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nerdywerdyprincess-blog · 8 years

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The Final Answer (TFP Redone)

Reposting this due to an offensive title that apparently upsets people. The Final Answer is going to be more appropriate anyway since there will be a question asked at the end of this series. ;)

So again, rewriting The Final Problem to be what it should have been, featuring lots of Johnlock, M-Theory and tying up a lot of loose ends! See previous posts for the Prologue. Part one is below. Part Two will be tomorrow. Hoping to post one part every day until the end.

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Part One

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The sound of the projector whirring in the background was just white noise to him and made the black and white image on the screen feel more nostalgic and romantic. The private theatre seat and the large viewing screen was all part of the atmosphere, and like his brother, Mycroft Holmes knew a thing or two about how to set a stage and how to create the right dramatic setting for the show.

Unlike his brother however, he preferred to indulge in such dramas privately.

“'You know, I could arrest you,” the tough law enforcement agent said in his gruff, sexy voice as he regarded the blond woman in front of him. The trench coat was classic for such a setting, as was the woman’s knee length skirt and red lipstick, although one couldn’t see the exact shade due to the black and white color scheme.

“What for?” the woman responded with a coy look.

Mycroft smiled to himself, relaxing just a little more and glad to be able to lose himself in his favorite film. It was a secret delight of his and one that would have likely shocked anyone who knew him; his fondness for old films and romantic dramas. Perhaps, he philosophized, because he was always guaranteed a happy ending. Life however….life never guaranteed that.

“Wearing a dress like that.”

“Would you like me to take it off?”

“Then I’d really have to press charges.”

“Press away.”

“Isn’t that how they got started?”

“Who?”

“Adam and Eve.”

Mycroft mouthed the words along with the actors and glanced over to the table next to him just in front of where the projector rested and grabbed his small glass of sherry with his free hand, his other holding his lit cigarette, even as he grinned to himself in a way he never did in public. He would be mortified of course if anyone knew he was a closet romantic, but that was alright, because no one would ever know. Ever…

“Oh, them.”

“And that turned out OK.”

“You think so? I thought it was supposed to be the beginning of all human misery.”

“Now what was all that about arresting me?”

“Well, maybe not arresting you.”

“No?”

“I could just keep you under close watch.”

“Very close?”

“A-huh.”

“Shame, I was looking forward to putting myself into the hands of the authorities.”

“You were?”

“Finger-printing, being searched thoroughly…”

“MYCROFT!!”

The door to Mycroft’s private theatre was abruptly thrown open and the lights turned on. Mycroft jumped as if a clown wielding a machete had just burst into the room to attack him and he swore as he burned himself on his own cigarette and spilled his drink on his trousers with his own startle.

“Sherlock! What in God’s name—“ Mycroft began as he stood up to face this intruder, only to pale and tense as he saw he wasn’t alone. Gregory LeStrade was with him too it seemed, wearing a trench coat.

But Mycroft didn’t get a chance to ask questions as he was abruptly grabbed by his brother, wearing his own signature coat and hat and shoved him up against the nearest wall.

“WHERE IS SHE?!” Sherlock shouted like a man possessed. His icy blue eyes bore into his brothers, and Mycroft wondered if he was high again or otherwise mentally impaired. The last time Sherlock had gotten his physical with him, he’d been strung out after all. “Where is Eurus?!!”

The name made everything inside Mycroft go still, and Sherlock knew in that moment that his theory was correct as his brother tensed and his expression went ice cold. His own heart was pounding as well, though this time it had nothing to do with cocaine or any other form of narcotic.

He was motivated entirely by fear and a kind of raw desperation he’d never felt before, save perhaps once, when he’d been inspired to jump off a building.

“Where is she, *brother*? Tell me where she is right now!!” Sherlock shouted again.

Mycroft swallowed. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve…never even heard of anyone named Eurus.”

