House of Cards | tag: Mycroft INACTIVE

[philosopher]

Takes place shortly after the events of On Your Own

'How are you feeling this evening, Mister Holmes?'

Somewhat heavy hearted, Holmes muttered, 'What do you think?'

This doctor, who Holmes had easily come to hate, had seized the opportunity to examine him attentively in detail with the keenest curiosity more than once, as though he hoped to obtain some revelation, to draw some secret from him. He could still hear the man's voice - a voice of very peculiar tone, somewhat harsh and strident, with an interrogative inflection at the end of each sentence.

Like he had really never seen a drug overdose before.

His image said it all. Those pale, pale eyes under a greasy-white forehead, eyes that at times assumed a hideous, glassy, dead look, and at others lit up with an indefinable gleam that savoured of madness. Little sleep had been had, a nurse would, at night, proceed slowly to arrange the bed with a care and solicitude in that womanly way, forgetting nothing, as if she thought her efforts would give him refreshing and unbroken slumbers till the morrow. Never the case. Holmes would turn over and continue to lie awake all night.

'I see, well. It might cheer you up to know you have a visitor.'

'I know.'

Blinkingly, the doctor responded, 'You know?'

The torture became insupportable. He rose once more on his pillow, shivering under a biting cold that only he could seem to feel and replied in a tone treated to patronize, 'Well, yeah. That clipboard you're holding is awfully thin, about two pieces of paper on there I'd say and, roughly guessing, one has my personal details on and other, my statistics since arriving. Plus, you entered the room with this, somewhat forced, positive air - if you were coming in to tell me I'm a dead man, well. That narrows it down to either, you came to discharge me which I really doubt, or you'd come to tell me I had some visitor.'

'I see,' The doctor repeated, an answer that had become mechanical since Holmes' arrival on the ward. His bitter genius was difficult to get used to. 'Shall I send them in?'

'Suppose so.' He said with cold lucidity, lying back and sighing. More than likely it was Watson. As dearly grateful as he was, this was precisely the moment where John would sound that moral phenomenon of his, which so constantly took place in himself.

[billsykes]

The flight over had nearly driven him mad.

In the first place, he’d sent his personal assistant to send his things on after him. Not the most savory of choices he’d made but the fact had been that he was in a hurry, and in a tight spot it was better than nothing. Even so Mycroft knew that the majority of his possessions would be arriving in New York half mangled, thrown together in suitcases and boxes and then packed as tightly as possible to make everything fit.

His P.A. was a good woman, discreet to say the least. And also clumsy. So very, dreadfully clumsy. Of course, he’d known that even before he’d hired her; the backs of her hands, the tips of her high-heels and her left outer-ear had told him as much. Even so, he’d hired her, and now he supposed that he’d be reaping the benefits of his one good deed.

In the second place, Jones had nearly worried his ears off trying to make sure that preparations had been completed in his hasty departure. Mycroft had assured him, bloody exhausting as the little man was, that he could just as easily carry out his work concerning the Kor- well, that’s not strictly the point, is it?- in America as there in the office.

Between the fact that Jones hadn’t stopped for breath during the entire half hour he’d spent chasing Mycroft down a hallway; the fact that he’d clearly spent the night away from home; the fact that he’d most definitely kept company with someone not his wife; not a woman at all, for that matter; and the fact that traffic would be backed up approximately twenty minutes because of construction eight blocks over—it’d been an utterly killing morning at the office.

In the third place, Mycroft had taken a dose of prescription sleeping pills in the hopes of finding some small relief, and regretted it the moment he’d swallowed them down. Isn’t that just the Holmesian way, he thought somewhat bleakly, reclining back in his seat. Perhaps it was both a blessing and a curse that the medication failed to take its effect.

Oh, no. Instead, he’d spent the majority of the flight trying to ignore the child in coach who would very likely end up tripping a stewardess, if not himself, if he didn’t bother to tie his shoelaces, the librarian who had emptied her husband’s bank account in order to ‘find herself’… The list went on and on, and all of these things being mere snippets he’d been unable to stop from knowing, sitting alone in the first class cabin.

But none of these things took precedence over one supreme thought. The dark head of hair against the stereotypical egg-shell wash of a hospital’s sick room. The dull sheen of sickly sweat, bedclothes damp and all at once too light and too heavy. Washed out light flooding the room, casting shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. Sherlock. His own brother. In withdrawl.

Mycroft hated himself for allowing it to happen. As impossible to keep up with as Sherlock often was, Mycroft was painfully aware that he should have been able to do more to ensure that this point hadn't been reached with him. He wondered vaguely at what point it had been that Mycroft had become so very busy and important in his own life that he couldn't afford a phone call. An e-mail. Anything.

Sherlock. His brother.

A pretty young woman sat reclining at the reception desk, which Mycroft approached wearily. Sherlock, if he had been there, probably would have asked her how long she had been taking ball-room dancing lessons with her fiancée. She would have thought it charming, and he would have told her all about how he’d worked it out. But Sherlock wasn’t, Mycroft didn’t, and the woman has directed him to the proper ward. He’d asked the doctor in charge of Sherlock’s health to announce a visitor before he’d gone in.

Mycroft allowed himself to hang back, just out of sight but well within ear shot. He allowed himself to rest against the coolness of the thinly-painted dry wall, eyes drifting across to the door where three- no, four- days ago one of the nurses had dropped a tray of medicine and hurried to correct her mistake so that no one would know. Mnn.

The doctor strode out of the room, white coat twirling out behind him in a doctorly-wrath as he went. He was out of his depth, dealing with Sherlock. Surprise, surprise. Mycroft made an attempt to compose himself. A loose grin on his face, hands thrust into his pockets- he was still wearing his business suit- he rolled around the edge of the doorframe, stepping easily through the threshold.

“I dare say, brother mine, that you’ve already acquired something of the highly dreaded American accent.”

[philosopher]

The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blinds were down, and yet it was not pitch dark. He half-lay with eyes fixed, waiting. So sudden and transitory had been the experience that it seemed now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive and sinister a quietness broken in on his solitude, that for a moment he dared not move.

He had hardly been aware of the process, but every hour had done something, it seemed, towards clarifying his point of view. A consciousness had begun to stir in him that was neither that of the old, easy Holmes, whom he had never been fully aware of before, nor of this strange ghostly intelligence that haunted the hawklike, restless face, and plucked so insistently at his distracted nerves. He had begun in a vague fashion to be aware of them both, could in a fashion discriminate between them, almost as if there really were two spirits in stubborn conflict within him. It would, of course, wear him down in time.

Just dimly, aware of a change of position about the door. He felt a quick tremor, a walking movement, and his one and only brother walking into his room.

A change, that seemed almost the effect of actual shadow, came over his face. It was almost a physical comfort, some long-sealed spring of delight seemed to rise in his heart with an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find a little peace - a brief pause, his mouth opened in silent, soft exclamation, then becoming a laugh.

'Oh-ho, no. Say it isn't so. ' Though an infinitely exhausted laugh. 'Tell me you've not brought mum with you.'