to resume some of their reflexive movements. Sherlock was right. In retrospect, he could see how carrying constant tension made him look angry and unapproachable: an undesirable trait in life, especially when one required the cooperation of others.
For Sherlock's sake, he had made an effort to accept what he was. Yet it was not merely that he was not human. He could look at other Felisians and admire how they fit in their own skin. He felt nothing of the sort. Even as his younger brother steadily inched towards adolescence, Mycroft lived with a festering repulsion for himself and all that he was.
He looked in the mirror, and his reflection was not what he expected to see. It was... wrong, not merely ugly in his eyes but somehow monstrous. What he was on the outside did not match how he felt within, and the more he tried to ignore it, the worse it became.
By the time he was sixteen, he had made up his mind. He could not go on as he was. Something had to change. He had to change.
And so the story of his life had scrawled its way to that particular page, that day, that moment when he had made his choice.
Every step felt like walking to his own execution. Hope and desperation thrashed in his stomach, mixing to form an immolation that flared along his nerves and set up a subtle shaking in his limbs. He had done his research. He was prepared to argue with his parents over what they may see as a childish and desperate request.
It was a balancing act between helping them to recognise his own, negative experiences while respecting their own. They had, after all, made him, and though his parents had never reigned over him with any godly authority, this challenge still, in the back of his head, felt like blasphemy.
There was a chance that, in setting foot on this path, he would alienate the people he loved most in the world. The thought cut at him, but if that was the price for this decision then it was one he would have to accept.
'Mother. Father. I need to speak with you.'
His parents listened attentively. The words he'd chosen with care fell like autumn leaves to wither on the ground, replaced instead with a canopy of honesty. He could not look at them: could not bear to read the story of their reaction in every nuance of their body language. He could only pour it all out, opening the bloody, poisoned wound deep within himself and hoping they could see it for what it was: a cry for help and not an accusation.
Only when his arguments were spent did he stop, his breath shuddering between his lips and his eyes bitten with tears. Sentiment: he hated it, but there were times it could not be masked or subdued. Occasionally, there was a soul-deep need for expression, and there was no escaping it. He gulped in air, clenching his fists to steady himself before daring to glance in his parents' direction.
He expected many things, but not the soft, sorrowful looks they exchanged with one another. Sadness tilted their ears even as acceptance stained their faces. They looked resigned rather than hurt; determined, not despairing, and Mycroft felt his world tilt on its axis as Mummy got to her feet.
Narrow hands smoothed the creases from her clothes before she walked over to her desk, retrieving a big manilla envelope almost splitting at its gussets. It bulged with paperwork, and when she pressed it into Mycroft's palms it felt as heavy and solemn as the law.
Shakily, he pulled the first page free, skimming the typeface: a surgeon’s details, one of many. In fact, the whole stack of papers listed various medical professionals, from those who could help with the mental aspects of such dramatic cosmetic surgery, to those who would rehabilitate his body to its new way of existence.
'I – How–?' His words stumbled, decimated by his own confusion. He shook his head in disbelief, only looking up when his mother's soft palm rested against his cheek.
'We knew this day was coming. We wanted to be ready.' Her eyes were bright, but the gentle acceptance in her face was not a mask for any ugly doubts beneath. She may not understand, but she accepted. That was more than Mycroft had dared hope.
'It will not be an easy process,' his father murmured. 'There is a vast sea of red-tape and bureaucracy: some necessary, most not. However, we will be here, whatever it takes. You have to do what is best for you.'
'You aren't upset? He bit his lip, stumbling over his words as he struggled to factor in this stark and unexpected reality. 'I thought –'
'You are our child,' Mummy promised, 'and you always will be. It does not matter to us what you look like, Mikey. What matters is that you're happy. That's what we care about the most.'
Looking back, Mycroft could see that, emotionally, it was the hardest thing he'd had to do. For a man who shied away from sentiment, his desperation had been palpable, gilded with the earnest nature of youth. That conversation with his parents had shaken him to the core. He had lain himself bare, showing every vulnerability. It had been unpleasant, but the result? His parents' unflinching support and assistance? That had been more than worth it.
His only regret, in the years of preparation that followed, was that he had not included Sherlock in the conversations that circled around what he was going through and what he had planned. Some would argue that he was a young man himself, one concerned with life-changing surgery, and that his little brother could not in any way be considered his concern.