Sherlock scoffed bitterly, but didn’t let go of his brother’s collar. “Oh really? Well, let me refresh your memory,” he said darkly and pulled out a note and held it up to his brother’s face, even as he read it aloud.

“Dear Sherlock,

Did you miss me, brother? Come and play.

Love,

Eurus”

Mycroft paled starkly as the letter was read aloud and he reached for it.

“Let me see that!” Mycroft demanded sharply.

Sherlock’s eyes went cold. “Don’t remember her at all, I see,” he mocked sardonically as he saw Mycroft examining the handwriting with his eyes and going stiff and pale. “My conclusion is correct then. I have a sister! Second conclusion; you’ve locked her away somewhere. And third, you’ve gotten sloppy.”

Mycroft frowned at the third, and glanced up to meet his brother’s gaze.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Mycroft said softly with a slow shake of his head and swallowed tensely. “Where did you find this?”

“In the home of John’s therapist,” Sherlock informed. “Or rather, my sister, pretending to be his therapist. His real therapist was found dead in that same house! And now John is missing.”

“Missing?” Mycroft asked incredulously.

Greg looked somber. “Molly was watching Rosie today and she called Sherlock this afternoon, frantic because John never came back from his appointment. He went to the therapist’s house and found the body and the note. We’ve searched all around the house and made inquiries with his sister and all his friends, but no one has seen him.”

Mycroft felt his blood go ice cold, but he kept his composure as best he could.

“Yes, well, Doctor Watson isn’t the most emotionally stable of individuals right now, is he? Perhaps he simply went on an impulsive holiday,” Mycroft said, handing the note back to Sherlock.

Sherlock’s eyes flashed with something dangerous at the suggestion and he abruptly punched his brother in the jaw.

“Sherlock!” Greg shouted in alarm, even as Sherlock shoved Mycroft forcefully up against the wall again, his arm to Mycroft’s neck as if to choke him.

“You listen to me, *brother mine*! If anything happens to John because of you….because you’re keeping secrets from me….I will kill you, blood or no blood!” Sherlock threatened darkly, almost shaking with vivid anger and….perhaps just a little terror at what might have happened to his—doctor. “This isn’t one of your government conspiracies where you get to play god with peoples lives! This is bigger than that. This is *his* life and mine! Now I want to know who Eurus is! Everything, Mycroft. I want to know everything! Why can’t I remember her? And where is she?!”

Mycroft stared into his brother’s eyes, so alive with….feeling. Sometimes he did envy Sherlock his ability to feel so deeply. Of course, Mycroft knew it was far more trouble than it was worth, and for the most part he was happy with his solitary and purely intellectual existence! But there were times like now, when he saw Sherlock truly moved and willing to do anything for someone, that he envied him that connection to people.

He truly believed Sherlock meant every word. He’d known from the beginning that John Watson would either make or break his brother. Truly, in this moment, he wasn’t sure which one had been accomplished. At one point he had…hoped….that John could be Sherlock’s salvation. Now, he feared that he may be his undoing.

Which he realized was possibly the plan all along.

“If we are going to discuss his, we shall do so privately. This is a family matter,” Mycroft said quietly, ignoring the pain in his jaw as he turned to look at LeStrade.

Greg held up his hands in surrender. “Fine by me. I’m just here to keep Sherlock from killing you,” he informed and then smirked. “You’re really watching ‘Paradise Found’?” he asked in amusement, the film having been playing softly in the background once he found the knob to adjust he volume. He was fond of old films himself, but never quite thought Mycroft Holmes was…the type. Surprise, surprise!

Mycroft went a quite obvious shade of pink. “Out!” he ordered with a frown, utterly humiliated that of all people, he would be the one to walk in and see his most private of hobbies.

Greg shrugged and walked out genially, just glad that Sherlock didn’t try to kill anyone this time.

As soon as the door was shut, Mycroft went over to the projector to turn it off the film completely, not meeting his brother’s gaze as he did so.

“I still believe it is impossible that Eurus was able to escape. I took every precaution.”

