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John tries to say no. He doesn't want the money, he doesn't really need the money and he most certainly doesn't need
Mycroft's pity. Just because he can't get a job at the moment, and he can't actually keep 221B Baker Street, because central
London rents are what they are and Sherlock's case fees were the only thing enabling them to pay for it and he doesn't have
that anymore, none of that means he needs money.
He hates the way people look at him, like he's some non-functional,
half-mad cripple, which he's not, in any way, and Sherlock was the one person who understood that. No, he really doesn't need
to see another psychiatrist, because that wouldn't bring Sherlock back and that is the major problem in his life. No, as the
third of the bloody people he had to see on Mycroft's suggestions, which for suggestion read order with threats, he doesn't
have some sort of survivor's guilt. Sherlock knew what he was doing. He's had some funny looks over that statement, and that's
when he loses it. Which doesn't help with his claim that John Watson is okay.
Mycroft couches his offers of charity
nicely. He has a friend who owns a surgery, who is going on an extended holiday and needs a new partner. Or he has a friend
who is taking a career break after her maternity leave and needs someone to take over her surgery. If the pattern amongst
Mycroft's friends is repeated throughout the NHS, it's a miracle that there are any staffed surgeries whatsoever.
It
doesn't matter how nicely Mycroft asks, it's the principle of the thing that's stopping him. If he moves out, people will
touch Sherlock's things. That was the worst thing about coming home day after day, finding the remnants of fingerprint powder
everywhere in the flat. Someone had been in there, touching Sherlock's stuff, disturbing the precise lack of order, Anderson's
horrid bony fingers running over Sherlock's stuff, infecting it with stupidity (oh God, he has to stop hearing what he thinks
would be Sherlock's opinion on the matter). If the circumstances had been different, he would have left Sherlock a note. No
more killers in the sitting room, it only means police visits and having to explain where you got the fresh eyes from this
time.
He had no reason to leave notes like that anymore.
A better man would be kinder to Mycroft, but Mycroft
takes to kindness even less well that John does. Mycroft hates euphemisms; it's something he shares ... shared with his brother.
They were so similar, even if neither of them would have admitted it.
"I don't need any money."
"I know. Of
course you don't *need* it." There was a pause. "No one needs to know that you've taken it."
"I don't want to take
your money."
"It's mine to give." Mycroft was halfway through the door. "Sherlock had three friends in all of his life.
That makes you important to me, whether you like it or not."
Of course, the other thing they shared was the ability
to understand how people's minds worked. John couldn't let a carrot of information like that go without chasing after it.
"Who were the other two?"
"William Trevor and ... I'll tell you the other name if you take the partnership with Stevenson."
John
needed to know, wanted to know more about Sherlock's past, to see if it explained anything about him. Something had to explain
him. "I'll take it."
"I thought you might." John knew that now that Mycroft had found out that throwing breadcrumbs
of information would get John to agree to his plans, he would keep doing that. And yet John didn't care, this was as close
as he could get to getting Sherlock back. He needed to know whether this William Trevor had the same urge to throttle Sherlock
when he was so superior and yet couldn't remember to buy the bread, and then he'd do something amazing, so incredible that
you'd forgive him for the unspeakably annoying thing he was about to do three seconds later. John would do anything to find
out more, this wasn't accepting charity, this was an investigation.
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