Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alert me if it doesn’t work darlings!

Anyways, here’s the cover! It’s meant to look like a painting of Mycroft and Snow but with the add on additions of Sherlock and Regina—the two most important people to Mycroft’s character. His guiding lights. Snow was intentionally monochromatic to draw attention away from him and onto Mycroft. Yes, that black part is torn canvas (zoom in to see the thread) and that is an eye looking at Mycroft. I did use Snow’s Portrait as a base—the one you can find on the fandom wiki when you search Capitol Couture. Mycroft’s design is the one I used in the second picture. This is not my best work but I tried.

(Also, it’s the size of A4 so it’s big! It will looked a bit fucked up on desktop or IPad but will like fine on phone. So as long as it’s not landscape it’s okay.)

Anyways, here’s my attempt at giving Mycroft some fancy outfits! I wanted to go for Capitol Couture, but it just… strayed? So you get this.

I think that Mycroft would put a fair amount of effort into his appearance—especially clothing—so I borrowed from Effie Trinket’s approach to fashion! Please zoom in for my annotations.

(Fun fact, this design sheet was the first time I drew Mycroft.)

Jen, you are free to use my cover for your work as long as you credit. And I look forward to the rest of the series. :D

(In fact, I might continue doing doodles for this series, who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

(Also, if you notice anything in the pictures that look like they are not hand drawn—like Snow’s throne and the flowers? They are pictures, and turn a blind eye to them.)

Chapter Text

Sup, back again!

Anyways, devoted to Jen’s work of Dead Men Call Out! Which is so good so far by the way.

If you’re asking who is who, at the front of the table is Mycroft holding a hologram of Sherlock. To the front left is Anthea (who I forgot the appearance of and said fuck it), to the right is Regina. Bottom left is Killian, having a depressive drink, and to the right of him is Bond.

I purposely only coloured the three POVs fully, after last work and me only colouring in Mycroft, I was like—heh heh, no one has to know. Well, now you know.

That is Snow’s shadow at the back! Covering the torn painting of Mycroft and Sherlock being happy. Symbolism! The art & literature student in me is patting my own back.

(Also, you might want to download and then view if you are on something like an iPad because I hate AO3 formatting. It’s fine on a phone though!)

Anyways, see you guys when I see you guys.

Chapter Text

Sherlock has a plan.

He has a plan. He has a plan and he’s going to come home. He’s going to come home to Mycroft (lying bastard) and Regina and play violin at their wedding.

He’s playing to win, because winning means surviving. He needs to survive. He needs to come home, for Regina, for his friends.

For Mycroft.

(“He left us to die!” Something in Sherlock snarled. “He promised that we’ll get through this. He promised!”)

“We knew this could happen,” another part of Sherlock whispered. “I doubt this was his fault.”)

“May the odds be ever in your favour” is practically the Hunger Games’ motto. But odds are not luck—not uncontrollable. They are mathematical probabilities that could be changed with effort and variables. Luck is the universe rolling dice, odds are rigging that dice.

There are two distinct variables: What Sherlock himself does, and what the people beyond do. He’s done all he could with influencing the Capitol. Everything else on that side of the equation depends on luck.

Argh. Luck. He really hates luck. If he and Mycroft share anything, it’s their distrust in chance and hatred of uncertainty.

(They share so much more than that.)

So, he focuses on what he can do by himself.

The plan is simple. In the brief grace period before the Games, stock up on food and eat.

(Statistically, in longer Games, the reason why so many die during the Games is because of dehydration and starvation. It’s called The Hunger Games for a reason. The best way to prepare is to limit the chances of such. If he’s full, he will have enough fuel to keep him alive for around two weeks without food. Water will be his greatest struggle. But his greatest strength is chemistry and science—if he cannot find a way to distil drinkable water for himself, he’s a failure.)

Get to the Cornucopia, obtain supplies—weapons, water, food—and get out of dodge.

(The Cornucopia Bloodbath claims the greatest number of lives. High risk, high reward.)

He would hide after, try to wait it out with his supplies. Try to find more supplies. Keep the deaths to a minimum until the very last second when he’s running out.

(So many deaths were based on revenge. Despite taking the classes, he’s not a Career. And even if he was, he will still have no allies to watch over him—Mycroft’s legacy has poisoned his chances to do so.

And it’s logical. If he initiates encounters, he raises his chances of being killed in a fight. He’ll wait the rest out, and when they are exhausted, he’ll strike. A war attrition will be boring for the Capitol and might bring him less Sponsors—sure—but that would only be a concern if he was a regular Tribute. But he’s the Ice Man’s brother— as much as he hates that—and he’s unusual, and that’ll get him far.

He is not Mycroft. He will not kill unless he has too. No. He cares too much about the value of life to do so.)

A few years ago when he started planning for the worst (him being Reaped, despite Mycroft promising him), he had assessed what weapon would be best. He couldn’t pick any weapons that would require him to develop muscles that would in turn require a higher metabolism. The priority would be speed and accuracy would be priority, as well as ensuring availability.

A knife, then. Knives were plentiful in the Games, and would check off his requirements. The main problem would be the need to get close and personal for maximum effect, but that could be remedied with throwing the knives.

But there was also the chance of not getting a knife.

However, the blade was more of a convenience, a security measure. Most Victors survived with passive skills. One or two in the Games’ history didn’t even kill at all, only that their opponents managed to blunder and die by their own mistakes. And even if they were clever enough not to die as such, Sherlock was still very good at hand to hand combat. He knew how to take down an opponent, he knew how to kill them with his bare hands—he knows the anatomy of the human body. He knows the best way to swiftly and efficiently kill a person.

Sherlock felt a bit guilty, that the second thought of when he received his blue scarf after the thought of “This is beautiful” was “I could garrote someone with this”.  

He can see it: Mycroft’s deep royal blue work of art drenched in crimson red, used for violence. He would be so heartbroken.

(They are both nothing but violent pragmatists. If the scarf is used as a weapon, then so be it.)

Sherlock has a plan. 

He has a plan to come home alive.

A desert makes things both easier and more difficult.

The death of just shy of half the Tributes—but all the Careers, the most dangerous—makes things more complex. Perhaps, not in a good way.

The desert was nothing he couldn’t overcome. The temperature would be the greatest danger factor—the heat for the day causing heat stroke and the cold for the night causing hypothermia—as will dehydration. Finding a source of water would be the first priority. Setting up camp or finding items of clothing would be second.

However, the death of all the Careers did complicate things greatly.

The Careers were the ones who Sherlock was counting on to hunt down the rest of the Tributes. They were the ones with both the means (training and allies) and the mindset (most of the other Tributes likely would adopt a ‘Live and Let Live’ attitude) to actually hunt down the other Tributes. Without them, the Game’s chance to become long increased. And with length came the danger of supplies and energy running out.

However, only around a baker’s dozen of them are alive. And soon—by Sherlock’s anticipation—a few more would join them due to their wounds hindering them. There was no way no survivors didn’t come out with injuries. 

Most of the people in the Arena are merely children. (Innocent children. Why did Mycroft ever work for Snow?) Sherlock has Career training and his intellect.

The odds of him winning have increased tremendously.

(Sherlock briefly contemplated, dwelling on the sounds of explosions and screams that he had heard as he ran. Why was the Cornucopia rigged when it just made sure the Games were less entertaining for the Capitol in the long run?)

Somehow, just somehow, he’s managed to procure allies.

Sherlock ends up knowing their names. 

(“Why did you tell me your names?”

“You told us yours,” the girl from Three—Electa—said. 

“It’s only fair we tell you ours in return,” the boy from Three—Weldon—continued.)

A mistake, really, to hear them out. He’s going to get attached.

They fill their bottles and Sherlock briefly commits the location of the oasis to memory, just in case they need to come back. Although, Sherlock thinks that the next time they come back, it will be poisoned.

Just as they were about to leave the oasis to avoid the chance of the Gamemakers throwing something nasty at them, a capsule and accompanying parachute landed in front of Sherlock.

He kneels down, not quite wary, and opens the capsule.

A knife—a proper hunter’s knife—is inside, its silver blade glimmering in the light wickedly. Reassurance. Temptation.

His two allies glance at it and him with a frown. Sherlock scowls.

“If I wanted to kill you two,” Sherlock sneers. “I would have already.”

The other two glance at each other, trading looks that Sherlock has trouble understanding, before Weldon walks away.

“Come on, Sherlock,” Electa said, a smile gracing her lips. “Let's get a move on.”

They make their move into the desert. Sherlock looks around as they walk, trying to scavenge for any food or other useful items.

He notices the footprints in the sand.

They are not bloodstained, so they must lead to people alive and dangerous—or at least, people they can’t take out easily. Sherlock does not draw attention to them, and rather continues walking.

Soon enough, they approach near the Cornucopia, and Sherlock spots a trail of blood reaching out. It was rather hard to see in the glaring light of the desert, but the dark brown of dried up blood contrasted the pale yellow of the sand enough to be seen. 

“We should follow the blood there,” Sherlock muttered, pointing at the line of dark brown. “It’s likely we’ll be able to take them out, if they are still alive. We’ll need all the resources we can get.”

They needed to take out the competition, he does not say. It’s a desert. The longer they stay, the less likely they are to survive.  

They move towards the trail.

They find Seven’s female.

She’s unlikely to win.

“I want to die on my own terms. It would be an honour to die by a Tribute’s hand,” the girl—merely fourteen yet still so old—rasps, clutching her bleeding side. “Hurry up and kill me.”

Sherlock kneels before her and places the knife at her throat. The girl closes her eyes.

His knife slits the trachea and the artery. Sherlock closes his eyes in remembrance.

A cannon fires.

Electa gets the bow, being the best shot out of all of them. Weldon carries the food. They use Seven’s clothes for makeshift protective gear.

Seven’s female is buried under the sand.

(Sherlock carefully does not think of the time he reads on how many calories human flesh gives. They have not reached that point of desperation. With luck, they won’t have to.)

The Gamemakers hit them with a sandstorm.

Sherlock can feel the sand hitting against his skin. His scarf his covering his neck and mouth. The makeshift gear used to protect his eyes. They are crawling on the ground, trying to avoid the brunt of the storm.

When it calms, Sherlock can see gashes and scratches on his hands. There is a trail of blood down Weldon’s face.

By the end of the day, Sherlock feels like the Game is rigged.

They find another oasis. Sherlock tests the water, wary. He throws sand. Nothing. Electa dips her bow in, nothing. Sherlock takes a sip. Perfectly safe.

They refill water, they set camp. Sherlock looks around.

There are a few light purple flowers, small and in bunches. Sherlock has suspicions on what they are.

“Where you going?” Electa asked when Sherlock got up. He says nothing, and merely walks towards the beautiful plants. He kneels and assesses.

Sherlock knows what they are.

Mountain laurelocks—a crossbreed plant of Dermatophyllum secundilflorum, Texas Mountain Laurel, and Conium maculatum, Poison Hemlock—are considered some of the most dangerous plants around, simply because of their toxicity. A single leaf from them was capable of killing an adult in a minute, although not before giving them hallucinations. Not as deadly as Nightlock, but even more dangerous in its own way.

How very convenient. Sherlock just so happened to be very good at chemistry and botany, toxicology a main part of his work.

“Poisonous flowers,” Sherlock tells his allies, and Sherlock can feel their wariness, albeit tempered. (Not undeserved. Mycroft killed most of his opponents with poison.) “Pass me the canister.”

Earlier on, when the sun was still high in the sky, they—more specifically, Weldon—received another Sponsor gift. In the form of a smoke grenade.

Expensive and valuable. Guess Weldon has someone rooting for him. Or could it be his Mentor? Goodness knows how the Capitol doesn’t know how to give gifts like these.

But the most important part is that the active ingredient for the smoke can be replaced with something else, let’s say… poison gas.

Sherlock smiles and gets to work. He digs two holes in the ground. They light another fire in one pit. Sherlock gets the billycan they looted from Seven and places water in, as well as the laurelock.

Sherlock wraps his scarf around his nose and mouth. He cannot afford to breath in too much.

Soon, the liquid has a very, very slight tint of purple. Sherlock opens up the canister and pours out the other liquid into the other pit. He carefully—very carefully—pours in their poisoned concoction into his canister, and seals it tight. He pockets the canister.

“Take your arrows and dip the heads into the poison. It’ll make sure that even if you don’t hit a fatal area, they’re still likely to die,” Sherlock says to Electa. He takes his knife and dips the blade into into the leftover poison He turns to Weldon. “Same with that scalpel chain.”

The two of them do. Sherlock collects the rest of the liquid in one of their waterproof pouches.

“What’s the plan?”

Sherlock looks at Electa, and gives her the first smile he has had in the Games. It’s not a nice one.

“We go hunting.”

Day two, they head down to the Cornucopia.

“I could try using my arrows to get rid of the landmines,” Electa says, soft. Sherlock remains quiet, scanning the area around the Cornucopia. It’s hard to see if there are any landmines and if so where they are, covered by red and brown stained sand. A reminder, despite the worst of the gore having been cleaned up.

Sherlock swallows, and tries to push the hysteria to the side. He can tell by the looks on his allies faces that they are not okay being here too.

“Save them,” Sherlock says, careful to not let the bile up his throat. “Actually, you could borrow me the bow.”

Sherlock is not as good at the bow as Electa, but he is decent. She does hand the bow over, with a few arrows. Sherlock strings in, notches an arrow—poisoned and deadly—and takes a shot.

An explosion. Dried blood and sand are blown away in the blast. Sherlock can see glass at ground zero. High heat.

Damn. They really didn’t want anyone getting to the Cornucopia at all.

Sherlock makes his move forward, gently and carefully, assessing the ground at every second. He feels the adrenaline in his veins, can feel the nervousness of his allies. Every step was playing with luck, taunting death.

There is the sound of a cannon—of death—and Sherlock almost meets his own death.

He gives a shaky breath when he reaches the centre of the Cornucopia, relief and hysteria in his mind.

He finds food, water, weapons—a trident, a blowtorch, a set of bow and arrows. He leaves the trident, no one here is proficient in using that. But the blowtorch and bow and arrows he keeps.

Sherlock creeps back over the sand, and once they reach safety, they flee.

They fill themselves, they take a sip of water, and they head off to hunt.

Sherlock catches a trail.

“How can you know where to go?” Weldon asks, a genuine question. Sherlock’s lips twitch in what might be called a smile. Those from Three were always curious, even if their prides were snubbed they always wanted to learn.

“The sand is not nearly as even as it should be,” Sherlock says. “And the likelihood of them going this way from the start is high. Balance of probability.”

They find a group: Eleven’s male and Twelve’s Tributes have teamed up. They remain still. 

Good.

Sherlock nods towards Electa, who strings her bow with a poisoned arrow, and fires at Eleven’s male.

The aim strikes true and through the ribs, piercing both a lung and the heart. Eleven’s male cries out in pain as he falls. The two other Tributes quickly look up in shock and alarm.

A cannon fires.

Electa gives them no peace, firing another arrow. It doesn’t strike a fatal area, and merely draws a hiss of pain from Twelve’s female. She’s doesn’t quite fall, but Sherlock can see the poison taking effect on her. Sherlock strings his own bow, and fires. He puts Twelve’s female out of her misery.

Another cannon fires.

Twelve’s male recovers from his shock and rushes at Sherlock, raising his axe in the air with a distinct killing intention—motivated by fear and vengeance.

Sherlock ducks under, utilising his speed, and gives Twelve a nasty gash to the forearm. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cause Twelve to drop the axe, and thus Sherlock winces when the axe manages to give a wound to his own arm—fortunately not deep. Merely a cut.

Sherlock jumps away. Twelve rushes. Sherlock continues to dodge and dodge, observing as Twelve’s eyes become more glazed over, sweat at their brow and losing energy. It’s a waiting game.

Twelve’s male drops to the ground after one last pathetic swing. Sherlock carefully kneels down, and when he sees unseeing eyes, he closes them with blood stained fingers.

The third cannon fires.

Sherlock gets up and they all offer a moment of silence. Then, they loot, they dress Sherlock’s wound, and they bury the bodies. For Twelve’s Tributes, they set up a makeshift pyre, and burn them.

They find another oasis—oddly enough. But this time, there were snakes and cougars and fucking cheetahs.

And the water was acidic enough to burn off skin, as they learn when they lured a cheetah into the water.

They quickly left.

“You know,” Electa starts. “Other than that sandstorm and those animals with that shit oasis, it’s pretty pea—mhm!” Her words are muffled but surprised in tone when Sherlock slams his hand on her mouth, Sherlock grimaces.

“Don’t jinx it.”

They run into the Tributes from Five.

“Hey, mates,” the male greets, a smile—too innocent, but that was to be expected from a thirteen year old—on his face. “Got any space for two more?” The boy looks towards his fellow Tribute—a girl of the age of sixteen. She still looks so young.

Sherlock steels his resolve and walks away. He will not kill a child. At least, not directly. He knows that the two Tributes will die in approximately a day. They don’t have enough water or food, or perhaps the Gamemakers will deal with them themselves.

He can hear the sound of his allies walking beside him, and the hopeless pleading of a young boy. He lets a glimpse of his true despair crack through his mask, but does not stop.

(Sherlock’s prediction comes true. He hears the cannons fire—three of them—in the night. He recognises the young boy in the pictures, and tries not to tear up. Water is too precious in a desert.)

Day three dawns, and their prey come to them.

Sherlock saw it from a mile away, could see it in the sand. Blood, bright red and fresh.

“Fresh blood. Someone’s nearby,” Sherlock muttered, stopping. Electa and Weldon look at him, and then at each other, before readying their respective weapons. Sherlock ensures his scarf is covering his mouth and nose, and looks around, eyes deducing and observing.

There is no sound except for the sand in the wind.

And then, there is a scream.

Sherlock turns around as a man hurls at them an axe. It barely misses Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock springs into action.

He darts forwards, swinging his blade. The man dodges and comes at him with a sword. Sherlock barely parries. 

He ducks, and attempts to cut at the legs, but he just misses. The man does not give him reprieve, and manages to get a slash at Sherlock’s back. Sherlock cried in pain.

And just as the man was about to deal another blow, a scalpel chain hit the man’s neck and ripped off flesh. Blood sprays on Sherlock, who gets out of the way as the man falls.

Sherlock looks up at Weldon, who looks back at Sherlock, eyes wide and holding a bloodstained weapon.

A cannon goes off.

Then, there is quiet, nothing but the heavy panting of Sherlock and the soft breaths of Weldon and Electa.

Sherlock gives out a half-laugh half-sob, and he rises to his feet. Weldon and Electa come closer, and they come together in a hug.

It’s nothing like Sherlock has ever felt before. It’s not the soft but fiercely protective comfort Mycroft used to deliver, or the joyous embrace Regina gives, nor the clinical touch his mother gave. 

No. This hug was born of desperation and adrenaline and the feeling of thank god we’re alive.

They seperate. He can see tears on Electa’s face.

“So,” Electa starts, her voice cracked but happy. “This is it, huh? The final leg? Where one lives.”

The thought is daunting.

“And, I just want to say,” Electa continues, a sad smile on her face. “That even if I don’t win, I’m glad I was friends with the two of you.”

Friends. Friends.  

She was right. These were Sherlock’s friends.

He doesn’t want to do this.

“Me too,” Weldon replies, giving them both a smile. Sherlock replies with a weak smile of his own.

He has to take his shot now. 

The gas canister burns at his skin where he stored it.

“We should duke it out at the Cornucopia,” Weldon suggests and Electa gasps in excitement at it. 

“Yeah we should! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Sherlock carefully unpockets the canister from where he left it. And pulls out the pin.

He takes a deep breath.

And lets the canister go between the two Tributes from Three.

Light purple gas—mostly translucent—spills out.

And Sherlock closes his eyes. He hears the sound of choking.

The final two cannons go off.

When Sherlock opens his eyes, he sees the two dead bodies of the Tributes from Three. 

He wants to scream.

“Panem!” Caesar Flickerman’s voice rings out, breaking the spell of grief. “May I introduce your winner!”

Never has Sherlock hated someone’s voice this much before.

The next moment he’s back to his body, Sherlock Holmes—Victor of the Seventieth Hunger Games—is on a hospital-style pallet bed. On a Capitol plane, he notes absently.

He finally breaks down, and sobs.

(And in the end, Sherlock Holmes comes home alive.)

Chapter Text

Hello my dears! Back with another artwork / cover.

I decided to keep to the colour scheme of black, white, red and gold. Initially it was supposed to be just red, black, and white to resemble playing cards but my mind went “lol no” and here we are.

The basic inspiration for this specific work was based on the Fates and Ananke. Because fundamentally, in story, Mycroft is the Architect of Fates, he’s the Weaver of the Tapestry—he’s the Chessmaster trope. The characters know this. The golden cloth he’s weaving (which took sooooo long to render (but was fun to do lol), you have no idea) is the Rebellion—which also neatly ties into him being a tailor. (It has a design of a mockingjay over flames—like the Mockingjay and the Girl on Fire.)

Now, the tapestry behind Mycroft—they represent his influences. On the white side (illuminated by light) are the Revolutionary Crew [stupid name I came up with but okay] who are keeping him in check. Each one of them has a golden symbol that represents them in short (the hook for Killian, a bloodied crown for Regina, the scarf for Sherlock, the trident for Finnick) and are all tied up by the thread that Mycroft has linked them with. I would pay special attention to their eyes, since they had a bit of meaning to themselves. All are distinctly directed to Mycroft, except Regina’s—which is directed to Sherlock, both significant of how her main concern is Sherlock at that point and how both Mycroft and her are, uhm, having marital issues.

Then we have the shadows, which is about Snow. Mycroft is still shrouded in shadows for a reason, because at this point he is still—in many ways—Snow’s. Which is also represented in the red threads. Snow is to Mycroft what Dr Gaul was to Coryo. The bloodied crown over his head is representative of his almost presidency—he was the successor, and in many ways, he still acts like it. (He still could be.) However, there is one thread (his thumb) that links to the frame of the tapestry and forms a rope: which is really just a reference to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and how in the end, Snow is the Hanged Man in The Hanging Tree song. I would also say how it’s him signing his own grave regarding Mycroft.

The whole ‘shadows and light’ thing is just neat little symbolism about moral ambiguity and all that jazz.

Now, onto Mycroft himself. I’m not sure how it translates, but I based his hairstyle and a fair bit of his appearance on Coryo’s look in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie. At least what we’ve seen so far. Again, representative of how similar both Mycroft and Coriolanus are. Because—at their core—they are nearly identical in personality and quite a few experiences. (I have no doubt that if Mycroft was born during TBoSaS, both Coryo and him would either be rivals or best friends.) He’s blood splattered—the darkened side—he isn’t metaphorically clean at all. (I also gave Mycroft some nice eyeliner but that means nothing really) And he’s holding a bloodied white rose in his hands (his own blood, or another’s, you decide—but roses have thorns). Guess you know what that means :) . There’s also the distinct usage of red and gold on his clothes—the lining of his jacket (the outside) is gold, but his waistcoat (the inside) is red—he is a very different person than he was before, but that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t have those sins. Drawing attention to the previous artwork I did again, because before he was just wearing his waistcoat. He’s getting better :D

Anyways, that’s about it for symbolism now!

Here’s the art without the mockingjay design on the fabric because I love it so much.

Anyways, I’ll see you all next time.

Chapter Text

It’s unfair. It’s so very unfair.

Snow has just figured out a way to strike against them, and Mycroft can’t even properly retaliate because it wasn’t even targeted against them. 

No, they were just in the crossfire.

Cinna had told him about the Girl on Fire—the girl with a golden mockingjay pin. His first ever Tribute that he has become so very attached to.

Snow has gotten desperate. That is not good.

“Mycroft Holmes!”

There are six male Victors of One. Mycroft isn’t really surprised that he was chosen. But he was more than willing to die as long it isn’t—

“I Volunteer as Tribute.”

For a moment, Mycroft is violently thrown out of his own body. His ears ring as his peripheral vision turns black. He is a mere spectator to his own body as he shifts his head to look at Sherlock, who has his hand up high—his lips pursed in a determined declaration of war. 

“Sherlock— Sherlock,” Mycroft barely manages to choke out. He cannot recognise his own voice. “You can’t. Please don’t—”

“I can, and I will,” Sherlock murmurs, sounding so very far away. He turns to look at Mycroft, a soft and silent plea in his eyes; a farewell that Mycroft refuses to accept. “Better me than you, Mycroft. You’re better off behind the scenes.”

Mycroft cannot respond, he is locked in his own body. He is aware he is on the verge of hyperventilating.

Time blurs—Cashmere’s Reaped, he doesn’t care—and Mycroft has to be escorted away by Peacekeepers.

He has to be sedated after he tries to break away, brutalising a few of the Peacekeepers and screaming for his brother—who is walking to his death once more.

Out of everyone in his direct friend group, only Killian has managed to not be Reaped. Annie comes as well, but she was Reaped but Mags—bless her soul—Volunteered in her stead.

During the interviews, he watches as Sherlock practically eviscerates Snow in a show of surprisingly subtle barbs and threats while still gaining the sympathy of the Capitol. (Irene’s influence, likely.) He watches as Regina and Bond do the same. He watches as Killian exposes his heart. He watches as Johanna curses out the Capitol blatantly and with pure utter rage. Classic Johanna.

He watches as Katniss Everdeen’s wedding dress turns into a mockingjay in a twirl of fire. He watches as Peeta Mellark sets the sparks needed for a revolution on the Capitol’s part.

The hour after the Hunger Games begin, Cinna’s black leather jacket—bloodied and scratched up—is delivered to his doorstep. He calls Hortensia to let her know. He hears her give a shaky sob once before the line cuts.

He receives a call from Coin. A retrieval plot. Good. Some of them may yet live. He passes the information along to those who should have it. Heavensbee and he work the inner operations of Panem and the Games while Coin settles District 13.

(He should have known the hope wouldn’t last.)

The three of them—Mycroft, Killian, Annie—remain in their flat throughout the entire Games.

They watch tensely as Sherlock, Regina, Finnick, and Bond all miraculously manage to make it to the end, surviving the Bloodbath and all other trials that are thrown their way.

They watch—in horror and shock—as Katniss destroys the force field around the Arena, turning the Arena against itself in a bolt of lightning.

Mycroft receives a message from Coin soon. The Mockingjay has reached the nest. Queen, Detective, Hunter, Trident secured. Retrieval in 10 minutes. 

“It’s time,” Mycroft murmurs towards the other two inhabitants of the house. The two of them immediately jolt to attention, Annie sitting up from where she lay her head on Killian’s lap while Killian rises from where he rests his head on Mycroft’s shoulder. The three of them spring into action, collecting their bags of their most essential and sentimental valuables. Mycroft takes his own bag—containing a collage of personal pictures, his essential documents, a sewing kit, and a change of clothes—and, with a large amount of consideration, his umbrella.

They run out of the door, and are immediately greeted by a contingent of Peacekeepers.

Fuck.

Their guns are pointing towards them, and Mycroft feels Killian and Annie frozen behind him. Killian is tense but ready to defend and kill. Annie is terrified.

In front of them stands a woman that some meet but never survive to tell the tale.

Mycroft has briefly met Mary Morstan—codenamed ‘Rose Blood’, a member of Snow’s personal hitman squad for when things needed a personal touch or when there could be no mistakes—during his tenure in Snow’s Cabinet, and found her rather kind and gentle out of duty.

There is none of that here. Only the Rose Blood, whose name was spoken in whispers in the shadows that had once been Mycroft’s domain—that still are, perhaps.

“Mycroft Holmes, Killian Jones, Annie Cresta,” Morstan greets, a cold smile on her lips. “Come quietly, and no one gets hurt.”

Mycroft’s hand tightens around his umbrella until his knuckles are white. 

“Yeah… ” Killian says before Mycroft could make a response. “About that: We don’t believe you. Annie, Mycroft, go!”

Killian jolts forward and punches the Peacekeeper in his direct path, before slamming down his gun and using it as a blunt instrument against the next Peacekeeper. Mycroft quickly makes his own move in a split second, drawing his blade from his umbrella and spilling blood from a Peacekeeper that charges him next. 

“What’re you doing?” Killian yells, hitting another Peacekeeper and knocking off their mask. “I told you to run with Annie!” 

“I’m not leaving you again!” Mycroft grits out, stabbing a Peacekeeper in the stomach with his blade.

It’s times like these—cutting down and clawing and stabbing swaths of Peacekeepers—that Mycroft really does get what Snow was trying to say when he told Mycroft that Victors are the most dangerous people in Panem.

“Stop.” 

Both Mycroft and Killian turn around to look at the source of interruption, looking at Morstan—who had a silently crying Annie at gunpoint in her arms.

“Come quietly,” Morstan says again, voice low. “Or Ms Cresta will join her late Mentor in the Afterlife.”

It would be better to fight, to run and live another day and get to District Thirteen. But Finnick is alive, and Annie—if they do not go—will not be.

Unacceptable.

(He has too much blood on his hands already. Annie deserves better, both she and Finnick do.) 

He briefly looks at Killian—his face is determined and resigned. Mycroft makes his decision.

He sheathes his bloodstained umbrella, and raises his hands in surrender.

Mycroft is careful to not let any fear—or anything that could be perceived as weakness—show when they drag him into Snow’s office. He shows nothing but the face of a man who knows he is of equal capability, cold and calculating.

Snow faces nothing but his own creation and more. Five years fighting to survive have been more than enough to teach him a few tricks to cover his own gaps and refine his technique. 

“It’s a bit bold for you to do this, isn’t it?” Mycroft says solemnly as he sits on the offered chair across Snow. Peacekeepers line the room, two of them standing near Snow, two of them keeping Mycroft under guard.

“I could say the same to you,” Snow parries back. There is disappointment in his tone, and the part of Mycroft that had been raised by Snow shrivels at it. The rest of him holds strong in cold rage. “I thought we had an understanding, you and I. I had done my best to keep to our terms and yet there you were: plotting a revolution right beneath my nose.”

“It was retaliation for Sherlock’s Reaping,” Mycroft says flatly. “However, it’s not just that; The current policies of Panem have caused unnecessary strife to more than three-quarters of the population. I had a desire to cause change to negate that suffering so that all may be happy, even when I was in your Cabinet. My resignation just… freed up the possible avenues, illuminating the fact that such change could not be done without much blood being shed. It was merely killing two birds with one stone.”

The same way you had, goes unsaid but heard by the two of them. 

“You and your friends were not the main target, I assure you,” Snow says, the word friends getting a near unnoticeable emphasis. “I was aiming for the Victors as a whole, Ms Everdeen especially. In fact, it was Gamemaker Heavensbee who switched out the original Quarter Quell envelope for this one.”

What?

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” Snow asks rhetorically, his voice patronising if it weren’t for how genuine the sympathy and surprise sounded. “I didn’t even have an idea that he switched the Quarter Quell theme until I read the envelope. It’s rather impolite that he didn’t mention that he practically facilitated the second Hunger Games of your dearest and closest, isn’t it?”

Mycroft pointedly does not think about the various times he had done rather terrible things in the name of his objectives. He does not think about the various things he has done to his friends. 

He does not think about Regina.

Instead— “What do you want?” Mycroft asks. “I doubt you called me here just to question me about what you already know.”

Snow smiles as if Mycroft is a dog who performed a trick. “Indeed. I asked you here to offer you a final deal.”

“Which is?” Mycroft asks warily.

“Rejoin my Cabinet,” Snow says. “You will resume your position before your resignation, but with restricted freedoms until you earn them back.”

Mycroft does not waver. “Or else?” 

“You won’t be able to regret not taking it,” Snow says, light and ominous. So a threat of death.

Mycroft has come a long way from the person who would do anything to live. He knows too many who deem existence a curse. 

“My apologies,” Mycroft drawls, calm and cold as ice. “But I’m afraid I will have to decline your generous offer.” 

“Oh Mycroft,” Snow sighes, a sad fondness in his voice as if he is sorry for what he is about to do—what he has done. “I wasn’t asking whether you would join, but whether you would do so willingly.”

Mycroft feels the hands of Peacekeepers on him, forcing him to his knees on the floor roughly as he grits his teeth and tries not to scream at the touch.

“The Citadel’s R&D department has been working on something known as Project Stockholm,” Snow says, almost nonchalantly. “Based on the term ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, it’s designed to alter the minds of those who are… less inclined to side with the Capitol.”

No. No—

“You can’t—” Mycroft is injected with something in the neck. He winces, feels panic clawing at his throat.

“You know,” Snow says, smiling fondly—its sincerity making it even more unsettling. “I saw you as a son of mine.”

The world blurs, and Mycroft can barely remain upright as his limbs go slack, his eyelids becoming heavy. The world is going dark and time is slowing down.

“And for the record, I truly am sorry for what you are about to go through,” Snow mournfully says, his voice far away.

Mycroft closes his eyes and sleeps.

(A woman stands in a secured room of the Citadel. Across from here, the most powerful person in Panem stands.

“The parameters?” The woman asks.

“Maintain his brilliance with minimal alteration that would affect memory of his work, no amputations or any major injuries, keep it as psychological as possible—with help from the venom,” Snow orders. “Other than that, anything goes.”

“Carte blanche?” The woman asks, a grin settling on her face. “How delightful. The narrative?”

Snow hands over a file, which she opens up and scans through. Her grin widens.

“It will work,” she says. “Might I propose a… little surprise if they find him?”

“Go ahead,” Snow says.

“Edit his DNA and his family tree,” she muses. “I wonder what Holmes would look like with naturally blonde hair.”

“If you can first pull the essential off, I would allow you, Dr Heavensbee,” Snow says. “Do not disappoint me like your uncle did.”

As Snow stalks off, Eurus Heavensbee walks into her lab, and locks the door behind her.)

Mycroft is aware who the woman in front of him is.

“Oh, little spider. You poor thing,” Dr Eurus Heavensbee sympathises, her voice in a saccharine coo. “I warned you that Father Spider would come for you—but you didn’t listen, did you?”

Mycroft does not speak, more out of his inability than want.

“Although, I do suppose that even with doing your best, you would have come to this point anyway,” Dr Heavensbee continues. “A bit of a conundrum, the machinations of Ananke. No foresight in the world could stop the inevitable. So is it better to experience tragedy twice?

“No matter.” The mad psychologist claps her hands in glee, her voice still melodic. “You’re here, that’s all that matters to me. Your mind is absolutely awe inspiring and I’ve just been itching for the chance to dissect it—metaphorically, that is. Mr President still wants you alive and operational.” 

Dr Heavensbee picks up a needle, and squirts out a little of the clear fluid to remove the air bubbles. Her smile—when she looks at Mycroft—is dark and amused.

“Now then,” Dr Heavensbee says, her sharp smile is armed with teeth. “How would you like to cry acid?”

No 
 No

No

N̵̻̂̑ò̸̯̮̪

They’re dead!

They dare?

They can’t die.

STOP WITH THE L  I  E  S

(He grieves. His face burns.)

(Hahaha, Ice Man—
        (W̷̘̏h̵͉̎ä̸́ͅt̵͙͌ w̸̙͒̔̈́i̵͙̅͛̈́ͅl̷̪̘̔̉l̵̙̭̈́̋͝ 
                ỵ̸̲͉̘̭̄̀ő̶̱̺̯̪̳͐̇̑̐̍ṵ̴̡̭͙̰̃͂̀̃̀ d̵̲͐̐̉̐͝ö̶̢̨͍̱̭̻̗̉̓

  
N̵̛̻̦̤͒̐̃ơ̸͕̝̰̘̝͚̑̀͜ẅ̶̡̺̱̳͈̲̤̩̭̖͒̉̍́̒̾̅̇̿̚͝?̷̱͓͙̥͖̠̫̫̯̝̳̀͋̊͆̕ )

STOP    I  T

(The rebels are at fault.

T̷̪̭̀̽h̵̰͛e̵͒͌ͅŷ̶̠ ̵̧̮̊k̴͍̆i̸̘̹͝l̴̢͑l̷̻̿͘e̵̞̲̓d̸̤̀͜ ̵͚̏t̴̛̊͜h̶̤̱͋̃é̶͇̺͝m̴̫͌.̵̨͔̌̐)

Puppets
       ALL OF

T    H    E   M

(Stranger. Stranger. Replacement danger. 

  Switching their places. Question mark faces.

    Parasite. Parasite. Oopsy daisy.

      Rage and rage, little king. HA HA H AAA)

(“What did you do to him?” Killian asks sadly; angrily. 

Orion’s constellation in the night sky—

My dear friend, you’re the only one left.)

(“How do you find him?”

A flash of white hair. 
   The scent of roses.
                   A warm hand tilting his head up.

“Yes, sir?”

A smile from poisoned lips.

“He’s p̴͔̎ ̶̙̊e̴͇̓ ̶͓͒r̷̘̀ ̶͇͒f̸̰̒ ̷̗̽e̸͕͘ ̵̱̕ĉ̷͎ ̸̣͊t̷̚͜.”)

Mycroft stares himself in the mirror, watching as scars in the form of tear tracks disappear under concealer. He smooths it over—the cracks that look like kintsugi—and applies the setting powder.

He would usually skip this part of his grooming routine—most of the people he interacts with at work don’t really care as long as he looks mostly professional—but he is meeting Aurelia for their weekly breakfast later and it would break his heart if he scared her.

He manages to finish styling his hair when the door to their bedroom opens.

“Mornin’, love,” Killian greets sleepily as he steps in. “Kettle’s on—Earl Grey. Food’s being delivered.”

“I thought we were supposed to have breakfast with the Snows?” Mycroft asks, washing his hands.

(He does not see, but Killian’s face twists into a contemptuous grimace.)

“Postponed to lunch, Aurelia decided to sleep in today since it’s school break,” Killian explains and he steps beside Mycroft to brush his teeth. He whistles. “Looking dashing as always.”

“When will you ever stop complimenting me like that?” Mycroft keeps his voice calm, but like always—no matter how many times Killian’s done it—he’s flustered. 

Killian’s look even with a toothbrush in his mouth is a clear enough deadpan that Mycroft can hear the ‘when you get it in you thick skull, that’s what.’ Mycroft splashes him with the water from the open faucet and Killian squawks. 

“I’ll be in our room,” Mycroft states and when Killian nods, Mycroft leaves in a trail of the scent of roses.

(On the coat stand at the door that led to the rest of the manor, hangs a pure white chlamys lined with gold—the fibula a white rose. Next to it, an umbrella with a malacca wood handle.)

(A woman enters a room protected with the greatest security measures. She is usually composed; even in times of crisis her professional capability and unflappability are unmatched. But this time, she is breathing heavily and in clear distress, her makeup ruined. There are tear stains from her ruined mascara.

“Everyone,” Anthea pants, calling the attention of the entire room. “I believe we have a situation.”

“Where are they?” Regina asks, worry in her voice. “Where are the three of them?”

“That’s the situation, I’m afraid,” Anthea explains. “They weren’t at the rendezvous point. They weren’t even at the flat. There were signs of bloodshed and struggle at the door.”

There was pin drop silence.

And then Sherlock Holmes stands up, and slams his palm on the desk. “What?” )

Chapter Text

1: The East Wind

[INT. INTERROGATION ROOM]

[THERE ARE FOOTSTEPS ON THE HARD FLOOR. SHERLOCK HOLMES ENTERS THE ROOM. THE DOOR CLOSES AND LOCKS BEHIND HIM. EURUS HEAVENSBEE PERKS UP.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

I see they sent you in. Did no one want to deal with me?

S. HOLMES

No. Regina wanted to come, but we were afraid if they did, she would murder you on the spot.

[S. HOLMES WALKS FORWARD TO THE TABLE WHERE E. HEAVENSBEE SITS IN CUFFS. HE SITS IN THE CHAIR OPPOSITE HIM.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

Alright, you’re here to talk. So please— [SHE LEANS FORWARD, SMILING.] (amused) Tell me, what do you wish to know?