“Did you now?” Sherlock asked. “Well, as I said; sloppy. Now start talking, Mycroft! I want the truth.”

Mycroft gave a soft, scoffing laugh. “The *truth*?” he asked, and turned to look at his brother almost piteously. “Who was it that said that said ’the truth is rarely pure and never simple?’”

“I don’t care about your pedantic philosophies, Mycroft,” Sherlock dismissed coldly. “There were three of us then. You, me and Eurus; the sister I can’t remember. The ‘East Wind’,” he said with a bitter sneer.

Mycroft looked somber. “Our parents were fond of unusual names. Eurus is Greek for the god of the east wind,” he informed, as if speaking to a child again.

“I know what it means!” Sherlock snapped angrily and fisted his hands at his side. “You used that to scare me!”

“No.”

“You turned my sister into a ghost story!” he further accused, pacing away and taking off his stupid, silly hat and tossing it down in agitation. Fuck, he wanted a cigarette!

“Of course I didn’t. I monitored you,” Mycroft insisted calmly.

“You what?” Sherlock demanded with a sharp look.

Mycroft looked grim.

“Memories can resurface. Wounds can reopen. The roads we walk have demons beneath…and yours have been waiting for a very long time,” he said softly and then sighed heavily, shaking his head. “I never bullied you. I used, at discreet intervals, potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition. I was looking after you!” he tried to insist.

That’s all Mycroft had ever done, it felt like. Trying to look after Sherlock… He knew he’d done a lot of damage over the years of course. His methods hadn’t always turned out expected results, but his intentions had been pure. No matter what happened, he did want Sherlock to understand that!

Sherlock’s expression remained neutral however as he stared at his brother all he more intently.

“Why can’t I remember her?” he demanded quietly.

Mycroft smiled sadly. “You do remember her, Sherlock….in a way,” he specified. “Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today is your memory of Eurus.”

“Enough, Mycroft!” Sherlock exclaimed, unnerved by that and the idea that….there was something missing in his mind. His mind was so important to him! It was a machine, finely tuned and designed for nothing less than excellence. The idea that there was a flaw somewhere…. Missing information…..a virus in his hard drive, a fly in the ointment….

He shuddered as he heard Moriarty’s voice in his head, mocking him, and he instead turned his brief lapse of attention back to his brother. “Just get to the point. What happened?”

Mycroft bit a lip somberly. “You know how I’m the smart one?”

Sherlock scoffed in response.

“We were tested more than once. I was remarkable, but Eurus was described as an era-defining genius. Beyond Newton. She was….incandescent…” he whispered, his eyes going distant as he remembered he girl with dark hair. “She was different from the beginning. She knew things she should never have known….as if she was somehow aware of truths beyond the normal scope…” he whispered, and looked visibly disturbed as he abruptly closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if remembering images from a nightmare.

Sherlock frowned in confusion. He hated such unspecific details. And yet, as Mycroft spoke, he felt an eerie sensation, like a memory from a dream almost….

“What do you mean? Examples.”

Mycroft looked almost haunted as he opened his eyes. “They found her with a knife once. She seemed to be cutting herself. Mother and Father were terrified. They thought it was a suicide attempt! But when I asked Eurus what she was doing, she said: I wanted to see how my muscles worked….” he quoted and felt a shiver as if he could almost hear her voice in his head, and could almost imagine her in the room with them. “So I asked her if she felt pain, and she said: Which one’s pain?”

Sherlock looked stoic at his, his emotions getting a little more in line now that he was getting facts, and yet he found himself watching Mycroft intently, seeing how disturbed he looked and couldn’t help but feel a chill in the air as well.

“Then what happened?”

Mycroft swallowed thickly. “Musgrave,” he said softly and a vivid memory of their ancestral home flashed before his eyes. “The ancestral home, where there was always honey for tea. And you played among the - funny gravestones.”

Sherlock didn’t know why, but that word….Musgrave…felt so familiar to him.

