PARA/DOX

Guardian And Governness

"I saw my brother tonight." Sherlock admitted, his eyebrows creasing as he stared at their shared reflection in the mirror. From Sherlock's angle it looked as if Musgrave held him in a headlock, the boy's arm made wider by the sleeve of the heavy jacket held tightly across his neck.
"Mycroft? In a memory or in passing?" Musgrave wondered.
"A memory. He hasn't been here in two years, or at least we haven't been able to coordinate in that time frame. But tonight...tonight was different." Sherlock sat up, finally sick of appearing to be strangled. He sat close to Musgrave, pressing his chest against his arm while trying to recount what he had witnessed in his latest hallucination. "He was going somewhere...dare I call it a date."
"How can you know it was a date? I never thought he was the dating type." Musgrave chuckled, obviously taken aback by the idea of the elder Holmes engaged in any romantic activity.
"He was walking around the room, posing to himself. He wore his cologne. I could smell it." Sherlock admitted anxiously. Reginald chuckled, though he allowed Sherlock to continue.
"And he was practicing his speech in the mirror." Sherlock finished anxiously.
"A speech?" Musgrave wondered. "I never practiced speeches with you."
"Yes well...that's not the point. I'm stalling, you see, because I don't want to stomach the idea." Sherlock grumbled, hiding his face a bit deeper into Musgrave's shoulder as he encouraged himself to process.
"What, oh come on. Your brother was allowed to date." Reginald complained, patting Sherlock on the back as he recognized the growing distress. His fingers messaged along the bones that protruded from the skin, made even more jagged by Sherlock's hunched position.
"That's not just it. He said...well he was practicing his speech. And he mentioned Victor." Sherlock admitted at last. He raised his head, watching for Reginald's reaction. He wanted to see just how believable the claim was, though he was not surprised to see the boy on the verge of laughing and crying. Reginald's face contorted, for a moment his lips were upturned, then pursed. His eyes were wide, then squinted. It was the same sages of grief that Sherlock had to go through in order to ultimately understand the situation at hand.
"You think your brother dated Victor?" Reginald whispered, dropping his voice just in case the bodyguard happened to be sitting with his ear against the wall. It would be unprecedented but certainly not surprising.
"I don't know what I think. In fact I'd rather think anything else." Sherlock admitted. Musgrave sat back, running his hand across Sherlock's spine as he processed the information. At last he shrugged, as if his ultimate decision was one of indifference.
"I'm sure it's nothing to think too much upon. Your brother was a nice young man, and Victor was...is, an attractive fellow. I'd say being locked in a laboratory all day would make anyone a little bit, well for lack of a better word, excitable." Musgrave muttered.
"Oh stop, stop, don't even..." Sherlock pushed Musgrave away, though he laughed as he did. "Don't even make me think about that!"
"I'm just saying!" Reginald defended, raising his hands in surrender as he fell backwards across Sherlock's bedspread. "I'm saying they were two consenting teenagers, alike in sexuality. Anything might've happened."
"You disgust me." Sherlock muttered, chuckling as he reclined to meet Reginald where he lay, pressing a kiss to his lips before flopping parallel upon the blankets. Reginald collected the small frame against his chest, hugging tightly as if he could bring Sherlock back to life within his arms.
"You could always ask Victor." Reginald suggested.
"I'd rather get more bone marrow extracted." Sherlock grumbled. "It would be less painful."
"Yes, I suppose so. But you'll never know when you need to blackmail him." Reginald pointed out, to which Sherlock nodded in agreement. It was an awkward motion; he was more pushing his forehead into Musgrave's sleeve than agreeing to anything substantial.
"I don't need to blackmail him. Like it or not he's on my side. It's his father I have to worry about. His father and Doctor Moriarty." Sherlock admitted. Musgrave sighed heavily, his jaw setting as he pondered those most evil creatures.
"Whatever happened to that other Doctor, the one you liked?" he wondered. Sherlock didn't respond immediately, instead he closed his eyes, remembering the shadow of friendship that might have emerged within his brief encounters with John Watson.
"Gone." He admitted at last, his heart stinging to recite such a word. "Gone and never came back."
"That's a shame." Musgrave muttered. Musgrave said it best; he said it as any rational onlooker might. Though it wasn't just a shame, no it was much more than that. It was a tragedy. A betrayal, if you might go so deep. John Watson's disappearance had sparked not only a deep distrust in even the best of men, though it made Sherlock wonder if the agency had found out about their secret sharing. John Watson vanished not two days after the flash drive was passed into his possession, leading Sherlock to wonder if he had escaped with the valuable information or if he had been abducted by the very people he claimed to work for. Did he deem this work too valuable that not even the government could know? Or was he thrown down a well somewhere, his head twisted and his flash drive rooted deep into Doctor Moriarty's computer? It was a question that Sherlock didn't like to consider, as both avenues led to disaster. The former dampening Doctor Watson's good character, and the latter proving that even a detailed blueprint could not lead their scientists to the discoveries and ultimate freedom of their most precious lab rat.