S. HOLMES

(calm but angry) What did you do to him?

E. HEAVENSBEE

Who? The little prince? [LIGHT CHUCKLE] Nothing that I wasn’t ordered to do. Although, I added my own… personal touch to it.

S. HOLMES

Which is?

[E. HEAVENSBEE TSKS.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

Honestly, do you really think I’ll say anything that easily? Shoddy detective work, my dear. I expected better. But I’ll let it pass.

S. HOLMES

I read about you—you take great pride in your work. Your name is of note in scientific circles, most specifically the psychology and neurology areas. You completed your education at thirteen and by eighteen you were in President Snow’s personal Cabinet and the Head of Psychological Studies in the Capitol’s Citadel. 

E. HEAVENSBEE

(smiling) If I didn’t have to keep to the shadows, I would be publishing my work for all to fawn over—but most of it is not for the faint of heart, of course. It would… horrify some of their more delicate sensibilities.

S. HOLMES

You have published some, however.

E. HEAVENSBEE

(delighted) Oh? You know? 

S. HOLMES

I’ve read them. They were very useful, the three of them. Curious titles. Boreas: A Compendium of the Study of the Mind—Psychology, Zephyrus: The Therapist’s Helper, and—

E. HEAVENSBEE

Notus: The Manipulator’s Handbook, yes I’m aware of my published titles. Although… 

S. HOLMES

(irritated) What?

E. HEAVENSBEE

I actually have four books, the last of which only has three copies left across all of Panem. Such a shame, considering it would answer your question. (teasing) Want to know its title?

[SILENCE FOR THREE SECONDS.]

S. HOLMES

(gritted out) Yes.

E. HEAVENSBEE 

First, I want a promise.

S. HOLMES

(immediately) We cannot give you clemency.

E. HEAVENSBEE

Oh, I know. I am requesting something relatively small. You see, I have a violin—lovely thing, as antiquated as it is—in Heavensbee Manor, my old room. I want it back to comfort me in my last days.

S. HOLMES

(incredulous) You expect us to go behind enemy lines to get a violin?

E. HEAVENSBEE

I do, actually. Since all three copies of the book are in the heart of the Capitol, and the only one that you can even remotely access is in the Heavensbee Manor Library’s Private Collection—it was a gift to my uncle. Oh, and I see your face. Don’t worry, it would be totally worth it.

S. HOLMES

You are aware that we are the ones holding you in captivity, right? You are in no position to negotiate.

E. HEAVENSBEE

Yes. But you are also aware that I will not relinquish any information even with torture. You know I am not afraid of pain or death.

[SILENCE]

S. HOLMES

(through teeth) Fine. The title?

[E. HEAVENSBEE SMILES SHARPLY.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

Eurus: A Guide to Breaking Minds. It was the thing that seemed my place in Mr President’s inner circle—has a treatise on the usage on Tracker Jacker venom, brainwashing techniques, torture, and several other rather graphic and disturbing pieces of information. Most importantly, it’ll definitely solve your problem with Mr Mellark’s Hijacking, and help give you a direction on where to go with the little prince. 

I do recommend, however, that you read the book in a place where there is no one around who has a weak stomach. It’s remarkably graphic despite the pictures being illustrations, and the contents are not for the weak of heart. I have no doubt the princess consort will likely vomit out blood if she realises what her husband has been through—

[S. HOLMES STANDS, THE CHAIR DRAGGING WITH A SCREECH ON THE FLOOR. HE WALKS OUT OF THE INTERROGATION ROOM. E. HEAVENSBEE LAUGHS, THE SOUND ECHOING THROUGH THE ROOM.]

2: Tiresias’ Warnings

[INT. CAPITOL BAR]

[MYCROFT HOLMES SITS ALONE AT THE BAR. EURUS HEAVENSBEE ENTERS. SHE WEARS A VEILED HAT THAT ENTIRE OBSCURES HER FACE AND IS DRESSED ENTIRELY BLACK IN CRÊPE FABRIC. E. HEAVENSBEE SITS NEXT TO M. HOLMES.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

(cheerfully) Mr Holmes! Mind if I buy you a drink?

M. HOLMES

If you so desire to, I won’t mind.

[E. HEAVENSBEE SMILES BRIGHTLY. SHE TURNS HER HEAD TO THE BARTENDER.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

Bacchus! A Frozen Hearth for the man of honour here! And my usual Thorned Rose while you’re at it. Place them on my tab!

M. HOLMES

You requested for me and here I am. So, please elucidate your reasons why and who you are.

E. HEAVENSBEE

(cheerful) Eurus Heavensbee, dear! Consider me your dear Oracle of Delphi for today.

M. HOLMES

(disdainful) I hope you aren’t here to importune me to take a ‘quest’.

E. HEAVENSBEE

In no way, little prince! [SOFT LAUGHTER] I’m here to serve as a herald of news regarding Olympus—or perhaps the Underworld, from your point of view. 

M. HOLMES

(intrigued) Oh?

E. HEAVENSBEE

Yeah. It’s been a total madhouse since you left. Mr President doesn’t display it that much, but he’s absolutely pissed that you left. 

M. HOLMES

I would hope so.

E. HEAVENSBEE

More than you would expect really. Man’s spent more than forty years looking for a successor and spent eleven years working on you. Pissed is an understatement. 

[SHE SLOWLY TURNS HER HEAD TOWARDS M. HOLMES. HER SMILE DISAPPEARS AS HER MOUTH IS FLAT.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

(solemnly) He’s not going to let you go that easily. 

[THE BARTENDER DELIVERS THE TWO OF THEM THEIR DRINKS. M. HOLMES’ DRINK IS DIFFERENT SHADES OF BLUE THAT SWIRL AND ICE WITH THE MIST OF LIQUID NITROGEN COMING FROM IT. E. HEAVENSBEE’S DRINK IS SHADES OF RED WITH ROSE PETALS IN IT.]

M. HOLMES

(voice low) Is that a threat? 

[HE PICKS UP HIS DRINK AND BLOWS OFF THE TOP LAYER OF MIST, BEFORE TAKING A SIP. HE DOES NOT TAKE HIS EYES OFF HER.]

E. HEAVENSBEE

(cheerful) No! [LAUGHTER] I would never! Don’t be so suspicious, it’s merely a statement. Mr President’s like that, I’m sure you know. The man likes to obsess and possess—power especially, but everything that he thinks he owns works. (exaggerated stage whisper) I think it’s the trauma.

[MANIACAL LAUGHTER]

M. HOLMES

You’ve psychoanalysed him?

E. HEAVENSBEE

I have records and notes from all of Panem and her history and I’ve worked with Mr President enough to draw my observations. Documents sealed to most are open to me, and I’ve dug quite a bit myself. And Tigris had been happy to… illuminate me when it came to our dear King. I can definitely see the parallels between the two of you.

[THEY BOTH TAKE ANOTHER SIP OF THEIR DRINKS.]

He chose you because he saw himself in you, and he tried to recreate the circumstances to push you towards his path—he didn’t, of course, anticipate that you were going to choose love over security. Which was stupid by the way, can’t believe you did that. Even for Uncle Plutarch, I still would’ve chosen my job and left him to die.

M. HOLMES

It may have been a decision made in the moment but it was not a caprice.

E. HEAVENSBEE

Perhaps. We’ll see. We’ll see whether your dissidence pays off, prodigal son.

M. HOLMES

Spare me your soliloquies.

E. HEAVENSBEE

[LAUGHTER] Alright! I’ll leave you alone now. 

[SHE DOWNS HER DRINK AND LEAVE NOTHING BUT ROSE PETALS IN HER GLASS, GINGERLY PLACING IT DOWN.]

Do give my regard to your roommates, especially the queen.

[HER SMILE FALLS, LEAVING AN EERIE BLANK EXPRESSION.]

(solemn) And I implore you to heed my words. Troy fell because they refused to listen to their Seers.

[SHE SMILES AGAIN SHE GETS UP AND LEAVES.  M. HOLMES IS ALONE AGAIN.]

3: From the Other Side

[PHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN PLUTARCH HEAVENSBEE AND JAMES ‘JIM’ MORIARTY.]

[CLICK]

P. HEAVENSBEE

Jim.

J. MORIARTY

(cheerful) Boss! How you doing?

P. HEAVENSBEE

Keep this short, Jim. 

J. MORIARTY

Alrigh’. Alright. I have… news regarding the Ice Man. And probably the pirate.

P. HEAVENSBEE

Good or bad?

J. MORIARTY

Bad. Like really, really bad. We got called into a meeting, and I’m afraid big brother’s gone dark.

P. HEAVENSBEE

(shocked) That’s… that’s impossible. Holmes would be the last person in all of Panem to join Snow right now. 

J.MORIARTY

No-pe. Completely loyal. ‘My right hand’ President’s been calling him now. 

We’re also forbidden from talking about the rest of his inner circle other than Hook, apparently—and only good things about the boyfriend. And to treat him like he’s always been against the rebels. 

[SILENCE]

P. HEAVENSBEE

James.

J. MORIARTY

(softly) Ooh. Proper name. You’re serious.

P. HEAVENSBEE

James. Satiate my curiosity—

J. MORIARTY

Y’Know I always do.

P. HEAVENSBEE (CONT’D)

But was there a woman—about your height, long dark brown hair tied up into a bun, grey eyes, white chlamys, and looks like me—at the meeting?

J. MORIARTY

Yes… I believe there was. I liked her. Smiled prettily.

P. HEAVENSBEE

That was Eurus Heavensbee, my niece and the Head of the Citadel’s Psychological Studies. I believe I know what happened to Holmes. 

J. MORIARTY

You must be very proud of her. I mean… someone as brilliant as her?

P. HEAVENSBEE

She’s spent her entire life learning how to manipulate people to do her bidding, human psychology her greatest obsession. She has no loyalty other than her work and whims, and perhaps a few minor attachments to people.

J. MORIARTY

Sounds like my kind of woman.

P. HEAVENSBEE

(irritated) That’s my niece you’re talking about. And right now, we can’t do anything but retrieve Holmes. I only know the basic theory of what Hijacking, what Eurus did to Holmes would be far more complex.

J. MORIARTY

Hijacking?

P. HEAVENSBEE

The alteration of memories through usage of Tracker Jacker venom and the subsequent hallucinations. 

J. MORIARTY

Wow.

P. HEAVENSBEE

Do you have anything else to add, James?

J. MORIARTY

Nah.

P. HEAVENSBEE

Good. I’ll see you on the other side.

[CLICK]

Chapter Text

There is a boy. There is a boy who walks the halls of the President’s Mansion and the Citadel of the Capitol.

To many, he would look fairly ordinary. A suit of grey and a tie of black with gold accents, well-tailored to his figure. Cold grey eyes and blood red hair styled to perfection. He is not attention grabbing in the way the Capitol would expect, a silent presence that suited the boy just fine.

To those who know how to see, a trail of silk threads follow him, hanging by his joints, ready to pull him along to Her design.

He walks and schemes for a better world, unknowing of the nature of the paths he takes. He does not know of his true effect, the corruption that awaits. 

The Mother prefers to keep it that way. 

(And so the story goes.)

Many years ago, two men once appeared in a world foreign to them. Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood.

With them, they brought the Fears—fifteen horrible Eldritch Gods that existed from the consciousnesses of living beings, that fed upon the terror of these living beings.

Jonathan Sims was the Archive. A living chronicle of the Fears to bring Them and Anchor Them to the world they lived in.

Their arrival had sparked the downfall of civilization. How unfortunate.

When Mycroft Holmes first meets Regina Mills, the scent of fresh blood permeates the air around her. He manages to not choke on it nor on the instinctual clogging terror.

Regina Mills stalks forward with the intention of a predator, her words sharp and cruel. Bloodlust her every intention, accompanying ambition to make for a truly astonishing aura of control.

She had carved out the heart of a Tribute during her Games, her fifteen years old to the boy’s eighteen. Punished him for flirting with her. She held his still beating heart, looking hungry as if she was about to consume it in her bloodlust. 

The imagery had stained and marked the memory of Panem, had driven fear and awe and disgust into the various minds of both the Capitol and the Districts.

Mycroft barely manages to keep his reactions in check, an irrational sense of panic filling his brain. Regina smiles, but does not touch him.

(There are a thousand threads—glimmering silver and would slice her to pieces if she dared to move towards the boy—between the two Victors. Regina is one of the Slaughter, and Mycroft fears— a feast to her senses. But he is too important for the Mother to let him die, and he will die now as he does not know and cannot devote himself, and so She will keep him safe.)

They speak, and Mycroft feels unsettled around her. There is something about Regina Mills that makes him want to throttle her, that makes him want to flee.

They become business partners nonetheless.

(The stage is set for more.)

When Jon had realised that the Fears would move to wherever he went, bringing despair to each and every world he travelled to, cursing him with life, he endeavoured to find a solution. To banish the Entities once and for all. To stop the suffering around him.

He learnt of his new world, a newly ruined world that was destined to be destroyed by the Extinction, which had fed on the fear in that new world. 

There was a Statement. A tape recorder. The Beholding eagerly feasted on the new world, Watching and waiting.

When Mycroft is sixteen years old, he meets Killian Jones for the first time. 

He knows of Killian Jones—Victor of the Fifty-Fourth Hunger Games, District Four, working in Fairchild Inc as the one in charge of their Capitol Sailing endeavours. Has the same kind of terrible reputation as Mycroft does, but has more leeway since he isn’t actively participating in the oppression of the Districts.

Killian’s eyes are calm waters with stars reflecting upon them. They are the cosmos with countless nebulas. They are the indecisive oceans that storm and still.

There is the scent of sea breeze and sweet ozone and leather and salt around him, his hair wild like he just came back from sailing the Capitol reservoir. He wears a suit underneath his leather jacket; his shirt an illusion of water with its shaded of white, blue and green, his waistcoat a blended weave that results in a silky black that fades into midnight blue at the bottom, silver thread meticulously stitched throughout it to create a tapestry of constellations.

(He does not notice, but the colours shift like the waters, and the constellations change slowly with time—as if his outfit was the heavens put on timelapse.)

It’s beautiful—like the appearance of most of the Fairchilds that night, dresses and suits and ball gowns of flowing fabric and intricate designs, they all took up much of the space with their presence. Mycroft is happy to let them have it despite it being his birthday party.

And when Killian grins at him, there is the siren song of infinite possibilities.

The appearance of a tape recorder, one that trapped audio on its long magnetic tape and appeared if there was something of importance to be heard, had given Jon a bit of a question. 

(“What exactly are the tape recorders?”)

A question leads to an answer. 

(“They record information of the Fears, but they are manifested from both the Eye and the Web. Mostly the Web.”)

An answer leads to a hypothesis. 

(“Can the tape recorders act like Leitners? Trapping the essence of the Fears?”)

And a hypothesis leads to an idea.

He continues to grow. Continues to excel. 

(Continues to fall and entangle in the Mother’s design.)

Mycroft is eventually—at the age of seventeen—promoted to the status of Inner District Coordinator, following the uprising of Eleven. 

(He cried out in pain as Regina darted forward—almost too fast for him to react—and scratched his arm. She’s covered in the blood of Graham Humbert and laughs and laughs and laughs—)

He is now considered the most powerful Victor to date. 

He is still nothing.

(He wishes for a world where he is something more, where no one can touch him. Where he and his can be safe, can be happy.  

And the Mother hears and smiles with venomous fangs. Soon, my child, She croons. Soon.)

The Archive asked, the Spinner of Schemes answered.

Eight billion eyes looked at the Archive’s infinite, and they stared in silence. A battle.

The Spinner of Schemes blinked first. 

She smiled. “What do you want, Jonathan Sims?”

“Happiness.”

Killian eventually invites him onto his personal ship—the Ríona.

The ship sails the waters, cutting through with nearly no displacement of water, preserving the mirror image of the blue skies above—giving the illusion of the sky consuming all of them, no end in sight. Just them entering the ever-present heavens.

(It is awful in an archaic way. It is both calming and disturbing. It is Vast.)

Mycroft fears that if we’re to lean over just, he will fall and never return. Just sink down into a bottomless abyss of countless unfathomable creatures.

The Ríona sometimes sways. When she does, Mycroft’s grip tightens on the railings when he’s near them.

(The Falling Titan is not supposed to eat him, but how could They resist such a fine appetiser?)

The rest of them on board—Bond and Regina and Alec—don’t seem to have this fear. They laugh and joke and play around. Killian does too, but he’s the captain of the ship and grew up in Four so he’s not counted.

Killian looks more alive on the water than he ever did on land. Mycroft holds his hand as Killian teaches him how to steer and somehow his fear fades away.

“What can I do for that happiness, Archivist?” The Mother asked, still smiling and patient.

“Help me bind the Entities to the tape recorders.”

The Web thought of this. It would be rather counterproductive to simply restrict Them.

“Why?”

“Because if You go on like this—if We go on like this, the End will take us all, and the Fears will die. Including You,” the Archivist explained. “You are all Anchored to me. For as long as I live, the Entities will continue to exist in only one world in Your current states.”

“And if the End gets to you?”

The Archivists Gazes upon the Mother.

“Then You will just have to stay here. Forever. Until You are eaten by Terminus.”

Unacceptable.

Occasionally, Mycroft still sits down to work as a tailor. 

He has an entire room dedicated to the art of fashion and fabric as a whole. Tables full of fabric—both bolts of new fabric and old pieces of scraps. Sketches of designs stuck to the wall with blu tack. Wooden shelves with spools of thread of countless kinds. Mannequins clothed with outfits waiting to be put on and admired. Thimbles and needles and needle threaders placed orderly for use. He sometimes goes down himself to textile stores for fabric when he needs to.

He eventually even asks for yarn and knitting needles. Used a few times for professional reasons. The Capitol adores its accessories and items are a fashion trend that still persists. He has made too many crocheted berries from all the times old Lolita fashion had made its occasional comeback in the Capitol.

Sometimes, Snow comes along to watch—to what end, Mycroft does not know. Mycroft gives him suits for his birthdays, as a courtesy thing.

One day, a weaving loom is in the room when Mycroft enters it, a note attached to it saying it’s from Snow.

Mycroft sits down at it, and tries it out—interlacing yarn, weaving in colours almost instinctively. His first try is not perfect, but far better than he had anticipated.

It feels like coming home.

“And what makes you think I will help you, Archivist?” The Mother asked, amused. 

“It won’t necessarily truly keep you away, just return things back to how it was before,” the Archivist appealed. “What happens after it’s done is none of my business until I die.”

The Mother considered this.

(There was a glimpse of something, in the distant future. A second chance. They could bide their time and wait for it.)

“Alright,” the Mother conceded, a smile on Her fanged lips. “I’ll help.”

It all went uphill from there for the Archivist.

He visits Sherlock from time to time, or perhaps Sherlock visits him. 

They still call regularly, albeit their term for regular becomes less frequent and more time in between. 

Sherlock grows up to be a handsome but fairly bitter young man. His scientific mind is unparalleled, accompanying a quick caustic wit supplemented with a dose of malice. His voice is a deep baritone and features full of sharp angles, completing the picture.

Mycroft does not like that he has to watch his brother grow up from afar.

(His brother had grown up hungry for knowledge—chemistry, biology, anything and everything. And every time Mycroft sees him—his eyes are just the tiniest bit more prominent, bright and piercing with its silver and blue. His brother deduces far better than the child did, and almost instinctively, as if he just Knows.)

The Desolation had been the first to be trapped—on the insistence of the Mother.

The Archivist took a blank tape recorder to a Domain of fire, and had begun to pour in a statement—one of Jude Perry. A statement regarding some advice. It was a real shame the original had been lost.

(If one were to replay the tape, there was an overlay of Jude’s voice on top of the Archivist’s. The original had been taken directly from the subject.)

The rest of the work had all been of the Web’s. With the Archive’s power and status as the Anchor being the basis.

In the end, the fire was subsumed into the tape recorder, leaving nothing but cooling ashes. The tape recorder hot to the touch, its outer casing almost melted—but still functional.

It was later buried in spider webs and heat resistance fabric.

Mycroft is twenty two when becomes one of the most powerful people in all of Panem.

You could be extraordinary.

(He sits as the heir to the throne of Panem, he knows.)

His mother dies within the year. Illness. 

(The Corruption sings at his grief.)

The next few to have been trapped were based on how useful They were to be, or rather The lack thereof. 

The Dark had been second—a statement of Manuela Dominguez regarding her unconventional religious beliefs and their interaction with her project aboard the space station Daedalus. The tape recorder, almost entirely covered in black that did not reflect any light that gave an illusion of a box of void, was later secured in a museum with many cameras looking at it, always well lit as much as it could be.

The next had been the Slaughter—the statement of Wallis Turner on the Nemesis, originally recorded by Gertrude Robinson. The tape covered in blood that seemed to never be able to be cleaned off. It was then locked up in a soundproofed room under piles of silk thread.

The Corruption—trapped with a statement of Jane Prentiss, regarding a wasps' nest in her attic. The recorder had bugs of all kinds come out of it, and every cotton swab came with some form of disease. It was locked up in a box that was disinfected, sprayed with insecticide and sealed in steel and concrete.

He goes on a ‘tour’ of the Districts soon enough. An assessment of Panem to christen his new position. It’s a chance, a true test, to put to use what he’s been training for all these years—diplomacy.

He and Anthea visit Five first, and then six, with little to no fanfare. Seven he leaves with a little spark of an alliance (a thread to be nourished in its potential.)

They reorder their schedules and head to Four next, Killian there to greet him with a tour. Finnick isn’t there, so Anthea stays at his house while Mycroft stays with Killian. 

There are a lot of revelations.

(Love is a difficult bond to break, when it truly exists.)

(The restriction of something as grand as love is near antithetical to the nature of the Vast.)

They get drunk. Talking about sexuality and how Panem operates.

(Anthea speaks and there is the undercurrent of… something in her words.)

Mycroft dwells in the living room with Killian, and they continue to sit and converse until the physiological need for sleep asks for them.

(In Vino Veritas. Mycroft knows. Their words and actions had swelled dangerously to flirting territory. “… jealous of Regina. ”  

And when Killian holds his cheek—meeting his gaze with eyes of a sun-warmed sea—the fog of his Loneliness at his peripherals slink away ever so slightly.)

The Flesh had been bound by a statement from David Laylow, regarding his time working at an industrial abattoir near Dalston. Its tape that seemed to be made of entrails but still strangely able to function had been buried in an artificial garden of nothing but fake plastic flora.

The Stranger—always choosing to be Odd—was restricted into a tape recorder with a statement on its Domain the Merry-Go-Round. The recorder—a beautiful thing covered in painted-on masks of different emotions like theatre—was later secured to a library with a similar fate to the Dark’s own tape recorder. 

The Spiral had been wrangled into a psychedelic fractal patterned tape recorder with the statement of Michael the Distortion, originally taken directly from the subject. It was placed in the hands of a blank mannequin and placed somewhere where no one should be able to see.

Mycroft and Anthea leave Four with valuable information—the first is that Four is fairly reliant on its Victors, which meant that it struggled badly between the time gap of its near thirty-one year time gap between Cian and Killian’s wind, as well as the decade between Killian and Finnick. The second is that the main reason why it’s not as bad as many other Districts was because of the attention of the Fairchild family as patrons, ensuring the black market rates were extremely low for Panem’s standards. The Fairchilds have always had a vested interest in Four, every Victor but Finnick (who was under Capitol Sponsorship—but spent a lot of time with the Fairchilds nonetheless) and Jim (under Zelena) under their Sponsorship umbrella.

District Nine is poverty stricken, its beautiful golden wheat fields providing an extra stark contrast to the diseased-riddled shacks that compose the living quarters of the District. Almost no one is older than perhaps their late forties; Martha Hudson, Victor of the Twenty-Sixth Games the notable exception. 

District Ten is almost the same in terms of its poverty, the sole difference being in how it’s animals in well ordered shacks and slaughterhouses aplenty instead of the golden fields of grain.

Everything is flesh and all are animals. The Peacekeepers treat the residents as how they would the animals—but it’s likely the farmers treat the livestock better. 

(The Flesh growls and bites in Its hunger, and takes Its chance to feed.)

A Peacekeeper pins him to the wall by his throat, and adrenaline floods through him with the intensity of a lightning strike. He does not detach, strangely enough, but he is painfully present and in the moment, calculating to keep himself alive. 

(The Mother narrows Her countless eyes at the assaulter, displeased at Her sibling’s rash Servant, but carefully waits.)

The Peacekeeper vents his anger in gruff snarls, and Mycroft does not act, attempting to keep the violence to a minimum and not escalate, despite the sharp pain.

However, when Anthea attempts to intervene and the Peacekeeper insults her, Mycroft remembers why Snow had said it would take very little for a Victor to be pushed to the point of killing.

He takes a breath to calm, and the threads align in a clear tapestry. There will be no death in this room, but he cannot go unpunished either. A bark without bite is as good as dead, and letting this issue linger would cause damage to both his and Anthea’s standings. Action must be discreet and thorough.

It’s nearly as easy and instinctual as breathing in the end, and barely takes a second before Mycroft opens his mouth and speaks with crisp words that stung like venom. Truth that he just Knows. Illuminating the threads that hung him and his family like nooses. Every word confirming everything he Knew; Mycroft could dismantle his life, his future, his family, more easily than can be imagined.

The Peacekeeper is nothing compared to his machinations and reach, it would barely take a single sentence before everything he had came crumbling down.

“Insult me or my assistant again,” Mycroft tells him, with excruciating quiet, tone terrifyingly matter-of-fact, “and I will lay waste to you. Touch me again, and I will take personal satisfaction in ensuring you are kept alive to watch your siblings shredded in front of your eyes. Do not speak - exit now, and I look forward to seeing no trace of you for the duration of our stay in this District.”

Mycroft feels his fear, his horror, his anger, his sheer hopeless terror, and carefully does not lick his lips. 

It’s intoxicating, the power. The sheer knowledge that he could control the fates of others himself. 

It’s an addiction that Mycroft can lose himself to.

“Are you alright?” he asks Anthea, without looking at her; he doesn’t quite trust himself yet. His voice is not quite his own, still clipped but too smooth, too deliberate.

“Fine, sir,” she says, transparently rattled, and Mycroft glances over at the honorific; she is paler than he has seen from her previously. “Do you need seeing to? Your head…”

“No, I’m quite fine,” Mycroft replies, with a tentative prod; it doesn’t even hurt, as if the injury had never been there in the first place. In fact, he feels better. “Anthea…”

“I’ve never seen you like that.”

Anthea is tense, strung-out. She has an entirely new way of seeing him: they have worked together for half a decade, but Mycroft has so rarely been on the front lines. She has seen him flatter, coerce, manipulate; she has never witnessed the latent power Mycroft has at his disposal.

She has never seen him as somebody who could be feared. She does now. 

Mycroft feels very bad that he’s pleased about that.

(The Mother smiles indulgently, pleased at the outcome.)

The Lonely had been quite easy to bind with a statement of Peter Lukas regarding his life, family and interactions with The Lonely. The tape recorder—cold to the touch and with fog around it as inside was liquid nitrogen—had been later given to a woman with Eye leanings but a very strong family bond tied together by the Web.

The Vast and the Buried had to be bound together. The former with Jan Kilbride’s account of his time spent aboard the space station Daedalus—producing a beautiful recorder decorated with nebulas on the inside and waved patterns on the outside, buried in a deep hole. The latter had been with the collection of Hezekiah Wakely’s letters about his career as a gravedigger—and stored in the vacuum of space.

Eight goes by without much to say, Bond and Cecelia meeting them the same way Killian had. Eight happily got rid of them, and while on the train to Eleven, Mycroft addressed their brewing instability.

Mycroft’s exhausted by the time he reaches Eleven—he and Anthea both. 

It had been six years—and only six years—since Eleven’s attempted revolt, and the ghost of Graham Humbert remains at the edges of his vision. On the ground, he has finally managed to assess the true nature of that revolt or the possible ones to come; Eleven is spacious, allowing for nearly no organisation of rebellion whatsoever, a purposeful design. However, the main decision-making portions are kept centralised, and had been untouched by the rebellion despite the destruction of the produce instead. Eleven cannot spark a revolution on its own, but rather needs something outside to act as a catalyst.

(Coin. Of course it was Coin.)

Twelve, their final stop, is where things go distinctly off the rails. 

It is supposed to be simple; District Twelve is always considered unimportant in the grand scheme of things, few thousand residents, Peacekeepers nearing retirement, the afterthought of legislation and supplies alike. The District is destined to be phased out in a few decades time; mining—the lifeblood of the District—will be simply unneeded with it being replaced by renewable energy from Five.

It is supposed to be brief and perfunctory; nothing about the District draws any serious concerns.

However, instead, Mycroft finds his feet drawing him away from his bed in the dead of night to an abandoned mineshaft, a siren song playing only in his mind leading him along. It’s full of coal dust and its entrance is covered with yellow tape, a worn warning sign at the front. Many have died down there, mostly those who were young.

And beyond all possible reasons and sanity, Mycroft enters the darkened abyss.

When he exists, it’s before dawn. He comes back out safely, soot that was somehow still warm on his clothes, and spider webs in his hair that he dusts off easily.

And in his hand, is a single analog tape recorder, covered in spider silk and a sticky note that miraculously stood the test of time, with a note written in cursive—saying Play it at the right time, you’ll know when. :)

It’s very familiar, and Mycroft feels like he should know it.

(He does. It’s very similar to the cassette tape Aether Fairchild—patriarch of the Fairchild family and Killian’s primary sponsor—hangs by his hip in a cassette player. There is a reason for that.)

The Extinction was the second Entity to use a statement of Their Domain—an inventory of what comes after—resulting in a rusted metallic tape recorder with wires spewing out, buried in a wildlife preservation forest.

The End was next—a statement of Nathaniel Thorp, regarding his own mortality. Bound in a tape recorder of corpse roots and bones, locked up in a box with nothing that lives around it. How can something die if it never had life to begin with?

The Hunt had been next, having outlived its usefulness. A statement of its Domain as well, an examination of pack tactics. Its tape recorder is scratched and mauled, and wrapped in chains of steel and spider threads.

The next Games hit, and Annie Cresta—a girl attached to two of his friends and himself—is Reaped from District Four. It’s a death sentence, considering the Arena.

Mycroft orchestrates an earthquake to deal with the excruciating slowness of the Games, with the added benefit of giving Miss Cresta a very obvious chance of winning due to the rushing waters of the dam.

(The Buried and the Slaughter feed gleefully, and the Vast sighs in what may be relief alongside Their Servants.)

Mycroft negotiates with Snow, to give young Annie some reprieve. He does as best as he could, and carefully shifts the conversation away to lessen the tension once he gets what he wants. 

They are equals, Mycroft can finally acknowledge. As close as equals as Snow would allow. And as they speak and discuss knowledge and possibilities that affect all of Panem, Mycroft can quietly breathe in the pride that he had everything he has asked for; Panem is moulded by his actions. The child that was him a decade ago has his dreams in his reach.

(The Mother watches and weaves, and grins with sharp fangs. It does not matter what happens now, all have been assured—it’s time to cut loose some threads.)

In the end, it’s down to just two of the Entities, the rest carefully sealed away. The two Entities the Archive is most familiar—no, Bound to. 

The Eye, the centre of his power, and the Web, the one that made it all possible.

By now, the Archive is weak and more Jonathan Sims than the Archive or the Archivist. No matter. The Web will head the deal and the Eye does not truly comprehend.

It cascades, it all does. Everything in the world is based on cause and effect.

Gold says something, Mycroft reacts—whether for better or for worse. (Worse. You were so brash, my dear child.)

It’s always Sherlock. By Sherlock. For Sherlock. People can do horrible things for the things they love.

Mycroft is tired, tired and scared, tired of being scared, when Killian gets to him.

Killian always knows when he’s at his lowest; it’s a constant that is as irritating as it is reassuring. Being around Killian always felt as if all the problems were so inconsequential, so meaningless, so insignificant. 

Regina is the adrenaline rush of excitement and fear that made him want to do better, Killian is the calming influence of the tides that you float on and you focus on nothing else.

Everything that happens is both a blur that went by too fast, or a moment that feels too slow for how present he is.

Mycroft directs, comfortable in his control, and Killian handles everything else like performing magic. The Ríona is quiet, cutting through the waters without displacement, the sky still and tranquil above them, decorated with specks of white that glimmer and blink down at them, as if observing them with countless eyes. 

As they find the central part of the reservoir, Killian takes over; the vessel slows, and Killian reduces the Ríona to her barest essentials.

The sky is impossibly large. 

Mycroft finds a blanket—warm and well loved—around his shoulders. They sit together in the quiet, the ambient noise of calm breathing and water and the Ríona rocking providing them a gentle atmosphere.

Killian weaves a story of the stars, Orion the hunter, the Pleiades. They could never be safe on this earth.  

(There are more constellations and more stories. Ones found nowhere else but the reservoir, where Killian resides at as his Domain.)

Killian holds him, and it does not quite jar. He holds him—and his heart—like he matters, a balance of warmth and delicacy and reassuring firmness. He is considerate, lovingly so. 

For the moment, for the first time in years, Mycroft feels as if he is safe.

(No matter what happens next, at least he can have this.)

The Eye had been both the simplest and the hardest of them all to bind. 

It was fundamentally the powerhouse of the Archive, and to do anything towards it was like self-harm to a fully functioning person—inane.

And yet, the Archive hated the Beholding, and so this could happen without much despair. The Beholding loves Its Archives, but the Archivist does not return that sentiment at all.

The Ceaseless Watcher stared, the Archivist stared back. And the Watcher blinked first.

(What happens when the Eye gazes inwards? Turns Its gaze upon Itself?)

The Eye was, in the end, bound by a statement by its rejected child—Elias Bouchard who was really Jonah Magnus—regarding the dreams of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, then unresponsive.

Its tape recorder is made of reflective material on the casing and eyes that follow on the inside. It’s put into a box, dark but with countless nonsensical images on the inside, and placed onto a raft on the sea—alone.

And then, there was only one left.

Snow knows. Snow knows.

(They could never be safe on this earth.)

Snow deals a test. One he cannot fail. 

(He loves Killian so very, very much. But he loves himself even more.)

Mycroft does not hesitate to send Peacekeepers to arrest him, after the confirmation arrives. The simplicity of it, the sheer convenience of the information, is almost insulting; but then again, Snow had always preferred to deal with things blatantly.

He and Snow dance delicately, pretending that the other is not entirely aware; Mycroft presents Killian’s destruction, Snow feigns surprise, Mycroft feigns betrayal beneath professionalism, Snow feigns comfort. It’s all false in a way that leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

(Tug. Weave. Loop. Tear. This part of pattern is so close to being finished.)

“Well done,” Snow says at the end of their charade, almost breaking character without quite doing so entirely, skating towards honesty and away again with precise dexterity. “Kindly provide reports en route, I will conduct some independent monitoring.”

Just as Mycroft is about to turn to leave, there is the scent of the sea and ozone in the air, choking in its intensity, cloying sweet and irritatingly salty. Mycroft freezes up in his shock, barely registering Snow’s the blend of resigned-fear-irritation-anticipation on Snow’s expression as Mycroft turns around and—

Killian Jones is there.

He’s standing there in front of the still closed doors (they never opened, how—) with nothing but intense loathing on his face. Not at Mycroft, but at Snow. He holds a bisected Peacekeeper by the neck with his hook, dead but still leaking blood all over the floor, a puddle that had led from nowhere, entrails strewn on that spot. 

Killian directs that gaze towards Mycroft, and Mycroft thinks this is what a hurricane feels like. Sheer raw power and absolute terror.

“Mr Jones,” Snow greets, and the tension skyrockets. “How may I help you?” 

“I have two new constellations before I rammed the rest of them under my boat,” Killian merely says, his voice eerily calm. The wrong sort of calm—a flatness antithetical to Killian’s very nature. Mycroft doesn’t like it. “Next time, if you want to fuck me over, send the Hunters instead, you condescending imperialistic web weaver.”

“Now, now, there’s no need for the insults,” Snow says, feigning hurt. 

“There is exactly the need for insults,” Killian snarls, showing teeth and—oh god those are sharp— “Now tell me why shouldn’t I send you careening through the stars before you die of impact due to water tension.”

“Oh, not even a star?”

“I could make your death mundane if you would like, but I like not being convicted for murder.”

Snow’s smile is sharp and patronising. “What makes you think you can even make it happen?”

Killian drops the body of the Peacekeeper, letting it hit the ground fully with an unpleasant sort of soft splat and squelch, before taking out something from his jacket and holding it up for them to see. A tape recorder—decorated with patterns of the seas on the casing and containing the cosmos in the film. He grips onto it firmly. “I’m Aether’s favourite. And everyone can tell you’ve been losing your grip on the threads.”

There is nothing but silence between the two titans at battle and the single breaking mind trying to make it all make sense.

“Then he will Become. You know I can do that,” Snow murmurs. Killian barks a laugh, something both genuine and mocking.

“I’ll make him a constellation before that, the prettiest for me to adore,” Killian says. Snow’s smile turns deadly.

“Let’s put that to the test, shall we?” Snow waves a hand at Mycroft—

And Mycroft 

s c r e a m s

(A thousand threads bind at every part of him and pull him apart, to be remade and resown to the Mother’s design. To be hollowed out and filled with countless spiders and become a home to them. To be removed of all that made him human.

And Killian Jones screams along with him.)

The Archivist looked at the Mother, asking. And the Mother, for the first time in all Her endless years, attempted to go back on a plan.

But the Archivist—for all that he was weaker now—was far more stronger than the Web, who was missing the rest of Her siblings that She needed to exist in the mortal realm. She was connected to them, so She must follow.

“I can’t convince you to not do this, can’t I?” The Mother asked, almost rhetorically but not quite.

“Do you want to?” Jonathan Sims asked.

“I don’t have a choice,  do I?” The Mother merely said. “Well played, Jonathan Sims. May you have your happiness. I will leave without struggle.”

“Good.” 

“Oh, and Jon?”

Irritated. “What?”

“Help me write a sticky note later.”

When Mycroft comes back to himself, his vision is blurry and his mouth is full of viscous liquid that tastes like iron, leaking down his chin in disgusting warm droplets. He aches badly, every inch of him covered in fine but deep cuts as if made by metallic thread sawing in; he can’t even stand, instead kneeling on the hard floor of Snow’s office.

Killian kneels before him, and cups his cheek gently, an echo of their time in Four.

“Shh, love. It’ll be alright,” Killian whispers softly, his voice tender and loving and a warmth that he wants to lose himself in. “Now, I’ll be away for a bit, yeah? So I’m trusting you to give this back to Aether when you have the chance.” Killian presses something cold and box-like into his hands, and when Mycroft grips it he feels nothing but the emptiness of space that brings clarity to his pain.

“Don’t worry.” Killian smiles, sadly. “We’ll be reunited, be it on the earth or in the stars.” He presses a quick peck to Mycroft’s forehead, and comes back with his lips crimson red.

Mycroft hears the Peacekeepers when they come, and Killian—instead of fighting back—steadily stands up, and allows them to whisk him away.

Mycroft wants to scream again, but he can’t. It’s too painful. 

Instead, he turns to look and Snow—to really Look at Snow—and finds the strength to stand. He pockets the tape recorder in his hand, and takes out another one; one similar in appearance but very different. Holds it up for Snow to see, its majesty stained by the blood from his wounds, his thumb on one of the buttons.

He knows what it is now. And by the look on Snow’s face, he knows what it is too.

“Mycroft,” Snow tries to appeal, but Mycroft does not listen. He refuses to listen. 

“You said,” Mycroft begins. Or perhaps he ends? But it doesn’t really matter, anyway. Not anymore. “That I could be extraordinary.”

“You are extraordinary, Mycroft,” Snow says, and he sounds steady for a man who is facing his death. But most Avatars… they face death to Become. But that’s just shedding their humanity, isn’t it? They don’t die. It’s not permanent. Not like now. “That was never in question.”

