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Chapter Text

I.

            My name is Alexander Mycroft Michael Holmes. I occupy a minor position in the British Government. I am a faithful servant to the Crown. I am a practical and pragmatic man, which makes me a valuable asset in delicate conversations and polite society. I possess varying levels of governmental clearance, which afford me the luxury of being as visible as a wish to be, and quite the opposite as the mood strikes.

           I detest legwork, but am no stranger to it. I do not allow my skills to fall into decay, no matter how many hours I may sit at my desk. (Or sweets I may consume.) One never knows when such trivialities will be inevitable. I would say to ask a sorry group of Serbians what I may mean, but as they say, “dead men tell no tales”.

           I live in a comfortable Brownstone on the edge of London, outfitted with a rather spectacular security system (were that any of you reading this suddenly find yourselves with the foolish idea to try and disturb my home). And if you have the good fortune of infiltrating the premises, please refer back to said sorry Serbians.

            There are wars that Great Britain has been involved in. And there are those that is has not. I have had not a small hand in each of these decisions for a healthy amount of years, now. I have saved brave men from peril and I have sent said same men to horrid fates. It does not please me, this pointless waste of life, but neither do I lose sleep over this. The world is a wicked place, and my trade is to caul the nastier bits. I can cauterize a festering wound of society, but there will still be blood, shed.

            I have held the Queen’s ear, just as I now hold the King’s. Officially, my position is that I support the Monarchy. Which, in my humble opinion, ended 8 September, 2022. “Figurehead” has never been a more apt descriptor. But certainly, I digress.

            I have engineered policies and torched others with the same flick of my pen. I have swayed the most stalwart hold out to see the … correct side of a position. Just as I have made the apathetic into the greatest champion of a cause. And when appropriate (or perhaps when I am bored), I may find reason to Pinch certain scruffy, unkempt, unfit pennies, if you follow my meaning. I do not inflate my importance in the hierarchy of my country’s command, though it would take a fortnight, at most, to notice my absence should it be permanent.

            I have made loyalists from enemies, and enemies from friends. Those that merge into my inner orbit have earned a great deal of my trust, and I would not hesitate to have them at my back. As such, my back never leaves the wall. Sentiment can lead to misplaced trust, which leads to all manners of trouble, death merely the simplest of them all.

            This truncated list of my credentials is outlined only to emphasize the point of all of this: My name is Alexander Mycroft Michael Holmes. I occupy a minor position in the British Government. And my life’s purpose is as follows: Protect William Sherlock Scott Holmes. What follows is the [ABBREVIATED] memoir of the trials and tribulations of being my brother’s keeper.

Chapter Text

II.

            I will never mention to my parents, for I would never want to hear their sickly sweet lies in the face of the obvious truth: my conception was in error. My mother was a devoted Mathematician – a stunningly brilliant woman who had to work thrice as hard for the opportunity to be dismissed as a woman in a “man’s” space. To be blindsided with sentiment by someone a simple as my father – an accountant, so at least not a complete dullard in my mother’s field on interest – was an equation the woman had never thought to try and solve for. As it were, the unexpected consequence of their actions – Hello – prompted a fast-tracked marriage so I would not be born the bastard many would gleefully call me, now.

            Where I in a similar position, I would resent my spouse and child so mightily that they would remove themselves from my life of their own accord. Mother, however, tipped in the other direction. Within reason, of course. My father was supportive of my mother in a time where many would question either his manhood, his motivation, or his sexuality, but he was always made of stronger stuff than I gave him credit for. Though concessions on my mother’s behalf needed to be made, her career was not one of them. When I was three, she went on a book tour to Colleges and Universities to discuss her brilliant publication on new mathematical techniques. There were times my father and I joined her, and times when it was father, Nanny, and me at home.

             I take after my mother in many ways – wunderkind, tenacious, cunning, vicious and ruthless where necessary. And capable, though wary, of letting someone in. Therefore, I was, and at times, still am, rather taken aback that she wanted another child. I proved from a young age to be quite different from my peers, far beyond just my intelligence. I would believe myself to be the perfect offspring for a woman so ambitious. Why take the chance on a second and find yourself with a dullard who might put exceptionally unfair demands on your time? But no one thinks to ask a four year-old for their insights on child bearing.

            Another secret I will never mention to my parents, for with all of their faults, I still hold a not insignificant amount of familial affection for them, and I would not want to recall what I am sure are painful memories, is this: there were siblings between my birth and Sherlock’s who never made it Earth-side. My birth was quite the surprise because I believe that my mother  believed her chances of pregnancy were statistically low. So where I was a happy accident, Sherlock was a desperate want.

            I recall, not long after my fifth birthday, seeing my mother crying in the bathroom. I asked her what was wrong, as I had never seen her cry like that before. She hugged me so fiercely and thanked me for allowing her to be a mother. It was confusing for me in the moment – my omniscience not even in its infancy yet – so I told her that I loved her and that seemed to put things to right. Later that evening, I saw her and my father embracing in the hallway. My father was rare to offer such comfort to my mother because she was not the type who needed it. But I knew that what I saw earlier in the bathroom directly related to this moment, and I vowed that I would do anything I could to fix this, for all I knew what “this” was.

            I am loathe to admit, but I was rather a fan of Pinocchio as a child. The Disney version, for full disclosure. So I did what any boy of five would do – I went to my room, opened my curtains, found the brightest star in the sky, and wished with all my might that my parents could have what they so greatly wanted so they would not be so sad anymore.