It was on the tip of his tongue…

He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair shakily. “Funny? Funny….how?” he asked, though he felt odd suddenly as if he could remember flashes of old stones with numbers on them. Wrong numbers…

“They weren’t real. The dates were all wrong. An architectural joke which fascinated you,” Mycroft said softly.

Sherlock closed his eyes as he heard something in his head; a distant voice like a little girl…singing in a sing-song voice…and an image of them sitting at a table while she sang…

Deep down below the old beech tree - Help succour me now the - East winds blow.

“East winds blows…. Sixteen by six….and under we go…” Sherlock whispered shakily, his eyes opening again as he stared distantly.

Mycroft watched his brother intently and swallowed thickly. “You’re starting to remember.”

Sherlock shook his head. “Fragments…” he dismissed, but paused and frowned as he remembered leaving the table and running out, wearing his pirate hat and wielding his little wooden sword, and calling a name. “Redbeard…” he breathed shakily and then glanced up to look at Mycroft in horror.

Mycroft nodded darkly. “Yes, Sherlock. Redbeard,” he confirmed quietly. “Eurus took Redbeard and locked him up somewhere no-one could find him. And she refused to say where he was. She’d only repeat that song. Her little ritual. We begged and begged her to tell us where he was! But she said: The song is the answer. But the song made no sense…” he said darkly.

Sherlock looked strained. “What happened to Redbeard?” he demanded intently, because he realized suddenly it was happening again. John…

Mycroft shook his head. “We never found him. But she started calling him Drowned Redbeard, so we made our assumptions. You were….traumatized,” he informed frankly. “Natural, I suppose. You were, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that, you were different. So changed. Never spoke of it again. In time, you seemed to forget that Eurus had ever even existed.”

Sherlock scoffed shakily in incredulity at the idea that he’d been…emotional! And that the loss of a dog had changed him so much! But granted, his memories of Redbeard were….both painful and happy at the same time and so very complicated. And yet it felt unreal that he was missing so much information! There was something not quite right about any of this…

“How could I forget her? We lived in the same house!” Sherlock argued, convinced his brother wasn’t telling him something.

“No,” Mycroft corrected. “They took her away. Not because of Redbeard, but because of what happened immediately after,” he said grimly. “She burned down the house. Almost killed all of us in our sleep,” he said darkly. “After that, our sister had - to be taken away.”

“Where?” Sherlock demanded tensely, because he had to believe that wherever she was, John was too. Or at the very least she could tell him what happened to him!

“Oh, some suitable place, or so everyone thought. Not suitable enough, however,” Mycroft informed casually. “She died there after starting yet another fire.”

“Damn it, Mycroft!” Sherlock snapped angrily. “That’s a lie!”

“Yes!” Mycroft retorted tensely. “But it is also a kindness, Sherlock. This is the story I told our parents to spare them further pain, and to account for the absence of an identifiable body.”

Severus scoffed bitterly. “And no doubt to prevent their further interference,” he accused.

“Well, that, too, of course. The depth of Eurus’s psychosis and the extent of her abilities couldn’t hope to be contained in any ordinary institution. Uncle Rudi took care of things,” he said softly.

Sherlock’s eyes sharpened. “Where is she, Mycroft? The truth.”

Mycroft bit a lip, before he sighed heavily in defeat. “There’s a place called Sherrinford. An island. It’s a secure and very secret installation whose sole purpose is to contain what we call the uncontainables. The demons beneath the road? This is where we trap them. Sherrinford is more than a prison, or an asylum. It is a fortress, built to keep the rest of the world safe from what is inside it. Heaven may be a fantasy for the credulous and the afraid. But I can give you a map reference for hell,” he said with dark pointedness.

The word ‘hell’ made Sherlock’s head snap up and he stared at Mycroft intently for a moment, going cold as words were echoed back to him in Mary’s voice.

Save John Watson… Go to hell, Sherlock.