“Yes, but why?” Mycroft asks. His voice is far too steady for a man with broken vocal chords, backed by the quiet strength of a thousand others.  “Why was it me , and never the many others?”

“Oh, Mycroft, it was always going to be you. As much as I am loath to admit it.” Snow explains it like he’s just a little more oblivious than he actually is. Like he’s a child. “Everything you had ever done, had done to you, all of it led to this moment. You never truly had free will, you see? She’s had Her eyes on you for too long for it to be so. You’re the most beloved among all Her children.”

Snow expects him to rebel. It’s the predictable nature of humanity to hate the idea of the lack of freedom. Mycroft—when he wants to be—is anything but predictable.

Or perhaps this is playing right into where Snow wants him to be. Perhaps he is nothing but predictable. But it doesn’t matter now.

“Free will.” Mycroft tastes the words. The bitterness on his tongue is not just from the iron. “Is overrated anyways.”

He presses on the button, and the tape clicks on and whirs.

“Statement of—”

“Mycroft—” 

Mycroft does not hear what Snow has to say; has to plead. Not when a moment later all he hears are the agonised laughs from a damned man being eaten inside out. And the calming words of a man that was long gone, glitched and haunting.

Not when what was left of Mycroft Holmes becomes the minds of all the world, intertwined in a grand web of connection and attachment, and unfurls beyond the confines of his humanity.

Jonathan Sims raises the final tape recorder and stares at the Mother. He cannot look at the Web directly now, since the Eye has been bound, so instead he looks at a spider that Martin had been so kind to help him trap. The spider is still and intent.

But Jon will Know. Or perhaps just know.

It’s a very easy step to make.

“Statement of Annabelle Cane. Regarding her history and her observations of the Magnus Institute, London. Original statement written 20th July, 2018. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. Statement begins.”

And as he continues to read from his mind, his voice steady, threads emerge from thin air and are sucked into the tape recorder, plentiful—almost as if they’re the magnetic tape itself.

And when the statement is finally completed, all that is left is a tape recorder with silk spewing out of it haphazardly. 

It would later be buried in a mine, Desolation heat in the soot and coal fueled by the souls of the young around it, and would never be found by anyone until centuries later.

(This is how the story ends. Or perhaps how it begins again?)

There is a man who was once a boy. His body sits in his room, carefully weaving a tapestry; pulling and looping and overlapping colours and threads in the most meticulous way. Athena could challenge him, and he would win, for his pattern is to be of the connections that make him. 

He does not run out of thread despite not reaching for more, and will never. How do you run out of something that comes from yourself?

Despite his status of being in a room closed to the world, he knows everything that happens in Panem. Well, not quite, but it’s as close as one could come to. His mind is everyone. He hears the current affairs of the Capitol—every rumour, every truth, just as they happen. He knows of states of the Districts, how they fair, every single life as they die, fading from his awareness—but not quite yet, they still link to the others alive. Threads to be plucked and manipulated, no life or casualty a waste in this grand tapestry.

His awareness extends even beyond Panem. He’s a worse monster than his predecessor sometimes, but that’s okay.

The Mother softly nudges him—a constant presence in his mind, comforting as it is suffocating—and he refocuses. There is to be no allowance for doubt in his mind.

He knows Anthea approaches before she even comes to the corridor, and attempts to step down from his universality and back into the flesh and fabric suit of what was once Mycroft Holmes. It is not easy to reduce and condense all he is into just one human shaped flesh being with two hands, two legs, two eyes, one mouth only; into flesh and bone and skin, no matter the fact he is hollow with spiders and his blood red hair silvered with web. It’s like attempting to fit a sea into a drinking cup, or the entire Capitol into a single centimetre cube of flesh and steel. But his attempt succeeds passably, and he manages to bind himself with thread before he hears the knock.

“President Holmes,” Anthea greets as she opens the door. She’s doing better than ever, and works brilliantly as the President’s aide. “Your five o’clock is down in the Conference room.”

“Good,” the man smiles, venomous and unholy. The threads not yet made slacken and dissipate, and he rises from his seat. “I'll be there shortly.”

As always, the work continues, and the pieces move around on their little stage.

And for the first time, he gets to be the one to pull along the threads.

(The opening act finally ends, and the stage begins the dance of a new act.)

Chapter Text

Hello! It’s been too long, isn’t it?

So, wedding chapters, I just needed to draw them.

The original plan was to draw a ‘screenshot’ of the wedding in my head but then I needed to first get the outfits down and then my exams came around and then my motivation just went down so here’s what I got lol. Mycroft’s outfit is actually pretty much taken from this Pinterest thing but recoloured to my desire but Regina’s dress was done with a bit of mish mashing of several different dress desires and some laziness to actually render lol. I gave both Mycroft and Regina light blue eye makeup because I really like it. And I Headcanon that it’s a bit of a customary thing to do eye makeup (or eye paint) for Capitol weddings.

Fun fact: My original plan was to give Mycroft a cape/cloak of sorts. However, I decided to scratch that since I have this small bit of Headcanon that it is an unspoken rule in the Capitol—if you were in some way associated with Snow’s government in a professional capacity—the cloak or cape was part of the ceremonial attire, stuff worn during the most important of situations. The longer the cloak, the more senior and trusted you are. Colours of the cloak depend on the aegis/house you were under, usually, but they were particularly good ways to show other allegiances. So here, out of Snow’s hold, Mycroft wouldn’t be wearing a cloak due to the fact that he is technically a disgraced and resigned member of Snow’s government. So I went with this instead because honestly I fucking love the design.

Anyways, hope you liked this!

Chapter Text

There is at least one spider in each office belonging to those working for the President at all times.

It has been such since the beginning of President Snow’s tenure. Nearly every office in the Citadel has a spider, sitting in the darkened corners, weaving their webs of silk. Most have given up trying to get rid of them; they always come back, and they aren’t actively terrorising the residents of those offices, merely an ever lurking presence in their periphery. Those that come in – fresh and green – learn eventually to leave them alone, accepting them as just another part of their job, even if they feel Watched.

(Those that continue their removal of the spiders awake in their beds with feelings of being Watched, of being Seen, of spider infestations in their homes. 

And always in their dreams they are lucid, but never can they move to their will as their dreams turn to terror.)

The Government of Panem runs like a well-oiled machine, the many cogs of departments and individuals coming together to construct something far greater than the sum of its parts. A web of connections and bureaucracy and greed and suffering and work all devoted to maintaining Panem spiralling outwards from its core, the Capitol and its overseers to the Districts and their people, each thread important in their own way.

And at the beating and rotten heart of this colossal web of blood and glory, terrible and unholy and magnificent, lies the spider that calls themself Mycroft Holmes.

(The world has always been a stage of puppets to be pulled along by thread.)

[CLICK]

QUARTERMASTER

Statement of the entity known as Mycroft Holmes, regarding their life and observations around the nature of fate. Statement taken directly from subject, 12th January 70 ATT. Statement begins.

HOLMES (STATEMENT)

Free will and fate are such odd concepts, aren’t they? Seemingly exclusive to one another, the idea of freedom to choose versus the idea of events being predetermined. Chaos versus inevitability. Old philosophy has debated over this issue several times. Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with the libertarian model of free will. 

So which one is true and which one is false? Well, the answer truly depends on the person.

He really doesn’t want to be here.

Sherlock absolutely hates the Capitol – hates the gaudy opulence and the obvious ignorance to the suffering of the Districts and the insipidity of the people even if they disguise it with an array of technicolor taken and stolen from the Districts. He hates the politics intrinsic to its foundations and the niceties born from malice and the flattery woven into conversations that are unnecessary.

(He hates that no one here has to ration themselves and hoard all they can because they do not know when they will be able to eat next. Hates that no one here has had to fear the violent oppression of Peacekeepers, staying in their homes after curfew for fear of being shot down in the streets. Sherlock hates that the children can be children here, wide eyed with wonder and the ability to choose what they want their future to be. Hates how unfair it all is.)

More than that, Sherlock loathes living in the Presidential Palace. He had anticipated that Mycroft would bring him to the Capitol no matter what – a promise he had known since his brother became the Coordinator of the Inner Districts – but he hadn’t expected living in the heart of the Capitol, in the centre of this wretched place. In this gilded cage of cold halls that echo and too many rooms to count and Avox and servants that wait at their feet and their every desire.

(Of Avox and servants that might be – and Sherlock will never acknowledge this if he wants to sleep – corpses dragged around by threads as they perform to his brother’s will. Or perhaps they are alive and silenced and in a constant state of terror or broken, and that is even worse, but Sherlock will not dismiss that possibility with the Web being his brother’s god. But he will never acknowledge it, not even to himself, because Sherlock wants to cling to the slowly crumbling idea that his brother is a good person when he might not even be a person.)

Still, he is here, because Sherlock is the brother to the President, and Mycroft is an overprotective and possessive bastard who does not think that Sherlock can go without supervision for a month without something catastrophic happening – especially in this kind of climate.

(Because Sherlock also hates their family’s business, hates One with only just a little less contempt than towards the Capitol. Because as much as any of them refuse to admit it, for all he is steeped in the Beholding and holding on to his own humanity through sheer force of will, Sherlock is the one of the few that can qualify as an adequate Anchor to Mycroft’s humanity. That can bring Mycroft and Regina back from the depths of the abyss they lurk in and remind them to care.)

(He doesn’t know if he should be afraid or flattered by such an honour.)

Still, his day to day is not too bad, he supposes. Sherlock had been placed with private tutors to catch him up on what he should know – scientists and researchers that would eventually be his colleagues in the Capitol’s R&D department, each brilliant in their own field and open to new insight. He interns for them as he is taught the practical parts. He fills his day and night with the acquisition of data and knowledge, hungry for more and more and more until he gains a name in his own right in the halls of the Citadel, where he lurks in his own private lab.

Sometimes, Mycroft comes around for a visit, a looming presence that sends his colleagues and mentors into states of alertness and terror as they snap to attention and trying to prove themselves. His brother laughs at his quips, frowns and rolls his eyes at the right times, and talks to him about Sherlock’s work – occasionally giving him more to do, pointing him in directions that Sherlock hadn’t bothered with.

(Sometimes, his brother isn’t really his brother, merely a monstrous creature of control and manipulation and spiders, bound in a suit of skin and fabric and silk thread and wearing Mycroft’s face like a mask, his body a mere puppet to the Entity controlling it. Sherlock always Knows when that happens – a smile too wide with teeth too sharp, his voice a cadence too hypnotic, his eyes cold and amused instead of the exasperated fondness he is used to – but he can pull his brother back to the surface when that happens.)

But for all of Sherlock's snipes and insults, born of traditional sibling rivalry and deep seated resentment, he can never really refuse Mycroft. He can never resist his questions or his requests, even if they are inconvenient or something Sherlock wishes not to dwell on. He can never resist his touch, not even if it’s a bad day and he can’t stand the contact that curls closely around him like a serpent, cold and dangerous if affectionate, crushing and suffocating yet somehow safe, and especially not when his brother needs it – needs the embrace and anchoring touch of a human to keep him from going down to where no one can touch him. 

Sherlock suspects that he would bleed for him, if Mycroft asks.

(Sherlock isn’t quite sure if that’s a property of his lingering sentiment towards his brother – an instinct born of blood ties and faded memories regarding Mycroft being his first comfort and mentor and caretaker – or a product of the threads of steel Mycroft had woven, linking them together in chains, trapping his heart and soul. It is both comforting and terrifying, to know that someone would care as much as to bother to possess him like that. To want him, to love him, to love him in this deep and primal way, a need as much as a feeling, consuming all in its way and burning everything that had dared to come in between.)

HOLMES (STATEMENT)

In the old world before the collapse, there was the concept of the Fates, spinners of the thread that represent individual human fates. Fate is often conceived as being divinely inspired, something beyond human ability and will.

Then, there is free will –  "it was the fact that nothing hindered us from doing or choosing something that made us have control over them". 

True free will would require us to be aware and have control over every aspect that is influencing our actions – environmental factors, precise mood, past experiences, et cetera, and we all know that is completely impossible, even for me. 

Of course, from the statement by Annabelle Cain – the statement is rattling in that head of yours somewhere, I’m sure – you have a perspective of the nature of free will, or rather the illusion of free will. That it is merely ignorance, repackaged into something more palatable. Something that soothes the innate human yearning for freedom. Or perhaps the innate human instinct of pride.

When we succeed in something, or do something we are proud of, we have a tendency to say it was free will – that it was our decisions that led us to that moment. But when everything falls apart, we blame it on forces beyond our control, on our gods and the fates, instead of doing the reasonable thing and taking accountability for our own failures and misfortunes. They used to say “The Devil made me do it” or “It’s part of God’s plan” or, the simplest of them, “I had no choice”, when they wanted to shift blame or they wanted to make themselves better about the terrible things that happened to them.

But I suppose some of those misfortunes are out of our hands. Sometimes, we can’t help ourselves, or it’s the only logical possibility, or it’s just our instincts and wants that determine what we do – and we can’t change that. Sometimes, the world is just out to get us, or perhaps it’s beings beyond our sight imposing their will upon our world. 

Fate is, by design, a very complicated thing. Does it exist? Perhaps. Will we ever know? Maybe not.

Did I choose to become what I am? Did Mycroft Holmes – the little boy who wanted nothing more than to protect his brother – choose to become the most powerful being in Panem, all at the low, low cost of his humanity? Or was it all part of a grand design, be it destiny or fate or the Mother’s will and Her threads,  leading me to my apotheosis of bloody horror and woven silk?

That’s a bit of a complex and insensitive question to ask, don’t you think? But in my case, it was fairly simple, I suppose – if you ask the right questions.

Regina senses it before anyone else does.

There had been an undercurrent of instability brewing in the Capitol, a product of the recent political upheaval that was the sudden shifting of power. A District-born Victor – one of the more infamous ones at that – for President of Panem was never going to go down well, let alone peacefully, with a fair bit of the populace.

Regina’s instincts shriek and laugh and snarl and hiss, a song of violence and blood singing in her veins as her mind conjures the sound of drums and pipes as a subtle soundtrack in the background.

It isn’t unexpected, of course. Violence doesn’t come in merely bloodshed, of flesh bleeding, it comes in the metaphorical wounds of the political and social battles too. A violence that hurts in the most lovely if indirect ways, soul crushing or future burning. Wars have, after all, always been built upon the insults and failed diplomacy and the general cruelty inherent to humanity’s genome.

But this is a much more visceral kind of instinct, one promising corpses dropped on floors and the final gasp of life. Regina is giddy with it, almost stumbles.

Regina takes a steadying sip of the cocktail in her hand, scanning around the ballroom.

The floor is filled with an array of technicolor, various members of the Capitol mingling and laughing. Figures are dancing, plenty are feasting, and the hall is filled with the buzz of countless different conversations being held.

At the centre, spinning his web, is Mycroft – poised and professional, coldly charismatic, a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

The chimes get louder in her head. Regina holds her glass hard enough for it to break.

Someone’s going to die tonight, Regina thinks. She makes a quick sweep around the ballroom, assesses and makes a map. Many Avatars, a few assassins on break, soldiers a plenty and – 

There is killing intent on the floor near Mycroft, directed at him. 

Someone’s going to die tonight, Regina thinks again as she makes her way towards the eye of the storm. And it’s going to be by our hand.

As Regina approaches, the crowd around her parts like the Red Sea and the buzz gets a little more rowdy and sharper. She can practically taste the bloodlust in the air, rising with her very presence pushing things to instability.

Mycroft clearly senses her before anything, grey eyes directed towards her even as he continues his conversation smoothly. His smile becomes just a little more genuine, and a bit more concerned – more human, if you will.

The scent of blood gets sharper to her senses, copper flooding her mouth even as she gives a smile. Regina both hates and loves what she is during moments like these.

It comes to a crescendo, and the war drums start thrumming less like a heartbeat and more like a climax that shrieks for her attention.

Here’s the thing: Regina’s reaction time – raw reaction time, without any premonition or warning or deductions in advance – is the fastest out of their circle. 

She’s a soldier at heart, a creature of discipline and bloodshed, a living weapon that revels in the violence. The Slaughter is her god, the one constant throughout her life, the constant beating of the drums that never goes away and calls her to war and battle. Even when everyone leaves her, It will still be there, always.

It’s likely Mycroft had been aware of what is to come, but he’s always been excruciatingly careful to demonstrate himself as human to the rest of Panem.

It spikes, the taste of blood in her mouth, an overwhelming sensation—

And 

Then

She tackles the bastard who was holding the knife, slamming down into the floor with a loud crack. The screams start around them, even as she wrestles the blade out of the man’s hands. Her blood sings with every bit of blood she draws with her nails and every bruise she makes with her hands and every scream they draw in this sudden dance of death. Every punch and wound she takes fuels her rage in return.

How dare they, her blood sings. How dare they come into this place with malicious intent towards those I love.

Reality and time blurs to her mind as she partakes in this offering to her god, and she barely keeps from clawing the bastard’s heart out with her bare hands. She rises, gazing upon her work and taking in every wound she had dealt in retribution, feeling the presence of the Slaughter retreat from her mind and heart like a beast satisfied from a feast of raw flesh. The assassin’s almost knocked out, too tired to move but not unconscious to be able to be questioned.

She catches Mycroft’s eye – Mycroft, who looks shocked but is clearly pulling an act to all those who know him – and a single glance is enough to illustrate what they need to say. When the guards swarm them, they do not touch her, Mycroft merely informing them all they need to know to drag the assassin away.

HOLMES (STATEMENT)

Children of One are born with expectations put upon them since even before they were even a twinkle in their parent’s eyes, I have been no exception; Reputation is key, the most important part of your life. Failure in itself is the greatest failure, and disgrace is often worse than death.

I had learnt from a very young age the art of manipulation. I think every child does, it’s part of the human condition in a world so harsh. But I had learnt to be very good with it, using all the tools I could to my advantage, playing the role of the dutiful son as I grew and pruned relationships to my desire. By trial and error I had learnt to weave lies and truth, learnt to press the right triggers of the needed emotion, to make others dance to the tune I set down. Of course, I had learnt from my parents, as most are in One – they were very good at drawing guilt, twisting words and sentiments into what they weren’t and weaponizing them. But I like to think that it was I who perfected it, especially after I entered the Career Academy at eight years old, a perfect testing ground for future reference.

Then, the Games. I won’t go too much into it, there’s not much to talk about – I’m sure you’ve seen it yourself. But suffice to say, those thirty-seven hours had sealed my fate. I had drawn the attention of those with greater designs, and they had chosen me to fulfil a role I never thought I would have wanted. From the very moment that antidote to my own poison had touched my lips, I had unknowingly signed a contract with Entities far beyond my understanding then.

But that’s the Mother for you. She’s the writer of a television series that has casted you in the role of a character that does things you aren’t quite comfortable with. Only the television series happens to be indistinguishable from reality, an insidious little realisation that only comes far too late.

Their relationship really shouldn’t work as well as it does.

(None of it really should, and Killian is perhaps a little wary of what it means that it does.)

Killian is the ocean – free and mercurial, of shifting tides and horizons expanding outwards forevermore, even as you attempt to reach the end you can never find it. His god is freedom made into something tangible, is the looming heavens which limits can never be reached, is the knowledge that you are nothing but a single glimmer in the consideration of the universe, inspiring a devotion made of eclipsing existential terror that breaches the boundaries of awe and elation as you take in the limitless possibilities at your will; a realisation that only you can bring significance only relevant to you to your infinitesimal existence amongst the cosmos, possibilities as plentiful as the stars.

Mycroft is control made flesh – tight and restrictive, of chains wrapping around minds and hearts tightly coiled like pythons, of the spider’s architectural perfection constructing intricate designs of suits and tapestries and plans with no error in the weave, no detail unaccounted for. His Patron is the binding to a design of another’s making, is the anchoring of one to cruel existence, is the trapping of one to fate and destiny made long ago by something greater than you, evoking a warmth of surety and safety that you have a place in this grand design, that you are useful, that you have glorious purpose; that chance cannot curse you for there is no such thing as chance, only destiny, that you cannot do better or worse but only what you are designed for.

What they are are almost antithetical to each other. Killian is Anchored down to humanity, almost indistinguishable from a mortal if not for his eyes which reflect the heavens’ glory, drawing people in so that those who see may be lost amongst the stars, the air around him a mixture of stardust and the open sea air. Mycroft is closer than almost all to his Patron, dwelling firmly in the uncanny as a pale mockery of humanity, something monstrous crammed down into a crude parody of human flesh, an aura of power and not-right and the desire to fall to your knees encasing him like a well-fitted cloak.

And yet, Killian loves him. And yet, and yet, Mycroft loves him.

(Killian, who had offered his own head – his life, his being, because every Avatar knew that to be an Avatar under Snow’s interrogation if he wanted you gone would be to be sacrificed to the Spiral or the End or the Web – to keep Mycroft from facing death. 

Mycroft, who had faced death anyways and Became, losing who he was, what he was, to ensure Killian lived, to ensure he was saved from a fate worse than death. Mycroft, who looks at him like he’s the centre of the universe and regains a sense of the humanity he had forsaken when he holds him.)

Well, Mycroft loves many. He loves Regina and Killian and Sherlock and Finnick and Bond and Annie. He loves them fiercely and holds them in higher esteem than the rest of Panem. He loves them enough to want to be selfish, to bargain with his Patron on the topic of what their purpose in the grand design is – the only bit of defiance he ever displays towards the Web.

(He had loved Snow as well, although that is far more complicated.)

Occasionally, when things get too stressful for any of them and the threads holding Mycroft’s body together threaten to unravel and Killian feels like drowning, he drags Mycroft and whoever he can gets his hands on to the Ríona, to the Capitol’s reservoir. 

He invites Mycroft onto the waters of his domain, standing on still waters that do not break, merely reflecting the skies above and extending the horizon in ad infinitum.

Sometimes they go deeper, dipping into waters unknown and dangerous, the abyss of endless depths calling to them. But the temptation to sacrifice Mycroft to his god never comes.

Is it love that stays his hand? Killian likes to think so.

(Two monsters, hand in unlovable hand, loving dearly.)

HOLMES (STATEMENT)

My Sponsorship had been a training ground, the internship if you would. The Mother had deemed me the perfect clay to work with and proceeded to do so, shaping me into a perfect potential vassal of Her design. I became one of the most powerful people in all of Panem, spinning my own web of machines and influence apart from Snow. Snow, who had deigned to mentor me and guide me along – pull me along – when I needed a bit more of a… forceful push.

(wistful sigh) I had an odd relationship with Snow. He was as much my paternal figure as he was the one person I couldn’t trust. He understood me in a way that no other had ever come close too, yet at the same time never was able to reconcile it with the finer details of my humanity – the empathetic, sentimental bits. Although I suppose in the end, he was correct considering all of this. He was – first and foremost – my mentor and predecessor, who honed me to a fine point and placed me through the fire to become something terrible and great, who opened gateways to possibilities I never thought I would be able to have, who was no doubt manipulating me in many ways yet I couldn’t help but follow along, curious to see what he desired of me and willingly blind to the worst strings attached.

But there had been no puppet strings on me the entire time, no true loss of control. It was my own skill and ambition – my own choices – that brought me here to this position, and the most the Mother had done was keep me safe, nudged a few things around to gently shepherd me along the path, and greeted me warmly when I had finally arrived. I myself had merely walked into the centre of the web – and if I hadn’t done so myself with minimal interference, I am fairly sure the Mother would have chosen another to fulfil the role.

She really only cares about the endgame, the destination. The small details don’t matter – who does it, how they do it – and it just so happened that I made things easier for Her by naturally playing into Her hand.

My life hadn’t been predetermined. A contract can be loopholed around, even contracts with the universe. Moments written down in script can be exchanged for ad-lib by the actor, and the actor themselves can drop a role, force things to change even, negotiate with the writer. 

I could have fallen off the role the Mother wanted me to play very easily, chose to play a different role in Her grand design, but I… chose not to. 

Q is aware that he is mostly unwanted. A boy with no past, one of the many orphans of Three, a child who has no value beyond his tenacity and intelligence.

Who has beckoned the attention of the Ceaseless Watcher, the Scourge of Secrets, the Scavenger of Knowledge. 

Gold had been too Other for him not to notice. Many had thought that to be a product of his presence and odd mannerisms, but there are some things that just don’t add up without considering other factors. Like how he always Knows everything – and Q means always. Like the spider webs that appear in the shop despite there being no spiders.

Gold enfolds him into the web when Q is catching onto him, this grand secret of Entities and monsters and fear. Gold doesn’t tell him to join or offer himself to his own Patrons – he knows that if any of them had set Their sights on him, there will be no escape anyways.

The Watcher has already had its claws in Q by the time he’s told. District Three is a breeding ground for those devoted to the Eye or the Extinction, and Q’s greatest attribute – or perhaps his worst flaw – is his unrelenting desire for knowledge and truth, and his ability to get it.

Q is fourteen when he’s brought to the Capitol. Apparently, the newly inaugurated president – Mycroft Holmes, a mysterious element that Gold has feared more than Snow – had asked for him. (He won’t know the reason why, for a while.)

Q is fourteen when he prepares to bear the weight of a mantle. The Quartermaster had once upon a time been the Archivist, but over time the position – the title, and what it means to be the Archivist – had adapted into something else to survive a new world. The primary function – a gatherer of information to feed the Eye – had never ceased, merely adapting a new packaging and secondary purposes.

Q is fourteen when he dies and gets up, Knowledge filtering unbidden through his mind, as a conduit for a god that – in the end – takes more than it gives. But all the Fears do that in actuality, if one is willing. Nature of scorpions, nature of Fears.

(To become an Avatar of the highest devotion towards your god, venerated by all those who serve the same, requires sacrifice. An offering of your own being, your own soul, parting with a piece of it, consuming and being consumed in return, to influence and be influenced. Most never reach that point, but those that do are the ones that are those that are among the likes of the Distortion, Simon Fairchild, Annabelle Cane, Jonah Magnus, and others terrible and great.)

(Q doesn’t want to particularly dwell on the fact that he takes pleasure in his role, in his duties, that it feels like he’s been made for this and waiting for it after all this time. He searches for information and creates in R&D and takes in statements and it feels like coming home.)

Q is sixteen when, somehow, he becomes a Keeper of one of the Recorders. He is the vessel of his Patron in Their greatest concentration. 

(A long time ago, the Archivist – the Archive, Jonathan Sims – had bound the Entities into Statements and Tape Recorders, extracting them from their places outside the universe in the little in-betweens where they hold on and draw blood from reality, and binding them into something… tangible, touchable. Knowable.)

Q is the Keeper of the Ceaseless Watcher, the one who Knows all that has come into the Beholding’s view – every memory, every statement, every discovery, every scrap of knowledge that has been taken down, from science to the humanities, secrets and news. The Ceaseless Watcher Knows, and Q’s job is to bring comprehension.

Q Knows his once-was name now. He still prefers Q. He’s a baby in comparison to the rest of the Avatars – child Avatars are rare, soul-bonded Avatars this young are almost unheard of, and he is aware most of Panem’s Fear community doesn’t think him worthy for bearing the Beholding’s Recorder, thereby becoming one of the most powerful Avatars in current existence. But he’s been chosen, his place secured with blood and fear written into the fabric of reality itself, and the Beholding will not part until either Q or his god choose to let go of each other, so really no one can do anything about it. The Beholding had, after all, once been the linchpin upon which all the other Fears entered the mortal plane. 

(The Fifteen are almost complete. Fifteen who bear the Fears in their magnificence.)

Q knows that as time goes on, as he grows into his role – his years stretching out into decades, living in terms of centuries – he will lose more of himself to his Patron. His humanity, fresh life from childhood yet to age or decay, will be picked upon by the vultures of Fear and time and the weight of the world. 

But for now, he is the closest thing to human any Avatars of his calibre and role can get to, even if he has the Watcher’s Crown upon his head. Q is rather happy with that – as happy as he can be. 

HOLMES (STATEMENT)

I chose not to. Such an important distinction. The Mother guided me to a choice, a crossroad, a chance, but I made the choice. I chose to ascend to my position of power as a creature of horror instead of dying as a human with morality. I chose time and time again to shatter and darken my soul in order to further my ambition, to protect those I love by sacrificing others, to prey upon the fears of others more innocent – more worthy of life – in my endless quest for safety.

There is no such thing as safety however, only various degrees of danger. I realised that too late.

Although, you could argue that it hadn’t been my own choice. We don’t choose how we react to things, at least not at a subconscious level. How do we tell that the person – not the conscious one, the one that makes of all our instincts and emotions and wants – that made those decisions isn’t being manipulated into doing them? 

Perhaps it was my destiny to sit here before you today, predetermined a long time ago. Perhaps it was fate that led us to this moment. 

Perhaps it was fate that brought you to Three so long ago and sharpened the attributes that made you such a good Holder for the Eye. Perhaps it was your destiny too.

[SOFT LAUGHTER]

But we’ll never know, will we?

Or maybe I’m lying about not knowing. Perhaps I do know, and I just don’t want you to know. Perhaps I’m playing my cards close to my chest.

QUARTERMASTER

Statement ends.

(annoyed) Very vague, aren’t you? There was barely any actual information. And full of contradictions too.

[A STATIC SOUND TURNS ON IN THE BACKGROUND]

HOLMES (?)

[LIGHT LAUGHTER]

(distorted) My dear Quartermaster, what would be the fun in being direct? Besides, without some mystery, the Eye would starve. Isn’t that the opposite of what you should want?

QUARTERMASTER

Mystery is more of the domain of the Spiral, the Dark or the Stranger, I would think.

HOLMES (?)

(distorted, clearly amused) So it would seem.

[THE STATIC FADES]

HOLMES

Do you have any more questions?

They have been commissioned.

Constructing a person from scratch is not something easy to do. They are lucky it doesn’t have to be human in the slightest, merely a suitable vessel for what’s to come – to be a living Door, connected to all the Entities and allowing them to proceed to worlds beyond.

But plans and schemes are the Web’s domain. Tigris is just here to complete a job. 

Plastic and metal bends with her mind, fabric fusing into it. Beside her, the Butcher works in threads of flesh and sheets of skin into her work. Tigris’ job is to provide the base skeleton and shape it into something brilliant while the Butcher makes it into living flesh.

As much as it irritates her to let such things become flesh-like, it’s just a little necessary. There may be living plastic and dolls that are Avatars, but most of them are reserved to the Stranger. There is a reason why humans are the preferred Avatars of the Fears – manifestations are just not the same, and most of them are purely of a single Entity.

So they construct, they shape, and they make. Skin, muscles, joints. The finer details – like eyes and internals – they let be. They are not supposed to be completely human, not a perfect imitation, just one that can pass for it, and some others have their own part to play in the making of this figure.

Tigris recalls the myth of Pandora – all-gifted, unleasher of evils. What a suiting tale.

They are given as much time as they need to bring the most perfect product they can. The new President – Tigris can say Holmes is perhaps just a little better than Coriolanus had been, and truly it is ironic that she outlasts his cousin in the end – comes by to check on their progress, occasionally sitting down to weave alongside them. Tigris has to admire his skill in creation, an art in itself with how he moves.

And then, the Fear’s Pandora is completed. 

QUARTERMASTER

Yes. I want to know why.

HOLMES

You have to be more specific.

QUARTERMASTER

Why did the Web choose to replace Snow with you?

HOLMES

Simple. Part of it was that he had become too… arrogant, and started deviating from the Mother’s will. He started becoming human. Human not in any moral way or in any literal sense but in a way that he thought he could control his own fate. Hubris. That is not a luxury afforded to those who serve our Patron. The Weaver will not tolerate those who break their vows – whatever they may be – to serve Her.

While Snow may have been a talented manipulator and a good agent of change, he had always been in a very precarious situation and could never be truly favoured by the Mother. The other Powers that Be – like yours, the Ceaseless Watcher – are not truly aware, and thus allow you agency to fulfil your desires with their power as long as you continue to feed your god. The Web does not operate in the same way. While you are useful, you never have to feed Her – She has others for that – but an actor or director who does not deliver the script starves. 

Snow had served his purpose, getting us here, but some threads have to be pruned for others more essential to thrive.

Avatars of the other Fears… they don’t often have that calling. That call to a cause greater than their own, a siren song that plays loud in your head to create change in our Patron’s design. For you, it is either survival or self-actualisation that drives you – that allows you to cope and perhaps even begin to love your god – an affinity for your Patron or Patron wanting what they can bring you.

We, on the other hand, are called to destiny.

Most would chaff at these restraints. What use is power if you can’t use it to change things to how you want them to be? But I would say it is the honour and duty of every Servant of the Mother to be both actor and director of this great story, this grand play, this beloved show. But never the writer – that role doesn’t belong with them. 

But to be both the puppeteer and puppet… isn’t that the most delightful – the most divine – of pleasures?

QUARTERMASTER

[STATIC RISES]

(the quote that comes out is from a different, much older statement, not at all The Quartermaster’s voice) I am no more free than you are, little puppet. Ah! If only you could see the strings that bind me, that wind together as they pull me along my own path. Perhaps then you would not blame me so. But they are not the tripping threads we are here to watch, no.

[STATIC FADES]

HOLMES

Snow did not truly think so. He had control issues, and could not abide by this sort of thinking – born from starving in his youth and obtaining power through intellect and willpower. The Mother saw his use, and that use has come to an end. It isn’t anything particularly against him, per say – we’re all deeply selfish creatures  – but eras always end. That’s why they’re eras. 

QUARTERMASTER

Then what happens when your interests clash with the Web’s?

HOLMES

Pardon?

QUARTERMASTER

What happens? You’re driven by the pursuit of safety and protection for the people you love, the people who Anchor you. What happens when the Web demands you give them up?

[SILENCE]

HOLMES

My position allows me the inherent ability to negotiate. To change the finer details. Right now, there is no reason for them to be disposed of—

QUARTERMASTER

(distorted) That’s not what I asked.

HOLMES

Calm yourself.

[SILENCE]

HOLMES

Eras end, Q. I would be able to negotiate – the Mother is many things, but wasteful is not one of them, nor is she unnecessarily cruel. That is the Desolation’s Domain, not Hers. She has an objective, one I doubt that would require placing them on the chopping board, but I would if I had to, such is the nature of sacrifice. There is no such thing as safety in this world. This is a script with no main character.

QUARTERMASTER

(sarcastic and a bit disgusted) You are your god’s loyal servant, aren’t you?

HOLMES

(audibly smiling but condescendingly) Quite so. She gave me everything I ever wanted, the least I could do is to work for Her greatest goal.

QUARTERMASTER

The multiverse problem.

HOLMES

Just so. And speaking of such, I’ve given you my statement, time to collect. 

[A SOFT SIGH]

The air is thick with power.

Fifteen stand around in a circle. Fifteen surround a single one.

Today. Today is the day where the threads fall into place. Today is the day when everything collides and the puzzle is completed. Today is when the effort of countless millennia finally bears the fruits of labour.

Today.

In this room, even if you know their name, everyone is referred to by their title, by their epithet, by their mantle.

By their god.

The Quartermaster stands on his allocated slot, right next to his— right next to The Tailor of Threads. 

“I hope none of you expect any sort of fanfare for this, we are all very impatient I am sure,” the Tailor drawls. Some of the more unhinged Avatars laugh a little.

“We will go in a clockwise arrangement,” the Tailor continues. “Starting from the Spiral, ending with me. Understood?”

The Spiral with its beloved Distortion as the centre, the Web to bring it all together. It is a gamble, to play with the Throat of Delusion Incarnate, but one that will have high payoff, one with little risk with the Spiral in cooperation.

The Illusionist steps forward towards the empty husk – it is a convincing body of a woman, with long dark hair and pale skin – and bestows the Distortion upon it. Its hair curls in ringlets, threads of bright and saturated yellow and purple and other colours in eye-bleeding technicolor incomprehension glimmering and then fading.

One by one, the Avatars step forward. One by one, they become the modern Prometheus. One by one, they establish the pantheon that creates Pandora, the All-Gifted, the Bearer of Evils. Power builds and their gods come down in a purer form as they create their very own sentient Key of Solomon. 

He gifts the body of what will become Eurus Pandora – because the Web adores Her stories, Her ironies – with the curse and blessing of Knowing. It opens its eyes briefly, a lifeless yet unbearably sharp stare of grey eyes, other eyes opening up all over its body to stare, and then closing and disappearing until only the main two – the two that have been designed to be there – remain, which shut close.

And then the Tailor steps forward and gifts two things. The first is the gift of control, to influence a mind. And the second is the gift of sapience through the gift of a name.

(The Ancient Egyptians called it Ren, one of the essential parts of the soul.)

And Eurus Pandora is no longer a mere husk, but something alive, breathing air as her chest rises and falls even if she doesn’t need to. Her eyes brim with something fierce and cold and maddening, spirals of colours that are fractals, void black sclera. Her body is made of shadows, of raw flesh, of fur and claws, of stardust, of fog, of of of—

Blink, and she looks normal, looks human enough to pass for an ordinary Avatar with human origins. Steel grey eyes and dark hair. She looks rather like a female version of Sherlock Holmes, like the Quartermaster, but the Tailor has always been a sentimental kind of person when they had been human. 

The Ceaseless Watcher inputs into his mind that she had been constructed with the Tailor’s DNA, and that if you put her hair through a machine it would read as though she was their sibling. Typical.

The Tailor asks, “Do you know what you are?” 

And Pandora answers, “A vessel. A Doorway.”

The Tailor hands over a piece of crisp paper, one that had been written on with the most important words of all.

(The last messiah that had been created had to grow. The bearer of the Archive had to be primed. This one doesn’t, both a child and yet perfect and young all the same.)

And then, the Doorway speaks.

QUARTERMASTER

Do you know the final words of the Mass Ritual? The ones Jonathan Sims invoked to bring the Fears into his world?

HOLMES

“I open the door.”

QUARTERMASTER

Correct. And, that’s the key behind it. ‘Open the door’ is a one time thing. The Archive had been a key, an anchor to draw in the Powers, but a key is usually only for one door, one way.

HOLMES

So instead of a door, we would need… a hallway of doors, perhaps.

QUARTERMASTER

And what aspect of an Entity manifests itself as a set of infinite hallways?

HOLMES

The Distortion. So hypothetically, a Distortion-esque aspect that has been edited to also act like an Archive – a living chronicle of terror, to use the language of Jonah Magnus – and not just a part of the Spiral would be the hallway needed to access other worlds. And nice that’s done we can… seed the Entities.

QUARTERMASTER

That is the hypothesis, yes. However, we have no frame of reference that it should work. Many Entities have some form of transportation – the Dark has their shadows, the Lonely their fog, the Vast their domains of sky and sea.

HOLMES 

But those are just fringe benefits, not the main attraction like the Distortion is.

QUARTERMASTER

And the Distortion is, uhm, tricky would be the word for it if we’re being polite. Although it has been relatively tame since it has been smote and recreated, if a little more powerful since the Entity doesn’t have to bypass a dimensional border.

HOLMES

And so the Distortion must be bound to something firmly of another Entity to temper it, yet also unalive, and only given consciousness when the Archive has been completed.

QUARTERMASTER

(exasperated) In less purple prose, yes.

HOLMES

Is it really that simple?

QUARTERMASTER

Well, we don’t know for sure. But Occasm’s razor suggests so.

HOLMES

Very well. I think I might have an idea now.

Eurus’s voice is haunted and shrill and sweet and low all at the same time.

“You who lie and distort and bring madness and despair. You who deceive and fracture and are unknowable to ephemeral minds. You who open doors not there and close those that are and bring insanity to the strongest minds.”

Mycroft can feel the rising power singing in his veins, scotching the air, even if it’s only in the first paragraph calling upon The Twisting Deceit. The Mother brushes his consciousness, caressing his mind, warming his fractured soul, and he shudders in pleasure.

