Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mycroft read through the rest of the article, trying to figure out where his plan had gone awry.

The lab that had exploded was the same lab that Mycroft had met Jim in, which seemed important, but also a bit strange. The place was significant to Jim, not to Sherlock.

Mycroft wondered for a moment if the article might be incorrect. Perhaps the whole consulting detective and criminal mastermind bits had been set up by Moriarty somehow. It wouldn't be the first time Moriarty had manipulated the press into doing his bidding.

However, when Mycroft did another search on Jim Moriarty, he found an abundance of evidence to contradict the theory. All the cases, the media attention that Sherlock Holmes had in the original timeline, Jim Moriarty had here. There was even a picture of him with Lestrade.

There was little corresponding information about Sherlock, beyond what was written about the explosion, but he seemed to have become a thief of some kind. The article attributed several large thefts to him, though with little explanation as to why he was even suspected. The exact reason why Sherlock had become such a thief was not adequately explained in the article.

Mycroft thought over the change he'd made, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Why hadn't his brother become a detective?

And then it hit him. He'd taken Carl Powers out of the equation. The Carl Powers murder had been Sherlock's inspiration, the thing that had set him on the path to detective work. His brother hadn't been simply destined to be a detective – it had been a whim, a sudden irritation at a stupid article he'd seen in the paper that had sparked his interest in outdoing the police. Without that case to catch his attention at that particular moment, his focus could have gone absolutely anywhere.

Mycroft already had a half-formed idea of what he needed to do to fix the new problem he'd created, but there was one element to the story that still bothered him. Namely, the fact that Sherlock had gone out of his way to kill Jim. There didn't seem to be any obvious reason for him to have done it.

The explanation given in the article – that Sherlock had been angry at having his plans continually thwarted – didn't sound plausible to Mycroft. Knowing his brother as he did, Mycroft had already concluded that Sherlock's career in thievery had arisen out of boredom, not any actual desire to acquire valuable items. Having someone capable of thwarting his plans would only add to the challenge.

No, whatever it was, it had to be something personal, and Mycroft couldn't go back until he knew what it was.

There were many lines of investigation Mycroft could have taken, but he started by going to the lab. It had been nearly three years since the explosion, so he knew there probably wouldn't be much by way of usable information, but he needed to see where his brother had died.

The building had been completely rebuilt, unsurprisingly. He stood in front of it for a few minutes, then turned to leave...

...only to have a pair of men grab him and unceremoniously shove him into the back of a black car.

~*~*~*~*~

Mycroft remained silent during the car ride. He didn't yet know whether he was being taken by his alternate self or someone who had mistaken him for his alternate self, and there was no point in talking until he found out.

He was taken to an abandoned warehouse. He was forced to wait there for a little over an hour before a woman walked in. He remembered her vaguely; she'd been his assistant for a while.

“Sir,” she said, taking a seat across from him. “No... not sir. You aren't my boss anymore.”

Mycroft said nothing, though he had to wonder what precisely had happened to his other self. Had the incident with Sherlock been enough to lose him his job? Had he found the American project and jaunted off to another universe to save Sherlock?

“Where have you been for the past two years?”

“Has it really been that long?” Mycroft asked.

She gave him a look.

“How did you find me?”

“I had the lab staked out,” she replied. “In case you ever came back. You don't have to worry; no one else knows you're here.”

“What do you intend to do with me?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” she replied. “Given where you popped back up...”

Mycroft thought over what she'd said. It seemed they were closer in this timeline. He might be able to turn this to his advantage. “Do you still have any of the files on my brother?”

“I still have all of it, even your personal ones,” she replied. “I brought it all with me.”

After surprisingly little convincing, she brought him back to the building he owned, leaving several boxes behind with him. “I hope you're able to find what you need.”

He was. The boxes contained a wealth of information on both Sherlock and Jim, much of which he would never have been able to acquire through ordinary sources. His other self had been just as concerned about Sherlock as he was.

Every single one of Sherlock's exploits was there, ordered by date. Sherlock's first major theft had been in 1991, two years after Carl Powers hadn't been murdered. There had been a newspaper article about a new museum exhibit containing a rare, prehistoric insect, preserved in amber. The article had gone on and on about the new 'unbreakable' security being put in place to protect it. In fact, it had given away so much that Mycroft already knew exactly how Sherlock must have stolen it, even before he reached the second article detailing the actual theft.

The item had been mysteriously returned a week after it was taken. Mycroft had to imagine it was his other self's doing.

That certainly seemed to be the theme running through the thefts, over the years. Mycroft could see the way Sherlock had actively taunted him with his crimes, as well as the way the other Mycroft had cleaned up after him, minimizing the damage, hiding the culprit as best as he could. He had continued to do this as Sherlock moved from stealing valuable antiques to scientific research to important government secrets.

There had been a tenuous equilibrium to the situation until Jim Moriarty, consulting detective, had upset the balance. He'd noticed a pattern in several of Sherlock's crimes, linking them together in a way that no one else ever had. He went around insisting that there was a single criminal mastermind behind any number of high profile events.

Surprisingly, this had occurred a good two years before the explosion.