Yet his parents had followed his lead, perhaps hoping to protect Sherlock from some of the fearful realities surrounding what lay ahead. There could be complications. Fatal ones. He, blinded by his own need, could ignore that. His parents could rationalise it, but a child, even one as intelligent as Sherlock, might give in to fear.
Still, he should have said something, because it seemed that Sherlock, who observed every uncomfortable truth around him, had not seen the slightest hint of Mycroft's intentions. The result was the breach that lingered between them to this day.
Mycroft set his empty glass down on the table at his side, propping his elbows on his knees and pressing his brow into his hands. His memories spun in a frantic carousel, circling the few years where he lived on the precipice of change, existing on a promise of one day and striving with each moment to reach it.
There had not been much respite between the rigours of his education and various appointments and sessions, all to ascertain his readiness for the surgery and what must be done before they could proceed. It felt like living under a microscope, where every minutia of his life was examined with great care. They delved deep into his past and his psyche, plucking at his mind like strings on a harp, listening for the discordant notes.
All the while, Sherlock kept him sane by being nothing more or less than himself. Mycroft listened, rapt and amused, as his brother sliced apart the lives of his peers and their families, revealing every secret in a voice brassy with confidence.
He would catch glimpses of the world through Sherlock's eyes and marvel at the mind that gleamed beneath those dark curls. There were times when his observations were so astute, so rational, and so firmly founded in a string of deduction that Mycroft wondered how they could possibly be related.
Perhaps he was, after all, the odd one out. The one who did not fit.
Then Sherlock would do or say something so irrefutably "Holmes" that Mycroft had to cast aside his doubts. They were facets of a gemstone, bending the light in different ways but still the same at their hearts.
Going away to university had been harder than he anticipated. He had hoped his surgery would be done by the time he left home: a ludicrous dream of aligned fresh-starts, but it was not to be. Every case such as his had to go before an ethical committee, and it took time. So much time. In the end, perhaps it was for the best. Bidding goodbye to his father and mother, and most of all to Sherlock, was challenge enough.
The weeks passed quickly, and he found, for the first time, people in whom he could confide. They understood and accepted – human and Felisian alike – with an open-mindedness that left him breathless. It was a careful network he constructed around himself, one that remained in place to this day. He may deride sentiment at every possible opportunity, but some bonds could never be broken.
Then, at last, six months into his university year, it began. A time and date for his first surgery: the removal of his ears. On the surface it was little more than a cosmetic procedure, but there were issues to contend with, reconstructions and potential complications.
Mycroft's mind shied away from those recollections. He did not trust easily, and putting himself and his survival in the hands of even the best surgeons had been an anathema. Still, he had borne it. What choice did he have?
And so it was done. The hardest part was adapting to his changed hearing. The mechanisms were more acute than a human, but the removal of his Felisian ears necessitated a change in the shape of his auditory canal. That, coupled with the facsimiles of human ears constructed and grafted from skin and cartilage elsewhere leant an odd, muffled quality to the world.
He learnt to read lips to help make up for the shortfall as his mind and body found a new synchronisation: a valuable skill in his line of work. Body language, too, became of greater interest. A side-effect of doing all this would be that his own thoughts weren't betrayed by the tics and twitches of his flesh, but that did not mean he erased all his tells. There were still others: smaller and human, requiring control.
The doctors kept him under close observation, analysing his physical and mental progress with blunt rigour. Though the surgery was not untested, it was far from common, and they took advantage of this opportunity to gather further data. Mycroft let them. To each their own. Besides, he had his own concerns to deal with.
He had expected, when the bandages were removed from around his head and the healing complete, to feel as if he had come home. He had wanted to look in the mirror and finally recognise the young man he saw. He had hoped for confidence, completeness... a sense of satisfaction.
Instead, shock raced down his nerves, followed by a clanging uncertainty that rang like a bell in his chest. Every doubt he had pushed to the side these past few years came rushing to the fore, and he shivered where he stood. He had not made a mistake, he knew that, and yet for one, brief moment, he wondered if he could possibly have been in error. Had this, in fact, not been the right choice?
No. It would take time, that was all. Another adjustment. Or, perhaps it was because he was only half-complete, stuck between human and Felisian. They would not touch his tail until they were certain there were no complications from the removal of his ears, but his teeth? Well, they were a problem easily solved.