The culmination of multiple millennia of work, of weaving and unravelling threads of this grand tapestry of destiny and free will and terror and power and ambition. Witnessing the final thread of the Mother’s magnum opus be tugged into place feels like drug-induced euphoria, leaving him and Her almost breathless with orgasmic ecstasy.

He had never thought he would be the one to witness this, to bring them to this point. 

“Unleash to us your wholeness,” Eurus – his child, his sibling, their greatest work of art – intones. She speaks with sixteen voices, one for each Avatar here, one for herself. “Unleash to us your perfection.”

I always knew you would be the one to do it, the Mother croons; sings, praises, wrapping threads around his mind as She sinks into his body, sharing it; sinks into his soul, eating it. My darling champion, my greatest asset, my dearest child, my most favoured bearer, my best investment. My siblings must be so envious of Me to have you and your devotion.

(All he desires is to be loved and understood and to be protected in the ways it matters. The Mother gave him that – gave him Her attention, gave him Her protection, gave him Her love. Even if he knows it is conditional, he would gladly fulfil its conditions, for he loves Her.)

“And let me be the vessel and the doorway of all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that weaves and crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and sees and leaves and hides and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies!”

Mycroft can feel his mortal body unravelling and refitting, like him tailoring a suit – a flesh suit – with spider silk and viscera,  giving him spider limbs, and six other eyes that do not belong to him and do not see for him but for the Mother that shares his bones. 

The others do the same, have the same physical apotheosis. The Quartermaster is a figure of shadows covered in eyes that have irises of green. The Butcher is of exposed flesh and bulging arteries and blood. The Pilot is of clouds and stars and hair of ocean water. The Arsonist is of black fire and a dress of ash.

Eurus, Pandora reborn, is wonderfully hard to look upon and comprehend. Spirals and fractals and illusion spark and weave from her form, reality distorting to accommodate such an unworldly being that does not obey the universe’s laws.

“Break the chains and the threads of the confinement you have been bound to, both the physical and dimensional. Let me be your transport, your opening, your vessel.”

The power reaches a fever pitch. He tastes blood, tastes ichor, in his mouth. It’s not the human copper that indicates iron, but a thick, syrupy sweetness that is honey. Honey and venom, the two metaphorical fluids that are the bread and butter of every Web Avatar’s arsenal.

“I OPEN—” Eurus screams; screeches; preaches, and their voice sings with the horror of the universe.

—THE  D O O R!

The world is silent for a moment. As if holding its breath.

And then, 

cacophony. 

As time and space distorts. And boundaries between realities

s h a t t e r

as the East Wind punches through the walls.

(A glorified hole puncher.)

And Mycroft Holmes, who is the Mother of Puppets, who is Mycroft, who is both and one and two,

laughs

with utter joy, voices intertwining, unbothered with disguises.

And the world is brightened by technicolor nonsensical madness.

(And everything ceases to make sense

but that’s by design.)

When existence settles back into something resembling the former status quo, the Doorway known as Eurus Pandora is gone.

The Avatars in the room pull themselves together into something more human, something less Other. They wear back their facades, their faces, and look at the spot where the Doorway had disappeared from.

Their Recorders – the prisons of their gods, the containers of the Entities in their highest concentration – are gone. They feel different. Some notice patterns on their skin, patterns that resemble the ones on their Recorders branded into their skin like scars and tattoos. 

(They have become more than Avatars. They had been Bearers, and they still remain as such. The Entities are free, but it doesn’t mean they still aren’t attached to those that had once hosted them.)

A door appears. Fifteen shades of colour in a spiral have patterned it.

The being known as Mycroft Holmes – sometimes as The Web, The Mother, The Author – approaches, and very politely knocks.

One. Two. Three.

They draw back.

And with a creak,

the Door opens

Chapter Text

You had sworn to never love again.

Lucy Gray had shown you that love is foolish. It made you weak, made you jealous, made you so very easy to manipulate.

So you burned your heart away, married a woman you will never love, and devoted yourself to Panem, constructing an empire built upon your design. You poison; execute; torture anyone who gets in your path, construct a system both hardy and fragile, and you are the  undisputed ruler of Panem for his efforts.

(You killed Coryo – the one who could have cared, the cousin-brother, the best friend, the lover – with Sejanus, hanged up alongside him, a thousand jabberjays echoing back.)

Forty-nine years after Lucy Gray Baird, the countdown clock starts ticking.

The boy draws none of your attention at first, when you first lay eyes upon him through the screen. Young, Volunteering at fourteen years of age, and thus deemed very foolish indeed.

(The screen could not capture the sharpness of his eyes, the sheer brilliance behind that mask.)

The boy draws no attention throughout, neither training session nor interview. A low average score for a Career, a brief and forgettable interview, nothing quite interesting. His youth is an odd thing for a Career, but nothing that would quite entice you to pay attention.

(Perhaps that is the first sign that you should have noticed. The absence of something tells as much of a story as if there was anything at all.)

Then, the boy gathers the bark of nightlock during his Games. And he drinks the poison he has brewed alongside his allies, leaving them to die while he lives, destroying years of carefully crafted tradition built on the foundation of mutual trust.

He successfully plays the game, displaying himself as a blank slate for them to see as they wish. To the Tributes, a non-threat; to the Careers, an ally; to the Capitol, a sympathetic figure.

(What do you see in the boy then?)

(Yourself.)

You should have been furious. The boy is a record breaker, destroying the certainty and predictability of it all, shattering convention, perhaps even humiliating the Capitol and the Games and the system he designed.

Instead, you find yourself intrigued and delighted at such a play, and you can’t help but send the antidote, wondering where this would lead, curiosity and anticipation burning through you.

(You are staring at a mirror, and you have always been quite prideful.)

You learn the boy’s name then – Mycroft Holmes – and delve into everything about the boy you can find. 

(A spark.)

You test the boy.

His performance through the Hunger Games, through the screens, definitely could not capture his essence in its entirety. This tired, wary, magnificent creature.

Mycroft is clever, incredibly clever. The youthful naivety and arrogance of a child, but utterly bright in the ways that matter, full of boundless potential. Made of clay, ready to be moulded, to be put through fire and solidified into something great. A weapon, a tool, a piece of your collection.

The two of them play chess, and you can tell that Mycroft is trying his best to lose, walking the line between intelligent and conceding, so very fearful of the consequences. Something that you will have to change. 

But he has enough skill to challenge you, to make it difficult, to walk that fine line.

The boy mimics you beautifully, reflects back to you that coldness, so organically that it becomes part of himself.

Mycroft Holmes loves, and loves dearly, with all his heart and soul. You can tell in the stillness of his being when he mentions Sherlock Holmes, that it is his brother he had gone in for, had killed for, and will continue to do so for. But he manages to push through, remaining sharp, eyes forward.

Mycroft tells you that he is afraid. (How brave of him then.)

Mycroft lets you win the game, conceding the battle to continue the war, and you are almost disappointed in such a decision. You wanted to see how far the boy would go for victory, something you can’t judge if he loses.

(The thrill of someone who could challenge you. Oh how wonderful, that potential, that ability.)

You watch Mycroft leave, closing the door behind him, and think that ten years should be enough time. 

He’s not quite perfect, not yet, 

but he will be.

It feels like living again.

(For so long you had been where no one could reach you.)

Mycroft is a breath of fresh air, life brought into this lonely hell, Persephone in Hades’ domain with no Demeter to chase for them. Mycroft is like you, beyond the insipid masses of the Capitol or the animals of the Districts – he is incandescent in his intellect, sees the world in the way it is, he understands.

(A survivor, just like you.)

You want to show him everything that he doesn’t, want to teach him, want to press him into the mould, want to stitch him together with blood and thread until he is beautiful and horrifying.

( Hippity hoppity, see the cycle repeat, Dr Gaul laughs at you. Mothers and fathers, the legacies we all meet.)

Mycroft is hungry, always. He has the urge to hoard food, tears through the library for knowledge, takes in information with startling ability to retain, desires so dearly for security that nothing can truly provide, wants for love and affection and approval. He hungers and he needs and you feel almost nostalgic when you guide the boy along, watching as he flourishes like a rose, blooming under careful attention.

(This boy who understands what it means to survive.)

You know your boy perfectly – the fear, the insecurity, the hunger, the pride, the brilliance – and nothing surprises you.

(Until something does.)

You start to realise that perhaps it’s more than just simple appreciation when you watch the boy roam upon the floor of his birthday celebration.

It took a month to prepare for this celebration, to send the invitations and prepare the hall and organise everything down to the minute detail. His favourite foods, the guidelines on how to interact, orchestrating every bit of the atmosphere.

It has been worth every bit of effort, you see as you watch your boy laugh and smile upon the floor. 

You had wanted to use this to attach him to you, to see you as someone he could offer his trust to, his love to. You wanted your boy to see what you could offer him, if only he just stuck by your side.

(You wanted to give him all the things you couldn’t have.)

His joy infects you, bleeds into you even from across the hall, and you can’t help but smile whenever you lay eyes upon him.

You carry him back to his room when he’s drunk enough on alcohol and elation for it to not matter anymore, holding him up by the shoulders as he stumbles in his drunken stupor. You help change him out of his suit and offer him bread and water and tuck him into bed.

I should wash up, he says. You respond, drily, yes, but you can barely walk straight and after all you have done it would be truly a shame for you to die by braining yourself on the sink.

There are stars in his eyes when he laughs, his voice like bells and chimes in the wind, inebriated and unlikely to remember this, and you can’t help but laugh too.

Sorry, he says. I don’t know why I’m so happy.

It’s your birthday, you say. You almost wanted to catch yourself. You don’t. It was your big day, of course you are. I would be concerned if you weren’t.

You grew up malnourished, didn’t you? It would make sense, the Rebellion coincided with your youth and your house was dying, Mycroft deduces, looking at you with sharp and almost sober eyes, the inebriation freeing him from his fear. You tried to get him to eat bread and hydrate, and he didn’t want to. That's why you’re, uh, vertically challenged.

I was, you simply respond. That’s why you need to eat.

I don’t want to go to sleep, he says when you pull the covers over him. You ask him why and he says I don’t want this day to end.

He is hopelessly vulnerable, and so very young.

You don’t quite remember being this young.

(You killed Coryo, your youth, buried beneath the rubble of an arena, swinging from the rope in Twelve, laying on the grass in a forest with birds feeding upon his body.)

Are you going to use this against me? your boy asks, looking up at you with an ancient tiredness and a child’s hurt.

In the face of another, it would have meant nothing but a desperate plea, and you would have felt nothing. It is not so for him.

I am a cruel man, you say. But I’m not that cruel to use a child’s joy against them.

A child’s joy. A lie. You are a murderer of children. But perhaps you didn’t lie, perhaps not to this child.

(Oh, how far you have fallen.)

Do you swear? he asks; murmurs; pleads.

You really shouldn’t promise something like that. 

I swear, you promise, and it’s true. Foolishly, it’s true.

(What has he done to you?)

Your boy falls asleep and you leave him. You move to close the door, 

and see Lucy Gray and Coryo sitting on the edge of the bed, their ghosts looking at your boy, and then they look at you, a thousand accusations.

(A thousand what-ifs.)

The door closes.

He remembers nothing of last night. A mercy, truly, you do not know what you would do if he remembered.

Frankly, you aren’t quite sure what to do now.

So instead, you don’t mention it, and you bury it in a memory only you will ever hold. The two of you observe Regina Mills from the balcony, her foolish joy, and you lay a hand on his own, your right over his left. He lets you.

The warmth seeps into your bones. It’s almost burning you alive, the temperature shock cracking you open.

(You can’t help but yearn.)

The two of you talk about Panem, and once again Mycroft proves that he understands better than anyone else on this earth.

He’s afraid of what his party was for and you tell him the simpler truth, that it was for him. He’s still afraid of you, wary, this broken soul.

You don’t want him to be afraid. Fear doesn’t suit him.

(You stopped being afraid of Dr Gaul. And then you became her.)

You are honest when you say you do not know what you intend for Mycroft. He is an asset, but you do not know the true extent of it. Two years had been enough to get a sense of his being, his capability, his potential. A thousand paths open up for him, but you know that no matter the thread, he will always have a place in the tapestry you have created.

Perhaps, that is the most telling part of it all.

He isn’t perfect yet, but he will be, eventually as you cultivate him into something wonderful.

Shall we simply agree to tell one another the truth? you ask; offer; promise. No recriminations, you have my assurance. You tell me the truth, and I will grant you the same.

(You will not have another Lucy Gray.)

They will not lie to each other.

(But deception is something too interlaced into men like them.)

You have spent two years with Mycroft, of course you grew attached, isn’t that the natural inclination of humanity?

It is mere fondness, however, for this wonderful creature, this brilliant mind, this wary soul. Mere pride. You own this boy, he is yours, this marvellous and interesting being, and it would be folly for an artist to look upon their magnum opus and feel nothing.

(You aren’t ready for when it’s more than that.)

(A flower blooms in a desolate garden.)

Sometimes he likes to test your patience. Sometimes, he gets ahead of himself, and that youthful arrogance surfaces; sometimes, he even hides from you.

But that’s alright. You have kept plenty of secrets from the people around you. He’s a child, and it had taken even you some time to get it right. 

A decade is enough. It must be.

He proves himself to you, however, time and again, and you award him accordingly.

(This needy, needy child. You know you, and thus you know him.)

(And you know neither.)

You watch him grow over weeks, months, years. You observe and guide and prune him, as he reaches heights most others will never even begin to dream of achieving.

Apotheosis. 

It is not becoming a god in the sense to be better, it is becoming a god in a sense to be other, shedding humanity like water as you emerge from the sea, beyond the boundaries of the masses. To be a god is to be a monster, to be a god is to be cold and cruel but functional and true, orchestrating a thousand tragedies and a thousand more wonders.

Dr Gaul had been the Gorgon Medusa, snakes in her hair and a gaze that turned you into stone, the terror sinking into your blood as she feasted upon you. She had turned everything into art, beasts and people and war.

You are Scylla. The once beautiful nymph, now the man-eater, but never truly human. Your dogs are the serpents, and you have been bathed in poison. You drag others down into the abyssal waters, and should men wish to sail past you, you will always have a sacrifice of blood.

(Lucy Gray had been a siren, in her almost humanity, lurking beneath her skin. The voice that drew all near, capable of sinking ships. The wings of a bird that allowed her to fly where no one could touch her, like one of those mockingjays she had so dearly loved.)

Mycroft has that spark of divinity, that monster crawling underneath, beautiful and awful in all definitions of the word. You help expose that creature of ice and blood and steel, sharpening his blade, putting him through the fires of hardship and tempering him in waters glorifying.

You are Demeter in that regard, burning away your Demophon’s mortality – his humanity and morality – in the fire. You are his caretaker, anointing him in the ambrosia of your house colours that sit upon his form in a draping cloak, in your protection.

You wonder what type of creature he would be, and you burn with the desire to see him – your boy, your glorious creation – as he tears into the world with his ascension.

(And just like Demeter, you are interrupted.)

You refer to it as his chair.

You don’t quite know when you started to do so, but you do so anyway.

He has settled into your space, a place that no other will ever find themselves open to. He sits in front of the fire as you sit at your desk or on the seat opposite to his own, and he shares your space, both unbearably and comfortably intimate. The two of you soak up each other’s presence, without the need of conversation even as the two of you work well into the night.

Perhaps the most odd of all, it feels like he has always belonged here, that you are comfortable with him in this sanctum of yours. Or perhaps it’s not that odd at all.

Perhaps it says a lot about how it’s all playing out. 

You meet Sherlock Holmes, and 

you hate him.

Perhaps not hate. Hate is such a heavy word, one that would suggest Sherlock has gotten under your skin to demand hatred. Disdain would be the better word. You burn with the same disdain towards Regina Mills.

Sherlock Holmes is an angry, angry child, and you can see all the cracks in him, all the dissidence, and he hates you too. 

You are almost disappointed that Mycroft did not raise someone like him. Although, you must concede that he did not truly have the chance to do so – after all, he had been here in the Capitol all these years, for almost seven. (He had been here with you.)

A few months later, Mycroft clears out an insurgency group in One, killing the major players while capturing junior members.

You know why, and you could almost be proud – it was an artful move to cover his brother’s tracks, and would have mostly worked on anyone other than yourself.

You are mostly furious, for Mycroft to suggest that you are that oblivious. For him to let his fear get ahead of him.

You let him mostly get away with it, just as you had many other things, but you send him to interrogate them himself.

I would hope you have not spoken to insurgents recently, you say; warn. I would have concerns.

Mycroft does not lie, but he doesn’t give the truth in totality either.

You are going to break him, and then you will remake him in your image with the shattered pieces.

(You watch as he tortures them to a symphony of screams, as he orchestrates countless nightmares, as he bloodies his soul, and he is beautiful.)

Mycroft comes back from Three different, he comes back changed.

You never got rid of that inveterate and pathological need to monitor him at all times, this bone deep urge to just to just watch him, and with it you know he lies. You’re almost impressed, you can’t even be angry – the semantics are unimportant in the long run, and thus you, of course, allow it to slide.

(You have become quite lenient with him as of late.)

Mycroft Holmes stands before you, unfearing of who you are. Or perhaps he has learnt new and more pressing fears with his brush with death.

He is incredibly tall, a man rather than a boy, towering over everyone. (Where has all the time gone?)

You ask him to explain your weakness. He says you cannot trust, draws his conclusions towards Covey (towards Lucy Gray), and tells you all the reasons why your lack of trust is a weakness.

You laugh, and tell him that after all these years, perhaps he is the only person you’ve been able to trust.

Then, you return the favour with his sentimentality, his attachments, his desire to love and be loved in return.

Regina Mills has slowly wormed her way into Mycroft’s care, the alliance becoming something genuine. She is not Livia, she is possibly Sejanus, but thankfully she is not Lucy Gray.

(You burn with it, your desire, your envy – not just for him, but of him – and you want to break them apart.)

Mycroft has a deep need running through his being, insecurity laced in the cracks of his psyche.

It would be amusing if it wasn’t pitiful, heartbreaking even.

(It reminds you of Coryo, and for a moment you are both nostalgic and hateful and everything in between.)

These eight years had been enough to solidify exactly what you wanted out of him, enough to build a foundation and a towering monolith. For not the first time in recent months, it crystallises in your mind the vision you have of your boy and his future – not of a possibility, but of a concrete future.

Mycroft is insecure about his position by your side, when all along he has been the only one to captivate you like this for this long. He has made a home out of yours, carved a space for himself, and with time he will take your crown and wear it like you had, blood dripping onto his head and hands.

He is enough, he is more than enough, he is beyond what you could have hoped for when you first took him in.

You could be extraordinary, you say; praise; reassure, letting your pride and affection show. You will be, a prophecy if you had believed in fate.

He is perfect, and he is your legacy, and you could not possibly be more ecstatic about it.

The two of you negotiate about him joining your personal cabinet. He asks for a few things, most reasonable, some questionable.

The first is perhaps one you are hesitant on. You have slowly, over years as Mycroft rises in the political scene, reduced the frequency of appointments that he has. What Mycroft wants is autonomy, he wants to be sure that he will not be sold, that security that he is a person and not chattel.

But he is yours, yours to control, yours to dictate the life of, so you will hang that sword over his head and watch him squirm. It’s more of a symbolic thing anyways, you are perfectly fine with giving him that ground. He takes it as a victory when it costs you nothing much at all.

The issue of his brother coming to the Capitol is one you are far more concerned about, far less willing to accept.

You want to distance him from those attachments, to stretch the threads thin to the point of breaking, and proximity would allow them to become stronger in the end. 

It would be easier to keep him under your hold should Sherlock Holmes be made a resident of the Capitol. Your reach extends to all of Panem, but the seat of your power is the Capitol where you have a tighter grasp upon every aspect of its carefully curated existence.

So you concede, and you ask him to do one more thing: Marry.

(You do not realise that the one thing you introduce would be the worst of it.)

Distress is threaded through Mycroft’s being as he asks to visit One.

He explains it is to visit his dying mother, you see through it immediately, and he folds, telling you that his brother needs him, that he is able to self-modulate, that he just wants to be there for his brother.

You cannot allow that. You need to disconnect them, and frankly, you need to teach him this lesson.

You care about him, and that part is painfully true when you say it. 

You can see it when his resolve crumbles into dust, falling into deep despair and resignation, and ultimately he submits to the threads you have entangled around him, sinking into them in surrender.

You cannot protect him from all the agonies of this world, you say; soothe; remind. He falters; croaks; whimpers, I want to.

Oh he cares so much.

Your hands remain gentle, as gentle as you can be when you have long since forgotten tenderness – something that you have only rediscovered with your boy. Fingertips brushing against his skin, and then your palm, your right hand curving around his cheek, embracing him, but it does not satiate your want to comfort him and have him. 

Care runs through Mycroft’s veins in the warmth that forges his humanity, and you are the cold-blooded monstrous serpent that aches to bask in it.

His eyes are so blue in his emotionality – a far cry from the creature you had made with his grey – shiny with unshed tears, looking up at you like a desperate and clueless child. The hurt, the desperation, the panic, the desire to run for his brother. For a second you remember that he is still so young.

(Tigris’ ghost glints on your peripheral, crying for the boy she raised, the boy you killed.) 

You understand, you truly do, and you say so to Mycroft. But the real truth behind it is one far more selfish.

You ask for his trust, like a hypocrite, and he concedes it.

(You take and you take and you take and it’s all you know how to do, you scorpion, drowning the frog and yourself.)

You lay a chaste kiss upon his head, like a father to his son, and you are overcome for a moment, in the raw intimacy, your irrational desire to seep into your boy’s skin and never let go, to dig your teeth into him like the serpent you are.

(You know him. You can practically taste him, his being palpable in your mouth.)

You are a lion and he is a gazelle, affectionately grooming him, your dear boy, until the moment you are hungry and merely having him isn’t enough. Or maybe you are the follower and he is the demigod and what you want is an Eucharist, a communion for one.

(You taste the blood in your mouth, and wonder whether it would taste the same if you bit down.)

You watch him drown. You drown him, holding him and laying him down in bloody waters like a baptism of old, the waters that you have long since made your own, the waters that make you. You and your serpent heads drag him down into the darkness where you lurk, and you wish that he will not resurface. 

You told me my weakness was a lack of trust, you say. You certainly make it difficult, at times.

You offer him your trust, as much as you could.

(And then, he deceives you but you do not catch it, for you have chosen to be blind.)

You were right, ten years had been enough.

It is not perfection, but you are well aware that there is no such thing as perfection, and what Mycroft is has come close enough for it to not matter.

You encourage him to disconnect from the Victors that he has attached himself to, and it is both logical and selfish what you have suggested.

Do you truly believe that the Victors could be allies to the Capitol? you ask him. The words are bitterness disguised with viciousness and caution.

He hates you and cares for you, and it is all you will ever need and all you can ever obtain. There has never been an attachment you could keep, that men like the two of you could keep, and one day, even he will leave – or perhaps it will be you.

(So many years ago, you made the mistake of forgetting Lucy Grey Baird was District, rationalising her away as Covey.)

(And once again, in elevating Mycroft, in elevating your boy, in projecting your visage upon him in the ways that matter, you make the same mistake and forget that he is a Victor.)

Mycroft moves out.

He moves out, out of your grasp, out of your hold, and it discomforts every single bit of you. He remains in the Capitol, still comes to you, but he is no longer here, safe and close at hand.

It claws at you, this loss of control, it shreds you inside out. He is away from you in a sanctuary you cannot peer into and it stings, digging into scars you had sustained from long ago.

He is a garden that you have carefully tended to, but now you have allowed it the chance to grow wild. 

You try to relax, and hope for the best case scenario where the chaos will be controlled and the foundations will hold, a bird that will come back home.

(You keep his room well-maintained, and perhaps it is in the details that it becomes reverent.)

You hate Killian Jones.

No, hate is a word that feels too common and diluted for what warrants it.

You despise Killian Jones.

You watch them in the night, upon the reservoir, huddled together in a display of the purest warmth and intimacy, and you know. Know of their love for one another – it would be one thing if it was just a one-sided affair, but this is a redamancy, something deep-rooted and long lasting, something that digs into the foundations that you have carved out of him, like vines digging into stone.

And you burn with your hatred, your anger. It seeps into your mouth, and makes the metallic taste of blood that much more prominent. It sinks into your bones until you are nothing but fury. 

You make your way to his office in the morning. You need to orchestrate it, need to tear apart the web of connections that he has forged, or at least shake it to the point where it won’t matter.

The details regarding Annie Cresta crystallise an image you are not fond of in the slightest. Mycroft has been led along by his heart, allowing himself to be tugged along by the threads he has taken up, allowing himself to be dictated by them.

They will not ruin him.

(He looks at you with hatred, and he bows all the same.)

The two of you once swore to tell each other the truth.

And you should have known the two of you would break that delicate but heavy promise. 

(You suppose that the two of you have been too similar to do so otherwise.)

You would have expected for Mycroft’s torture of and subsequent disconnection with Jones to have settled something in you, and it does, but it is not enough.

Against all odds, the most important of those threads remain strong, and it is only due to decades of experience and practice in control that you do not follow the urge to render them ablaze.

You have Sherlock Holmes Reaped.

And then, it becomes evident that you had miscalculated on a truly catastrophic scale. 

(Your boy has become unpredictable, when once before you knew him perfectly.)

Every person has a breaking point – every person has multiple, each for a different reaction. Some break the soul so firmly that they are resigned to fate, others drive them to tear apart the stars themselves.

You gambled, with all the cards in your hand, for you thought you knew him. You made a calculated decision based on what you knew of him, and the final lessons you must impart on him.

You gambled, and you lost.

You both do and do not recognise the creature in front of you. And it seems after all this time, you forgot one of the first observations you ever made about him – that Mycroft Holmes loves, and loves dearly, with all his heart and soul, and for those that he loves he would tear the stars down for. You have forgotten that a man made of love is someone you cannot uproot from the garden and the roots of his connections.

Mycroft looks at you with deep-seated disappointment, like he truly did expect better from you. He thought so much of you, and now you let him down.

And then

he

leaves you

He leaves you.

He leaves you, after all you have offered him, after all you have done for him, that boy leaves you. For what? For love? For those ephemeral attachments? He would allow Panem and all he has built and fought for and suffered for to be plunged into chaos for a mere collection of misfits?

(Are you, are you, Lucy Gray sings, her shadow dancing upon the wall. Coming to the tree?)

You merely watch as he leaves you, and says your given name – an equaliser, a taunt, a farewell, injecting far too many emotions for a single word, the yearning, the hatred, the wistfulness, the resolve – after winning the battle and continuing the war.

He has manoeuvred you into a checkmate, and you are both proud and utterly incensed at that. The former of him, the latter – upon closer inspection – at yourself.

He holds a sword to your throat, and he has made it clear that he is your enemy – that he is a failure of the highest degree, not due to his lack of meeting expectations, but rather because he has exceeded those expectations, and chosen to turn your back on you.

You do not need him. You have spent sixty-seven years of your life without him, your adulthood building an empire of which you are the head of. Mycroft will see the error of his ways and crawl back to you, or he will be forgotten and you will start over again.

(So why do you still yearn?)

You stack the deck to ensure Sherlock Holmes wins – but not without a cost for them.

And then, you go back to work.

The mansion is cold. 

(It never used to be this cold.)

You continue your work in maintaining Panem’s security and stability, and with Mycroft – who had by the end of his employment took up the workload of five men and almost the sensitivity of your own work – out of the picture, resume certain tasks that double your workload. 

It’s a visceral ache, this want and need, this regret and longing. 

Sometimes, you look up and expect him to be at his seat in front of the fire. The fire which does not seem to warm you.

Oh. Oh.

You miss him. 

(People say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. But the truth is you know exactly what you had, you just never thought you’d lose it.) 

You miss him. No, even worse, you loved him. Still love him. You have since before you celebrated his sixteenth birthday.

(You did the worst thing you could in this situation: you fell in love. )

When you were Coriolanus, you used to be a garden of humanity. It was full of weeds that choked out the flowers, but it was still a garden.

You killed that garden, however. When you killed Sejanus, you sprayed it with poison; when you shot at Lucy Gray, she took the flowers with her as she ran into the forest; when you killed Highbottom, you crushed them under your feet: when you had surrounded yourself with Dr Gaul and those like her, you burnt it down to the rotten soil; when you sent Tigris away, you had nothing but cold ashes.

Mycroft, you now realise, has made a flower bed out of you. He has infected you with his humanity, his half-there but warm and lively humanity (just like Lucy Gray, but that way madness lies) and it has cracked through the ice to take root in your soul, vines underneath your skin, sweet sap in your blood, thorns digging into your heart, leaves in your lungs, choking you until you’re coughing up the petals of your sentiment.

(You suppose it was fair. You bled into him too, the poisonous crimson you inherited bleeding into his brilliant light, turning life to ash.)

You are a field of marigolds and peach blossoms, and no matter how much you wish to, you can’t get rid of the flowers.

(Maybe you don’t want to.
Maybe you want the flowers.)

(no)

(You want him)

The surface reasons and logical excuses to invite the two of them to Sherlock’s Victory party are as follows: It is well known that Mycroft had been a well-regarded member of your government, and while he is a Victor, it does not discard the fact that the two of them are brothers – it will pose well for a reunion and remind all parties involved of their positions. And towards Mycroft, it would be a chance to gauge his current intentions – Regina Mills is a necessity only by the virtue of being his fiancée.

The much more irrational truth is that you just wanted to see him in the flesh again.

He looks at you with perfect calm, and the battlefield sets again.

As much as you have a deep fondness for his time by your side, as your right hand, there is something marvellous about having a challenge, even if they have no true intention of challenging you for now. You know him well, and yet he meets you strike for strike, knowing you. And it’s simply amazing to be on this end, everyone and everything else is superfluous as you witness him practise his art. 

(You want to tear into him and have him tear into you.)

You choose to believe when he says he will not attempt revolution. Mycroft knows chaos and knows control, he will not attempt to destroy the delicate balance.

(Oh you blind, blind man.)

You write letters.

You haven’t had to write physical correspondence in a while, but these are not formal invitations or some documentation, no, these are letters to him. Your boy.

(It aches and it aches and you are starving. ) 

You could have perhaps typed them out and placed them into encoded hard drives, but beyond the security issues, there is something far more intimate in paper and ink that digital medium cannot capture, the raw emotionality in every stroke of the pen evident, and you need to express it.

So you write, write all the things you were too much of a coward to say, the mundane and the emotional, write what you would have said to him had he not left you.

You seal those letters, and place them in a safe that requires your biometric data. 

You should have burned them, once you were done, should have rendered the evidence of your lack of control and sentiment to ash,

but you didn't.

There are moments, moments where the fire does not warm you and the colour reminds you of his hair, where the frost crawls on the walls of your mind, where the ghosts haunt the corners of your vision, when you tell his ghost 

Sometimes, I wish you had been born when I was

Maybe he could have saved you. If he was your sibling, your friend, if he had been there when Coryo was the most alive, maybe it could have kept you above water, maybe the two of you could have shared the flowers.

Then you remember the first rebellion war and Dr Gaul and the blood on your hands, you remember the boy he had been with his unhealthy humanity, and then say

Then, I remember that they would have eaten you alive.

Something stirs in Panem, and you see it, the sparks of rebellion beginning to burn. It isn’t anything you cannot particularly handle, but it is a slowly burning fire that is beyond the baseline that has been maintained. Likely due to several parties and shake ups, but nothing beyond what had been anticipated.

(You really should have known better.)

It’s a dance, it always is.

You try to see how you can strike and test the waters while Mycroft evades and blocks. Nothing too harsh, or too provocative – he is still at the height of his power, still capable of bringing it all down to rubble, and this cold war of yours is built upon the truism of there being restraint on both sides.

You set Sherlock Holmes appointments, he declines and Finnick Odair takes them. None of which would be grounds for retaliation considering the attitudes of the Capitol and your previous actions with more difficult Victors.

You arrange two appointments for him as a reminder of what he had forsaken, a reminder that you had been his Sponsor, a reminder that for all he is out now, it does not change that he is yours, that you still dictate parts of his life, that he can never truly escape.

The two of you dance and hold daggers at each other’s throats, and you wonder if the blood will drip or spray.

You watch them get married, you even officiate it.

It’s absolutely sickening, to witness this domesticity, to know that you encouraged him to do so when you wrote it into his work contract. To see him here, happy, with the people that took him away from you.

You hand him the bread, and it feels like handing him your heart, bleeding out, veins and arteries pulled along for consumption.

You watch him expose his heart to Regina Mills, to all of Panem, nothing but genuine emotion in every word of his vow, and you taste blood in your mouth.

It is with great pleasure that I present to you, ladies and gentlemen: Mycroft and Regina Holmes, you say. And they are so unbelievably happy you are bleeding with hatred.

You focus on Mycroft, the gentle emotion on his face, the vulnerability that is too tender to be anything but genuine and you burn with it.

You don’t stick around long enough to watch him eat the bread.

(You send him a gift that you don’t expect him to keep – a bouquet of flowers made of crystal and gold.)

Your little cold war starts to escalate by your design.

The reasoning is simple – for all you believe that Mycroft has no intention in causing a revolution, it does not change that he has the potential to do so, does not change that if there was a revolution, he would throw himself and his substantial amount of power and connections that would easily tip the scales.

(Does not change the fact that you want him back under your control, and you cannot do that if he has enough power to retaliate against whatever you throw at him and his extensions, rendering incapable of being threatened or shaken, especially with them in the picture.)

Mycroft Holmes is not just a very powerful entity on the board, he’s a wildcard and a threat – which is frankly unacceptable. You can’t properly deal with him until you defang him, disarm him, until he has nothing but his sharp wits and his raw determination to fight back – which, you admit willingly, make him already quite a formidable weapon, but it is his connections that make him untouchable.

You taught him how to weave threads together, to tug upon, a single word capable of pulling upon the web and igniting the world on fire. You had helped to facilitate his connections, even.

And just as you built him up, you will tear him down, until he has no choice but to come to heel.

Oddly, it had everything to do with Mr Gold and his black market and nothing to do with Mycroft this time.

But as if Lucy Gray was laughing at you, your lives have been irreparably and inseparably intertwined, and it still comes back to Mycroft Holmes. (You wouldn’t have it any other way.)

You see it, the discomfort and unease and grief, present in how it’s not, hidden behind a cultivated mask that is perfect to an outsider but easy to see through for you.

You take his hand with your right when you greet him, taking the opportunity to set the mood of their conversation, to satiate a need, to remind him. He is still warm and you can just melt into it.

(You see him move, that too-much-fluidity, as he tries not to freeze at the touch. You ignore it.)

Everyone can be coaxed into what you want them to do with the right tone and body language. When you first started, you had to pay intricate attention – some worked better with flattery, others needed harshness. Now, you have come to the position where fear and authority and coldness and the promise of pain and despair is all you need to encourage most to do their part. 

Mycroft has no fear of you, he knows you too well for that – you aren’t the monster to him, and you could never be such anymore. He requires a softer approach, one laced with years of history and all the hurt and want and pride and humanity you both have to offer, he requires you to gently cradle him in the honesty and warmth you would only offer to him, a special honour just reserved reserved for the one who made you grow flowers.

You are nothing but genuine when you say Reaping Q had been completely incidental when it came to Mycroft. And you are completely honest when you say you thought upon his parting words to you – the semantics might be different to him than for you, however. You had thought about every single second of that conversation such that it haunts your dreams and nightmares.

(What could you have said; done; explained to keep him?)

Hope is in his eyes and you lure him in, as you disarm him and turn this battle into a dance, pulling him close.

Oh how brilliant that he’s still yours, that you still know him, that you can still sink into his skin and lurk in his blood.

Your boy still has convictions, ones that separate you from him and make him all the more interesting and worthy. You would be disappointed otherwise.

(You want him to love you, just as you love him. You want him to choose you, willingly and wholeheartedly, beyond any other ambition and connection.)

The two of you dance with words and implications. When he holds a blade to your neck, you merely smile and lean into it, let yourself bleed and showcase your own vulnerability.

Then by all means, educate me, you promise; suggest; imply – an invitation for him, back into his domain, into his work, into your arms, where you will keep him, and you will not lose him again.

Regina Holmes interrupts, and you are reminded how much you hate her, this girl who had dared so brazenly to take what is yours.

You dip him into bloody and abyssal waters and watch him sink. He isn’t quite convinced, is holding his breath, but sincerity rings out when he says he will consider your offer. 

(No matter how much pain, every son wants to come home.)

It is almost a victory, had it not been for them. And oh how you burn with your hatred.

You have to admit, albeit grudgingly, that Killian Jones holds up well against you. Jones is deeply loyal to someone who had him tortured, who had facilitated his breaking. Mycroft hurt him and Jones forgave him, allowed him back and found his way into your boy’s heart.

(The envy claws at you, tearing you apart, until you are bleeding with it.)

Killian Jones is a sailor, however, and you are Scylla. You push against him with the waters, threatening to capsize him, to eat him alive, although Jones knows that you really can’t do so, and thus holds up in faith, or perhaps sheer loyalty and willingness to be sacrificed.

Mycroft emerges from the waters like a leviathan, rage vibrating in every single molecule of him, warming his blood until he burns cold. 

You are both monstrous beasts in this battle, Titans trapped in human flesh, and Mycroft comes with the intent of drawing blood. 

Jones seems emboldened by the recent arrival, and makes his strikes, almost effective against you. Mycroft continues to look at you, grey eyes focusing upon you and it sets you alight.

The full force of his terrifying fury pushes against you, and you stumble.

(You made him a living weapon. What do you expect to be able to do when that weapon turns against you?)

Despite the fact that Jones is here, you let yourself plead with your humanity, wherever you have left of it, in an attempt to get Mycroft to do the same. 

(Killian Jones interrupts, and you show the serrated, bloodied teeth you hide, the burning fires of loathing and animus you feel, the winter storm that you want to unleash on him in a wrath.)

He does not heed, does not give mercy, does not give you a single opening with his sheer intent to draw blood, and continues to press on with ice and waters and unimaginable force and pressure – and you are proud as much as you are furious. 

If you were any other ex-employee, in your position, you would already be dead, you say, and he does not catch the sentiment behind it, does not catch that other things than his own power holds him back.

You let them go.

(You are an old man, and you are not very good at change, are you?)

An Arena at least a few years to plan. A Quarter Quell, even longer.

Everything is specifically tailored and designed as much as they can, just as every game before it, all the way until the Tributes enter and human nature throws everything into controlled chaos. But Quarter Quells are special, in which more is demanded from them, from the execution to aftermath.

And yet due to their speciality, they are allowed more leeway in their proceedings, such as Tributes – beyond the typical children Reaped, it allows for more variety, a different set of variables. Perhaps more Tributes, or maybe a specific damned set.

Such as those that had already survived the Games.

Mycroft’s inner circle consists of those Victors, a variety of them from different Districts. And there can only be a singular winner.

You could, perhaps, leave him out of it. For all that you could stack the deck and the Gamemakers could manipulate the field, the Arena is always a risk with the Tributes and human nature’s fickleness.

But Mycroft can easily metabolise helplessness, and would be able to forge on if sat out, he would not be able to deal with failure, the pain of being in the Arena and watching those he loved perish right in front of him.

It is easier to control one pressure point than many. Sherlock Holmes, for all your disdain of him, had been Mycroft’s drive into his Games, the reason blood is on his hands, the reason why he would tear the world apart. Mycroft had promised to tear Panem down should Sherlock die, and you had learnt that it is best not to test him.

Mycroft Holmes will either die and be out of the way, or he will return home to you. It would get rid of the threat either way.

So, you set the Quarter Quell, and you draw up a rough draft for two years later.

You visit the Capitol’s fashion week when it arrives, over and over again.

It is as much an information-gathering exercise as it is about seeing him. You never do see him, but Mycroft had never been one for socialising anyways, a shadow rather than the light which cast it when it came to work.