His heart pounded quickly in his chest as he recalled another time when he’d spoken of hell itself. When he’d offered to shake Jim Moriarty’s hand there…

“Sherlock?” Mycroft queried as he saw his brother zoning out and his eyes doing that thing where they moved from side to side as if he were reading words in mid-air, a sure sign he was thinking and deducing quite quickly. “Whoever it was that killed that woman or left you that note, I promise you, it couldn’t have been her. That’s where our sister has been since early childhood. She hasn’t left, not for a single day!” he insisted.

Sherlock raised his eyes to his brother and then gave him a pointed, determined look as he grabbed Mycroft’s umbrella and tossed it to him.

“Well then, brother….let’s go prove it,” Sherlock said determinedly and then strode out of the room, fully expecting Mycroft would follow.

~*~

#johnlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock #tjlc

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nerdywerdyprincess-blog · 8 years

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The Final Solution (Part One) - (TFP Redone)

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Part One

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Unlike his brother however, he preferred to indulge in such dramas privately.

“What for?” the woman responded with a coy look.

“Wearing a dress like that.”

“Would you like me to take it off?”

“Then I'd really have to press charges.”

“Press away.”

“Isn't that how they got started?”

“Who?”

“Adam and Eve.”

“Oh, them.”

“And that turned out OK.”

“You think so? I thought it was supposed to be the beginning of all human misery.”

“Now what was all that about arresting me?”

“Well, maybe not arresting you.”

“No?”

“I could just keep you under close watch.”

“Very close?”

“A-huh.”

“Shame, I was looking forward to putting myself into the hands of the authorities.”

“You were?”

“Finger-printing, being searched thoroughly…”

“MYCROFT!!”

“Sherlock! What in God’s name---“ Mycroft began as he stood up to face this intruder, only to pale and tense as he saw he wasn’t alone. Gregory LeStrade was with him too it seemed, wearing a trench coat.

But Mycroft didn’t get a chance to ask questions as he was abruptly grabbed by his brother, wearing his own signature coat and hat and shoved him up against the nearest wall.

He was motivated entirely by fear and a kind of raw desperation he’d never felt before, save perhaps once, when he’d been inspired to jump off a building.

“Where is she, *brother*? Tell me where she is right now!!” Sherlock shouted again.

Mycroft swallowed. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I’ve…never even heard of anyone named Eurus.”

“Dear Sherlock,

Did you miss me, brother? Come and play.

Love,

Eurus”

Mycroft paled starkly as the letter was read aloud and he reached for it.

“Let me see that!” Mycroft demanded sharply.

Mycroft frowned at the third, and glanced up to meet his brother’s gaze.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Mycroft said softly with a slow shake of his head and swallowed tensely. “Where did you find this?”

“In the home of John’s therapist,” Sherlock informed. “Or rather, my sister, pretending to be his therapist. His real therapist was found dead in that same house! And now John is missing.”

“Missing?” Mycroft asked incredulously.

Mycroft felt his blood go ice cold, but he kept his composure as best he could.

“Yes, well, Doctor Watson isn’t the most emotionally stable of individuals right now, is he? Perhaps he simply went on an impulsive holiday,” Mycroft said, handing the note back to Sherlock.

Sherlock’s eyes flashed with something dangerous at the suggestion and he abruptly punched his brother in the jaw.

“Sherlock!” Greg shouted in alarm, even as Sherlock shoved Mycroft forcefully up against the wall again, his arm to Mycroft’s neck as if to choke him.

“You listen to me, *brother mine*! If anything happens to John because of you….because you’re keeping secrets from me….I will kill you, blood or no blood!” Sherlock threatened darkly, almost shaking with vivid anger and….perhaps just a little terror at what might have happened to his---doctor. “This isn’t one of your government conspiracies where you get to play god with peoples lives! This is bigger than that. This is *his* life and mine! Now I want to know who Eurus is! Everything, Mycroft. I want to know everything! Why can’t I remember her? And where is she?!”