Other Mycroft had taken an interest in him immediately, putting together a basic file on his history. Mycroft was pleased to see the effects of his interference – or rather, the interference of Jim's 'anonymous childhood benefactor' – had been basically positive up until that point.

Other Mycroft had then arranged for Jim to be picked up in a black car. Fortunately, he'd had the whole thing recorded.

The meeting had not quite gone the way the other Mycroft had been expecting.

Mycroft watched video-Jim step out of the car, carelessly shoving one of the guards out of the way in the process. “Yes, yes, you're all very intimidating, but I'm here to meet your boss. Whoever he is.”

Other Mycroft stood nearby, affecting an intimidating pose. “Mr. Moriarty,” he said.

Jim froze the moment he heard the voice. Mycroft groaned as he watched his other self completely misinterpret the response, assuming that Jim was truly frightened of him.

“I see you're beginning to understand the full weight of the situation you're in.”

Jim's head snapped up. His eyes were wide for a moment, and then he laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

Other Mycroft was visibly taken aback. “Mr. Moriarty--”

“It's you,” he whispered. “It's really you! I thought I'd never see you again!” Jim ran over to Other Mycroft, patting him on the shoulders and chest as though to make sure he really existed. He looked up at Other Mycroft's face almost worshipfully for a long moment, then stepped back, sighing. “No, you aren't him, are you? He was a bit thinner than you are and a few years older... not to mention the fact that this was twenty years ago...”

Other Mycroft just stared at him, clearly baffled.

“And you obviously have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's okay. Maybe he was a relative of yours,” Jim went on, looking thoughtful for a moment. He then shook his head, giving Other Mycroft a huge grin. “It doesn't matter. This is great!” He threw his arms around Other Mycroft, giving him what was undoubtedly the biggest hug he'd had in his entire life.

Other Mycroft allowed it, seemingly at a complete loss for what to do. Hugging wasn't exactly a common response to one of his kidnappings. After a few seconds, he patted Jim's head vaguely, obviously trying to adapt to the situation and roll with it. “Just who are you talking about, Mr. Moriarty?”

Jim pulled back. “Jim. You can call me Jim. And I don't know.” Jim laughed. “I don't know his name. I've been looking for him for nearly twenty years, but I haven't found anything about him. He showed up, enrolled me in school, and then he just-- poof!” Jim mimicked an explosion with his hands. “Vanished right off the face of the Earth.”

Other Mycroft went slightly pale. “You're referring to your anonymous benefactor?” he asked. At Jim's nod, he continued: “And... he looked just like me, twenty years ago...”

Mycroft could see the deductions occurring in his other self's head, and Mycroft knew exactly what conclusion he would reach, whether he would speak it aloud or not. Discounting time travel, as any rational man would, there was a far more plausible explanation for the man's identity. Mycroft always had looked just like his father, far more so than Sherlock.

And once he'd deduced that the man was his father, the rest of the story became obvious. There was only one reason for a wealthy man, particularly one like his father, to anonymously come to the aid of one specific boy.

Other Mycroft circled Jim, looking him up and down. He stopped in front of him, inspecting his face. “Do you resemble your mother more than your father?”

“Yes,” Jim replied. “Now, I know what you're thinking, but Shadow Man said he wasn't my real father.”

“People say a great many things, don't they?” Other Mycroft replied. He stared at a point in the distance, sounding weary.

“If you had no idea he came to me, why did you bring me here?” Jim asked.

Other Mycroft snapped out of his daze. It took him a moment to recover and come up with something not related to Sherlock. “I've heard about your impressive deductive abilities. I was hoping you might be willing to take on a few cases for me, on a discreet basis.”

“Work for you?” Jim looked positively ecstatic. “Of course!”

“Good.” Other Mycroft sounded slightly off, still visibly uncertain about how to handle someone who was enthusiastically willing to cooperate.

The video ended soon afterward.

From there, it didn't take much for Mycroft to figure out how things had gone, in particular how they had gone wrong.

Jim had continued to take the cases Other Mycroft had given him, with Other Mycroft making a point to keep him as far away from Sherlock as he possibly could. The two had grown fairly close – so close that it had been inevitable that Sherlock would find out.

Mycroft's hands shook as he looked through the items in the final box. It consisted almost entirely of taunting notes from Sherlock, running back over a decade. They were more hostile than anything his Sherlock would have written, but the first batch were more attention-seeking than threatening.

They'd changed after Jim came into the picture, however. Mycroft found a photo of Other Mycroft with Jim in a cafe, both men smiling. There was a note scribbled on the back in Sherlock's handwriting: 'Is he the brother you always wanted?'

There were other photos, other notes. One had Jim's face burned through by a cigarette. 'You can't replace me, Mycroft' was written on the back, scribbled violently enough to tear holes.

The final note was barely legible, yet perfectly clear. 'You will lose us both.'

Mycroft rubbed his face.

Two things were obvious to him now. First, he needed to ensure that Sherlock still became a detective, not a criminal, regardless of what Jim did. Second, he needed to do something to dissuade Jim from looking for him or associating with his other self should they happen to meet again.

Sherlock had committed his first crime in 1991. Mycroft set the device to two weeks before the crime would occur, then activated it, watching the future whirl away in front of him.