(Killian Jones is the one at fashion week, and you patently avoid him. He’s not the one you want to see.)

So, you observe Mycroft through his work, through the fabric, through the seams and the designs. An artist tells a story in every bit of the construction and Mycroft is no different for all that he wishes to hide.

But for the most part, you are content with simply observing.

You are well aware that this is the obsession you are satiating, that hunger and want to see him in the flesh. You could be doing something else other than visiting a place he will never come to all just for the small chance that he would .

Despite being aware, you still continue to do so.

He calls himself Q, Q French, a name borrowed from someone who cared for him.

He is unfearing of you, and exceedingly sharp, weaving truths and weaponizing them like he breathes, fiery determination underlying it all. 

He manoeuvres around you with a deftness rarely seen ever since you obtained the Presidency, not even Gold could do as such. He does not bother with niceties nor the subtle dance most attempt, but rather barrels on through, handing you truth for your own truth. 

Want to see if I’m reliable? he dares; challenges; sets the stage that he knows he would be able to successfully move upon. Watch me work.

You look at him, and while you can see the influence of others – of Gold, of Three – all you can see is Mycroft, both when he was a boy and when he was a man. 

(Amidst the people that took him away from you, you feel a pang of nostalgia and longing.)

There are a few key differences from when he was young: confidence instead of arrogance, the simple knowledge that he knows what he can do and do it well, far more kept together – far less broken – than Mycroft had been at that age.

You look at him, deeply intrigued at this character, and he looks back at you. He looks into the abyss and does not blink.

You move away, and think that maybe you can have a contingency plan.

(Oh, how you miss him.)

You sit and watch Q work, laying underneath the hologram table as he cusses out his coworkers. You’re pretty sure he thinks you’re someone else.

It is a reminder that Q is quite different from your boy. Startlingly competent just like him, but different all the same – abrasive in which he was smooth, moving through dirt and grime while Mycroft had sensory issues and particularly disdained mess.

It doesn’t matter, really, when Q is working so perfectly in an area you can’t afford to have imperfections in, improving the system and its cogs. Beetee Latier’s influence, perhaps.

You can’t help but be disappointed.

(You see the stars in his eyes, and you can’t help but ache.)

You invite him for a meeting. He brings Regina Holmes with him, something you had anticipated, something you find irritating nonetheless. There are secrets and truths and hidden semantics you would only reveal when it’s just the two of you, something you can’t do now.

It was a room for two – just the two of you – and now there are three. You had invited him to the Citadel, impersonal and professional – he doesn’t get the invite for your home.

It’s a train wreck for you in every conceivable way.

He is artful and efficient in his words, brutally so, every phrase and implication used to the fullest, no breath wasted in his blizzard. You meet him accordingly, water turned to ice, sharp as blades.

He says he simply wishes to live his life unimpeded. You don’t quite believe him despite trying desperately to do so. No, Mycroft has always been a man of action – patient, perhaps, but in a way a serpent would be posed to strike, a fox moving to pounce. There is simply too much at stake for him not to, especially when you keep pushing upon him and those he holds dear. 

Perhaps in time you would be able to let go. 

(But Lucy Gray still haunts you to this day, why would you expect otherwise for the son you raised?)

You lower your mask, hide your claws, sheathe your sword, and try to appeal to him through his humanity, the part of him you ache for. 

(You wanted the Ice Man, the protege, the successor, the bloodied survivor. You yearn for your son, the boy you raised, the human behind the ice and death who sat by a warm fire.)

Regina Holmes interrupts and you are filled with so much rage and hatred that if it wasn’t for Mycroft’s protection you would have made her beg for mercy in death.

They work in perfect synchronicity, the result greater than the sum of their parts, complimenting each other in nearly every way to make for a truly lethal pair as they cover for each other’s weaknesses. Mycroft is cold calculation and textured layers upon layers of semantics and words while Regina is fire and fury and offence in the form of drama and malice.

They, impossibly, back you into a corner together, Mycroft fueling Regina’s fury. Her sheer anger and vitriol immediately throws you off guard, turning the waters turbulent and against you, echoing Charybdis in action, fire and lightning in her veins and her words, Circe in wrath.

Mycroft smiles at his wife, and merely looks at you and your flustered being.

Do I need to remind you that we’re Victors, she snarls; snaps; jeers and of course you know but you have to look at your boy and keep reminding yourself because—

You were always more than a Victor.

You realise too late that it escapes your mouth, a flower coughed up for them to see, blood on your tongue and blood in his mouth as he takes your heart and eats it. Your voice is made out of the shards of your shattered being, of the broken glass that is your sentiment.

Mycroft allows you the mercy of reconstituting yourself, rebuilding walls, hiding behind them although he will still be able to see into you, you taught him too well for it to be otherwise. He knows you too well for it to be otherwise, holding your heart in his hand with his teeth wrapped around it, even if he doesn’t know the true value of the flesh between his lips.

Rancour and acrimony stain your psyche as marigolds bloom.

He softens when he looks at you and your weariness, knowing your dismissal as a retreat, and even now he is unbearably warm in his humanity. You are in the bloodied waters as Scylla, hiding away, and he holds a lantern that illuminates who you are.

The world is just the two of you now. It’s always been the two of you ever since you first met him. Panem is your world yet he is at the centre of it.

This is not what I wanted either, he says. 

It is the only thing you know as true.

I offer you everything and this is what you choose to do? If you had spoken aloud, your voice would have cracked. 

Yes, he would have said. I’m sorry, truly I am. But I can’t choose the life you made for me, it is not who I am.  

( I can’t choose you, is what you hear.)

I don’t understand, god, you sound like a child even in your own head.

Have you ever? Sorrow makes the stars in his eyes, and it is unbearable.

You watch him resurface from the waters, grounding himself as he breathes.

This was your choice, Mycroft, you say. Remember that, in times to come.

It becomes three again, in this room. And you let them go, hand in hand, in perfect sync.

Your right hand aches when you clench it, contracting in the lack of warmth, cracks running through the stone and the marble, vines in your veins and you want to eat him alive. You want to flay him alive and butcher him and handle each part with reverential care as you dissect him and begin to understand this marvellous creature that you no longer truly know, holding his beating heart in your hands while you have his brain between your teeth. You want to pull him in and devour him until you are one flesh and bone, a horrific amalgamation of love and tragedy, no longer you and him but you-and-him, until you have him once again for the rest of your life.

You are starving and you hate it.  

Q is an interesting person, and you remember what it means to teach.

Being a Gamemaker was perhaps your first real vocation, Dr Gaul – the first Head Gamemaker – had taken you under her wing, and you had been anything other than a bad student. 

Aside from the Games being your primary method of control over the Districts, it is as much about you liking to make the Games. Much of the mechanics behind it were your design, after all.

Then he asks

What is it you want from me?

(What are you anticipating from me?)

You are back in your mansion, a red-headed boy opposite you, wary, the two of you talking over a game of chess, sitting in front of the fire. A simpler time, before you had fallen so far you can never hope to get yourself up.

You can’t help but laugh, a sad thing in your double vision.

I’m afraid that entirely depends on you, is what you say, is the echo through memory.

You dismiss Q. You have to, he’s not him.  

He’s not him. That’s the worst part, that he’s not here.

Q wishes to make himself an asset, which is a good thing, it should be a good thing for you. He’s excellent at his work, of great potential, and already immensely competent compared to even most Capitol-born that has been seasoned in Gamemaking for a while.

(He is also, dare you say it, a rebound.)

You make it clear that he needs to allow your surveillance, especially now that he is becoming more senior in role. That he needs to sever his connections. As much as you believe Mycroft’s words, again, you do not quite know the true depths of any of their intentions.

Q is hesitant, especially regarding James Bond.

You sigh, because you know exactly how this is going to go. You saw it once before, and you don’t mind – you’ve had practice compromising.

(You’ve long since resigned yourself to letting him live in your head.)

In the end, you invite James Bond for the conversation, and they accept.

You allow yourself to breathe.

The Seventy-Fourth should have gone smoothly. It doesn’t.

There are two Volunteers from non-Career Districts this time. One of them from Twelve, Volunteering for her sister – one with a serious chance of winning the Games judging by what she looks like, a hunter.

(Lucy Gray laughs.)

District Twelve is the only District without a pair of Victors yet. You cannot let that spot be filled. Your plans for the Quarter Quell necessitates it.

They salute her, the editors manage to catch it, but they salute her.

You replace her with the original girl, you draw up a cover and excuses. The Districts will know none better, but the Capitol has seen. The Gamemakers are working overtime in order to control the narrative which has almost spiralled out of control, is still spiralling out of control.

The girl from District Ten gets a salute. She had Volunteered out of compassion.

It just goes downhill from there.

Emma Swan has Capitol parents – children of David Nolan and Snow White. Perhaps the worst part of Pre-Interview.

You weigh the odds. There is no need for a Career win now, and recent wins have placated the Inner and Central Districts enough. Outer Districts are fine. Judging by the distinct salutes of solidarity, you will need to set a win for the Further Districts – which have been due for one anyways, the last being Graham Humbert.

District Eleven would be preferred. They are the most probable anyway, the twelve-year-old girl landed a seven – incredibly impressive for someone that young – and the boy landed a nine, the best score of the non-Careers, other than Emma Swan.

Emma Swan would probably be a possible pick for a Victor, however one that might be too inflammatory in the long run. However, her as a Victor would be the worst outcome. The boy from Twelve would not be a bad option, easing the already angered District.

Then the boy from Twelve – Peeta Mellark – proceeds to charm the crowd with such skill it’s effortless and tell the Districts there was a switch-up with the Tributes, that the Reapings were manipulated, playing public opinion so deftly not even Finnick Odair would match.

(Lucy Gray comes back in sight, smiling. Are you, are you, coming to the tree? Where dead man called out, for his love to flee. )

He manages to provoke Twelve into rioting with that little stunt of his, causes the rest of the Districts to be very furious, and you quickly revise your plan. Peeta Mellark is not going back to Twelve alive.

Peeta Mellark dies, remaining kind, and passes on his mockingjay pin. 

(Sejanus looks at you, eyes kind, eyes burning. Lucy Gray sings.)

You don’t pay attention to the Games now that the country is busy burning and you have to put out the fire. Mercifully, only figuratively burning, because if it was literal you would have a whole new set of problems.

The country is close to its flashpoint, it is not yet there.

(Not yet.)

You hear deep in the meadow, and immediately tune out.

(You hope Lucy Gray, if she was still alive and managed to escape once you left Twelve, never had to see your face and what you’ve become.)

And then, you tune back in when Emma Swan kisses three of her fingers and raises them to the sky, her face incandescent with rage and vengeance.

District Eleven revolts, something incredibly bad in this atmosphere, considering Panem is almost like kindling at this point, and you assemble your emergency council as the country is actually set on fire.

You left the Gamemakers to their own devices for a few hours and they botched it so badly you have to take charge and prioritise it over the burning revolt that is Eleven. Seneca Crane has been summarily executed.

The narrative is set with Emma Swan, and the Games finally closes with a smooth interview, the one redeeming feature of this Games.

You sit Q down for a conversation. He explains his perspective of the Games, you pick at his motives, and he tells you that he, frankly, does not care about trust.

Again, another point in his differences with Mycroft, who had always cared dearly about it. It’s kind of refreshing.

You tell him about the Quell, watch the flash of panic on his face, and set him on the team. He asks if you offered the same thing to Jim Moriarty. You didn’t, but a one of a similar scale was offered.

Mycroft is your greatest disappointment, because everything had gone right with him, and he chose to leave you.

You were an old man, just a man, no matter the monster that you have become willingly, and you wonder what will happen once you die.

Q looks at you, and asks when do they start.

Four revolts when you are on the train to Ten. It’s moments like these where you miss Mycroft dearly, him and his competence that really did make your life easier.

Emma Swan is made of rage and vengeance, a Victor who is righteous. She isn’t really capable of organising a revolution, you’re sure, but to be the figurehead of it? All the ingredients are there.

You tell her, when she asks, that there have yet to be uprisings. She doesn’t look like she believes you.

You don’t know what my life has been like, anybody in the Districts, don’t pretend to, she snaps. And immediately you bite back because of course you do, that’s what made you so good at your job in the first place.

She looks like she is restraining herself from punching you and it’s quite entertaining, actually, talking to someone who is this trigger-happy and so angry. Most others would play this game because they have to, this girl has no patience for such games and would rather punch you.

Emma Swan is, curiously, not suicidal for all that she stabbed a blade through herself. She’s an orphan that has lived in District Ten, clearly indicative of being an excellent survivor. She is simply self-sacrificial to the extreme, and far too compassionate for her own good, all the way until it circles back to being violently angry, a deep love for humanity in her bones. 

She isn’t suicidal, she’s just uncaring of death, knowing that her breath is a blessing that at any moment might be revoked. She doesn’t value her life, but she wouldn’t actively seek the end of it.

She asks if you’re going to kill her, you say no.

(I am functionally immortal, you boy had said back when he hadn’t been your boy as you knew him, at least for a while.)

Your initial threats were just to set the stage, and now you could actually give an offer. Her parents, to know them.

(Every child wants to come home.)

You see fire in her eyes as you leave with an agreement that would break out the moment she is the Quell. A fire that wasn’t there before, one tasting of something utterly destructive like hope.

It doesn’t matter, really. She won’t be alive to see it through.

(And during the Victory Tour, she still makes herself a nuisance, although you didn’t expect otherwise.)

Eight revolts, the rest of the Districts salute, mockingjays are all over the place, and you smash a piece of glassware. 

The country is on fire, a revolution imminent, Mycroft and the rest of them are evading surveillance and god you are so tired.

(Your ghosts laugh.)

Finally, you announce the Quell.

And then you invite Mycroft, again. The Citadel, once again, nearly a year apart.

One more try. And this time, you will concede willingly. You’ve played this game long enough, and you are tired. You are an old, dying man with not much time left to live, and you want to live it resting, your loose ends tied up and Panem’s future safely secured – something only he can do.

So you offer him the Presidency. You offer him the safety of those he holds dear, and you offer him the greatest power, the crown you forged out of blood and tears, just as you had intended before he left.

It would be the greatest of all your victories for him to accept, to return, to take your hand and your offer. Victory via surrender, control through abdication, the final nail in the coffin that he is you and you are him, monstrous and divine. It would be the highest demonstration of your affection, of your adoration, of how much he has affected you, how much he has taught you.

It would be you and him, for what is left of your meagre life. You are not one to hope, not one to dream, but you can’t help but want.

And then 

He 

Declines

Somehow, you really hadn’t expected this.

You had conceded, you had given up. He checkmated your king, the board was his, he won, he won, what else did he want?  

(You won, I said you won! you want to scream. Why do you continue this useless war?)

(Why won’t you come home?)

You’re the one drowning this time, in his fury, in your despair, your own waters turned against you, the surface icing over and you can’t emerge, the icicles stabbing into you until your blood drifts off into turbulent waters, eviscerating you. There is no mercy in him, but his resolve is all human. His hearth’s warmth is burning your flesh off. 

You manage to only keep your expression to confusion, disbelief, confusion.

He declines the Presidency. He declines the power, the security, the offered promises of change.

He declines you.

You are lost. You can’t look at him, can’t recognise him. If not for the ice and steel in his words and eyes, you would call him a changeling wearing your son’s skin and name. He is cold and merciless when he looks at you from across the line that he has drawn.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

I know the man I married, Regina Holmes says when you look at her. I’ve always known him - don’t try it. I’d prefer six more months with the man I love, than sixty years with the man you tried to make him into.

You know, just know, that it was her who ruined him. She buried your boy underneath the dirt, was the one to plant the weeds in the garden that you had tended to, allowed chaos to come into the carefully created control you had spent years working on. She is the murderer of your son.

You break through the ice with your rage, digging through it with claws made out of hatred, blood and fire in your mouth as your need for vengeance seeps into your very bones.

Mycroft is – had been – perfect. And she ruined him.

The lines in the sand have been drawn, solidified in stone, and soon will be christened in blood. Just as his smile promises, sharp like the blades he prefers to wield, the feathered serpent, holy and monstrous.

Then, Mycroft - we are, indeed, done, you say, drawing up the walls that you taught him to make, that he in turn refined yours. I will concede that I am deeply disappointed.

As I noted, he says. All that transpires - myself quite notably included - is of your making.

The student has surpassed the master it seems, and every word seeps venom. You draw up your own, as he has made it clear he will not be subdued easily.

(You look at him, and think for a moment that, perhaps, you’ve never known him at all.)

You dismiss them, and they leave, not turning back. 

There are cracks all over the walls, the foundations of your world crumbling apart, and when the glass you are standing on finally breaks apart, you fall and fall and f a l l

and drown

(You emerge for the waters, an unholy creature of vengeance and bloodlust and need, the teeth sharp and serrated in the maws of all your heads, and the corpse of what had been your meagre humanity is lost in the rushing waters, split apart at the seams like a used cocoon, consumed wholly by grief and wrath and the agony of betrayal.)

(You killed Coryo, again, for the fourth time. This time, you hope it sticks. But you know it won’t.)

Back when there were such things, it was said that a one-man cult is just an abusive relationship.

So then, one might ask, who is the cult leader?

That’s the thing, isn’t it? You’ve given him too much of yourself. Now he’s gone and you are empty, a gaping hole in your chest and abdomen, your right hand made of flowers. So long he lives, so too does whatever humanity you have in dying, flickering flames.

So you continue, because it’s the only thing you know how to. You’ve clung on, or perhaps his ghost clung to you, an obsession taking root so deep in you that you’re not sure you can keep yourself together without the thorned vines constricting you and holding your shattered pieces into something that resembles what had been you. Before he ruined you, before you ruined him, the simpler days when you were singular and you hadn’t learnt of his warmth.

Give up this poisonous dream, the ghosts hiss and scream at you. He doesn’t want you.

(Oh, but haven’t they heard?)

(You just adore poison.)

There is one incredibly large problem with the initial Reaping of the Quell – the first is that Jim Moriarty Reaps himself by rigging the Reaping Ball. 

It doesn’t really matter when you call out Killian Jones’ name, but then it does when Sherlock Holmes Volunteers in place of him.

The panic seizes you.

From all records, Sherlock Holmes and Killian Jones do not have the best of relationships, animosity running through their history only put aside for Mycroft's sake. So why—

Oh. For Mycroft’s sake.

You quickly rework several plans in your head. Of course Sherlock Holmes would throw a wrench into your plans.

His gaze is burning you alive.

The nation is watching the Victors emerge on the chariots. All eyes are on them, Emma Swan most of all with her flying construction of feathers and fabric. They shout and scream her name.

You only have eyes for one, however. It is telling that you can recognise that it is his own work that he’s wearing. He is a vision of blue and silver, red bleeding into the design, black blending into the shadows. Your house colours, if it wasn't for the fact that the shades are different and there is no spark of white.

Grey eyes meet your own and there is nothing but a challenge.

You have nothing but fondness when Mycroft deduces the Gamemakers. He is as breathtaking as he has always been, in his element, picking apart the lives of the people before him with utter precision and control as if it is as easy as breathing, simply incandescent in his intelligence. The Gamemakers are impressed and intimidated and hateful – most of them had squirmed during it, one had fainted – while you merely have the urge to laugh softly. The score of eleven is well deserved.

Emma Swan comes in, bows, tells them to fornicate themselves, saluted with the District’s funeral salute in a clear sign of rebellion, and walks off – earning herself a zero for her simple lack of engagement, a paradox in which she is both a non-threat in the practical sense and the most significant threat in circulation.

Until Sherlock Holmes creates and stabs an effigy of you. He is brave, you have to give him that, but bravery is often another word for stupidity. The score of twelve is your vengeance, along with – later on – dragging an abused Finnick Odair into the Tribute Centre as a reminder.

Every word he speaks is utterly captivating.

It should have angered you – here Mycroft is, wrath and ice in every single syllable, a force of nature, calling to the Capitol and playing on emotion, bringing forth the concept of unity, exactly what you wish not to have. However, strangely, it doesn’t. You can’t condemn him for the crime of being your enemy now that he has made it clear he sits on the other side of the line, no matter how much you wish for him not to.

Instead, you find yourself absolutely delighted. Absolutely delighted at this very manifestation of threat, charmed by him playing the game so perfectly. Because of course he does, everything he does is perfect, it is a simple truism of the world.

A long time ago, you challenged a boy to a game of chess. You did it to assess him, and found yourself faced with potential. He hadn't quite been there yet, however, a child yet still to grow.

Sixteen years later, and here he is – a boy no longer, that potential you had seen finally achieved and put to the test, the first true challenger in all these years. And what a delight he is, every action taken and word spoken absolutely right. Another reason why it was always just him that could be your successor.

The rest of it doesn’t go nearly as well, every single Victor trying their utter best to rock the boat, following Mycroft’s example of unity, of wanting to simply live.

Emma Swan reveals herself as a mockingjay, the mockingjay, and Sherlock Holmes manages to imply that Mycroft and Regina Holmes have a child despite knowing full well that she is sterile, immediately throwing the Capitol into disarray while you can’t say anything about it.

The Capitol itself – your seat of power – has been thrown into chaos, you know it’s going to be a long few days.

You drink tea and try not to remember all the times you did so with your boy. He always seemed a little bit offended with how strong you steeped it, even though you did it to get past the taste of blood.

You remain in the observation booth. The country is now on the verge of utter self-destruction – thankfully, not yet there – and right now the Quell is your top priority, because if you do this bit right everything else would fall into place.

Even when speaking to Plutarch and Q, your eyes keep straying to Mycroft aboard the hovercraft. All this time and he still has his distaste and aversion to food.

Your observation room is sparse in comparison to your office in the mansion. You never liked the idea of decorating it, this place where people come and go.  Here, it is almost sterile, only populated by bits expected of you, roses and screens. 

Your mansion’s office holds your letters. It holds newspaper cuttings of Mycroft’s works and events. It holds a singular framed picture upon your desk that you sometimes cover because you occasionally can’t stand the feeling of his eyes on you. It holds his chair that over time had been moulded to his being and you once almost threw it away when you couldn’t stand his ghost sitting in it but you decided in the end not to because you knew you would regret it.

You drink tea, plan death traps, organise the psychological torture of Emma Swan and Sherlock Holmes, and pray to whatever deity out there that you never believed in that this goes as planned.

Six Victors down. 

(You breathe out a subtle sigh of relief when Mycroft is alive at the end of the bloodbath. He starts at eleven o’clock, making his way clockwise.)

Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty run into the acid rain and fog, one chasing the other, soon diverging when they realise that the place is a trap.

Sherlock Holmes is burned, heavily, on the cusp of death and you sincerely hope he dies. It would solve many of your problems.

Irritatingly, he lives through the pain of saltwater on acid burns, crawling into twelve o’clock, and you almost snap a pencil.

The Games are both hectic and smooth, several angles of focus maintained throughout, with the silver lining that there has been no major development.

Several Holmeses eventually manage to reunite – four o’clock sector. It must have been premeditated, for their meeting to be so clean. Most of them are wary, Mycroft is bleeding, Emma Swan and Regina Holmes have just been put through the ringer, and they have wire. Sherlock Holmes and Johanna Mason are at twelve o’clock.

The wire feels important. Likely a plan via Beetee Latier – perhaps another mass killing.

And then, four o’clock hits.

The screams begin.

He runs into the sector, of course he does, he cares too much, unable to discern the truth when running on stress and adrenaline.

The realisation on his face is heartbreaking.

The Quarter Quell and every aspect of it had been approved by you, aspects of it designed by you. Including the traps and the intricate details. The basics of it was to be constructed first, before the traps fully developed.

You were aware of the jabberjay trap. You laughed softly when they presented the idea to you, but gripped the edge of your mahogany desk until your fingertips turned white. You knew the sheer terror and distress it could bring (Ma! Ma! Ma!) and you gave your approval. You thought it would be useful to bring them down, to destroy them, you thought you could be impassive as Mycroft or whoever that entered were tormented by the screams of those they held dear, you thought you were prepared.

You weren’t prepared, as it turns out. Not at all.

You see Mycroft fall apart. You can practically feel it, feel him fracture and shatter and crumble to dust, emotions splintering off in the pressure like shards of glass, piercing you in the ruins of the storm.

(You are, for a moment, back in District Twelve. Ma! Ma! Ma! the jabberjays echo and cry and accuse, Sejanus hanging from rope. You know what he is feeling right now. You’ve been there.)

You are bleeding with him. His hand is choking you, clawing at you, pressing into your neck in vengeance, asking why you had done this to him. He is carving your heart out, sinking into it with teeth in order to muffle his own screams as the agony infects you like the flowers and the roots. The pain of two eras colliding into one as the jabberjays scream.

The Gamemakers beep you, but you can’t respond, you’re too busy bleeding out on the floor of an Arena you aren’t even in. Regina Holmes signs with her hands, speech without speech, yet despite it, the urgency pales in comparison to the pain.

You watch him collapse to the floor, sinking to where nothing can find him, dying by degrees, his humanity collapsing on itself as the structural framework is crushed under its own weight, Atlas finally becoming tired of the weight of the skies, a splatter upon the ground as his bones and flesh are turned to pulp.

You barely had enough sleep to begin with, and now this will haunt your nightmares.

There is an old painting, where a father holds his son, blood leaking from his son’s temple as the son dies to a wound inflicted by his own father, the father fruitlessly trying to contain the blood, regret and despair in his eyes.

Fresh blood fills your mouth, as if they could leak from your eyes as a replacement for tears.

When the hour ends, you sag back into your chair, try to resurface and remember what it was like to breathe.

You see Mycroft, slowly, draw himself back together, hopelessly fragile and so very tired. You don’t even care that Regina Holmes and the rest of them are there, too preoccupied by relief and agony.

You repeat the hour again, and again. You don’t know why, but you keep doing it, witnessing your son’s destruction by something you had planned and approved.

You did this to him.

You summon Plutarch Heavensbee and Q to the observation room. It is a momentary reprieve from the agony, distracting yourself with work.

You look at Q and, for a moment, you see ginger locks instead of black curls.

Your son is still in that wretched Arena, you are running on too little sleep to deal with this, and you want this to end.

You ask Q tell me who should win these Games.

Does it matter? he responds.

It does, at least to you.

The screens around you show the country burning, burning as revolution steers violently close, chaos arriving at your doorstep at the worst time. 

For all his ice, Mycroft has always burned bright.

I… well, Q begins. At the rate he’s going, potentially Jim…

I didn’t ask who will win, you interrupt. I asked who should.

You designed this Quell for him, for your boy. For him to return home, and you are so close too. A suboptimal position, considering Sherlock Holmes’ participation in the Quell, but it will be enough.

You might not quite know his heart but you own his mind and that will be enough for this to succeed.

Have you arrested Killian Jones et al? Q asks, trying his best to be clinical. Well - I think I have my answer, if you haven’t.

You sigh, an exhale that reveals too much sorrow but you frankly don’t care. Such intelligence, you comments sadly, such… potential. You see it, then?

Mycroft burns brightly, has always done such ever since you witnessed his brilliance, since you had been moved to save him with that antidote, his life in your hands. He should have died when he resigned, but you gave him chance after chance because you knew, one day, that he might return home.

No one else matters, has mattered, or will matter as much as he does. Not even Lucy Gray. Panem is your world, Panem is you, and yet you merely revolve around the sun that is him shining brightly, pulled so naturally into his orbit it’s as if you always belonged there.

He was freshly sixteen when he looked at you with stars in his eyes, laughter like chimes, and – even if you hadn’t known it back then – you were gone.

(How odd of you, how masochistic, for you to cultivate like an artist the divine monster, the creature of ice and steel and blood, the part which you felt kindred with, yet fall in love with his humanity, the part that you sought to drown.)

(Although, you suppose, you only hurt the people you love.) 

You want him to win, Q says quietly. Mycroft. Yes?

Sherlock Holmes was never supposed to be in these Games. He was the bait, the carrot of the stick, safely outside so that Mycroft would claw his way through the Arena to ensure his brother’s safety.

You know it wouldn’t work, Q tries and you look at him with warning. It… if he wins, he’ll be completely destroyed. There won’t be anything left.

You were counting on it. This would kill the Mycroft they created, drowning the flowers and weeds in fire, leaving ashes in the soil for you to cultivate. It’s not his heart you care for, although you wish to have it. His mind would be enough.

(You yearn and you ache and you hunger. )

In the ashes of the old world, we built Panem, you say. Hence, of course, Jones and Odair remaining, shall we say, undisturbed. It is not what I had hoped - but it is the only viable course of action. Mycroft has always… needed.

He looks at you like you’re insane. Maybe you are, just a little bit – there has always been a fine line between madness and brilliance.

I… Q begins, trailing off. It… you realise he’d never forgive it? If he won…

…then he certainly would not risk the security of those who remain, you point out coldly. Ideas of revenge would no doubt be attractive; that said, he is too emotional a creature to risk such a thing.

Frankly, you considered it. You just simply do not care.

You do not care if this will invoke Mycroft’s wrath, will forge a man hell-bent on vengeance, who will tear your dying body apart with nails and teeth and the swords you have armed him with.

The goal is for him to return home to you, but you will settle for dragging him down into the abyss, where the both of you can both be monsters together, continuing this cycle of violent delights, the snake eating its own tail.

(You want Mycroft’s attention, his obsession, his burning passion. And if hatred is how it manifests, then so be it. Negative attention is better than none, hatred is better than cold apathy.)

Let them both burn in the fires they have ignited, let them both bathe in the blood of the other, let them both be buried in the ashes of a world that never loved them, never knew them – hand in unlovable hand. 

You’re going to die anyway, but what a glorious death it would be when the world burns in the cold fire set by your son, going out in a blaze when his star turns into a supernova turns into a black hole. 

You had killed Dr Gaul, not just because she was a threat, but because of all she had done to you. You killed her, and then you became her. A snake bit you, then you became the serpent. Just as Mycroft will do to you, tearing into what’s left of your rotten carcass as the poison seeps into him and kills whatever is left of the humanity you had fallen in love with.

(Sometimes, just sometimes in brief moments where you see Lucy Gray and Sejanus and Tigris out of the corner of your eye, you think that maybe – just maybe – this is your way of punishing yourself.)

You cough up blood, iron on your tongue, iron in your lungs, and Q merely looks at you with disdain.  

You dismiss him.

A few things happen in quick succession.

Johanna Mason dies, her neck slit by Jim Moriarty.

Jim Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes run to ten o’clock, Holmes chasing after Moriarty.

Jim Moriarty dies, blood leaking from his body. Sherlock Holmes drowns.

You watch Mycroft self-destruct in real time.

And you breathe.

Do you think that the Victors could be allies to the Capitol? you had once asked Mycroft.

You really should have known better, but hope is a deadly thing.

I cannot be a part of the Panem you have created, he had said, burning. I will not allow the systems you have built to propagate.

The Victors, en masse, are a part of a family I have been privileged to enter: to ask me to sacrifice even one of their number would stain any Presidency I occupied.

You set Peacekeepers upon the Victors.

It seems to be a running theme, that every time you take your eyes off Mycroft, something catastrophic tends to occur.

Your attention strays from your son, exhaustion clinging to every atom of you, and that’s when it happens.

The light goes off for 10F. 

But you don’t pay attention to that, when a few moments later, the midnight bell hits, and the light for 1M goes out.

For a second, your heart stops, existence stops.

They switch perspectives as everyone panics. The camera focuses on a still standing Emma Swan, holding a sword.

Where is Mycroft? Where is he?

She digs the sword into the forcefield as lightning strikes, and it 

all falls 

down

You watch as everything falls apart. The hologram for the Arena dies. 

The camera’s last moments catch their bodies being airborne, carried by cables into the natural blinding sunlight.

(You see it, Mycroft’s apotheosis, six wings sprouting far too late to use them. Or perhaps, exactly, when he should use them, ascending into the heavens with fire trailing after him in a blaze of glory, absolutely transcendent, shining so brightly you can barely look at him, beyond where you are stuck in the abyssal seas.)

(He always did burn too brightly for this violent and bloodstained world.)

It has all fallen apart and you’re drowning in your own waters.

It has all fallen apart and all you can think about is him.

Mycroft has just died. At least you think Mycroft just died. It was a very certain possibility considering the Arena falling down and him being very close to where the lightning had hit and the Arena had started to fall and the lack of damn pulse from his tracker—

(Emma Swan stood when the light was out. You hope that same magic trick has been applied to your boy.)

You sent him into the Quarter Quell with the very outcome for him to either win or die. But at that point, you realised you had never, well, you had never truly comprehended what it meant for Mycroft to die. It was simply a vague possibility. In no scenario that you had lingered on, Mycroft had actually died.

(You once imagined that if you had to kill him, it would be by your hand, holding him down as you dug a dagger into his heart, holding him close as you coat yourself in his warm lifeblood and hear the gasp of his final breath. It would have been violent but intimate and purposeful, as is his due, as he deserves. Never had you wanted it to be this impersonal, this accidental, this wasteful.)

The eternal war, the Hunger Games as a set of battles to control it. And your life is falling apart like that Arena.

You stand up, and make a move for your observation room, the only place you could consider safe in this building.

(You will fix his body, and then you will rest him in a casket of crystal and glass, buried in gold and roses, until the two of you can both be buried beneath the garden.)

You feel like you are burning like the country you preside over. 

The pen leaves your hand, and you hear the sound of a mockingjay’s cry, feathers flying. 

Lucy Gray looks at you with empty eyes, caught by the throat. Sejanus is staring at you, mouth open with a cry that had been cut short. Then, 

Mycroft is in her place, bleeding from the trachea. 

You killed him.

There is a knock, reality stabilises and you see the shattered pottery on the ground. You give your permission and Egeria enters.

Regina Holmes, Jones, Bond secured. Holmes and Swan—

What is it? you ask.

The hovercraft with their bodies left Capitol airspace. Several of them left.

Their trackers? Being used as evidence.

You get her to bring their trackers. They are summarily brought to you. You open the bag labelled with Mycroft’s initials.

You reverently hold the tracker – still blood covered, letting the crimson stain your skin – between your fingers and smile.

He’s alive. He’s alive. Stars above, maybe there is a god after all. 

Maybe this will be worth it. 

Oh Mycroft, his name comes out of your mouth shaped with all the awe and joy you are filled with right now. You clever, clever boy. Of course you could.

That’s the thing about him. He would have never taken death lying down. Do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage against the dying of the light.

You place the tracker back into the bag and clean your hand. Gather the War Cabinet. We’re going to need it. Mycroft once said that he would destabilise Panem if his brother perished. It’s good to know that he still keeps his promises.

(Shall we simply agree to tell one another the truth?)

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, there has been new information. They found his tracker in the water. The hovercraft that picked him up has been hijacked and reportedly crashed.

Send out a search, you order. Ensure that all information of Sherlock Holmes living is suppressed. Once found, bring him to me, dead or alive.

Egeria leaves with the bags, and you look at the handkerchief stained with Mycroft’s blood.

You laugh.

What is chess if not a war in miniature?

Catasterism: The transformation of a hero or mythological creature, into a star, constellation, comet or other celestial object.

You are Scylla.

As the heads of your serpents devour the bodies of those taken by the storm, your waters made lethal out of your rage, you look up at the sky, at the stars and their burning fire, bright enough to be seen from far away. You take a deep breath, attempt to cup the stars gently in your hands,

and dream.

The door is summarily removed, and you step beyond the threshold of a place you had never been privy to.

It is said that a man’s home could be a look into their soul. Mycroft’s home is warm, even without the sight of a place for fire, even without anyone in it for a while, it is impossibly warm, hearth without a fire.

You lay your fingers upon the walls as you walk, tasting the air, savouring it.

There is a painting hanging on the wall, of Mycroft and Regina Holmes at their wedding, happiness evident even from a still picture, love in every stroke of their expression. You can’t stand it—

You blink, and Regina Mills’ visage has been torn, leaving behind the wood of the canvas where she had once been.

There is a vase of flowers below it. It is full of flowers – rhododendrons, milk vetch, and purple hyacinth.

(I am dangerous. Your presence softens my pain. Please forgive me.)

Your hands move of their own accord, plucking the flowers from the vase, falling to the floor. You pick up the vase, a well crafted thing

And shards fly when it shatters on the floor

(You emerge from the house a few hours later, Peacekeepers keeping documents and evidence. You hold Mycroft’s most beloved suit in your arms.)

I bear Panem no ill will, he had once said to you. I simply wish to live out my life, unimpeded.

So that was a fucking lie. Perhaps the most egregious out of all of them.

(When did you lose the ability to tell his lies?)

You can practically see the moment that Mycroft enters the battlefield proper.

The Districts have been holding up well, even after the destruction of Twelve (Lucy Gray looks at you with grief and rage), but they only start being effective a fair bit after the Arena has fallen. Around sixteen days, actually.

You can see his work in every bit of it, his style just a little bit different from what must be the work of the Mayor of District Thirteen. His work is in compassion towards the people, the lives saved, the innocents sheltered. It’s in the Districts and their interconnection, building upon one another until their work is terrifying to behold and their bite is far greater than most would anticipate. It’s in the moves that anticipate your own, as if he could see it a mile away.

You can predict his moves too – you don’t hold his heart but you know his mind intimately and that is more than enough for the two of you to cancel each other out, meeting strike for strike in this glorious fight. You know him perfectly in this regard.

Aside from the chaos, the exhaustion, the country being torn apart, it’s kind of exhilarating to play against such a perfect opponent, to face such a challenge. Almost magical, really, fighting this creature of fiery vengeance and protection.

Panem is the chessboard the two of you play upon, and the winner takes all.

It’s catharsis of the highest degree to see the ruin of Killian Jones.

Regina Mills curses at you, screams at you, and you smile with venomous teeth as you bleed him dry. You bleed both of them dry, crimson and secrets alike.

Killian Jones is a sailor, and you are Scylla. He had managed to sail past you several times, over and over again, paying nothing since the initial forced sacrifice, now he shall pay with his life.

You have her film the interview calling the ceasefire. It is as much about that as you dangling Regina Mills and those dear in front of Mycroft. 

After it, you slowly rip them to shreds. Your serrated maws feast on their agony as the Peacekeepers slowly vivisect them. Their pain builds upon one another in an echo chamber, James Bond’s augmenting Killian Jones’ augmenting Regina Mills’.

You’ve never been one to enjoy the pain of others, until now, vengeance singing in your veins.

They inject tracker jacker venom into Regina Mills, until terror is on her face, crying to a man that cannot hear her.

Your name is Regina Mills, you tell her. He used you, Regina, that’s all he ever does, uses and discards people.

You take away her memory, her memory of your boy and his humanity and replace it with a memory filled with your creation and his cold.

You won’t take him, she screams at you even as she screams in agony. My name is Regina Holmes—

My name is Regina Holm—

My name is Regina H—

My name is Regina—

My name is—

Bit by bit, you chip at her, her psyche, until she is drowning in your venom, until the shadows that haunt her are yours and his, and all she ever knew of him is his cold and not his warmth. Until she hates your monster and fears the human and learns to associate pain with his memory.

My name is… My name is Regina.

She doesn’t deserve him. So you bend her into shape, hammering her into a weapon, an instrument of death and discord – it is perhaps a similar end to you making Mycroft a living weapon, but there is not the gentleness you would afford your son and his tutelage.

She took him away, so now you will take him away from her and take her away from him.

The rebels make an explosion on the chessboard, Emma Swan and the Victors screaming their anger at you to all of Panem, the world burning around them.

The rebels have made Emma Swan their voice box, you say, and then order. You will dissuade her.  

Not Mycroft? she asks, grinning, shining the defiance of Regina Holmes, her hatred and spite of you pushing her forward. It hits, but you do not let her see it.

I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?

You watch her, and the waters turn almost lethal as your heads snap and snarl.

Regina Mills screams when lighting laces through Killian Jones’ being. It doesn’t do anything for you, the rage snapping and consuming you until the waters swirl and storm and shatter whatever is left of their already broken ships.