            I knew my parents had given up their hopes for another child until they sat me down one day with guarded optimism in their eyes and told me that I would be a big brother in five months’ time. I decided to keep it to myself, that my wish had worked. No sense in tempting the universe to take it back.

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            William Sherlock Scott Holmes was born on a cold, dreary, slushy morning in early January. My mother’s pregnancy was difficult and she was bedridden not long after I was told the exciting news that my days as an only child were drawing to a close. As such, Sherlock was born prematurely – held in a little longer thanks only to the bedrest. He arrived seven weeks before he was due, and he’s been full of surprises ever since.

           It was three days before I could visit my mother in hospital. She was a right fright – paler than I’d ever seen her, so weak that her hug felt more like a gentle pat. Her eyes were rimmed red and her hair was pulled back in a messy fashion that I had never seen on her before. She cried when she hugged me, and I wondered if this was how she would always be from now on.

            It was two more days after that before I could finally meet the miracle I didn’t know that I had wished for. There was a palpable fear surrounding my parents, especially as I sat on my mother’s lap as she was wheeled to the neonatal unit. I was prepped on what I would see, entering into such a room of veneration, but I was still terribly unprepared.

            I admit that I let the fear grip me in that moment, too. I was terrified to even approach the bubble that my brother was in. But father gently held my hand and led me over and introduced me to the newest Holmes. Sherlock was tiny. So small that some of my books would have dwarfed him. He was a dull yellow, with the smallest of tubes in his nostrils and all manner of medical detritus strewn about him. He was in a nappy fit for a dolly, and his miniature limbs moved and fidgeted as if he couldn’t be still to save his little life. His eyes weren’t open, but weren’t quite close, either. I watched his impossibly small chest rise and fall as he breathed. I swore I could see his tiny heart beating. His cries were small and pitiful and were nearly drowned out by the machinery working to keep him alive.

            I wasn’t allowed to hold him that day, he was too fragile to be removed from the incubator. I was told I could reach through the arm hole to touch him, but I didn’t want to cause harm. I recall being nervous that even my staring would somehow hurt him.

“He’ll need his big brother to help look out for him,” my mother said, her voice so tired, I hardly recognized it as hers. I nodded absently, unable to look away from this caricature of a baby.

            My mother remained in hospital for a full week. My father and I visited her daily. Uncle Rudy, my mother’s only living sibling, stayed with us at our home and minded me when father had to work or wanted to grieve alone with mother.

            When she was finally cleared to come home, the sadness and fear came with her. No one really explains what happens when you don’t come home from hospital with the baby you went there to birth. I suppose it’s not a possibility any family cares to dwell upon. Uncle Rudy, for all of his eccentricities, proved to be the levity we needed during that dreadful time. He kept me entertained with his oddities, was able to make father chuckle, and despite how different he seemed from my mother, Uncle Rudy was able to reach her through her pain and fear.

            She visited Sherlock every day, often for hours at a time. I knew father would visit on his way home from work. Some days mother would arrive home with him. Two weeks on, and still five weeks early, Sherlock refused to go without a fight. And soon, a seven-week premature-sized baby amount of hope began to seep into our home. Though diagnosed with apnoea, anaemia, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, jaundice, and a small hole in his impossibly small heart, he put on weight, his lungs grew stronger, his sickly, yellow pallor faded. He was two weeks and five days old when I was finally allowed to hold him.

            Propped in chair much too big for me, with pillows to either side, a wiggly, fussy little human was placed in my lap. He squirmed for a bit, then stilled. One of his stick-thin arms had been left out of his blanket and he gripped one of my fingers with all of his, and the strength in his tiny fist astounded me. I noticed then, that his newborn eyes were focused unfocusedly on my face, and he had completely ceased his cries. I’m certain there is photographic evidence of what can best be described as a kismet moment somewhere in my parent’s home.

            My mother’s words came back to me, then, and I suddenly understood with shocking clarity. I had wished for this, for him. For this impossible creature to come into this world and heal my parent’s heartache, and unbeknownst to me at the time, to change my life forever in unforeseen ways. I looked down at him, my baby brother, and promised him that for as long as I live, I would always protect him.

            It was an awfully large promise to make to such an awfully small child. I have never, nor will I ever, take a promise as seriously than the one a six your old boy made to his premature, newborn baby brother upon their official first meeting.

            Everything I have done, all that I have become, has been in honour of that promise. For better and for worse. I have many regrets in my life, including some of the ways that I have kept my promise to him. But I see this as merely my way of thanking the universe for granting the wish of a young boy, so that the child in his parents’ eye could become a real boy.

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            And if you get it in your plebian brain to call me “Jiminy”, you will soon be acquainted with the scope of my minor governmental position.

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            Sherlock was strong enough to come home almost three weeks later. Still two weeks early, though he rebuffed any efforts to label him as such. He had fought the first of many battles in his life, and he had beaten the odds. He was my hero in that moment, as much as I was his for many years after.

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            I hope you now see that throughout these writings, however many pages may they span, that that impossibly small child rather quickly took up an impossibly large space in my heart, and because of that miracle baby who refused to give up, so now, do I refuse the same defeats. I worry about Sherlock. Constantly. But he will always fight until it all seeps out of his very marrow. And therefore, so I, shall do the same.