A qualified dentist and a file. Some high quality veneers. That was all it took to make his smile blunt. He did not need fangs to be predatory.
He kept up with his studies while he healed, grateful to a cooperative faculty who made allowances for missed lectures as long as he continued to hand in exemplary work. He did all he could to help himself recover until the day the surgeons agreed that he was ready for the final, and most dangerous phase of the process.
There, his memories faltered, losing their clarity in a mire of anxiety and a drug-induced haze. Removal of a tail in any animal was a form of spinal surgery, and in Felisians, the point in a human that would be the coccyx was a bundle of nerves and lymphatic systems: delicate and complex. The main concern for the doctors had been the potential introduction of an infection to the spinal cord, one that could well lead to permanent paralysis. For Mycroft, his focus had been the pain.
It was... awful. Even now, years later, he could not think of a better word to describe it. Never had he experienced something so all-encompassing. It hurt to lie still; it was pure agony to move. The clarity of his mind vanished beneath a storm cloud of discomfort, losing itself in the raging sea of sensation that arced up and down his back. Time, as always, had become his enemy. All he could do was wait.
Days bed-ridden. Weeks hospital-bound. Months of physiotherapy.
Eventually, recovery.
Finally, success.
Yet the moment he had been waiting for arrived with little in the way of fanfare: an idle glance in the mirror and he felt... nothing. No distaste or discomfort. There was no subtle sense of wrongness: of alien pieces of himself that should not be there. He noticed his reflection and saw, possibly for the first time, himself, with no provisos or addendums. It was simply right, and his shoulders sagged as they were relieved of a burden he had not realised weighed him down so fiercely.
Triumph was a glassy, ephemeral thing, born not of sudden realisations but of the progress of a thousand separate moments. It was only upon his homecoming that the bubble of his happiness threatened to burst. His parents had visited him. He would rather they hadn't – preferred to experience weakness and pain in private – but in the end their support had helped him through. Sherlock, on the other hand...
There was no escaping the memory. Like a film reaching its finale or the turn of a page beginning the denouement, he could not think about his surgery without also thinking of this one, final consequence.
'You've changed.' Eyes as cold as a winter's sky narrowed beneath dark lashes, but not before Mycroft caught a flash of something within their depths. Hurt, or merely surprise? He could not glean anything from Sherlock’s body, not the folded arms – typical teenage defiance – or the lazy flick of his tail: deliberate indifference.
In his absence, it seemed that Sherlock had learned control, and now his body offered forth no more and no less than Sherlock wished to reveal. It was a display of maturity Mycroft had failed to anticipate. His stomach twisted with uncomfortable sentiment to see his little brother so withdrawn, not just teenage-sullen, but glacially distant, as if Mycroft were of no consequence.
'For the better I hope.'
'I doubt it.'
What followed was nine days of sniping at one another, plucking at each other's defences as small barbs cut deep. Perhaps, as the oldest sibling, Mycroft should have restrained himself, but he hated the way that Sherlock looked at him now, as if he were some kind of disappointment.
It flayed at the raw edges of his nerves, forcing him into retreat until he and Sherlock could barely even share the same air. Sherlock had slammed up a wall the moment Mycroft had walked through the door, and now they were reduced to this: petty squabbles and hurtful words.
On the tenth day, it all found its flash-point. It did not take much to light the spark – some snide, trifling comment from Mycroft – and Sherlock exploded into a mess of horrifying sentiment. The opaque glass of his distance fell to splinters, revealing the turmoil beneath. Not disgust, as Mycroft had believed, but a depth of hurt and betrayal that he could barely fathom.
'Go away!' Sherlock roared, his ears pinned back and his tail bristling behind him. Slender, musician’s fingers twisted into claws at his sides, and that gawky body held itself tight and contained, as if Sherlock were trying to stop himself either from launching forward into a fight or running from the room. 'Just go away! You're no better than us, Mycroft. No better than me because you made yourself look "normal". Anyone can cut bits off of themselves. It's not hard!'
'Sherlock, that -'
A flash of silver and blood's red paint. Mycroft had never seen Sherlock move so fast. He did not falter or hesitate, simply picked up their father's letter opener, grabbed his own ear and drew the blade across his flesh.
The cry that scraped up Mycroft's throat echoed in the room as he lunged forward, wrapping strong fingers around Sherlock's delicate wrist tight enough to bruise. He shook his brother like a doll, wresting the knife away and throwing it aside. 'What do you think you are doing?' he bellowed, fear expressing itself as rage.