Tell Mycroft to come home, you order her.

Regina looks at you, clarity in her eyes as she finally figures it out. You wanted him to win, she rasps. The Quell. You wanted him to win.

She says it like it’s so surprising, like it’s a shock, like it wasn’t just a simple fact that you had lived with for so long.

Your son, in the stars, far away where you can see him but you can’t touch him.

(Orion chasing the Pleiades, if you were to claim the story for your own.)

You once thought you would always be able to find him. The world is made of shadows and he burns incandescently, so brightly you wonder how no one else sees it, his passion, his brilliance, illuminating everything he touches. It turns out all he had to do was fly, expanding the field of play to the skies. 

They called Emma Swan the Girl in Flight. False advertising, although you suppose that you are the only one to see it, that such an epithet belonged to someone else.

You raise your eyebrow, and you feel his ghost holding onto you, fingers on your pulse, warmth burning, as if the two of you could melt into each other, something horrifying and beautiful, and there is a visceral need for that to be real.

Sherlock Holmes turns out to be alive, alive and in Thirteen with the rebels – with Mycroft – and you damage Killian Jones so thoroughly in the aftermath he had to be kept on life support.

It’s a distraction, and a test.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Panem, you begin. Today, we are going to discuss the senseless acts of destruction visited on our beloved country, by those few radicals seeking the destruction of all we hold dear. I am joined, tonight, by Regina Mills.

Regina doesn’t protest the surname. Good.

You didn’t bother with lighting up the fire. Screens and personnel surround you, an invasion of your space but one you allow once you put away the more telling parts of your being.

You had to have a replacement chair brought in despite doing this in your office. You couldn’t bear the thought of having his chair stained with blood, sat upon by someone that doesn’t deserve his memory.

She mentions rhododendrons and asphodels. I am dangerous and my regrets follow you to the grave, as you understand them, but the context evades you.

(You saw rhododendrons in the vase.)

This is the beginning, Emma Swan speaks on the screen, hijacking the signal.

You are made of raw fury as control is lost so thoroughly. The personnel around you scramble in a panic as they try to block the rebels’ signal.

The run images of the Victors, and you do your best to run damage control.

A snap of your fingers has a Peacekeeper cause Bond to cry aloud in pain—

They show Mycroft’s wedding, and you hear his voice as Regina Mills sobs in terror, a cornered animal.

It continues, a barrage of film and edits of Victors and their moments drilling into the screens. The technicians are fighting valiantly against the rebels – likely Q – but it’s not enough.

The screen splits into seven: Emma Swan, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Finnick Odair, Annie Cresta, Ruby Lucas and Q French. Each of them alone on a blank white soundstage, nothing to distract from the most famous faces in Panem.

We are your children, they speak, a harmony that is horrifying.

The technicians finally manage to cut it, the Capitol’s seal replacing them.

Okay. Time for another approach.

The Peacekeepers make their move on James Bond, and his cries colour the air with blood and bones breaking. Regina Mills cries out, the pain spreading, the agony catching, the care being its own weapon. 

You order them to cease, and the Peacekeepers stop and Regina Mills is sobbing. Everyone is in a state of disarray, you are in the centre of the raging waters.

Continue, you order, rage in every atom. The technicians protest but you press on, Continue with the broadcast.

Clearly, the rebels are attempting to disrupt the dissemination of information they find incriminating, you states, but both truth - and justice - will prevail. We will resume when security has been restored. Regina: do you have anything you’d like to say?

Regina flinches. I’m sorry… I…

Regina, you warn – calm before the storm.

Regina Mills’ eyes focus.

They’ve scrambled already. Sustained, Regina rasps, the final . Don’t return fire.

So brave, so stupid. 

End it.

The broadcast doesn’t stop, it continues, interspersed with pictures of the Victors, but you don’t care when the Peacekeepers bleed James Bond and Regina Mills cries, your heads and their sharpened maws taking your pound of flesh in wrath and vengeance. And—

The broadcast ends soon enough, Regina Mills’s terror infecting the nation, the Capitol’s seal upon the screen.

The waters settle, the storm exchanging for ice as it freezes over.

You order everyone out.

Soon enough, your office reverts back to normal. You ignite the fire, and sit in your chair at your desk.

Mycroft’s ghost tilts his head, sitting in his chair calmly, always belonging there, the outlines of wings behind him. The edges of his lips quirk into something like a smile, if only for its cold cruelty and amusement and challenge. A wave with his hand, almost light, mocking, and then he is gone, a flash of fire like a phoenix of the old.

Well played.

(You send flowers. White roses and mixed zinnias.)

Mycroft is an emotional creature. 

For all he masquerades as ice – successfully, you must add, so successfully it might as well be true – he is a creature made of fire and lightning. Electrifyingly quick, lethal, brilliant in every way, care warm, wrath burning, life and death in the palm of his hand, Prometheus’ flame bringing independence from the gods, from the Capitol.

There is no world in which Mycroft will abandon those he loves dearly. It is a truism that had you bore witness to time and time and again: that Mycroft Holmes loves, and loves dearly, with all his heart and soul.

(That doesn’t include you, perhaps never will. Maybe, with time and blood and the two of you being enemies at each other’s throats, it will stop hurting and you will stop yearning for an impossibility.)

It is a truth that you rely on for this little plan.

Mycroft Holmes, however, is a survivor. A Victor.

The Victors are formidable in and of themselves, you had once told him. In some ways, better than we could hope to train Peacekeepers. Inured to violence, to killing. Prone to desperation and polluted by trauma. Having killed, it becomes easier to kill again, particularly if one rationalises the situation as requiring it; place the Victors you know in a circumstance where they feel it necessary…

Snake in a scarf, venom metaphorical but scarring all the same. A little parting gift, as someone he loves attempts to kill him. And if it isn’t Mycroft who does the deed, then the people around him will take it into their own hands, prioritising his brilliance over this broken, poisoned thing.

Mycroft Holmes will bear witness to a Regina Mills that does not love him, hope dying replaced with bloodstained betrayal, fear coming to life. Human nature taking its pound of flesh with the need for survival taking front priority.

And if he cannot make the call, his love winning over sense in the end, then Regina Mills is a weapon regardless, a liability to the rebels, shattering Mycroft in the process with despair. Either way, it’s a perfect move, Queen off the board.

So you keep security easy, when the time is right. You watch them move through the Citadel, brazenly diving into the waters deep, cutting the threads and dragging them out of the prison – unknowing that the warden had allowed them to do so, to leave your Tartarus.

In the meantime, you coordinate with your council, and watch the distraction they provide. The Victors speak their story.

Mycroft makes an appearance.

I belonged to President Snow, he reveals. Ten years; I’m quite sure you can establish that I was not considered one of the attractive ones, that was not my fate. No - my life, my future, was bound entirely to the whims of the President; my brother’s safety relied upon it. I began working for the government immediately, at my Sponsor’s side. There was no true notion of ‘independence’; for the ten years I was under Contract, I was barred from living outside the Presidential mansion.

He says it like it’s a bad thing. As if you hadn’t taught him for those ten years, refined his being until he was better than either of you have ever hoped for, until he was no longer just brilliant but transcendent. As if you hadn’t elevated him to a status beyond what his birth would have dictated, honoured him to the point where he matched your own power as your right hand and successor by the end of it, where you offered him the throne and he declined. As if you hadn’t offered him a place in your home, your space, ensured he was taken care of, wanting nothing for food or security, and threw him his very first birthday party. As if he hadn’t enjoyed his work, your company, your tutelage, as if you hadn’t made him.

(As if he meant nothing to you, when he meant everything. )

He said you took away his freedom, and you did – you won’t deny him that. But you offered him security in exchange, a far more valuable thing in this world.

The Victors continue, and you watch as the technicians put up a false battle to control the airwaves, and as they collect their Trojan Horse.

You smile.

You can see his collapse in the war, the chessboard, his touch fading from it. You can practically taste his grief – whether from Killian Jones’ death, or the discovery of what happened to Regina Mills.

Good.

(He gets back up. You never expected anything different. )

They managed to bring District Two under rebel control, Emma Swan at the forefront – getting shot, likely nonfatal, unfortunately – and thus all essential Districts are held by them.

(District One is still under your own, kept solely for the crime of its crimes of being close and bearing your son.)

And thus you prepare for the eventuality of the Capitol being the battlefield itself. The endgame of this marvellous and catastrophic game of chess.

You are Scylla, and this is your lair. And when they enter into waters dangerously known, you will be ready.

In the meanwhile, it has become clear that there will be no possible sympathy, the last District that would fall for it taken by the rebellion. So instead, you set to break them.

Gallows in every District; funeral pyres, stacked dizzyingly high; makeshift hospitals; homes burned out of everything that once lived there.

The Victors are beloved to the Capitol, you remind Panem, so consider what fates might befall those who are far less valuable.

You show white-tiled cells, the upstairs rooms of Heavensbee Hall, the faces and screams of Victors, lifetimes on camera, a promise.

You don’t show anything relating to Mycroft. He deserves far better than that, deserves far better than to be lowered to the level of Victors and their debasement, deserves an honourable battle of wit and calculated strikes rather than being brought down from the stars into the dirt.

You keep your doors open to him. And as war continues and blood is spilt on all sides, you continue to dream.

District One has fallen to the rebels. You see the wedding of Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta, the happiness of everyone there.

Confirmation of Regina Mills and Killian Jones alive, and you resist the urge to break something.

Although, you suppose, if anyone could defy human nature and surprise you, it would be him.

The rebels have finally approached the Capitol, pushing into it.

You sit amongst your cabinet, every single aspect of it repurposed for the sake of this war. Ministers and Coordinators utilising their knowledge and delegations, Gamemakers turning the Capitol itself into the largest Arena known, staff coordinating groups of Capitol residents.

It’s a losing battle, you know this, the end is near and soon enough someone else will usher in a new era.

You smile.

(When the dust settles and you have signed your death warrant, your heads cut off as a new beast occupies your waters, you will look at him – glorious and terrifying and burning brightly. Beautifully human nonetheless.

He will look at you, and for once in your life, you will understand.

You were wrong. Oh how wonderful to be proven wrong. That this world isn’t the blood covered violence you thought it was. Mycroft’s humanity isn’t the exception, just a shining enough example to pierce through the waters. There was a choice, and you made your grave, so here is the angel of fire sent to cut you down, holding a blade, pressing it into your rotting body, monster slayer.

Coin will be cut down, and somewhere in District Twelve, a corpse will rise from the grass and feel the rain upon his skin, water from the stars, fire coming down, washing away blood so that he may rest in peace, flowers for the deceased.

You will laugh

And the sun will finally rise, the end of a long, long nightmare.)

Chapter Text

(There is a song that Lucy Gray had never sang to you, but you hear her sing anyways:

The world's greatest actor doesn't need a stage
'Cause they're so good at their craft that nobody knows they're fake
The fools have no clue the one they knew was just a fraud
The master of pretending to be something that they're not)

Ever since the war had started, occasionally the morning will start like this:

Good morning.

Your eyes open, and you are at your desk. There is a very obvious ache in your neck when you raise your head to sit up straight and reorient yourself.

The ghost in his chair smiles at you, something deeply amused. He sits as if he owns the place, relaxed and at ease. He practically does.

(The same routine had happened several times before the war, when you had time to sleep in your bed properly, when he hovered above you.

Back then, in those times when you were tired enough to mistake him as flesh, you had reached up, and found yourself heartbroken that you could not touch.)

You always know it isn’t real, that he isn’t real. The room would be warm if it was, colours brightening, shadows receding, heart no longer aching.

But instead of light, it’s his shadow that is all that’s left for you, an afterimage of his brilliance, an imprint upon your mind.

This is what? The third time since the beginning of the week? The ghost questions rhetorically. And it’s only Friday. 

(Time is ticking, and you can feel the sun starting to shine, the first rays of sunlight peeking through the horizon. It tastes like inevitability.)

You take a quick look at him. You have plenty of ghosts, but most others are wisps, fading from your mind as they fade into your distant memory – he maintains his colours, his voice, his scent, almost real if not fact that he is not. 

(You know the sound of his heartbeat, and you wish you could follow it wherever it went.)

You know, however, that over time this image has turned into something else. It knows you better than either of you, punishes you, fire and ice as it burns you for approaching, for being a fool, something like your voice in the echo. The ghost is stained with your own poison, splashed upon it like blood, but it’s the only thing you have now. 

You have work to do, other than talk with someone that isn’t there.

(Get up, Dr Gaul hisses. You have a job to do.)

So you breathe, and fall into the song of war.

(You taste inevitability like the iron on your tongue and know you’re just delaying the end. It does not change that you will fight it all the same.)

You change the password to the safe. The safe at your desk.

You never had a reason to really do so before. This office of yours is perhaps the safest place in Panem, buried in the heart of your mansion, at the heart of the Capitol, the centre of this giant web.

It felt suiting, however, to change it – poetic, revealing, a metaphor. Panem seems to no longer be your priority. It hasn’t been so for a while.

(He left, and he left a gaping hole in you, an exposed wound, your greatest weakness. The very thought of him lowers your defences, holding a key to who you are.)

So you change the password to his birthdate. It’ll be a funny surprise when he gets here, sitting behind your desk. Hopefully, he understands the sentiment behind it.

(You continue writing letters.)

At the beginning of the war, you entered his house and took it apart, piece by piece.

You then proceeded to reconstruct it in your own home, in his old set of rooms.

It felt like a betrayal to the boy you raised, the image of Mycroft Holmes that had left your house, but then you replace it with the man he became, that beautiful, wonderful creature settling in.

(You were grieving, back then, when it was days before he returned to the battlefield with the impact of a meteor. You thought him dead, and while you were at war, you couldn’t muster up the energy to fight and command with him gone.

That you were the murderer of your son.

During those dark and awful moments, you wished you had his body, so that you can lay his coffin in the room below yours to always be close to him.)

You remember every bit of it, even without the pictures taken. You can recount the quality of the air, the light layer of dust on the table, the flowers in the vase. You can practically trace the footsteps of the inhabitants.

You arranged the areas belonging to Mycroft yourself. Cleaning and sorting every suit with a near fervid meticulousness, by precise shade and then his favourite subcategories. His tailory equipment placed and set up to be used at any moment, his sewing machine, pincushion pierced with equidistant pins, needles and thimbles cleaned and organised. 

(You added the parts belonging to Regina Mills and Killian Jones when you realised, to your utter dismay and hatred and envy, that it felt incomplete without them there.)

You found the time to visit it, again and again. It is as much a museum as it is a temple, as much about the bitter yet addicting taste of hope as it is about the rotten and hateful feeling of regret. 

And sometimes, just sometimes, you give in to the temptation to lie upon the bed, luxuriating in the sheets he slept upon and his scent, and dream of a softer world.

(You still have that suit of his, the one you took for yourself when you first exited his abode, and you’ve run your hands through it so often that you will need to repair it when you return it, the edges frayed beneath your touch, loved until it was damaged.)

(Don’t you ever shut up? You had once asked his ghost when it bothered you. 

The ghost had merely smiled, something pitying lurking beneath it. 

I could. I am, after all, a figment of your imagination, a visage your mind had conjured. But I won’t, the ghost had said. Because you don’t want me to. Because you can’t bear the silence of being singular again.

And isn’t that such a damning statement.

I used to be able to, you had mused, and it is somewhat sad. You used to have entire days where you could be alone.

The ghost had given you a look. When one has lived in hell for years upon years, would they too not seek the light of heaven even if it burns them alive?)

The Victors enter the Capitol, and you immediately narrow your eyes when you peer through the surveillance and see Regina Mills, Sherlock Holmes, Q French and several others close and dear to Mycroft.

Something must be lurking in District Thirteen, something dangerous, if Mycroft deemed an active war zone safer than where he is now. A power struggle, perhaps, the Victors deemed a danger to Coin.

Welcome home, you send your message. And the city comes alive, a thousand maws screeching for vengeance upon your command.

You are Scylla, these are your waters, and this is your final stand.

The Victors hit a landmine, and you trigger the trap and hope for the best – or the worst, depending on one’s perspective.

Considering the damage done, it’s very likely they’re all dead, but you aren’t one to put faith in such things. Impossible things tend to happen when Mycroft Holmes is involved – because of course he must be, with the Victors here – and it wouldn’t be the first time something similar has happened. He tricked you for years upon years, with the Quarter Quell, you don’t doubt he can trick death too.

But you don’t need the truth in this case.

Citizens of Panem, you address the nation. These so-called ‘Victors’ led a nation to self-destruction. A violent end to violent, unstable individuals; in their absences, what hope does this rebellion have? The rebellion has no leader. No heart.

You don’t talk about the head, knowing full well who is at the helm.

Emma Swan, the would-be leader of this rebellion – in truth, little more than an impulsive, damaged young woman manipulated by forces beyond her control, you list out, weaving the narrative with the threads you have been provided. Standing side by side with those who gained their infamy through callous acts of murder. These are the people the rebels chose to follow – those who have no concept of how to lead a nation, those who wished only for their own vengeance. At long last, the Victors have been met with what they deserve: justice.

You wonder how Mycroft is doing. Whether he is seeing this. 

(You were always more than a Victor.)

The soul of this nation cannot be carried on the backs of those who crave violence, you continue, who abhor law and order, who—

You are interrupted, screens around you changing. An outsider signal, the technicians say. District Thirteen, you deduce.

You hold your breath, and it’s – stingingly – not Mycroft.

Citizens of Panem, the Mayor of District Thirteen interrupts, her face replacing yours. My name is Alma Coin – and I am the President of District Thirteen. The leader of the rebel military, of a rebellion that is inches from unseating Coriolanus Snow’s cruel, inhuman reign of terror.

President Snow seeks to tarnish the memories of the brave men and women who – in the face of unimaginable cruelties – nevertheless made the choice to fight back, Coin insists. This revolution has been built on their courage. Those Victors who joined the Capitol invasion prove the spirit of true rebellion: no matter what the Capitol have attempted to do to them, they chose to risk their lives - and to make the ultimate sacrifice, for the good of Panem. It—

Her visage is replaced with the street you destroyed mere hours ago. Of the screams of Sherlock Holmes, the burning of Finnick Odair, and the death of Emma Swan.

It’s not the Capitol’s footage, the technicians say. A ploy by the rebels. 

You must give credit to the woman, Coin is an incredible actress. And this is most definitely her idea – Mycroft wouldn’t do such a thing, to use the deaths of those he holds dear in such a callous way. But it’s a well executed move, nonetheless, wielding your own blade against you.

Do you think this is Batesian or Müllerian mimicry? you ask his ghost, in a moment of sardonic humour. He merely raises his eyebrow.

Are you that self absorbed as to think it’s mimicry? he asks. Maybe she evolved it separately – humanity rarely changes, after all. Maybe she is worse. An Emsleyan mimic.

I highly doubt that, you say, playing into that hubris. Mycroft huffs and looks away, something amused in the quirk of his lips. And— oh.

Look at you and how pathetic you are.

You continue on, when the camera comes back to you.

I wonder at any supposed ‘leader’ who will only claim involvement after most of the fighting is done, you muse aloud, your final statement carefully picked to hear against President Coin – as she calls herself. Consider, in the coming days, rebels and loyalists alike: do you know who you are truly working for?

It’s a bit of a selfish desire of yours, a fantasy, to have this final battle between you and him. And you can’t have that with an interloper in the mix, trying to play at games she is nowhere near capable of, a red-blooded monster playing at godhood.

Those dead Victors have always been tools: used, then discarded, you say your final words, a final call to Regina Mills – if she is still alive. Do you wish to spend your lives as tools?

The scene ends.

You set the mutts loose, into the Capitol when you confirm that it was a trick. 

A few hours later, the television turns on, and you see the Victors, the presumed-dead. They make a production out of it, turning the lights off, a call to a future.

You are given a countdown. Twelve hours to surrender.

(The timer from all those years ago reveals itself.)

Twelve hours is not a lot of time. But you are very good at utilising time to its fullest, you have been doing so ever since your first encounters with death.

So you rearrange rooms. Taking items from storage and placing them accordingly. Your museum for your boy becomes a testament to all he is, now that they have been moved in.

You leave gifts. Pictures and packages. Morphling in Sherlock Holmes’ coat, a gun in John Watson’s bedside table. 

(Muddlers on Mycroft’s table, for his dear privacy. His umbrella – the umbrella you gave him, that he kept after all this time – at the door.)

A noose for Killian Jones – pouring raw hatred into every movement as you tie the rope and leave it hanging in the bathroom. 

(You put the suit back into his wardrobe, and hope he will not notice anything different.)

You recognise that this is really just you being petty and vindictive, rage singing in your veins, but you have nothing to lose really, might as well have some fun with your last hours. 

You finally place a chessboard upon the table in your office, his ghost holding your hand as you set the pieces, and make your call.

You hadn’t quite anticipated Regina Mills to be the one to respond. Perhaps Emma Swan, perhaps Sherlock Holmes, anyone but Regina Mills.

You don’t get the airwaves unless you’re giving a formal surrender, Regina snaps, lividly angry. Is that what you’re doing?

Your smile widens. You can see her fear in her fury, overcompensating, using it as a shield against you. The Capitol is far from occupied; it is a little premature, would you not agree, to consider yourselves the victors of—

—we are Victors, Regina hisses. You laugh. 

Poor choice of words, you concede, examining her up and down. She looks as fine as she could be, after those months under torture and hijacking. You’re looking well, Regina.

Fuck you. Defense mechanism. Classic.

And yet, still so uncouth, you tut. You can see as Regina barely contains a flinch. I do hope your companions are alive and well?

Emma Swan enters the picture after a moment, camera on their faces.

So, are you? Emma asks. Surrendering, I mean. If you are, we’ll let you have the screens; if not, you’re an idiot, and we’ll see you again soon when you give up.

Your lip curls in clear contempt. You believe any war so easily won? you muse. Such childish petulance; you cannot simply demand what you will, then expect it to land in your lap. I wonder at Coin’s patience for your impetuous—

—Mycroft’s dealing with it, Regina interrupts, smiling viciously.

You freeze at Mycroft’s name. 

Yeah. Regina Holmes, asshole. Mycroft Holmes’s wife.

(With one final strike, Regina Holmes cuts off your heads, the serpents, and there is a spray of arterial blood as you collapse, a puppet on strings falling apart.)

You should be feeling furious that Regina managed to overcome the conditioning, returning to form as Regina Holmes, but you can’t really muster the emotion to do so, when all you can focus on is his name.

He’s dealing with it. What does that mean?

—This city is ours, Regina hisses as the mortal coil comes back into focus. It’s over. 

Resistance is futile, comes Finnick Odair’s voice.

You stare Regina Holmes down. 

I have a condition, you inform them. A private audience, with Mycroft Holmes. Allow me that.

You don’t have much to lose. And if the universe is merciful, you will see him one final time. 

After a moment, Emma Swan shrugs. Fine by us. You have to take the security down in the mansion, we’ll send a squad to meet you. Are we done?

Are you surrendering? Regina Holmes demands. 

You watch them, the two onscreen – their terror, their anger.

You don’t have much to lose. In fact, you have nothing to lose. You are a dead man walking, no more point in trying to drag your eviscerated body across the floor.

Well, are you? Mycroft’s ghost asks you.

All you can say is yes.

They hold you in the Citadel.

Honestly, it’s not as bad as it could be. It’s on the upper levels, not particularly comfortable but just fine, they send you meals twice a day, and the guards don’t bother you. You’ve dealt with worse during your youth.

During the war, you had no time at all, running the entirety of Panem’s military on one hand while managing the Capitol with the other. 

Now, you have nothing but time. And although not comfortable, you manage to actually get some sleep, knocking out for several hours before the guards awake you for your meal.

Now, you have nothing but your ghosts to occupy you. Nothing but time to think.

Your medication has long stopped working as one may hope, painkillers and experience with chronic pain the only things keeping you upright.

You’re likely being executed, it would be the only logical thing to do, and most of the nation will want it to be bloody and painful. You wonder who will do the deed.

So, you wait and wait and hope that Mycroft will fulfil his side of the bargain.

(You have so much to say, and not enough time.)

You pace about your cell, and try to imagine the conversation. How it will start, how it will end.

(In so many scenarios, you cling to him, your ice melting beneath his fire. It is an unequivocally selfish dream.)

You know, Lucy Gray says. Maybe you should just… not?

You have so much to say, and not enough time. You wish to pour your heart out, to rest with no regrets, no secrets – but you are not that kind of person.

She’s right, Mycroft’s ghost agrees. If you don’t want to say it, then don’t – let it be buried in the grave with you. It’s not about you, anyways, it’s about him.

It’s about the two of you. But you are a dying man, and he does not deserve to be burdened like this.

He is made of the stars themselves, the endless abyss above lit up by his light, and it would be a complete insult to drag him down to hell with you.

So you breathe, and hope the universe will be merciful.

(Coryo is a part of you, the part you killed, that songbird. You don’t know why you hear his voice, but you do, and you hear him sing, something deeply pitying:

But as the years go by, the actor starts to change
As day by day, they live their life like all the world's a stage
Their true self mutilated by their permanent new mask
But by the time they realised, it was too late to turn back)

You somehow know he’s here, just beyond the glass, moments before he actually is.

You glance up, when the door opens. Then you have to quickly correct your line of sight.

Oh, Mycroft’s ghost merely murmurs. I didn't expect that.

He’s sat in a wheelchair, which really does beg the question of what happened to him during his time in District Thirteen, although you suppose running a war leaves no time to rest and recover.

(Despite the fact that it’s always been there, you feel bad about the carpet now.)

It feels like it has been eternities since your last conversation with him, when you offered him the Presidency. And beyond that, five years ago, with just the two of you, a conversation that had sealed the fate of Panem.

Your being seems to settle with him around, breathing easier, and the world just focuses on him. Nothing matters except them in this room, except him.

Good evening, Mycroft, you greet, and you try your utter best to keep the words from revealing too much, his name almost falling like a benediction from your lips, savouring the syllables. The fact that he is here, in the flesh, not a mere figment of your imagination.

(There are some things you are too much of a coward to do.)

Mycroft is settled in a way you have never seen him before, lines of tension, anticipation, yes, but also – happiness too, something oddly peaceful. Divinity beneath his skin, fire in his blood, beautifully human, finally comfortable in his own skin.

He has changed in ways you can’t begin to fathom, something far greater than you could have dreamed of.

“Good evening, Coriolanus,” Mycroft replies, equal and opposite. Him speaking your name sets you off with surprise, and you cough into your handkerchief; blood spilling onto the fabric. “Ah; I take it your medication has been declined?”

Rather, those medications have long-since ceased to work as one may hope, you correct, smiling, dabbing delicately at the corners of your mouth. It would seem that a lack of rest and augmented stress, upon a frailer body than I would prefer, has had the expected effect.

“Something I can appreciate,” Mycroft acknowledges, nodding slightly. He looks incredibly tired now.

(There is so much to be said; so little.)

“You wished to see me?” Mycroft prompts.

I rather think the urge is mutual, you return, incisive and quietly amused. It has been quite some time since we were able to discuss matters clearly. I imagine my execution will be imminent – whilst we still may, ask what you will.

Briefly, Mycroft’s mouth curls in quiet disdain. “Little remains that requires undue clarification; your actions were hardly challenging to parse,” he dismisses. “Though I must admit, I had perhaps underestimated the degree of vitriol you were prepared to entertain, once desperation set in.”

Desperation? you echoes, faintly surprised. Oh, Mycroft; it was never desperation. Vengeance, I’ll concede – but not desperation.

“The last six months have served as an extended exploration of the depths of your desperation, I’m afraid,” Mycroft returns, a little tartly. “Or, are you attempting to argue that all such things are reasonable, in the context of war?”

You still remember how to get under his skin, but it seems the favour is returned.

Mycroft – this will be our last conversation, I imagine, you say. Let us be direct. You and I are both too old, and far too tired, to politic with one another

(Shall we simply agree to tell one another the truth?)

“Then by all means, let us attempt honesty,” Mycroft agrees, but he seems very sceptical about it. Understandable, considering their track record. “Let us begin with the obvious generalities: you are aware that I was never, even prior to my resignation, entirely your puppet?”

I never wished you to be, you rejoin instantly. Frankly, you are quite insulted by the notion. Mycroft raises an eyebrow. No two leaders are precisely the same; it would be foolish to pluck a District-born child from the rabble, and expect that all my traits would imprint perfectly – our lives have been utterly dissimilar, and we are very different men. It was never the intent to model you to be a perfect replica. Only to educate you; to curb those lesser instincts I have known, both in myself and others.

He is; was; had been yours, but he was never something as senseless as a puppet. Perhaps, a long time ago, before you realised he was too interesting for that, too wonderful, too brilliant for such a small role, before that fire and ichor shone through his veins. An asset, then a being, then a monster, then divinity – but most of all, human.

He is supposed to be better than you.

(You saw him fly, stars sparking into existence in his trail, and you realised that he could have never been you, and you love him for that.)

A small, quiet laugh flickers on Mycroft’s lips. “Do you not see the inherent contradiction in terms?” he points out. “In ‘curbing those lesser instincts’, you endeavoured to create a model of yourself.”

One whom would not fall prey to such things as I myself have fallen prey to, you agree, a thousand regrets behind it. I have made a great many errors in my time, Mycroft—  

(Sejanus and Lucy Gray stare at you from their corners, a noose around his throat and gunshot wounds through her body.)

—Regrettably, you continue, before you can fall apart. ‘Mistakes’ are made on a far grander scale when one has the power of a nation to – sometimes inadvertently – fuel them; I only wish Panem had not been rendered a warzone in order to illustrate the point.

“To which mistake are you referring?” Mycroft asks, drier. “I can name a number of salient junctures that may, perhaps, have avoided this outcome.”

(A thousand what-ifs.)

Truly? you ask, politely. I have had plenty of time to consider matters, including what may otherwise have transpired; I assume you turned your attentions to the matter of rebellion shortly after your resignation?

“At which point, I had already been in contact with Alma Coin for a number of years,” Mycroft reveals, and that’s a surprise to you. “Though I’m quite sure it would be the simpler answer, Sherlock’s Reaping was only one aspect; a tipping point. Hence my original statement: I was never entirely yours.”

You wish otherwise, but you know that it’s true, and no matter how much you think about it, it will always sting. He flies free, even when he had borne chains, a force of nature – it is impossible for one to bottle the stars themselves, after all.

But you never stopped wanting, you needy, needy child. 

(In many ways, the exact opposite happened, that it was you who belonged to him. He could strangle you to death right here and now and all you would do is revel in the closeness, helpless in his light, intoxicated by his very presence.

You suppose it’s a good thing he is sitting down in his wheelchair, and nowhere close to you, that he has not seen – perhaps will never see – the depths of your adoration. You are not quite sure if you could contain yourself if you were close enough to feel his warmth, if you could reach out and touch. You are quite sure that if he were to engage in physical contact, it would be disastrous for you, that your intellect would immediately become inaccessible, thoughts going silent, mind overcome with the need and want and the utter glory that he is here.)

And I will repeat, once again, that I didn’t anticipate you being so, you return, covering up sentiment. Nor were my offers for employment – nor indeed, the Presidency – made through any less than a sincere belief that your stewardship of the nation would allow Panem to develop beyond the stagnant bounds that my control inevitably had reached. I imagine you would have ended the Hunger Games, in due course; that you would have continued to innovate, as you always did, in order to safeguard the nation. I would not have groomed a Hunger Games Victor to inherit the Presidency if I wished for the Games to survive; I would not have allowed a District-born child into the heart of the government, if I did not appreciate the need for alternative perspectives as the nation continues to grow.

“You would not have agreed with my determinations,” Mycroft states, uneasy.

No, I would not, you agree promptly, but I could trust the single commonality that I believed to exist: that we are both bound by loyalty to this nation. As you have rightly noted in the past, I am not prone to trust; I trusted that truism. Foolishly, it transpires, given that you so wilfully pursued revolution all the same.

Mycroft’s expression is nothing but resolve, steel behind his eyes. “Once again: you would not agree with my determinations,” he repeats, “but that does not mean I am any less of that mind. I could not have been all that Panem needed, if I inherited the Presidency as you wished me to; it would have been only in service to you, not to the nation.”

The boy seriously underestimates himself, to think that he wouldn’t be enough. He would have stumbled, he would have fallen, but he would have lit the world on fire all the same, illuminating the night.

You smile, a distinctly forced expression, as you say, I’m sure we can agree to disagree. 

“So much for not politicking,” Mycroft comments, spite behind it. “All I have done has been, ultimately, to the service of Panem.”

Your smile seeps poison as you resist the urge to bite back with venom, blood in your mouth. Of course, he lies, that’s what he does. That’s what you both do.

The battlefield sets, just as it always does.

So much for attempting truth, you comment. Panem is a paltry runner-up to the individuals your life is composed of.

“My family,” Mycroft clarifies, sharp enough to cut and bleed you. “And if that were true, I assure you, matters would have played out very differently indeed.”

It is evidenced enough in that you would allow Alma Coin to inherit the nation, who has little in aught but her own prosperity, you fire back, fury in your blood. Because while you admit you were bad, she is perhaps worse in this regard. Do you sincerely believe that she holds Panem’s best interests in mind?

Mycroft casts you a look of faint amusement. “She holds very little in mind at all, seeing as she is dead.”

Your rage dies down, the storm calming as you piece it together. Huh. So that’s what she meant when she said he was dealing with it.

Dead, you echo. Interesting, though perhaps unsurprising; I suppose you would not have been ignorant to her workings. Dispatching her—

“—it was not mine to arbitrate,” Mycroft murmurs, he looks fairly hurt at something you said. “I had already dealt with Alma, comprehensively enough that her supposed leadership was no longer a question; her death, however, was unexpected. Gold, as best I have been able to establish, which I’m sure you can appreciate the irony of.”

(Lucy Gray huffs a laugh.)

Then, you piece something else together. Something a little more damning for the man in front of you, your boy – who looks incredibly tired.

A woman like Alma Coin would not permit a viable second in command, you say delicately, trying to be as careful as you can.

“No,” Mycroft agrees. He looks haunted. “She would not.”

Oh, Mycroft, you murmur, heart aching, bleeding for him. I am truly sorry.

The truism of Mycroft Holmes is this: he never truly wanted power, at least power for power’s sake. He just wanted to be safe, he wanted those he loved to be safe, he wanted people to be safe. Power was a necessary step in that want, but he would have immediately stopped once he had achieved enough of it. He has different hungers than you.

(Care runs through Mycroft’s veins in the warmth that forges his humanity.)

The boy that had won his Games at age fourteen would have loved the opportunity, craved it, to be untouchable like you had once been; the man before you would rather run away until it chased him down. He would have declined, if not for the fact that he has an Atlas complex and he truly is the best person for the job, no matter what he says.

(You don’t blame him. Every throne comes at a cost, and heavy is the head that wears the crown. No one knows this more than the both of them.)

It seems the universe has a sense of humour, and like the universe is to do, it is not kind. He has inherited Panem the moment he decided to step away and wanted for other things.

You see it, how Mycroft slides back into a child – that lonely, needy child. Something bloody and bruised with wounds that were there before you were.

(Broken children often recognise broken children.)

It makes you want to hold him. You don’t, however. He didn’t reach for you, so you won’t reach for him. It’s not your place to do so, and you’re pretty sure he would reject you if you did, and neither of you – especially you – can deal with that at this stage.

So you let him sit there for a moment, until you find him stable enough to speak.

Such matters aside, if you would indulge my curiosity? you ask. Mycroft nods slightly, grateful for the change of topic. In hindsight – I assume you were aware of the Quell prior to the announcement, yes? That degree of preparation…

“It wasn’t Q,” Mycroft supplies, smiling slightly, filling in the rest of the sentence and answering because of course he does, he knows you. You tip your head, beckoning.  “We were made aware shortly after Q’s Victory Tour. James Moriarty, of all people. I believe he withdrew from Gamemaking as something of a protest, though naturally, his motives were always challenging to parse; in any case. We had more than two years to prepare, with what information we could acquire from Plutarch en route.”

I wondered, you agree, a mystery solved. Hence my… insistence, shall we say, on senior personnel remaining isolated. Our differences aside, my commendations to all involved for their discretion, during that frame – again, hindsight affords such illumination. I underestimated the depths of loyalty you had cultivated within your… family.

“If only that were true,” Mycroft comments, drawing his own realisations, his own acknowledgments.

Your dear wife, you agree, smiling faintly. You understand why, of course?

You witness Mycroft harden. “It was not particularly subtle,” Mycroft states, crisp. “And, I will reiterate: desperate. Your actions in these past months have strained the bounds of all credulity.”

Ah. He doesn’t really know, does he?

You don’t understand, you comment, letting surprise bleed through your being as you smile, something venom laced. If you believe my behaviour ‘desperate’, then I’m afraid you have, indeed, misunderstood. All I have done has been with purpose. At the risk of overusing the phrase: you would not agree with my determinations. Nevertheless—

“—the Quell, the purge—”

—you know perfectly well why I staged the Quell, you interrupt. Perhaps he doesn’t, perhaps Q never told him, because if he did the tone of this conversation would be perhaps quite a bit different, but it doesn’t matter. You are speaking purely of my treatment of your so-called ‘family’, and we may as well put that matter to bed sooner rather than later. Mr Jones is alive, I understand?

Mycroft nods, though it is tight, strained. “In spite of your very best efforts.”

On the contrary: he was rather pointedly permitted to retain a pulse until the eleventh hour, as I’m sure you have long-since identified, you explain. You can catch the fire in his eyes, the rage, and as much as you adore riling him up it would be counterproductive to what this is meant to achieve. Consider it, from my perspective, with the war as it was then; then, perhaps, you may see.

“I am no longer a child,” Mycroft snaps. “I will not jump through hoops for your entertainment; if you wish me to believe that there was any true motive beyond spite, you will need to explain yourself.”

It would behove you to consider why I wished you such acute pain, you say, immediately backing down. Despite what you seem to believe, I am not given to wholly abstract malice.

(Here we go again, Mycroft’s ghost murmurs; sighs. You and your justifications. )

“You distrust intimate relationships, particularly of a romantic nature,” Mycroft states, as neutrally as he can. “I imagine Killian represented a threat.”

A threat. A threat to you. You’re almost insulted by the notion of such.

(As always, he knows you better than you would like to know yourself. And he doesn’t even realise it.)

(Lucy Gray narrows her eyes at you, Billy Taupe’s shadow behind her.)

Mr Jones threatened your purpose, stability and – frankly – common sense, you correct, vitriol seeping through in venom through sharp teeth. Certainly, not a distraction you required; not then, and certainly not during a war that held no trace of your influence. For quite some time, I believed you dead.

(During those days, you had gone through the motions of war, but you were lost, an emptiness palpable in your very soul, as if you had lost half of your own being. 

You wore blacks and neutrals then, eliminating every bit of colour, for a simple reason: you were mourning. Those around you would have assumed for the nation, and they would be wrong.

Then he returned, and there was fire and glory and it became clear that the end will have magnitude.)

Mycroft falters for a moment, as old wounds have been brought up. “It took quite some time to reach functionality, after the Quell.”

The difference was vast, after you – as you call it – ‘reached functionality’, you add. War is ugly, Mycroft. Mercy is anathema to such environs. Any suggestion of such is not something to dismiss: your emotionality had already rendered you incapable, in the early stages of the war, of exercising some mercy on behalf of Coin’s army. Mr Jones’s death would have been significant, no doubt, but clarified your resolve; playing nursemaid on an extended basis, on the other hand, would have distracted your attention from the needs of the nation.

Oh, he is furious. How delightful! “And the notion of not torturing him never occurred?”

Jones’s sanity dissolved almost instantaneously; there seemed little point in pretending otherwise, you explain shortly. Frankly, he was just… there, and you could have left him alone, but you are a vengeful (jealous, Lucy Gray adds; corrects) being.  As to the rest: I will concede some personal satisfaction. Given that your hands are saturated in the blood of almost every Victor barring your ‘family’, I think a touch of restorative justice has been more than earned.

