I am not lonely [Mystrade] - BOOK 2

CHAPTER 213 : The heart science

Mycroft looked at the mess in his study and grunted. He had pushed back the moment of cleaning it up for weeks but he had to resolve to do it now that he could barely walk through the room without knocking over a stack of paper. He opened the cabinet behind his desk where his files were usually hanged and started cleaning around, feeling the satisfaction of seeing the carpet for the first time in weeks

He was nearly done when he discovered a small box covered in purple velvet in a box of old papers he was ready to bin. Curious, he opened it and got rid of the lilac silk paper that covered its content, uncovering a little pile of yellowed pictures. In the first one he could be seen holding a baby Sherlock wrapped in a thin blue blanket, grinning with the toothless smile of a seven year old. On the back was indicated a date, just a couple of days after the sleuth's birth, making the politician wonder if that wasn't the first time he had ever held the boy who would grow up to become the annoying brat he was still taking care of.

He could then smile at a picture of him, few months later, in his Brambletye School uniform, pausing seriously in the garden of the Holmes' countryside cottage. Then another one, few years later, with the distinctive straw hat worn by every Harrow pupil, his brother on his back, his head resting on the hat of his eldest.

Mycroft was depicted on most of the photographs, often with his brother but there was only one family portrait. Taken in the living room of Holmes Mansion in London it was the last picture on which Sherlock was featured. The politician remembered really well the day the picture was taken. It was just before Christmas when he was 22, weeks before Sherlock would turn 15. Mrs Holmes had decided to have a family portrait,something they weren't used to, and had forced her youngest son to wear a tie and to comb his hair back, what had caused a violent crisis between the consulting detective and Elizabeth Holmes and ended up by Sherlock making his most unpleasant face on the portrait.
The only other picture on which his parents appeared was a black and white photograph taken at Mycroft christening, the baby in a long white dress in his mother's arms, next to Mr Holmes in front of Westminster Abbey.

He was going to put the box away in one of his desk drawer when he remarked the folded piece of paper that had remained stuck to the box's lid. He thumped the lid gently on one of the shelves to make the paper fall. Only then he understood what it was and. The paper had felt, unfolded on the floor, uncovering a phone number and under it, in the elder Holmes' own handwriting, a name : Gregory Lestrade.

The feelings flew back vivid in his mind just as if all the months and years had flown so quickly that they had left them untouched. There was no need for him to concentrate to remember the butterflies that would make him shiver until late in the night, the contact he would provoke just to have something to linger on in his sleepless nights. He remembered the fire inside him and the sensation that he could burst at anytime because of all the feelings he had concealed inside.

Urgently, he grabbed his pen and notepad, dizzy with all the memories coming back, needing to let them out. The thoughts were like music in his head, a symphony playing at full blast that he needed to note down before it passed, that he needed to share before it tore him apart.

He remembered the first flickering of his heart on a sunny summer day. Sherlock was younger and he was too, the out of his depth detective who stepped in the small flat the sleuth was living in, down in the east end. Black hair turning grey on the side and perfect pink lips, a greek statue to the elder Holmes. Just a few seconds then gone again but a lasting impression on the politician.

To say that he had thought about him for days would have been an understatement. He had looked for his detective all around London, trying to learn more about him. His name first, Gregory. The name of popes and dukes, greek for watchful and alert and music to Mycroft's ears. His pedigree then, a middle class boy from Kent turned Scotland Yard detective, that was at last as alluring as the muscles the official had seen peaking under his thin white shirt, keeling over his heart. And his number, that he would never dare to call.