'It's what you want, isn't it? You think we're monstrous: me and Mummy and Daddy. You want nothing to do with us.' Sherlock's face was dead-white except for two flags of furious colour high on his cheekbones. 'Why else would you cut parts of yourself away? Let GO of me if you hate me so much!'
Words jammed in his throat, rattling like rocks as Sherlock struggled against him. A rivulet of blood trailed from Sherlock’s hair and over the vault of his temple, but all Mycroft could do was keep hold of him, spreading his feet for balance as he tried to contain the scrawny, lithe tempest that was Sherlock in such a fury.
'That's not what I think of you.'
Sherlock froze in Mycroft's grip, his narrow chest heaving around each panted breath and his teeth bared in a snarl. Disbelief pantomimed across his features, those pale eyes snapping with rage.
The idea of exposing his reasons behind the surgery left a flavour of rotten meat in Mycroft's mouth. He had always lectured Sherlock on the weakness of sentiment. The very notion of confiding in this boy made him feel sick, because he knew what would happen. Sherlock felt betrayed, and he would lash out in revenge. He would take Mycroft's words and twist them. He would plunge his fingers into the healing wounds of Mycroft's confidence and rip them open anew out of sheer spite.
After everything he had fought through, that was one battle Mycroft knew he could not face.
'My career, Sherlock. I did it for my career.'
It was a white-lie; a half-truth. Felisians were statistically rare and stood out from the crowd. In a job that required subtlety, such traits were not an asset. However, Mycroft would not have pursued such a drastic course of action merely for the sake of his future profession. It was an answer behind which he could hide both himself and the truth from Sherlock, and he used it without hesitation
Tears bit at Mycroft's eyes, nipping along his lashes as he struggled to contain them. He knew the loathing of which Sherlock spoke, but it had never been focussed on anyone in his family. Every ounce of it had been aimed at himself. The idea of Sherlock seeing anything like that in his actions made nausea clench hard in his gut, and he swallowed against the lead weight of despair that crushed his ribs and stalled the blood within his veins.
Sherlock had fallen motionless, slumped in Mycroft's grasp with his face turned away. He should have told him the truth before all this began. He should have included him, young as he was, in the situation, yet he had not. Now, looking down at his little brother, watching the blood trail over his temple and the tears water his cheeks, he realised that something irrevocable had changed.
Things between them would never be as they once were, and it was all his fault.
The crack of a log on the fire startled Mycroft back to the present day. Outside, true night had drawn across the city, enfolding London in light-pocked darkness.
The armchair creaked as he shifted his weight and released a gusty sigh: one that brimmed with both resolution and regret. There was nothing of the path he had chosen that he would do differently, bar this: if he had his time over again, he would include Sherlock from the start. He would set aside his pride – his need to always seem superior and in control. He would reveal himself to be human after all, with the same frailties and doubts. Humiliating, but worth it.
He had never expected Sherlock to believe his excuse about his career. Perhaps, deep down, Sherlock knew that there was more to it than that, but they both clung to the reason he had thrown down like a gauntlet in the heat of the moment. For him, it was easier than discussing the truth, and maybe for Sherlock it was easier to accept than whatever alternatives he feared.
The result was this: a constant war of attrition between them. A dearth of understanding. Any common ground they once had fell away to nothing, and they were left sniping at each other, neither one of them meeting the other's expectations. True, Sherlock had disappointed him immeasurably with his use and abuse of illicit substances, but Mycroft could never escape the fact that, however unintentionally, he had been the one to strike the first blow to their relationship.
There was no way to turn back the clock, and mending bridges? He knew a lost cause when he saw it.
With a sigh, Mycroft got to his feet, going through the motions of packing up for the night. Moving to take his coat from the hook, he paused, considering his reflection in the long mirror near the door. He took it all in, from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes, the cut of his suit to the scars he knew lay underneath.
He had thought, back when he made his decision, that the cost of his choice may be the loss of his family, but he had been wrong. It was not the surgery itself that had caused the breach between himself and his brother, but his own damn pride. Yet even knowing all that he did, even suffering the constant chafe of Sherlock's disdain, he could not regret the path his life had taken.
Because when he looked in the mirror, he saw himself.
He saw Mycroft Holmes as he always should have been. To him, that was priceless.