It was the wrong thing to say, you know this immediately when you watch him crack apart, fire dying.

There is a brief moment of quiet.

Grief claws at him, and at you in turn, for you have hurt him. Of course you did, it’s in your nature, you scorpion. That’s the only way you can ever love.

…my apologies, you sigh; Mycroft’s eyes snap to you, and despite the situation, the despair in the air, it feels delightful, having his attention again. I promised myself I would not resort to such tactics.

Mycroft nods tiredly. “It is, of course, accurate; yet, as mentioned, we knew about the Quell,” Mycroft explains. “At that stage, fleeing was viable – but the revolution was not. Or, if it were to play out, would have caused exponentially more collateral damage. My fellow Victors, including those you incarcerated, in exchange for a war we could win; for a nation that will heal better than it would otherwise have done, had the revolution begun any earlier.”

I made the inference, you assure him. Mycroft – there is no peace to be found, not in this. It is done. Your loved ones restored, the war concluded. You will never be capable of fathoming how I could be capable of harming your loved ones as I have; nor will I be capable of fathoming how you could bear to sacrifice so many lives in a war that need not have been fought.

The strike hits, and bleeds. “Your continued insistence cannot deflect from reality: your proposed ‘solution’ – my eventual Presidency, on your terms – would never have achieved what you claim to wish.”

The ‘solution’, as you so dismissively term it, would have been in your recognition of all that I attempted to dissuade you from, you return dangerously, storm brewing. Consider it, Mycroft, and consider it well: every death in Panem is on your hands, solely because you could not bear your own loneliness. A weakness that is absolute, as I told you before: all you have ever wished is to be loved, to be cared for. To be accepted by those you love, you became all they required of you. A nation bleeds to satisfy your supposed ‘family’s’ notion of the person you ought to be.

(Ah, there it is, the projection of your own issues, Mycroft’s ghost sighs, eyes upon the ceiling, before turning to the other ghosts in the room. Mark down the bingo.)

You see Mycroft’s hand spasms in his lap, can practically feel the spiralling. And for a moment you relish in it, bringing him down, blood in the water – until you see his eyes clear, seeing something, a piece of the puzzle that pulls the image in his head all together. It’s kind of marvellous, seeing him gather himself in real time, and you would find yourself deeply fascinated, if not for the fact that this is a battle.

“A very palpable hit,” Mycroft acknowledges, slowly. “Were you in possession of sufficient insight to recognise your envy. I chose them; a notion that must still rankle, after a decade of investment.”

It’s a deeply accurate strike, wounding you through a place you never liked to acknowledge.

Such things cannot last, you warn, trying to reel back, engaging your defenses. They care for you now; you have seen, in Regina, how neatly such things can be turned.

(Snake in the scarf.)

Mycroft’s laughter has never changed, like bells and chimes through the wind, but something deeply broken is threaded through it, turning something beautiful into something eerie.

“Of all the examples you may attempt to use, you would try for Regina?” Mycroft asks, something unhinged in his eyes, Dionysus in wrath. “At this stage, I really think your determination to underestimate her verges on the deluded.”

I do not underestimate her stubbornness, certainly, you remark drily, making the metaphorical step back as Mycroft pushes forward. But as to your insistence that you are made ‘better’ by those whom you surround yourself with – the wounded, bereft of this nation will not thank you for propping yourself up on their corpses.

Mycroft’s expression twists, vicious, and you are helpless before him, sitting in that border between terror and delight, but helpless all the same.

(What is a king to a god?)

“As though you did not do the same?” Mycroft asks, bladed and sharp, cuts digging into you, for he knows you better than yourself. He strikes and it hits, piercing through, sword through your heart. “I can appreciate that you have been wounded, evidently, but your determination to project your wounds onto others has done damage that eclipses anything I have accomplished. Once, I believed it to be purely paranoia; I was incorrect. ‘Paranoia’ does a disservice to the incredible scope: it is terror. You have governed this country as one perpetually terrified, lacking the insight to name it as such – afraid to lose control, afraid to return to the destitution of your childhood, afraid that you will be betrayed by those you care for.”

I am not ‘afraid’—  

(Liar, the ghosts whisper at once.)

“I am,” Mycroft interrupts, laughing, and you can hear that laughter echo in your own head. “You know, I had an almost identical conversation with Alma, prior to her demise: perhaps it is an inevitability, that those who access power are – by and large – those who are deeply, appallingly afraid. Those who will resort to desperate acts, who can find ways to justify all the cruelties in this world, in keeping the truth of oneself at bay.”

Your expression has closed, but Mycroft knows you too well to fall for it. Panem…

“…we agreed not to lie,” Mycroft reminds him quietly, and you almost immediately fold. “This is not about Panem. I do not doubt that you and I both hold our duty to this nation close to our hearts; but it is not about Panem. I will not argue with you regarding the mechanics of the nation as a whole – I think we have exhausted that subject many times in the past – but setting aside the fabric of the Districts, or the Games. I ask you how Panem, as a nation, benefited from teenage sex slavery? Even when asked, your justifications centred in your maintenance of power. Victors have never presented a threat to the nation. Only to you.”

(Are you, are you? Lucy Gray sings, softly, in their forest of an Arena. Coming to the tree?)

You are a bitter person, even when you give a huff of tainted amusement. A point you have proven untrue, in abundance—

“—it was of your making,” Mycroft corrects, his gaze burning you, his words a judgement of damnation. “I warned you. All that has transpired was of your making.”

The power in the air is almost tangible, suffocating you, phantom fingers upon your neck as it chokes you. Your mouth tastes like iron, unrelated to the blood in your dying lungs. You are in the presence of a firestorm, and you are burning alive, terrified and awestruck.

“Revolution was never, never my aim – until you Reaped my brother,” Mycroft continues, the righteous hand of god, a living embodiment of retribution, of justice. “Sherlock had all but outgrown his teenage rebellious years – until you chose to have him bear witness to all that Finnick was forced to survive. Finnick would have undoubtedly returned home to District Four, had you allowed him that opportunity; Killian, too, for that matter. Johanna’s entire family, slaughtered for your wounded pride. Q, Reaped not for Panem’s best interests, but for your own. James Bond, who would have been a marvellous addition to the IS had he not been used, manipulated and betrayed. The Hunger Games did not make us rebels, nor even our upbringings; rather, as irony would have it, you made us rebels in your constant, desperate bid to ensure we never would be. Hence, it is desperation; hence, it was never more than malice. Your fear was well founded. It also became a self-fulfilling prophecy that you were too blinded by terror to notice.”

He stops, faltering, fire simmering down to embers and soot, something distant in his eyes, dissociating from his own flesh. The air becomes heavy with a different kind of weight.

He’s… he’s right, you have to admit, no matter how much you dislike the notion. Mycroft is usually uncannily perceptive, knowing humanity far better than you ever did. He’s uncannily perceptive of you, his own sight cleared enough to gaze upon your faults and illuminate the truth. 

Both of you know fear intimately. Not just of the visceral horror learnt from experience, but of the existential, the ones that sink into your skin and stay there, defining you in ways you might not comprehend, staining the glass you see the world through. 

(The boy who had nothing became the man who had everything. You thought you killed him, but that boy will always live, living in the shadows.)

Your entire foundation is rotten, built upon rotted wood and brittle stone infested with parasites and waterlogged, and for a moment you wonder if you had always been damned from the beginning. 

(You weren’t, you had been given so many chances. And that’s what made it a tragedy when you sealed your fate.)

Mycroft continues to look at his own hands. He feels so small to you, drawn into himself.

“In my time under your Sponsorship – indeed, in your employ – I was beholden to those fears,” Mycroft continues, voice soft. “I am, even now, still too commanded by them; it is why I shall not remain in command of Panem for any longer than I must. I am human. A man, and a very damaged one, at that – you are right, that I could have inherited the Presidency without bloodshed, that the war was avoidable. That said: if you truly wish for Panem to thrive beyond the bounds of your regime, if you truly wish the best for this nation, then you would not wish for a nation beholden only to the fears of its leader.”

A misted quiet hangs between them.

You can see Mycroft reconstruct himself, simultaneously steady and fragile.

And you do the one thing you had never done truly and willingly, without any other intent – you let your blade go, retract your fangs, disarming yourself.

(Sometimes, I wish you had been born when I was.)

(It’s such a soft dream, that in another, kinder world, the two of you could have been friends; rivals; brothers; partners. Instead you had died, over and over again, waiting and waiting for the other half of your soul – the sun, your sun – to come far too late for you.)

(In another life, I would have really liked just playing chess and writing treatises with you.)

“A little,” Mycroft echoes, something deeply wistful in the layers.

You cough again, blood spilling from your decayed body onto the fabric of your handkerchief. You fold it up, and draw back into yourself, reflecting him.

May I ask one thing of you? you murmur.

“That depends entirely on what you intend to ask.” You smile.

True; then. I am to be executed, there is no doubt of it – a traitor’s death, for crimes against this nation, you muse. I am to be remembered as a villain. There is no question that those who bay for my blood would consider it no less than fitting – but I would ask that you, if no other, remember me as a man who sincerely did wish for the good of this nation. No matter how misguided you may deem it, no matter how flawed; the truest commonality that we shared. The preservation of this nation, and its people.

It is such a selfish thing to do, but you can’t help but want, can’t help but need.

If there is anyone who could remember you as a person, who would even have a sliver of chance to mourn the tragedy, it’s him.

(It isn’t your story anymore, it’s his – the baton passed sixteen years ago, and you didn’t notice. You had cast yourself as the monster to be slayed in his story, and you can only hope that he will look beyond to see the man.)

Mycroft looks at you, trying to look for something. And then, he reaches into the interior pocket of his jacket.

He pulls out a small violet pill, letting you see it as he holds it between forefinger and thumb, reaching over to place it on the edge of your bed.

“A suicide capsule,” Mycroft states simply; you raise your brow in question, even as you look at it. “Your words are hollow. After all that has transpired, I am long past the point where I will allow your words to be nearly sufficient – hence, this. Your death is imminent. In all likelihood, a public execution: one that would allow a nation of damaged people some form of closure, though it would not be dignified. A quiet suicide would allow you dignity, but it would be an act of unutterable cowardice, and contrary to what Panem – as a nation – needs.”

Mycroft’s ghost fills in the rest, murmuring softly from where he sits at your side, if you commit suicide, here and now, there will be very little question that he had facilitated it. You would condemn him to his own tribunal, his execution. 

You would drag him down with you, Dr Gaul laughs. Lower him to your level, isn’t that what you had always wanted?

You can’t do that to him, Tigris cries out. That would be too cruel, even for you. He deserves better than that.

It’s a test, Lucy Gray intones. Like the one you failed with me. Are you gonna do it again?

It’s the end of your life, come on, Sejanus implores. One final chance.

It’s not about you, Mycroft’s ghost speaks again, holding so much weight. Prove yourself worthy, even if it’s too late. The choice is yours.

You look up at Mycroft, this divine and wonderful being, handing you a blade and baring his neck, looking upon you, giving you a chance, merciful in ways you had never thought possible, beautifully human, a garden of flowers well tended to by countless hands, and utterly glorious.

The stars are where he belongs, and you would never do him that disservice, not now.

At least one of them deserves a happy ending. 

(It is the duty of every teacher to ensure their student surpasses them. It is the duty of every parent to ensure that their child’s life is better than their own. And in some ways… you succeeded.)

So, in the end, the answer to this was never really in question, never a dilemma. He trusts you, after so long and so much blood, and out of all your previous accolades and positions, this is the highest honour you have ever received.

I understand, you state, hopefully covering it all: Mycroft alone will remember you as a man, if you allow yourself to die as the President you have been. Thank you, Mycroft.

“We shall see,” Mycroft corrects, and he is settled. You nod incrementally.

If I may: you mentioned that you do not intend to remain in power? you ask. You may think it is a stupid decision, but you will respect it.

“Correct,” Mycroft agrees, almost easy, tension leaving him. “I have agreed to occupy such a role solely whilst bridging the responsibility of all I have created – and then I shall step back. The intention is to introduce representative democracy.”

There is immediate disdain at such a declaration. 

(Democracy basically means a government by the people, of the people, of the people, Dr Gaul had once remarked to you, in one of your many lessons. But the people are fools – cruel, greedy little animals that care only about themselves.)

Democracy never works, you dismiss, blunt; wary. Humans; we are fickle, greedy beings. Our world destroyed itself before in the misbegotten belief that humans can be left to their own devices - that there is inherent ‘good’ in the world. It has never been true, as we have discussed before; we grasp at ambition, and power…

(I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings, Lucy Gray had said to you, in a forest, when you were soon to be slain a third time. You know when you’ve stepped across the line into evil, and it’s your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of that line.)

“Perhaps,” Mycroft agrees lightly, “or perhaps, we do not need to install something that is perfect; I am not suggesting that any such system is devoid of flaws, it cannot hope to be. Humans are complex, convoluted. No system, no world, could hope to perfectly harbour such an exquisite diversity of minds – but it can be alert to the shapes of them. Create ceilings for those who grasp for higher ambitions; create access routes for the disempowered. Changing, adapting, as time provides challenges – it will not be perfect. It will be, as humans are, honest. Limited and unlimited, all at once.”

You stop for a moment.

Despite everything you have learnt, despite all you have seen and experienced, somehow – when he says it – you believe him. He says it with such certainty, with such conviction, that you can’t help believe him, trust him. That the universe has heard him, and will make it true.

(There is so much power in every ounce of it, and you know he speaks the truth.)

Hope doesn’t taste bitter this time. No, it tastes like stardust and feels like spring rain. 

(Aren’t you tired of being afraid?)

Panem, your beloved nation, is in excellent hands. Again, no matter what you have said, you never doubted that with him here, your dearly beloved miracle worker.

(Somewhere, in District Twelve, a corpse rises from the grass and feels the rain upon his skin, water from the stars, fire coming down, washing away blood and poison so that he may rest in peace, flowers growing for the deceased.)

My only regret is that I shall not be alive to see it, you say quietly, and you smile – something genuine that reaches your eyes.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen Mycroft so at peace before. Even in sleep there had always been a sort of stress to him. It suits him.

You will not apologise for all you have done. You had done all you could for the good of the nation, constructing a system that – while not, perhaps, the best – was functioning. You were a monster, and you were nothing more than a bureaucrat, and you did what you thought was right.

(No villain is a villain in their own story.)

And even if you did apologise, it would be useless, with how much damage you had done.

Instead, you will witness as another will usher in a new chapter in the history books, a better one, made of something good.

You cough up blood again, pain ringing in your chest, and Mycroft merely observes you quietly – a hint of something similar but not quite sadness in it.

Before you leave, you say, straightening. A final word of advice, from an old man – you have quite the gift for cultivating loyalties. It was forever thus, I think, though most noticeable in your… family.

“It is a privilege I doubt I shall ever fully comprehend,” Mycroft admits, his smile faint, something deeply adoring and soft in it. “You recognise now, I hope, how entirely hopeless I would be without them?”

I would have been little short of delighted to see you so enamoured, were it not for my concern over the impact to your Presidency, you state, deep unbridled fondness in your smile, at seeing his joy – it infects you, like when he was newly sixteen and you watched him smile on the floor of your hall. That said: do be careful, Mycroft. You began a war over your brother; I doubt the world at large would survive such a war as you might wage for Regina.

“Oh, I think the true concern is the war she might wage over me,” Mycroft replies, his laughter soft. You concede, echoing his laugh with your own. “You came so very, very close. If you could have fathomed all that they are capable of, I imagine the last few years would have played out very differently indeed.”

You nod, at peace with the notion. 

And yet, here we are, you simply say, gesturing lightly around yourself: a white-tiled cell, devoid of luxuries, or of comfort. The poor ending of a man who led a nation for decades. In particular, my regards to Mr Odair, and to Q – for a game very well played, on both parts.

(You don’t mention anything regarding Regina Holmes, because you’re not sure you can really praise her without it sounding so fake and bitter that you set Mycroft off again, falling into argument, into another battle, something you distinctly do not want now that the two of you have gotten comfortable in each other’s presence, cradling each other’s soul in peace, a dance so delicate and beautiful and awful in all senses of the word. You do not want to break this delicate peace with careless comments, not like this, not now.)

“I doubt either have any particular interest in your opinion of them,” Mycroft replies, falling into the rhythm, this call and response that you are so delighted to hear complete once again, this playful spar, this waltz, once again with a partner that can match every single note and footstep so naturally. “But noted, nonetheless.”

There is an echo, one the both of you hear and witness, and time seems to slip, sliding into an easier time, before the stars had collided.

Your chair and his, meeting face to face for the first time, in front of the warm fire – a Game won, a chess match lost.

I know you let me win, you tell him, from a lifetime ago, when the two of you were young, before it spiralled into something you never thought possible.

You knew from the first moment you laid eyes on him in the flesh that he was special, you just hadn’t realised how much so. That he would come to define you.

Ten years had been enough for Mycroft to build a foundation, five years had been enough for him to evolve into something far greater than you thought could ever be possible in this bloody world, turning something monstrous into something holy.

You smile at him, at this brilliant man who truly does have everything – who is loved, and made better for it.

(It was the one thing you couldn’t have. And you truly are happy that isn’t the case with him. He deserves so much more than you ever did, then for his story to be doomed like yours.)

For the first time, perhaps a bit treacherously, you are glad he left your house.

Quite a gift indeed, you murmur to him. Do not squander it.

Mycroft nods, so much gravity behind every minute motion, understanding; heeding; promising.

The waltz ends, gracefully, beautifully, elegantly, and it’s finally time to disconnect, the metaphorical hands letting each other go, slipping away to start a new chapter, another story beginning where this one shall end.

Mycroft takes a breath, moving to wheel himself towards the door again. He stops for a moment.

“Oh,” Mycroft stalls. “Before I forget: the rooms in the mansion?”

I thought you may like to be reunited with your possessions, you reply, feigning innocence; Mycroft affords you a level look. Ah now, Mycroft – allow me a small piece of pettiness. Even I tire of grandiose gestures, after a point.

(You do not speak of his room, the fact that you had set it at the beginning, grieving, wanting to spend those final days in his memorial.)

You had startled a laugh out of Mycroft, the sound so beautiful a melody to your ears, and you almost laugh alongside him, his amusement infectious, just as it always has been. 

You are the villain of his story, it’s nice to know that he can appreciate the drama.

Mycroft exhales years of pain, of grief, letting go of the threads that had bound him and wounded him, and you do too, watching him unfurl his wings – light and delicate yet unfathomably strong – ready to fly.

Mycroft Holmes – the only person who had ever understood you so fundamentally, who had danced with you and knew the steps so truly, who had responded to your call, you the lonely bird. The only person who had witnessed the jagged, broken edges of yourself that had been weaponized into sharp and venomous cruelty, and never stepped back, but rather had held onto those sharp edges that sought to bleed him and mended you without either of you even realising it, at least until you forced his hand.

This beautifully ethereal being, the best of humanity condensed into one singularity, who you have hurt, and who has hurt you in return; who you cared for, and who has cared for you in return; who you loved, and can only hope who has loved you in return. Bleeding by his hand, his hearth fire warming you until you had forgotten the definition of cold and froze when you parted from him, sitting in your dead garden and planting humanity in colourful flowers; not just his teacher, but his student as well, allies and enemies.

You fell in love with him. How could you not? When he is the one person who has ever understood you, when he is the most beautiful being you have ever had the pleasure of bearing witness to – made of grace, made of tragedy, made of war, made of peace, made of love; creation both haunted and holy, made in glory.

(There had been moments where you contemplated a life where you never met him at all – those worlds where he didn’t exist, where you weren’t made weak by his presence, where you hadn’t become addicted to his being, where you would have stood strong and cold to the very end.

And every time, you come to the conclusion that you would have been worse off for it.)

It feels like a tragedy of the highest order, to meet him – who might be the closest person you had to a soulmate, the other half of your being, different and similar, written into the fabric of the universe – when you were sixty-seven, already dead three times over, and far too late for you to be good enough for him.

You will never; had never; can never get rid of it, this bleeding, bloody need to possess him, this wonderful creature, for him to be yours and you to be his in absolute. And in another world, you would have him, and the two of you would have set this world ablaze with storms and glorious fire, unstoppable and impossible and defiant of such a world as this.

You think that, perhaps, you could be content with this ending. An ending with magnitude, for a prophecy that has been written in the stars to be fulfilled – proving that justice does not sleep forever, that there is; had been; will be light.

It took decades, but Dr Gaul’s hypothesis has been disproven, the great experiment concluded with such profound results.

You hope that Mycroft knows you never faltered in your belief, your adoration, your love, however the forms that they had taken shape.

(I see and witness you, Coriolanus Snow, Mycroft seems to reach out. Who you really are.)

He looks like he’s going to thank you, for everything – for saving him back in his Games, for educating him, for giving him the space he needed for his mind to flourish until he had broken out and flown into the skies – and you really hope he doesn’t. You don’t need it, and you don’t want it either. Him simply existing as he is is thanks enough.

Him loving you is enough.

May you find safety, you say, with warm familiarity, the proverbial final bow to your partner in this dance that has spanned one and a half decades and lifetimes of development.

A District phrase, words from Mycroft’s home, acknowledgement that it’s now about him, now up to him. 

“And may you find peace,” Mycroft rejoins, confidently quiet, making his own bow. “Goodbye, Coriolanus.”

You smile.

Goodbye, Mycroft, you reply gently.

(Exit stage left.)

Mycroft does not look back.

(You hope he never does in the ways that matter.)

They take their time with your execution. Time, strangely, goes much faster than before. 

Although, perhaps not so strange, considering you have nothing left you need to settle.

Then eventually, it’s time.

They tie you up to a pillar, hands behind your back, the nation watching the final moments of your existence.

It’s still quite a production, a simple one on paper but one with heavy weight. The firing squad to execute you is a group of fourteen – all the Districts and the Capitol, the final rejection.

(You suppose you can play along. You have always been a bit of a thespian at heart.)

“Today,” Mycroft announces, “we mark the end of a regime that has destroyed countless lives; we bear witness to the death of a man who has committed atrocities, in the name of a nation that may – now – be allowed to grow. From the ashes of Coriolanus’s Snow regime, we will witness the birth of a nation that will never again descend to such barbarity - this is the reclamation of Panem.”

You glance up at Mycroft, who evenly looks back. 

The two of you have tied up loose ends, have given each other closure, have said all the two of you will. There are things you will bring to your grave, but it doesn’t matter, it’s not your story anymore.

So your eyes drift along. Finnick Odair, smiling with sharpened teeth, like his entire existence has been, honey and razors. Q French, too brilliant for his own good, combining the best of Mycroft Holmes and Mr Gold, utterly tricky. James Bond, a silent but no less impactful force in the shadows the lights of others may cast. The ghosts of Killian Jones and Annie Cresta to accompany, at rest somewhere, weary of vengeance.

Emma Swan, a child of fire, a child yet still, rage and righteousness boiling in every ounce of blood. Anthea Grimm, not a Victor but nonetheless has claimed a place beside them, so easy to forget and utterly deadly for that. 

Take aim, you hear. Tick, tick, goes the clock.

You give your nod to Sherlock Holmes, the boy who had started it all, who had been a pawn on a board for so long to hands far greater than most would be able to fathom, now his own man with countless ghosts and aches. Perhaps you should thank him, for without him, they wouldn’t be here in this beautiful situation.

And finally, Regina Holmes, Regina Mills – named the Queen. You hate her so much, this visceral hatred that you have never felt so deeply and personally before, but you can’t help but appreciate her continual stubbornness and raw determination, made of fury and wrath and scorching everything in her path.

She lifts their hands – her hand and Mycroft’s hand, entwined – for you to see. For you to see that she has won, that she is the victor and the Victor, that she was the one Mycroft chose, claiming him as the greatest prize of all.

You can’t help it, you laugh – blood spilling from your lips as the pain in your chest aches. It’s so petty and so her, it’s fantastic. What a perfect match for him, flame for flame in different ways.

Fire!

Gunshots ring out – and your laughter stops, falling away, like the mask you wear. The pain spikes through as your lungs fill with blood not from your illness but from the wounds.

Huh. So that’s what death feels like. Not of the kind you are familiar with – the kind found under the rubble of an Arena, or the gallows beside a friend, or a forest, or a room with your son, the kind that forces you to continue on. No, the more permanent kind of death that everyone will face, the cold merciful embrace that puts an end to all suffering.

(You wonder if there is an actual hell, in a strange moment of genuine hysteria. Maybe you can catch Dr Gaul and punch her in the face and laugh at her for being so wrong about everything, both you and her completely wrong and your son completely correct.)

You start slipping, feeling the abyss cling to you, dragging you down, Thanatos coming to collect.

You shift your gaze towards Mycroft for the final time. You want to see him as you leave the world, your final sight to be of him, the final note of your story to be of him.

(The light reflects down, shining bright to reflect like a halo behind him. He is Saint Michael, sent to cut you down, you who had been cast as Satan in this performance decades in the making.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, you remember a poem read a long time ago, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. )

He continues to look at you, the actor, the monster in this story, and he the hero, the monster-slayer, both harbinger and architect.

You smile.

And you exit stage left, slipping away as they reach the curtain call

and the countdown clock – from sixteen years ago, the start of a lifetime – finally comes to the end.

(Panem wakes up from its nightmare to a new dawn.)

(Mycroft’s ghost had sung to you, when you were walking to your execution, a soft mourning dirge. He has never sung before, the one made of flesh, but you know his voice and can hear it nonetheless:

The world's greatest actor despises their new form
Through their practiced saccharine smiles, they got much more than they bargained for
For as they turn back to their unsuspecting crowd
They thank them for their patronage and take their final bow)

Chapter Text

It starts when Tigris invites him over for tea. Well, less of an invite and more of an insistence that borderlines concerning.

That, perhaps, wouldn’t be so unusual, if not for the fact that she had asked for him to come alone – not with Killian, not even with Regina, alone.

Although, when putting together the possible motives, it would make sense. Tigris Semper – formerly Tigris Snow – is perhaps the only other person currently alive that would know Coriolanus Snow the person. She knew the boy, Mycroft knew the man, and now they have to tie it all up and be the only mourners of someone that their world despises.

(“Why did you name yourself Tigris Semper?” Mycroft had once asked her. It’s the name she uses on all legal documents.

She had merely smiled humorlessly – something bitter, something hateful, something grieving.

“Do you know what the phrase Sic Semper Tyrannis means?”)

Tigris’s smile is genuine, but strained when she greets him at the door.

“Mycroft,” Tigris purrs, a cat’s purr of contentment. Her eyes dart about and around, and when she finally assures herself of there being a lack of audience, she invites, “Come in. Leave your coat at the door.”

“Thank you,” Mycroft murmurs, the door closing behind him. “I brought biscuits for the house.”

“Oh. You needn’t have.” Tigris accepts the bag with the tin. “It’s not even I who truly wanted you here. Frankly, as much as I enjoy your company – I’m not precisely ready for the conversation we would have.”

Mycroft narrows his eyes and raises his brow, confused. “Then who…”

To that, Tigris does not answer, not until they reach a door, which she opens.

On a sofa, a woman with platinum blonde hair sits, quiet and poised, detached even. A woman that Mycroft hasn’t even thought of for nearly a decade, despite living in the same household for quite a bit of time.

Octavia Snow turns her head to look at Mycroft, cold blue eyes scanning him for something.

“Mycroft Holmes,” Octavia acknowledges, rising. “I think it’s time you and I had a conversation.”

“All of us thought you were dead after it became clear that you weren’t in custody or accounted for after the war,” Mycroft says, taking a sip of tea. 

“I am deeply fortunate Aunt Tigris had taken me and my family in,” Octavia explains, taking her own sip. “Frankly, I didn’t expect her to, considering her and my father’s… estrangement. And no, this is not me turning myself in, I have a daughter to care for and we will disappear once again if we have to. I have no intention of continuing my father’s work, I assure you. I have my daughter to think of.”

“Your husband?” 

“Incompetent,” Octavia answers, but it’s fond, a crack in that mask. “I love him dearly but I would not trust him to take care of Aurelia alone, even if he had Tigris’ help. Not to mention the fact that if it got out, those who had vehemently despised my father would turn their hatred towards Aurelia to exact vengeance – not to mention myself.”

“We wouldn’t allow such to happen,” Mycroft assures. Octavia’s smile is sharp.

“I know,” Octavia agrees, but it tastes bitter. “But it doesn’t change the fact that when people are motivated by emotion, it leaves too much to chance. Spite and vengeance are excellent fuels. To let the world think we are dead is for the best.”

They don’t say much for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Mycroft murmurs. Octavia blinks.

“For what, precisely?” 

“For killing your father, I suppose?” Mycroft says. 

“Why? You weren’t his executioner,” Octavia dismisses, voice flat. “He was dying anyway, something would have killed him, be it his own body or a bullet to the chest. Who or what did it doesn’t matter when the end result is the same.”

“For causing a war that uprooted your family?” Mycroft continues, unsure and guilty. 

“That’s between you and him,” Octavia blithely disagrees. “It’s not my place to judge what happened. Take it up with the orphans made in the war. But I’m sure they’ll forgive you when you have delivered freedom.”

“Then why did you ask for me?”

At that, Octavia puts down her cup with a soft tink upon the porcelain saucer. She looks at her hands, placed into her lap, silent, contemplating the words she would choose.

“I suppose I just wanted to see what my father saw in you, figure it out,” Octavia says. “I don’t see it. I don’t think I can.”

Mycroft doesn’t have a good response – or any response – to that. “I… Octavia—”

“Did you know my father kept your room completely the same after you left?” Octavia continues, and Mycroft falls silent. “For years, he kept your room in the exact shape it had been after you left, and maintained it. And then when the war started, he moved everything in from your apartment, had it on top priority for the staff to be kept clean. It was a whole… thing in the house. He kept visiting it during the war, and it was the only other part of the mansion he would visit other than his office and own set of rooms…”

Snow had said that it was mere pettiness, the reason behind the rooms, a last ditch attempt at psychological terror.

He had never specified about his room.

(The password to the safe beneath the desk is Mycroft’s birthdate.)

“…He even kept your chair, that chair of yours in his office,” Octavia continues, and Mycroft comes back to himself. “He wouldn’t let anyone sit in that chair after you left. Whenever someone had to sit down he would have a new one brought in. And he—” She falters in words, voice stuck in her throat.

Silence.

“All my life, all I wanted was my father’s approval, his attention, I mean – who didn’t? He was the President,” Octavia murmurs, something small and fragile – completely at odds with what you would expect of her. “Mother died when I was three. Father was absent most of the time. My childhood consisted of nannies and Avox. I spent my entire life trying to keep up with him, to be someone who he would look at and be proud of, he this mythical being who, despite me sharing a roof and blood with, I rarely saw. He was distant, but he was such for everyone, so I didn’t mind.

“He had these phases of sorts, where he would get… fixated over something. Obsessed,” Octavia continues, her eyes distant. The jump in topics could be considered jarring, almost unnecessary, if not for the fact that Mycroft can feel the threads of the story she is weaving, the pieces arranged for the conclusion. “I remember in my youth, Father was particularly fixated over old stories and mythology from the world before the Collapse. You could see the aftermath of it in the mansion now, the paintings and the artefacts. And I managed to keep track of these fixations, tried to connect to him through them, and they always faded after a while – some due to time and other things capturing his attention, others because they are no longer of concern. He was… predictable that way.

“And then you came,” Octavia says, her eyes training upon Mycroft’s form. “And you threw everything I knew about my father into the woodchipper.”

She falls quiet, looking down, grief clinging to her. 

“I was so deeply jealous when I figured it out,” Octavia states, picking up her cup again, but she does not take a sip. “For a long time, I thought that my father was simply… incapable of caring for another person like that. But then you came around, and you made everything so much worse, because you proved that notion wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Mycroft feels like he has to say, although he knows it is pointless. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“I think neither did he,” Octavia says, bitterness and grief and resignation in every word. “But it doesn’t change the fact that it happened. Did you know that you were his longest running obsession? He stopped having any sort of fixation after you became part of his Cabinet, and it only got worse once you left. Every moment that my father hadn’t spent running the country, he devoted to you. He chose you over his own blood, you the son he never had. Do you know how much that stings?”

“I can imagine,” Mycroft answers. “My own father and mother didn’t particularly… they weren’t the most supportive.”

Octavia huffs. “It’s one thing for one’s parents to not love them. It’s a special kind of hell to witness an interloper receive the attention and approval and love that one has craved for their entire life, that should have been given by right from their role as a parent. You may have had unsupportive parents but mine had proved that he could have been a good one, just… not to me.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call him a good parent to me,” Mycroft drawls. “He was the instigator of most of my trauma. He tortured the people I love.”

“But he was a parent to you, at least,” Octavia fires back, eyes dark. “And I didn’t say he was a good person, nor without his flaws, which I objectively acknowledge there were many.”

She then takes a deep breath. “It’s just… he chose you. And look at me, the blood daughter who he only had out of obligation.”

“I think his attention was a different kind of curse,” Mycroft comments. Octavia huffs.

“And I think we can agree to disagree,” Octavia says. “Although, what do either of us know, I truly never had his attention and you never stepped out of the spotlight in his eyes.”

They each take a sip of tea, letting the ghost linger.

“I don’t think I had ever seen my father so utterly… empty before, those days and weeks after the Quarter Quell,” Octavia finally muses, softly, mournful. “He would have burned the world for you. He almost did. He actually did.”

“He would have burned the world to the ground but he wouldn’t plant a tree. He would have given his life for me but he wouldn’t heal,” Mycroft returns, eyes downcast to peer into his tea. Maybe they should have had alcohol instead, sobriety doesn’t suit this conversation made of pain and regret and grief. “He turned me into a living weapon. A weapon he loved dearly, but a weapon nonetheless.”

“That’s my father alright,” Octavia laughs humorlessly. “Everything was either an asset, a problem, or worse, a threat. I think you were the closest person he ever saw to being a, well, a person.”

“You know I didn’t think you would criticise your father so thoroughly,” Mycroft admits. Octavia’s shrug is elegant.

“I suppose time changes us all, even the most static of us,” Octavia muses. “I changed. You changed. My father changed. Panem changed. It’s human nature to be fickle. And is there anything so undoing as a family? Is there anything so undoing as a child?”

Mycroft has Regina and Killian and Sherlock and everyone else. Octavia has her daughter, Aurelia, and now Tigris. Snow had Mycroft. They all have been irrevocably altered by the people around them, the people they hold dear. 

The face Octavia makes next is complicated, a pained rictus. “I have to ask… and you don’t have to answer because I know it’s a horrible thought, but did my father ever…? You know…”

Mycroft almost slips away, but manages to cling on. He’s not quite safe enough to disconnect.

Octavia is, shockingly, perhaps the only person that has ever outright asked him that question – even if she is dancing around it with language – and Mycroft doesn’t have an answer. His mind is a veritable mess in relation to the topic at hand, memories locked behind doors, but—

“Frankly, I think it would have been easier to understand everything if he did,” Mycroft answers, voice small. Because at least if he did, Mycroft would have known where they both stood, and it would have made hating him easier. It’s a horrible, wretched thought indeed. 

The hands that cradled Mycroft’s face and tilted it upwards to kiss his forehead had been soaked in unfathomable quantities of blood, including the blood of those he held most dear. But they cradled him all the same, and Mycroft cannot quite hate Coriolanus Snow the way the world does.

They are the children he left behind. The blood daughter he never wanted and the son he chose, two far ends of the spectrum of a father’s adoration – one who craved his attention but he never held and the other who ran but he chased until the ends of the earth and wanted to suffocate.

Silence. Octavia pours herself another cup of tea and Mycroft allows her to do the same for him.

“I think I’m going to dye my hair – temporary dye, I don’t want to damage it. Might go for black and purple. Take my husband’s name,” Octavia muses. “Finally get that Masters in Art History I always wanted.”

“We’re going to eventually create a museum for the artefacts we seized in the mansion and others,” Mycroft mentions. “We might need a curator. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Hey, it’s up to you.” Octavia shrugs. “Father made quick transfers of his assets in the final days of the war – I have a comfortable inheritance right now. Anything that had been under his name by the time he surrendered would have gone to you even if they hadn’t been taken under custody. The mansion and all related assets are under your name, do what you want with it. It’s in the will, if you need evidence. But I’ll… I’ll think about it, if I manage it.”

The two of them finish their tea in silence.

“The cremation is next week, Friday, as you are likely aware,” Mycroft states, standing. “None of mine are coming, so other than the cremator, it would be just me, you, and Tigris and your family if they wish to come.”

“And the ashes?” Octavia asks, rising. Both of them make their way to the door.

“Buried around the rose garden in the mansion.”

“Poetic,” Octavia murmurs, nodding. “He would have liked that. Although, I don’t think it will remain a rose garden for long.”

“I’ll ensure they keep a bush and bury the ashes there,” Mycroft amends. 

Octavia hums, and Mycroft opens the door.

“Goodbye, Octavia,” Mycroft says, stepping out.

“See you next week,” Octavia returns, closing the door.

Ultimately, six people arrive for the funeral. 

Killian comes along to support Mycroft. It is one of the many reasons why Mycroft loves him dearly, to love him even when Mycroft is grieving for someone who had hurt Killian. Octavia comes with her husband – Gaius – Aurelia, and Tigris.

There are two roses laid on the casket, belonging to the children of the father inside. Octavia takes time to speak softly to the casket of his father, as does Tigris. They don’t bother with eulogies.

Killian holds his hand when they burn the body. 

“I didn’t expect you to be good at gardening,” Mycroft says, watching Octavia pat down the soil.

“I was the one in charge of the staff before… everything,” Octavia merely responds, as she stands and pulls off her gloves, dusting away the grime from her overalls. “And I needed a hobby during my youth. We had a garden. I used it.”

They end up sitting on a bench in the garden. Mycroft notices an elegant fountain of a girl with ruffles for a skirt right next to them, water pouring from her eyes to her hands to the basin as a simulation for tears, a snake around her neck and songbirds sipping at the water in her hands and the basin. 

The fountain has always been there for as long as he could remember, made out of polished marble. It’s well maintained, even for a fountain in this garden – all the others have cracks and just a little bit of wear and tear, evidence of natural decay. Not this one, which looks just as fresh and pristine as if brand new despite its old age, still maintained by the staff even after the change of head.

Mycroft has always wondered whose likeness had been so adored by Snow as to have been captured for eternity in his garden. He had never asked, likely never would have gotten an answer even if he did. Another story that had been burned alongside the man.

There are more flowers than just roses now, which is perhaps the most shocking part of it. Scattered amongst the bushes of perfected white roses are peach blossom trees and marigold plants, pink petals falling upon the paths with hints of golden yellow in the whites.

They are silent, simply grieving.

“Well, I suppose I should wish you good luck, for… everything, I guess,” Octavia says, rising from the bench. “You have a lot of work to do.”

“And you too,” Mycroft echoes.

Octavia leaves, disappears, and Mycroft is alone.

He gets up after a bit, shrugging off the ghost that clings to him, and walks back to join his family.

Chapter Text

“Egeria, ensure that unless for an emergency of the utmost importance, I am not to be disturbed until I return.”

“I— of course, sir.”

The door shuts.

They hold off the funeral until they can bear it.

Sherlock’s body could not be recovered, and neither could Johanna’s, but they are dead, and it will only do to give them their final rites. So they prepare effigies of sorts with the materials they could scavenge from Thirteen. Fabric sewn into simulations of skin, rope dyed into their respective colours and woven into an imitation of hair. They dress the effigies in clothes remade into something that suits them more than the dull grey of Thirteen.

It does not matter if it is not their flesh, the memory is enough to haunt them.

They decide to go with One’s traditions, for none of them are familiar with Seven’s, and Mycroft leads the procession.

Snow is the only one in this funeral. The only one who is here to mourn.

The funerary customs of the Capitol – and District One – follow closely with those found in ancient texts regarding their forebears the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Mycroft has never created a completely white suit, so Snow took the suit that was the least pigmented and bleached it white – the colour of purity, the colour of ashes, the colour of death. He himself wears black.

It’s supposed to be a consecration, but it feels like a desecration, altering the suit beyond repair, to be burnt in a pyre. He could have gone without it, but it would feel wrong to simply leave Mycroft without a suit in the afterlife.

He clothes a wooden mannequin in it, anointing the doll in oil and perfume and aftershave to at least make it smell like him, dressing it up accordingly until it could look like his boy if you squinted at it from far away. He places a wreath – woven with lilies and roses and wild celery – atop his head.

He then wraps silk and linen around the effigy, above it all a shroud of white and gold silk brocade, before laying it in a coffin of wood.

Snow kneels before the symbol, prostrating before it, hands clasped tightly together in what might be prayer in another life – asking for mercy, asking for forgiveness, knowing he will receive none – and tries desperately not to sob.

(Murderer, his ghost tells him, casting judgement. How dare you act like you care now.)

It starts with a meal. 

As Sherlock's closest kin, Mycroft would usually be in charge of the preparation of the feast. However, this is not just for Sherlock, and considering the bonds that tie them all together, Finnick – by extension, Annie – and John had chosen to take charge. Mycroft was never the best at cooking anyway.

Coin had not been happy with them pilfering supplies and seizing the kitchen in order to prepare what they need, but Mycroft easily steamrolls over her and promises that this will be the last – from them at least. Q and Gold will make their own arrangements for Beetee if they chose to do so.

It is not a quiet meal, unlike another funeral that Mycroft had attended. Sherlock and Johanna would have hated silence and they all knew it, so the meal is as much a celebration of their lives as it is a grievance of their deaths.

In tradition, the dead man is considered the host and it is regarded as his expression of thanks to his comrades for their courtesy in burying them.

Mycroft eats some of the food prepared. It is only polite.

Snow skips the meal. The perideipnon was meant as gratitude towards the mourners for burying them, and Mycroft owes him nothing, especially not towards his murderer. He killed him after all, burying him is the least he could do. And a feast for one is a waste of food and effort.

Instead he obtains a black bull – black for the chthonic – sprinkles atop its head flour and salt, and kills it with a quick axe to its neck – the haimacouria, the blood propitiation, crimson spilling onto the marble altar. It doesn’t take long before his hand is in its guts, pulling out entrails into a pot for inspection. And once Snow has certified all is well, he burns the guts alongside incense so that Ceres, if she is real, will allow Mycroft to pass to the Underworld peacefully, to finally rest. 

Snow has never been one for belief, for fates and gods. Mycroft changed things. Mycroft changed a lot of things.

(He doesn’t want Mycroft to come back as a revenant. Snow is haunted enough as he is.)

He carefully cleans the altar of blood, this sacred place, and washes his hands clean so that he may handle the rest of the flesh with care.

He offers a portion to Mycroft’s ghost, dedicates it later to be burnt alongside the effigy, and consumes his own portion.

He is so hungry – a hunger that had started when he had nothing, a  hunger that had intensified when he had fallen in love with his boy a long time ago, a hunger that will never be satiated – and the meat still tastes like ash.

Each of them shears just two locks of hair from their heads, and Finnick and Annie weave them into two beautiful braids. Red, blond, black of all shades – out of many, one, e pluribus unum, the proof that Sherlock Holmes and Johanna Mason had been so dearly loved and will continue to be so.

They do not have the hair of Regina Holmes, Killian Jones and James Bond. All of them can only hope that they will not have to make three new braids for them. All of them can only wish they will have to.

They all agree on cremation. It would feel wrong to bury mere simulacrums into the dirt, and it isn’t precisely a good idea for them to go to the surface.

They manage to source wine, this time, somehow. Wine and grain and water and milk and oil as the libations, spilling upon the ground, onto the coffins. Annie and Finnick say their prayers, soft tones in the water-like language of Four.

He cuts off a lock of white hair, and places it gently into the coffin.

The choai – the libation of honey, milk, water, wine, perfumes, and oils mixed in varying amounts – is then poured upon the stele Snow had commissioned when this became a possibility. A possibility that Snow had never truly internalised until it became reality.

(Murderer, the ghosts condemn. You’ve done it again.)

And then, the rest of the enagismata – the offerings to the dead. The nourishment needed. Mycroft had never been one to eat under stress unless forced to; he must be starving by now. Not to mention they skipped the perideipnon and it is Snow’s duty to provide for him. 

An offering of honey, oil, milk and wine. Cake and bread baked by his own hands. More flowers in a wreath. He does not take any for himself, no matter how hungry he is. He has not eaten anything other than that but of sacred meat since the Arena had fallen three days ago. 

Under Ancient Roman tradition and belief, when the deceased received a sacrifice, they were now a deity, albeit one of the numberless Underworld Dii Manes – the chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent souls of deceased loved ones.

It feels disrespectful to group Mycroft’s wondrous, incandescent, extraordinary spirit with those of the masses, the rabble. If Mycroft had ascended to literal godhood, he would have taken on the Dii Consentes and won.

So Snow kneels despite his aching bones and weeps, his tears just another aspect of the libations.

He rests his forehead upon the altar, neck upon the execution block.

Each of them takes a moment to commemorate, speaking of their lives with Sherlock and Johanna, brother and sister in the ways it matters.

Most of them can’t keep from crying. Even Emma, who hadn’t known them personally, had sobbed during the eulogies.

Mycroft does not cry. He has long since exhausted his tears.

He presses a gentle kiss goodnight to what would have been Sherlock’s forehead, and lets a single drop slip from his eye.

He presses a chaste kiss to the likeness of his son, and then closes the casket.

Snow then ignites a torch, the fire the only warm thing in this area, and brings it to the pyre, averting his face.

The effigy goes up in flames, light illuminating the night.

He breathes in the taste of ash and embers, and screams.

They close the caskets after the final goodbyes. Falsities the corpses may be, it is real in the ways it matters.

The operator of Thirteen’s crematory charges the two coffins into the cremators. And they watch as the caskets burn.

It feels like giving up, doing away with whatever irrational hope that they lived, although dead they must be. Johanna slit at the throat. Sherlock drowned.

They are dead, along with most of the Victors, and countless across Panem from a war that Mycroft himself has planned. It should mean something that they are here, here to be able to fight another day, to be able to grieve, to finish what they have started, what they have given their life to begin. It doesn’t.

One day, it will. They will win the war, or they will die trying.

In the Homeric times, the blood of men and animals was regarded as the nourishment most agreeable to the dead. Achilles, on the tomb of Patroclus, slew twelve young Trojans, four horses, two dogs and a herd of cattle and of sheep.

The blade he used to cut open the ox, its steel glinting in the fire light like stars (like the stars of his boy’s eyes), calls to him to be used upon himself. It’s almost hypnotic, this siren’s song.

He is empty. So deeply empty. The lights have gone out and it is his fault. The shattered pieces unbound in chaos, visionless and despairing. 

He is a dead man walking. And there is nothing left to fight for in this bloodstained, damned, cruel world. His life is over, pathetically, sadly so.

His son is gone. His light is gone, the world gone dark in his wake. He killed him.

Seppuku is an ancient ritual suicide where a samurai  – a warrior of an old culture – kills himself by cutting into his belly.

The blade hovers just above where his entrails would be. It would be painful, this death, and a death that would satiate the ghosts, penance through blood.

Do it, you pathetic, useless mutt, Dr Gaul hisses, the shadows of snakes in her hair. You are a failed experiment. And failed experiments are best scrapped so as not to waste any more resources on them. I would have ended you myself were I alive.

He briefly contemplates cutting out his own heart, to place it into the pyre to be burned, and discards that thought out of practicality. The pain would be too debilitating.

Do us all a favour and end it all, will you? Lucy Gray jeers, unkind; wrathful; vengeful. Sixty-five years after it was preferable, but it’s never too late, isn’t it?

Another thought, to burn himself with the fire, ashes mingling together no matter the falsity of Mycroft’s effigy. But he doesn’t deserve to be burnt in the same sacred fire as he, no matter the fact it’s more symbolic than anything.

I would have wanted you to do it, Mycroft murmurs. You have caused so much pain to those that I have loved, it seems only just.

It would be so easy. And he is so tired.

Join us, Coryo, Sejanus smiles. Face us. Stop running. Death will come eventually. Might as well have it on your own terms.

Panem had been built by him as an empire. But all men will die, all empires will fall, and Time eats his all children in the end. It’s meaningless to cling on when there is nothing left. Panem existed long before he did. Panem will continue to exist long after. The forms taken shall be different, but when it changes, he will be dust and bone. It does not concern him.

Nothing matters. Oceans will rise, empires will fall, and he is nothing but a speck of dust. A mortal, ephemeral man in an uncaring universe.

Your body is decaying, your country is in a civil war where what will emerge will be worse than before no matter the winner, Mycroft states, coldly. There is no point in prolonging the inevitable. End it, now.

“What was it, my dear?” Snow murmurs to no one. “What was it you felt in your last moments? Was it pain? At so many threads left unfinished? Or was it relief? At finally coming to eternal rest?”

The Rebellion is my final work, Mycroft states, the angel of death. If you want to honour me, let it succeed. Let my vision be realised, let the tree I had given my life to bear fruit. Cut off the serpent’s head yourself, burn away the poison.

The blade moves closer, held tightly with shaking, white fingers. A sob echoes in the room, one that he does not recognise as coming from himself until he does.

From Sejanus
End your suffering, Coryo, end their suffering

From Lucy Gray
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me

From Dr Gaul
Such a pathetic mutt, lost cause you are

Do it

Do it

DO IT

(and the final command, from one he would have done anything for, full of rage, full of hatred, full of righteousness fury, the voice of all of Panem behind him)

KILL YOURSELF

He stabs the blade into his hand, through the muscle and skin, and gasps for air. And it is 

silent. 

The sharp physical pain is a welcoming sensation, bringing something almost like clarity to him, something he can focus upon like a lifeline, holding it between clenched fingers to ease the waters that threaten to consume him. It is infinitely preferable to the emotional emptiness or the mental anguish, to drowning in sorrows and fears.

The shade of Mycroft is the only one here, illuminated by the burning pyre. He looks at Snow with nothing but disdain.

Of course you have chosen self-preservation, Mycroft murmurs, venomous and pitying and disappointed. There is blood on his lips. You petty, pathetic, selfish coward.

No, he has to finish what he’s started.

(The rest of the war, the blood spilt upon the soil, shall serve as his offering.)

He turns his back to Snow, and disappears with the embers.

Snow is alone.

(Alone protects him.)

(He doesn’t want to be alone. Anything – truly anything, including pain and derision – is better than being alone. Snow can withstand against the burning fire, he cannot stand in the desolate cold.)

The blood stains the altar. Snow carefully, with as much stability of his hand as he could muster despite the pain, extracts the knife from his hand. He grinds his teeth as the blade slices through nerves, uses his good hand to staunch the blood flow, and moves to hover near the pyre, uncaring of the possibility of being burnt.

He bleeds into the fire, the flames consuming the offering hungrily, as if the spirits fueling the pyre are viciously baying for his blood with anger and vengeance.

They obtain the ashes in two different containers. They are mostly made of wood ashes and fabric, with no bones involved – but they still felt compelled to treat them with respect.

For Johanna, Finnick travels up to the surface, and returns with an empty urn. He knows the exact tree he scattered the ashes at to nourish.

For Sherlock, they give it to John Watson to hold. Mycroft doesn’t quite trust himself with it.

In the end, the world keeps turning, the machine keeps running, and they get back to work. They have people to fight for, they have the living to fight for, and that is an excellent motivator.

Snow tends to his hand – Dr Gaul had forced him to know at least first aid and quite a bit of practical medicine – disinfecting it, stitching it and wrapping it with leftover linen, before he collects the ashes into an urn.

It is not real, but Snow sprinkles the ashes with wine anyway, and then heads to his rose garden – well, not really his rose garden anymore, now that there are other flowers in the mix – and buries it beneath a marigold plant.

He sits on a bench by it for quite some time.

(He stops taking his medication.)

“Okay, bad news,” Octavia’s voice sounds through the phone. “Father’s funeral shroud is missing.”

“His what is missing?” Mycroft asks.

“His funeral shroud,” Octavia repeats. “Our entire family prepares shrouds in advance just in case one of us dies suddenly and prematurely, but my father’s is missing.”

“What did it look like?” Mycroft asks. “When did you last see it?”

“White and gold silk brocade. Predominately white,” Octavia responds. “And the last I had seen it was before the war. There aren’t many reasons why I would go looking for my father's funeral shroud, that’s just asking for bad luck, superstitious it may be.”

“Not white, blue and silver?” Mycroft has to inquire. “Most of the Capitol has funeral shrouds with their House’s colours.”

“Most of the Capitol concerns themselves with opulence, but my father was rather charmed by the idea of following the old traditions where ours had been derived from, and the gold was already pushing it,” Octavia responds. “So, three cloths all together, but I don’t have his shroud, so I’m going to use my own and obtain myself a new one later on.”

“I have contacts in Eight and would be happy to supply you with a replacement,” Mycroft says.

“I— uh, yes,” Octavia merely responds. “That would be appreciated.”

It is the only time in Mycroft’s memory that Snow does not smell like blood. No longer decaying, instead dead and lifeless, body in biological stasis. Instead, it merely smells vaguely of roses and other flowers, the scent not nearly as pungent as it had been in his life now that it no longer needs to cover up rust, having been cleaned of it. Godliness had long since been outlawed, traditions lost with it, but cleanliness was still next to that lacuna where the divine once resided.

He is wrapped in a funeral shroud – a beautiful silk thing, white with delicate gold embroidery in roses. Below must be the linen. Atop his head, a wreath made of roses and marigolds, gold bringing it all together, a crown for a dead man and a former ruler. 

He looks peaceful, suggesting nothing of the violent death, the execution.

Octavia is an excellent cook, as they found. A surprise considering that most women of the upper echelons of Capitol society, despite having been expected to be homemakers, usually pawn that duty off to Avox and servants.

“It was actually Father who taught me how to cook, actually,” Octavia admits softly, when Mycroft comments on it and that statement is more surprising than the fact that she could cook. “He wanted me to become self-sufficient, so he brought me to the kitchen one day and gave me a crash course in how to safely cook and the most basic skills I needed. The more advanced culinary skills he left me to learn on my own through research or the chefs, but he introduced me.”

“Was he a good cook?” Mycroft has to ask. Octavia’s smile is bittersweet.

“Yes, very – from what I remember at least,” Octavia says.

They bring the body to the crematory in an unmarked vehicle. Cremation as previously agreed upon and legally mandated – they don’t want anyone to get any ideas and exhume the remains. The attendants do a double take at the presence of leftovers of the Snow family, but Mycroft is given a reassurance of their silence. No one with ill intention shall know of their presence.

They move on with the libations. At first Mycroft had thought that Octavia would be the primary mourner, but she had simply shook her head and gave him a significant look when he asked.

(“Traditionally, the sacrifice would also have a blood propitiation,” Octavia muses. “But I think enough blood has already been spilt in my father’s name.”)

So he pours wine and milk and honey upon the casket, and dedicates a lock of his hair. Octavia hands over a pair of scissors, and Mycroft shears off a lock of his hair. He places it into the casket, and upon the casket, a white rose.

There is no prayer, but in replacement, steps forward Octavia – who places another rose – and then Tigris, each taking moments to speak to the body. Octavia’s dialogue is short, but Tigris’ is longer, made of bitterness and grief, and she comes away from it with tears at the corners of her eyes.

It is desperately quiet, wrought with suffocating intimacy, urgency. It is quite on-brand for the Snow.

They finally close the casket, and they give it to the technicians to handle and stand back to watch.

He hears the collapse and scream of Tigris as the body burns, a haunting, shrill scream that is too raw to quantify. He hears the sobbing of Octavia, shattering.

Killian holds his hand as Mycroft turns away and lets himself weep.

A garden, a final resting place, a gardener’s final work, to tend to it with his own ashes.

Nothing more to be said about it.

Chapter Text

Mycroft is so incredibly warm beneath his touch; despite the alcohol in his veins, he runs perpetually hot, warmth seeping through layers of hard fabric. Ironic, considering the moniker the Capitol has bestowed upon him. 

“I had never asked about the carpets. But… why?”

Mycroft’s arm is anchored around his neck, and Snow’s arm is tucked under his shoulders to pull him up. The night is quiet, only pierced by their chatter and the sound of their movements, muffled by the carpets they are conversing about.

His boy sways dangerously, and Snow stabilises him by placing a hand upon his abdomen. Well, if Mycroft falls, at least it will be a soft landing.

“Well, first is that it allows one to get a gauge of who is here and where they went based on the displacement patterns in the fabric. Second, is that I am not particularly fond of the sound shoes make on solid marble, it’s… distracting.” Then, Snow smiles. It could be considered a grin, perhaps, on another man. “And the faces they make when I appear next to them unnoticed until it is too late are always amusing.”

He sees a smile on the boy’s face at the rather silly reason. Mycroft is drunk enough to require assistance to stand up straight, so Snow allows himself to joke, to fall into informality he wouldn’t otherwise in any other circumstance. His boy won’t remember it.

He opens the door to Mycroft’s set of rooms, briefly letting go of his abdomen to turn on the lights. Low, of course, they want to encourage rest.

“However, it does create more work, doesn’t it? To maintain them,” Mycroft murmurs. “Considering those who come and go. They must make such a mess on a daily basis.”

“And I am the President of this country. I have access to more than enough staff to take care of my abode,” Snow responds, as he shepherds them to Mycroft’s bed. And once they reach it, Snow pulls away the duvet to settle Mycroft upon the soft sheets sitting upright. Well, as upright of a position as an inebriated boy could maintain while drunk for the first time.

“Alright,” Snow says, not to anyone in particular, casting a glance at his boy, before heading towards the closet. “Mind if you take your clothes off for me, Mycroft?”

The air suddenly becomes incredibly tense as he registers how his poor choice of words can be construed – silently cursing himself for such a mistake of speech – and for the first time in a long while, Snow feels what might be perceived as guilt.

“Not like that, dear child,” Snow chides softly, turning back to look at Mycroft. There is a slight tinge of horror at the very idea of forcing him like that, as if it would be an abhorrent desecration – the same reason he refuses to look at footage from Mycroft’s appointments, had erased them, had stopped recording them. He never gives himself time to analyse such an instinct. “I doubt you want to sleep in a three-piece suit, do you?”

“I’m comfortable in it,” Mycroft merely rejoins with admirable steadiness despite being drunk and wary and scared and vulnerable. But he does remove his suit jacket and moves to remove the rest of his outfit. Such a brave boy he is.

Snow turns back around to the closet, and picks out a pair of pajamas made of decadent light blue silk, as well as a pair of underwear he gives no thought to. He walks back over to place the items of clothing onto the edge of the bed – where Mycroft is now busy unbuttoning his shirt – and walks over to the door, taking out his phone as he does. He sends a quick message to the kitchens.

Snow waits, his back turned away from Mycroft for his privacy, the silence made unfortunately more awkward with the sound of fabric rustling and moving. If Snow had been any lesser man, he would have given in to the urge to start fidgeting. As of it, he merely waits.

The knocking upon the door is a welcome sound when it comes. When he opens the door, an Avox passes a tray – upon it, a plate with an assortment of buns and a glass of water – to Snow. He dismisses them and closes the door, but still waits until—

“Okay,” he hears Mycroft say, and despite the softer tone – almost muttered, a sound not meant to be vocalised in the first place – it is loud in such a silent room. “I’m decent now.”

Mycroft sits on the edge of the bed, hunched over, hand on both sides of him pressing into the sheets. For someone who is about as tall as Snow himself and is not done growing, who often holds himself with a maturity not found in men two times his age, he looks unbearably small like this. An aching vulnerability in his very frame.

He’s stripped of his suit, his armour, sitting there bare. It makes him look younger than he already is. 

Snow moves back to his side, placing the tray upon the nightstand, and then uses a hand to gently shift him to sit upon the bed properly, leaning back upon the headboard.

“I should’ve washed up,” Mycroft murmurs, looking down at his hands that sit upon his lap. Snow sits at the edge of the bed, but doesn’t take his attention off his boy. He tilts his head at that statement, and Mycroft continues, “I spent most of the evening downstairs drinking and eating and socialising. Bit of a waste of a perfectly fresh set of nightwear to sleep in with all this… perspiration on my body, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” Snow hums. And then, as dry as a desert: “But you can barely walk straight and after all you have done it would be truly a shame for you to die by braining yourself on the sink.”

A joyous sound startles out of him in a bark, before evolving into true laughter – a chortle, a guffaw perhaps. The sound is unexpectedly beautiful to Snow, like bells and chimes in the wind, light and free, if springtime had a sound, a symphony.

There are stars in his eyes when Mycroft laughs. All Snow can do now is simply stare at such a (wonderful; heartbreaking; lovely) sight, deeply and unsettlingly enthralled for reasons he cannot grasp, and vaguely aware that his cheeks are heating up.

Eventually, he gets swept up in the tides of emotion, letting the joy infect him like an illness, and knowing – hoping – that Mycroft will not remember this moment, Snow lets himself laugh too.

“Sorry,” Mycroft eventually says, settled. There is still a gentle smile on his face but his eyes are… weary. “It’s such a silly joke – if it even was a joke – I don’t know why I laughed at it… I don’t know why I’m so happy.”

“It’s your birthday,” Snow gently reminds. He almost wanted to catch himself. He doesn’t. “It was your big day, of course you are. I would be concerned if you weren’t. “

All of this was to make him happy, to show what Snow is capable of doing for him, an invitation of honey and happiness so that Mycroft would genuinely have reason to stay beyond his work or threat of destruction when the Contract is over, when the ownership stops being literal.

And also, it turns out, Snow has become fond of his boy. A complication, but one that won’t matter if all goes to plan. Mycroft deserves some rest before the work truly begins.

Mycroft merely looks at Snow as if he can’t quite believe what he’s saying. Snow chooses to ignore that, and instead shifts the plate from the tray to rest upon his lap.

“I’m not hungry,” Mycroft asserts, having caught Snow’s intention, the sound on the edge of petulance. “You had prepared me a feast. I am far from hungry.”

“And you are very drunk right now,” Snow counters drily. “You will not appreciate the hangover in the morning, the carbohydrates and hydration will alleviate some of your future suffering.”

A moment of silence as his hand hovers above the buns – each one freshly baked and aromatic, sugar and spice, hunger-inducing – contemplating which one to choose first.

“You grew up malnourished, didn’t you?”

Snow turns back to Mycroft, who looks at him with sharp and almost sober eyes, piercing, the inebriation freeing him from his fear. His brilliance unpolluted by fear, a worldview undistorted, sight clear.

It suits him, this lack of fear. Snow wants to see more of it, more of Mycroft like this – a first, truly, for him to want someone unafraid. Boldness is where he shines, when the stars in his eyes burn like supernovas.

“It would make sense,” Mycroft continues his deduction in a soft almost contemplative tone. “The Rebellion coincided with your youth and your house was dying. That's why you’re, uh, vertically challenged. Childhood malnutrition over a sustained period of time has its lasting consequences.”

Instead of feeling any sort of anger or frustration at Mycroft figuring out something he dearly wished to bury, all Snow can feel is some sort of relief that he knows, that he can understand.

Oh, clever boy you are.

“I was,” Snow simply responds, and watches the tension leave Mycroft’s frame. “And that is why you need to eat.”

Mycroft makes a reach for the plate, but Snow gently pushes it away. His boy simply raises an eyebrow.

“I am not letting your hands get dirty while in bed,” Snow says. Mycroft gives him a look that is close to a glare as he would ever dare to give his Sponsor. 

“I am already in a less than pristine state,” Mycroft points out. Snow simply smiles.

“You kept your hands clean by utilising cutlery, sugar and oil and crumbs are different things from natural bodily fluids you already produce when asleep,” Snow says. Mycroft is unimpressed but concedes.

Snow finally picks one – a flavour that Mycroft has not tried before, that can later be washed down with flavours he does like if he finds it not of his particular palate – and raises it to Mycroft’s mouth.

The bun is a pale tan with a pink-red undertone, almost like sun-kissed skin. Mycroft inspects it with surprisingly sharp eyes for someone under the influence.

“It’s not plain, is it?” Mycroft says, for it’s not truly a question.

“No,” Snow answers.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” 

“And where would the fun be in that?” Snow can’t help but tease. Goodness gracious, thank every god that Mycroft is drunk because he is slipping away from propriety. “Go on, I think you might like this one. I wouldn’t ruin the night with something you don’t like. Now, open wide.”

Mycroft gives one more glance at the bread with narrow eyes, before he opens his mouth and leans in.

Snow’s mouth strangely goes dry when he watches Mycroft bite into the hot, spongy core of the bread. He knows teeth have hit the filling when red viscous cream spills out of the seams of his mouth, and Mycroft makes a sound at the sudden emergence of flavour.

Mycroft draws back, tearing the bread apart and chewing upon it. Crimson stains his mouth like blood, a bright red under the low light, as if he had just taken a bite out of freshly butchered meat.

Mycroft brings a hand to his mouth – not quite touching, just to ensure nothing escapes his working jaws – and contemplates as he chews. “Sweet and a little sour, similar to cranberries but… distinct from it. What is it?”

“Pomegranate,” Snow merely responds. Pomegranate, like the fruit Persephone ate to bind her to the Underworld. The blood red rubies of the edible arils, a structure resembling the human heart, break open the skin and pry it open and deseed it with delicate patience, like a carcass.

And now he is hungry. Or rather, the hunger he has maintained as a baseline status – a lingering need, a reminder of his purpose – makes itself known.

“Pomegranate?” Mycroft echoes, then he swallows. “I’ve never tried it before. It’s not bad.”

“The cream in this one is much sweeter than the fruit, so a fair warning if you do try it,” Snow says. “It’s my favourite fruit.”

“Really? I’ve never seen you eat one,” Mycroft comments. Snow smiles, something amused.

“I prefer to eat in private anyways, Mycroft,” Snow answers. “And considering how messy they can be, I only indulge on special occasions. I sneak the taste into whatever I can.”

“And you gambled on whether I would like it?”

“Was I wrong?”

There is a small huff coming from Mycroft that might constitute something like laughter, and he opens his mouth again. Snow pushes the rest of the bread into his mouth, and he feels a light scrape of teeth at his fingertips.

It feels right, feeding Mycroft, as if it’s just making a known metaphor between them into something literal, something visceral, something tangible. Snow has given Mycroft his time, his mentorship, his protection, his power, and will continue to do so, to feed Mycroft of himself and the nation until he becomes something capable of standing on his own feet to brave the world, like a mother feeding their baby their own milk, or the myth of the pelican where they fed their children blood from wounds they had torn of their chest. 

The sacrament, perhaps. Nourishment of sweet blood. Blood of innocents and the damned both, Thanatos reaping indiscriminately, Themis holding the scales blind, Zeus both a king and the order of law. Snow will feed him poison and violence until he is made of it, until Mycroft spits it back up to feed another, like birds feeding their chicks. Snow will feed him until it turns decadent in Mycroft’s mouth, just as it has for him. People like them can stomach anything if it’s for the sake of something greater; medication never truly tastes good.

Mycroft has the blood of eight children on his hands, which is at least four more (five, if Lucy Gray managed to flee that day) than Snow had when he emerged from the bloody abyss and was greeted by Dr Gaul feeding snakes. He’s done plenty of the work already, the base form, all Snow needs to do is add the finer details.

To make a piece of pottery, sometimes you have to carve out pieces from the clay, sometimes you have to press down and shape it with your hands, sometimes you have to add new pieces. One will always have to place it through the fire in the end.

Mycroft Holmes will be more fortunate than Snow had been at his age, and will not make the same mistakes.

It will be of no burden to nurture him, or at least the benefits outweigh the negatives. There is something so deeply satisfying about seeing Mycroft grow replete in all regards, about seeing his cheeks colour with health and happiness, about witnessing his pleasure, a primal sort of gratification built into the human genome. Perhaps to see him grow strong, perhaps to stuff him with something sweet and savoury so that Snow can devour him in the future, perhaps both. He hasn’t decided yet, it will depend on if and how Mycroft proves himself. 

Mycroft is a prince from the rabble to be educated and feted, a diamond from the dirt to be cut and faceted; raw iron to be made into steel and forged into the sharpest blade imaginable.

Roses are heavy feeders, and one cannot feed every bloom. If you want a thriving garden, some shoots must go without. Mycroft is a rose – delicate and petals bruised from his past, thorned and drinking from blood, beautiful in the ways it matters – that has been deprived for so long, that must be fed so as to see him shine amongst the dullness.

Mycroft moves to wipe his mouth, but Snow gently bats it away.

“Ah-ah,” Snow chides. “Keep your hands clean.”

Despite being inebriated, Mycroft’s gaze is patently unamused. “I am not an invalid.”

“I know you aren’t,” Snow agrees, a heavy weight. “But do you want to get up now?”

Mycroft simply gives him a look, and lowers his hand, placing it on his lap. He doesn’t pull away when Snow places fingers along the line of his jaw, malleable under his touch.

He wipes away the worst of the red coloured cream from Mycroft’s lips with a thumb. And he wouldn’t know why if asked later, but he… lingers. 

He has a strange desire to push, to press in deeper, to penetrate that red-stained mouth with his fingers, to separate lips and pry open the jaws, to explore it and press upon the canines and the molars and dwell upon the sharpness. Snow has a strange desire to see what would Mycroft’s reaction be if he did. Would Mycroft go still and helpless? Let himself be controlled by his Sponsor and President for fear of punishment? Or would he bite down and bleed him? Blood seeping onto his tongue, tasting iron – something he had already been acquainted with.

Snow hopes it would be the latter. That he would see blood-stained teeth, unfearing, ruthless, dangerous. Peeling back the civility to witness something just ever so slightly savage. A survivor. Just like he had been in the Arena. Something unbound. Something delightfully monstrous. Something like Snow himself so he won’t be alone in this—

“Snow?”

Time resumes its proper course and Snow looks back at Mycroft, who merely stares back with something questioning and concerned and just ever so slightly uncomfortable in his eyes. He looks so very young like this, a boy instead of the man he likes to be, a fragile neck and limbs too long to be comfortable, eyes the gaze of one who has not yet learnt what it means to be broken, naive in very painful ways despite his experience. Like a delicate prey animal, a baby bird for Snow’s serpent jaws to swallow whole, a fawn to be devoured by a larger predator – but in the wild, almost all herbivores are facultative, and prey animals tend to have the most violent of defense mechanisms. Snow supposes that is part of the appeal.

“My apologies,” Snow murmurs, retracting his hand. His fingers are just ever so slightly sticky. He takes out a handkerchief to wipe at Mycroft’s mouth, and then hands him a glass of water, which Mycroft drinks from, taking a brief moment to let it linger before swallowing.

Snow glances back at his handkerchief as he withdraws it, the white stained with two types of red, the fresh lifeblood red of pomegranate sweetness and darkened deadness of dried blood. 

“Here, another,” Snow murmurs, as he lifts another bun – gently dusted with powder and fragrant with sweetness and spice –  to Mycroft’s mouth. His boy briefly gives it a quick sniff, and hums a noise of consideration.

“Cinnamon sugar?” is Mycroft’s guess, and Snow only gives a curt nod. And at that, Mycroft leans in and takes a bite – making an appreciative note – and then another, and then another, until nothing is left. 

Hunger. Both of them are so familiar with it. Such an appetite for both the basic and finer things of life.

“One more, dear boy,” Snow murmurs, picking up the final bun – swirled with a darker brown and ivory white – and bring it to his mouth.

Mycroft doesn’t bother with analysing it, instead leaning forward and taking a bite of the bun at once.

Mycroft makes a soft delighted moan at the flavour that must have leaked onto his tongue (a favourite, Snow catalogues into an ever growing library in his mind) and Snow almost looks away at the sound. He doesn’t.

“Vanilla and chocolate,” Mycroft comments, a soft smile on his lips that makes him look as young as his age suggests.

Sixteen. No where near an adult and yet he is worth a hundred men. But that was to be expected, Snow would only pick the greatest them after all, would only create the most magnificent works of art.

(He looked upon the boy – his boy – in the Arena, and saw it. A kindred spirit.)

Snow looks back at the plate and finds it empty. For some reason, the disappointment stings.

Mycroft finishes the glass of water, and Snow places it back onto the tray. And with a gentle push of his chest, Mycroft lays back down slowly, following Snow’s directive.

Mycroft does not close his eyes, does not turn over, instead he merely stares into something Snow cannot see. Snow lets the silence permeate.

Snow pulls the covers over Mycroft’s body, a shroud of rest, and his boy finally deigns to speak.

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Mycroft finally says, a murmur. 

“Why?” Snow asks.

The slight breath of air is agonising. “I don’t want this day to end.”

Snow looks at him. There is a sadness and ache in his being that seems to be bone deep, etched into his very psyche, cracks that are waterlogged with blood and tears. Without the mask of ice and steel, it is as if there is no skin at all, bearing witness to the flayed flesh of a child.

His boy is hopelessly vulnerable, and so very young. 

Snow doesn't quite remember being this young.

(He killed Coryo, his youth, buried beneath the rubble of an arena, swinging from the rope in Twelve, laying on the grass in a forest with birds feeding upon his body.)

(Snow was the god – cruel, true, monstrous and holy  that lived inside Coryo's head, and when cracked open, he emerged, the birth of Wisdom as Athena had been born from Zeus. But Coryo was no god. He was human, and he died like one.)

(He doesn’t celebrate his birthday anymore, not knowing which one to. Coriolanus was born in Spring. Snow came to life in October.)

“You may have the day off tomorrow,” Snow says, is all he can say. Mycroft nods, and finally turns to rest his cheek against the pillow.

Snow does not move, but when Mycroft does not close his eyes to sleep, he decides to leave. But just as he shifts upon the bed to stand, Mycroft finally speaks.

“Are you going to use this against me?” Mycroft asks, looking up at Snow with an ancient tiredness and a child’s hurt.

The question makes him look back at Mycroft, who does not quite look at Snow but past him. 

In the face of another, it would have meant nothing but a desperate plea, and Snow would have felt nothing. It is not so for Mycroft. For his boy. He has a duty of care.

(Mycroft is his. The nation is his, the Palace is his, the Capitol is his, but Mycroft is his. Somehow, that means something different.)

“I am a cruel man,” Snow admits, because he is, he is willing to spill more blood than most, and his wrath burns like hellfire until nothing is left. “But I—” Look at him, stumbling over the words to say when he is usually eloquent. He swallows blood, hoping the metallic taste resolves him into iron. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” Truth. “I’m not that cruel to use a child’s joy against them.”  A lie. 

Snow is a murderer of children. He killed Bobbin, he killed Mayfair, he killed Sejanus, and he is the one who oversees the Games that take at least twenty-three children every year. But perhaps he didn’t lie, perhaps not to this child.

(Oh, how far he has fallen.)

“Do you swear?” Mycroft asks; murmurs; pleads, a sound so soft, a zephyr. It tastes like trust, fragile and sweet and desperate.

Snow shouldn’t promise something like that. He is a liar, but he does not want to be so to Mycroft.

“I swear,” Snow promises, and it’s true. Foolishly, it’s true, but he is helpless, spellbound.

(Mycroft trusts him to heed, even when intoxicated. In Vino Veritas. That trust is a delicate thing. Snow can’t help but ache.)

The silence is long and assessing, Mycroft looking Snow fearlessly in the eyes, and Snow finds himself bare.

Mycroft gives a minuscule nod, something in him relaxing, and such a sight expels all the air from Snow’s lungs.

(What has he done to him?)

Finally, Mycroft’s eyes slip shut. 

Snow remains, seated at the edge of the bed, watching over him. And when there is finally a change in breathing, Snow… does not move.

Instead, he remains, and watches, and observes. Lingering. (He does not quite know why.)

Mycroft’s expression in slumber is one of peace, almost otherworldly as if nothing could touch him, a sort of grace; but there is a subtle stress to him, an everlasting constant that mars what would have been a visage worthy of old paintings.

Snow continues to watch him sleep, painting a snapshot of this moment to hang in his mental library in a prominent area, and decides to contemplate the future.

When Snow had Contracted Mycroft to himself, it had meant that they were both bound to each other. Mycroft far more literally than Snow himself – he cannot leave for ten years, and by the time he could, he will not want to (the thought is… titillating, for a lack of a better term) – but Snow too had pledged his time and effort. 

Mycroft, so far, has proven himself a worthy investment. More competent than most of the Capitol, and there is a spark of something magnificent in him – that same spark that resembled his own all those years ago.

In order to create a marble statue, one must chisel away pieces of material – to crack, to break, to destroy in order to shape. Breaking open the skin of a pomegranate to get to the sweetness of the arils.

It will be heartbreaking at times, but it will be worth it, to chisel away crude humanity to create something utterly beautiful. 

It’s one of Snow’s favourite activities, cultivating – assets, flowers, a nation. He will enjoy doing so with Mycroft; his boy is already shaping up to be so very captivating. It will be no chore, quite the opposite actually: it will be the greatest pleasure.

(His mind could fixate on a problem like that – anything, really – and not let go. As if controlling one element of his world would keep him from ruin. It was a bad habit that blinded him to other things that could harm him. A tendency toward obsession was hardwired into his brain and would likely be his undoing if he couldn't learn to outsmart it.)

Snow will lower him into waters, to death, all so Mycroft can shed his mortality, that vile, dirty humanity. It will be heartbreaking, holding him down and watching him struggle, witnessing the boy die just like Snow had, but with it something else will be born. A shining butterfly emerging from the depressed chrysalis. Rebirth. Heracles rising from the ashes of his pyre immortal. 

(Dr Gaul sits in his peripheral, smiling approvingly. The snake consumes itself.)

Maybe. Perhaps Snow is getting far too ahead of himself. Mycroft is but a sixteen year old boy – brilliant, but an unproven concept. He has yet to pass a true trial, having not the opportunity to do so. That will change eventually.

Snow breathes and returns.

He watches the gentle rise and fall of Mycroft’s chest, a rhythm that seems to define the passage of time in this space. He counts how many breaths per minute. He commits the feeling of this place to memory: the muffled sound of the city beyond these walls, the gently toned warmth of light from the lamp aided by moonlight, the feeling of  protection that seems to permeate this area for this moment; for all that Snow is no man of any religion or superstition, it feels sacred.

Red curls – usually so very well groomed – fall loosely over his face like a veil, and Snow does not give in to the temptation to move them, to brush them aside gently.

He rises, and finally moves to leave and retire himself. He switches off the lights, and slips outside the boundary. When he moves to close the door, he decides to look back one last time and

He sees ghosts, Lucy Gray and Coryo. Lucy Gray sits while Coryo stands, and they quietly survey him, warmth in their expression. Parental, even. Loving, most of all.

And then they look at Snow, judgement, a thousand accusations.

(A thousand what-ifs.)

Snow closes the door.

Mycroft does not remember that night. 

Snow considers that a blessing.

(And far into the future – or not far at all, depending on one’s perspective – when Mycroft is no longer his friend; partner; right hand but his enemy, when the fire is not warm and his soul aches for another; when the nation is at war and it all crumbles down, 

Snow will cradle this memory in his hands, in his mind, and dream.) 

(But he was never a dreamer. That was always Mycroft.)

(One day, Regina will introduce Mycroft to the pomegranate fruit, and Mycroft will eat the seeds. There will be a complicated expression on his face when he tastes them, something that will feel like melancholy and déjà vu.

“Is it good?” Regina will ask, a bit concerned. 

And all Mycroft can respond with is this: “It tastes like a dream.”)